Love the darker tone of this new iteration of DC movies. It matches what the newer animated films have been doing and I loved those as well. The nobody dies, lock em all up stuff is played out. I like to see the full scope of these guys powers and the complex affects their life and death decisions have on the characters, those around the characters and yes even the bad guys.
I wouldn't necessarily define current superhero movies as a byproduct of previous filmmaking being played out. It's simply caught up to the realism Hollywood adopted as far back as the 1960's. Once upon a time (and still alive on Turner Classic Movies
), westerns, for example, included gunfire, where heroes and villains got shot, with very little trauma conveyed to the audience, and sometimes even less visible bloodshed. Actual shootings aren't so pristine. Eventually filmmakers wanted to reflect actual cause-and-effect and revolutionary westerns (around 1970 or so) like
The Wild Bunch were born.
Personally, I blame the Comics Code Authority for indirectly slowing the growth of realism in comic book movie adaptations. The CCA neutered comic book writers' creativity to protect moral integrity at the cost of realistic subjectivity. Decades of comic book stories were shackled, showing what would happen in clashes between "good and evil." It was all so superficial. Collateral damage was practically nonexistent. It was pure fantasy.
Well, creators began slowly bucking the established system, rebuking the creative restraints, and interlaced more logic into their works of fiction. Fictional superheroes, like heroes in real life, do not want innocents to be harmed. But real heroes cannot prevent every consequence of evil acts. They're not omnipotent. Why should superheroes be regarded differently? It's not very realistic to think so.
The creators and studios of today's superhero movies of the past decade or so finally embraced what comic book publishers took control of 30 years ago. They stopped treating their stories like classic Disney films, where the hero/prince vanquishes the evil queen and everyone lives happily ever after. Instead, they look back on humanity's past, see the events unfolding in humanity's present, accept the consequences of what happens when conflict between good and evil occurs, insert superheroes into their fictional scenarios, and weigh what those superheroes can and cannot do. I'm glad Hollywood caught up in this aspect.
