re: You knew this was coming: John Carter should have been Guardians of the Galaxy

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You can quibble over the meaning of "successful" but I think Hollywood disagrees with you, which is evidenced by the number of super hero movies we see today.

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But let's take a look back at your point:

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The worst part, as far as comic book movies go, is that the films have built-in audiences and will be successful regardless of quality, thereby giving producers the sense that their moronic decisions and mandates were brilliant and spot on. As a result, they have no reason to change anything they're doing, so the cycle repeats itself.

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We aren't quibbling, it's important to make a distinction between "profit making" which you claim something like Daredevil was, and "successful" which something like Thor was, seeing as we are getting more Thor films, while Daredevil is being rebooted into Television.

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After the crime against humanity that was Ep 1, he still made two more, and they are among the highest grossing films of all time.

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The Star Wars films (not comic book films mind you) escape normal expectations and were written as a trilogy. And Return of the Sith was worth the other two films imo. It still wasn't as good as the originals, but good enough. Series of films can go up and down in quality. You aren't ALWAYS going to have a better film every single time. The best thing we have is that these studios with Marvel and DC can take chances on films.

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After the shitty second Iron Man, they still made third one, which turned a huge profit, which is the only measuring stick for producers, IMO.

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But that would only be true if other iterations of Iron Man or the MCU are terrible. Which they weren't. And second, was Iron Man full of moronic decisions? Yes or no? Was it a successful film? Just because Iron Man 2 sucked, doesn't mean they didn't do some things right on Iron Man. Right?

Iron Man wasn't successful because of comic book nerds, it was successful because it built a bigger audience and resonated outside of the built in audience. General People enjoyed Iron Man, that's the key. And that's the difference maker. I doubt the comic book market is big enough to support Iron Man 3 alone, much less make 1.1 billion dollars at the box office.

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You're right about the really bad ones not prompting a sequel, because fool me once.......hence the "reboots," which you're also wrong about. The reboots are a way to resurrect a franchise that has had the life wrung out of it once, without waiting 20 years. They get to distance themselves from the bad predecessors and trick audiences into flocking to the same shite over and over again.

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I view it as them recalibrating and trying to fix the things they got wrong. Look at Superman Returns. Outside of Routh, it's a crap film. Of the most important comic book character ever. We got a reboot 8 years later. 8 years. You said:

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thereby giving producers the sense that their moronic decisions and mandates were brilliant and spot on. As a result, they have no reason to change anything they're doing, so the cycle repeats itself.

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That's wrong. They saw the success of Batman and the failure of Superman. THey looked at the fan response because they were begging them to change it up. They weren't happy, and nerds are loud.

They changed everything they did and came out with a better overall product. That's a good thing, not a bad.

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Adam Sandler is a horrible example if you're measuring average movies in general. In fact, he's a perfect example of a built-in audience because of his prior, huge successes. The fact is that kids will flock to super hero movies, especially ones which feature characters that haven't been done before or for a long time.

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But the assumption is that built in audiences are bad. Families flock to kid and family movies and Pixar movies. Couples hit up romantic comedies on date nights. Old people see everything. In a row. On a Monday. There are your action movie fans (thanks for continuing that Stallone), your historical epic fans (Book nerds), etc.

It's the concept of the audience. You build a film that you want for acceptance by a particular audience. I mean, I'm sure James Gunn cares that people see his film, but he's probably more concerned with men from 15-35 more than anything else. For Divergent or Hunger Games, you're catering to a 10-25 year old female audience. That's built in. You satisfy them, try to bring in other audiences, and hopefully succeed.

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I think you're confusing "good" movies with successful ones.

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Not at all, what I think, or what you think, is a good movie has no bearing on a "successful," film. If you like certain types of movies, and become part of that "built in audience," then you want to see them take more chances. Reboots CAN be about rehashing the same thing for more gain, these are film BUSINESSES, therefore, at some point it's about profit. But that's a negative way to look at it.

But profit is the only thing that's going to get another movie made, in any case. If studios weren't finding ways to make some money, then we wouldn't have films.

So yeah, Iron Man 2 may have sucked and 3 was less than spectacular. But Winter Soldier was great. Guardians was great. Marvel will get some right, and get some wrong. So will DC. So will New Line. Or Disney. Or Universal. But the only way for them to keep taking chances, good or bad, is that the investment is sometimes worth the effort, and worth it big.

Besides, who knows, maybe they do Iron Man 4, maybe the fix the mistakes and knock it out of the park. Is that so hard to believe?