You might be the first person I've ever seen say that Dark Knight and Spiderman 2 weren't better than their predecessors.
Seriously. I'm sure people will pop up now saying it because that shit just happens on the internet, but I've never seen anyone who thought those two movies weren't the best of their series far and away.
Well, first of all I really liked the way they told the story in Batman Begins.
They took their time, and made it somewhat believable, but still had a decent amount of action.
I don't know if The Dark Knight would have been as big of a hit as it was if Heath Ledger hadn't died before it came out.
Plus there were all of those rumors saying that he died from a drug overdose, and the reason for that was because he was haunted by how dark the Joker character was, and that in turn very likely generated a lot of interest in the movie, which may have sold more tickets than it otherwise would have.
But the movie seemed a little rushed to me, as though they were more interested in showing the Joker blow things up and burn things than give any kind of background or motivation for his character.
Also I thought Two-Face was supposed to be a major villain in the Batman series, but he really didn't do all that much here, and then they killed him off.
As for Spiderman, I thought there was a lot to like about the first one, but a lot to hate about number two. Good name for it, actually.
To begin with: From what I remember in the comic books, "Dr. Ock" was an evil genius, but he was also a sociopathic murdering psychopath. Actually kind of scary. But I felt that this movie's version of him was a joke by comparison.
Also I hated the way Spiderman kept showing his (peter Parker) face to everyone. In the comic books he was always very careful about keeping his "secret identity" concealed. It was only much later in the various different series' that he VERY gradually started letting other people know who he was. Here he practically took out a front-page in the Daily Bugle with a headline screaming "I, Peter Parker, am SPIDER-MAN!" I mean that's what he might as well have done.