I think some parts of the X-Men and MCU has transcended the "ghetto", but with larger casts of characters they generally do not go as deep as the Nolan films did and none of them really had as good a director as Nolan either, in my opinion.
Well, I had wanted to avoid getting hung up on our own opinions of the quality of these movies, because that doesn't necessarily correlate to the distinction between superhero films as a genre and films that have superheroes as a subject. I'm just saying that it's not really something that marks the DC films as particularly ambitious when it's already been done. Also, while I do agree with you that the bloated casts are doing more harm than good, it's worth pointing out that DC is even more likely to stumble with this, seeing how they're going to be introducing their characters much more rapidly than Marvel.
Batman v Superman alone is going to have to establish Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg, and Lex Luthor.
He was not an anti-hero. Not in the slightest. He was "brooding" (not the right word) in parts; in the "I am lost in this life" part and in the "Kryptonians are trying destroy the human race" part. Is that weird to you? That is exactly where I would expect him to have some pretty dark feelings brewing. He was tender with his mom, earnest with Lois, pretty caring all-around. I think you have mistaken the film's tone for Henry Cavill's performance.
He was an anti-hero in the
classical sense of the term, which is to say that he was struggling with his own self-doubt and sense of purpose in life before discovering his true origins. Admittedly, Clark's brooding isn't done while posing on a rooftop with his head bowed in contemplation, but there's still a very glum and aimless feel to his journeys, something that tends to be missing from prior interpretations of the character. The film's justification of that was changing key details of his upbringing with the Kents to be much more negative, especially turning Jonathan from a supportive father who encourages Clark's use of his powers into basically an overbearing coach who treats him as a prophesied messiah who should prioritize keeping his powers secret over helping people, and demands huge sacrifices from him to this end. Whether or not such changes were improvements to the source material is debatable (you might have guessed I don't like them
), but they were, nevertheless, changes. This Superman isn't darker because they cleverly deconstructed the comics to point out all the little details that we overlooked or anything; he's darker because they specifically wrote him to be darker.
I'm also concerned that Superman loses a lot of his potential as a foil to Batman by removing the lightness that's usually inherent to his character.