It’s interesting to notice how many superhero movies that usually warrant more in-depth discussion in my circles are those who purposefully seem to steer away from some of the common tropes of the genre and/or just try to tell a cohesive story.

“The Dark Knight” movies aspire to be neo-noir thrillers that just happen to follow the POV of a man who dresses like a bat; one of the reasons why it can be enjoyed by people other than Batman fans. “The Joker” is a competent (if derivative) character study that coincidentally coexists with the whole Gotham mythos, and so on and so on.

I’m not trying to say superhero movies are not cinema (how would one begin to define cinema anyway), but I think an argument could be made to say Scorsese was not wrong to categorize them as “theme parks”, or to think they’re essentially a very refined delivery method of escapism.