Honda Quick wrote:
X-Men 2, Iron Man, X-Men: First Class, Avengers Assemble, and Guardians of the Galaxy were all fantastic. Outside of that, the comic book movies have all fallen well short of a good movie for me. Most likely because everything has been so oversaturated since the original Spiderman (which I'm sure was a great and unique flick at the time, but I just never cared for Spidey).
I think I just have a distaste for constant sequels when I feel they are trying to make more money rather than tell more story. Which is why I couldn't stand Iron Man2/3, Thor 2, Captain America 2, the billions of Spidermans, Hulks, etc. even though they link in more info for other movies in the Marvel Universe. The one exception for the hatred of sequels for me has been Oceans 12/13 and Bad Boys 2. Love those even though they truly don't offer anything new.

With all of this said, I'll go see Age of Ultron once it's released here in the States. LOL
Spiderman, to me, has always been more driven by teenage angst and the like. That's basically his defining characteristic to me. The trouble with that is that I think you start to lose people who don't fall within that age bracket. I found the first Transformers fim pretty good when I was about the same age as the main character is supposed to be, but honestly feel I outgrew it being relevant to me. Of course, I still enjoy giant robots fighting (though I'd actually say only Transformers 3 is a good film, 1 and 2 are tolerable and AoE was somehow overly unrealistic... even with the suspension of disbelief that got me through the first 3) and Spiderman fighting bad guys. I liked Spidey 1 and 2 and Amazing Spiderman was really, really well done I thought. But the trouble is it only takes one bad film to really derail a franchise imo. A film doesn't have to resonate with me personally to be good. Schindler's List is a great film, but nothing in my life, thankfully, allows me to really relate to the characters within it. But I do feel it adds a little something. And that something is sometimes the little spark that makes you really love a film.
Since about 2000 or so, off the top of my head the big comic books that have been made into films are as follows -
Blade Trilogy (though I'm not sure how well known this is as a comic book film)
X-men Trilogy
X-men First Class + Days of Future Past
At least two Wolverine centric films (or, alternatively,at least 7 Xmen films).
Spiderman Trilogy
2 Amazing Spiderman films
Batman (Dark Knight) Trilogy
Daredevil
Elektra
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Catwoman (which after 30 seconds of being sufficiently distracted by Halle Berry being so damned hot, even I turned off.)
Constantine
Man of Steel
Superman Returns
Two Fantastic Four films
Watchmen (I'm going to buy this on blu-ray tomorrow after work if I get out early enough. I haven't seen this in ages and was great - though the ending was massively improved for the movie imo)
Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and that Tony Stark film released under the name "Iron Man 3"
Kick-Ass (which was a great film) and Kick donkey 2
Green Lantern (which wasn't as bad as everyone made out, though it was far from good).
Thor, Thor: Dark World
Cap 'Merica, Winter Soldier
Judge Dredd film
Guardians of the Galaxy
Avengers + Age of Ultron.
That seems like a LOT off the top of my head. And, as minchy mentioned, we also have TV shows. Even excluding animated ones there is:
Constantine, Arrow (which is awesome), Flash, Gotham (imagine Batman without the best thing about Batman!*), Daredevil, Smallville is a few years gone but 10 years of that (one of which was good, and their Doomsday storyline was awful), Agents of Shield, Agent Carter etc.
By my count, based off my off the top of the head writing, that is 42 movies in 15 or so years. I've seen 33 of them, and enjoyed 28 of those enough that if a pal wanted to come round here and watch them, I'd be up for it. But that is a lot of films it seems (though probably many more come from books rather than comic books). I'm sure there are also many more that I don't know from comic books or have forgotten.
Part of me feels a big issue is that a number of the most "famous" comic book characters have been played out. Generally, this would mean either you put them to bed for a bit, you reboot them, or you use some other material you have rights to. I think we've started to see this a little with the introduction of more characters. Dr Strange and Adam Warlock are not obscure comic book characters and both played a decent part in some famous comic book arcs. I'm sure the two of them are instrumental in "Infinity Gauntlet" and their roles may impact Infinity War a little more (or they may go in another direction or base it off Infinity War since that's the name of the film.) But you cannot sell a film based on them alone. And I swear that Ant-man is going to find this out. In the trailer they make fun of how crappy sounding he is, and I think the film will suffer from mass derision unless it is really good (this is what I said about Guardians, but that was really good).
Odd as this may seem, I'm also a little offended at Marvel and DC setting up their release schedules for the next 5 or so years. It almost annoys me that they seem to be so utterly confident that we'll all keep going. Despite Sony having greenlit Amazing Spiderman 3 after the first Amazing Spiderman then subsequently having to sack it. It annoys me more that I know I'm the sucker who will go see almost every film on the release schedule too. Even if the next one is crap I'll see the one after.
Further, to compare briefly my feelings at the end of Avengers and Avengers 2. Avengers seemed like a solid bookend to that section of the story. Avengers 2 felt like it was pushing the sequel hook a bit much.
More substantial Age of Ultron spoiler
Spoiler (click to show)
The New Avengers seems pushed on us. I already somewhat dislike it. I really don't like Vision either and felt the complete lack of any clue to the audience of his powers was really stupid. Seriously, Hulk's powers were explained though he's well known. Hawkeye and Black Widow's "powers" were made clear before the big fight in Avengers Assemble. Iron Man and Thor had their powers made clear. Captain America, Falcon - powers detailed. Even outside the MCU this is true for almost any origin type story, or even just any sensible storytelling. Vision's handling really irks me.
Well, I usually save my rants for the videogame thread. Just realised I forgot the two Hulk films in my list above.