A decade earlier, a British gentleman named Christopher Nolan did something extremely clever. He took the most human superhero and reimagined his origin story with some excitingly dark realism. Critics and audiences hungrily lapped up Batman Begins, and many other superhero origin tales followed. Strongly reinforcing the trend, the universally appreciated Dark Knight just upped the ante for the use of dark realism in superhero stories. With all this reimagining and reinterpretation, the sub-genre was changing for good, it appeared.
Doubts began to surface when a not-so-tall and....