I used to love superheroes--they made me fantasize that I would one day be able to vaporize the kids who were kicking soccer balls right at my face while I was attempting to reroll a paladin's stats.  I was just biding my time until a radioactive spider would choose to sink its fangs in me or until I would inevitably be whisked away by the government into a top-secret lab for biotechnological enhancements (ahem).  Then I grew up.

These days, superheroes have reached their apotheosis in baroque displays of filmic excess, but mostly they're just more fodder for explosions and vehicles hurtling at high speed toward the screen (the latter an endlessly recycled visual cliche which I loathe), with an utterly predictable narrative arc that is best summed up by the now canonized and consequently banalized wisdom "with great power comes great responsibility". 

Let's not fool ourselves, as much as some of these films are ostensibly aimed at adults with their therapist-friendly themes, superhero Comics were targeted to (male) adolescents from the very first issue of Action Comics in 1938 and continue to be so till this very day.  I like to indulge my id as much as the next kid, but the wonder of that first X-Men film has devolved into a wonder of a different kind, as in, "I wonder what beloved superhero memory they'll crap all over next."  And are there any left--besides Alpha Flight?