RE: Comic Book Movies

You asked for it, I'm going to geek out hardcore here. I think you hit the nail on the head at the beginning of your post. The main problem is money: directors and actors start demanding more of it. I think boredom is also part of it. After watching Spider-man 3 I can't believe Raimi was as into it as he was during the first two or he wouldn't have made such a mediocre movie. Yes, it made a lot of money, but it's still not all that good.

I think the other big problem is that the studios worry about losing audience interest, like you said. Comic books never really end since the publishers can't afford to kill off their most popular characters. This results in lots of stories to choose from when adapting a character to the screen, though only a few classic or important stories. There's also generally plenty of villains to choose from though they may not all be well-known. Batman, for example, is generally considered to have the best rogues gallery of any superhero. Everyone knows Joker, but here's a few more off the top of my head: Two-Face, Man-Bat, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Ra's Al Ghul, Mr. Freeze, The Penguin, The Ventriloquist, Bane, The Riddler, The Scarecrow, Killer Croc. All of these are strong enough to keep the audience's interest if there's a good story. And that's the problem: instead of good writing most superhero sequels go for a bigger spectacle. In Spider-man 3 the story suffered while they tried to shoehorn in 3 villains. The result is all are wasted AND you lose the audience. X3 did the same thing. We had more mutants but less story.

So, I guess my answer would be that a superhero movie could attain Rocky-esque levels of sequelage IF the studios were willing to wait for a good story instead of rushing out a script. Not killing all the villains would help too.

One further note: television would be the perfect place for a superhero story, but networks haven't been willing to take the risk to go all-out with it. The current television model means you probably can't put the money necessary to tell a good story with most superheroes, but this is where they would really shine, especially if you let their universes be connected. Smallville does this, more or less, but those aren't classic versions of the characters. A Batman show would be cool, a Batman show with a guest appearance by Superman would rock. Spider-man with special guest the Fantastic Four. Deadpool and... well, Deadpool doesn't need special guests. All right, that's enough for me. I better quit before I really start to ramble.