Avengers: Age of Ultron just came out, and if you’ve been reading the paper like a good pupil, you know that even more Marvel and DC movies are on the way, to present interesting hurdles and varied fan expectations.

As fascinating as it will be to see how all these comic-book-based movies sort out ownership rights and whatnot, overall, it won’t really matter. All across the board science fiction, fantasy, and comic book fans are being consistently disappointed by the film counterparts of their favorite series, characters, and plotlines.

In 2009 and 2013, a lot of “Star Trek” fans were irked by JJ Abrams’ Hollywood style and lackadaisical disregard for canon in his films. Similarly, many Marvel and DC fans are also experiencing, these movies are not for the longtime nerds.

They’re made to earn the most profit, and therefore, they target a larger audience – the laypeople.

As a Star Trek fan, I often don’t even consider the new Trek movies’ canon; they’re simply a commentary on that canon, a fanfictional what-if scenario.

Nerd culture is “in,” and this new trend has both its benefits and downfalls. The good news is, people generally don’t despise nerds with a passion anymore.

However, that also contributes to nerd-based movies being dumbed down, homogenized and normalized.

I don’t read comic books, so naturally when this movie trend began, I refrained from seeing comic-book-based movies.

My philosophy was that I would be missing large chunks of data and would not really have a good grasp of the story and its characters.

Unfortunately, with the newfound popularity of nerdom, now everyone wants a piece of the title. People who have no background knowledge whatsoever of the Avengers and Captain America are pursuing the film versions—a shortcut to being a fan. If these movies were made solely for the longtime fans, then the newcomers wouldn’t understand them. Which is bad.

Deep-rooted nerds are still a minority; their money and good reviews would be drowned in proclamations of how much the movie sucked or didn’t make sense.

Then the movie would lose significant amounts of money, a risk the people and corporations that make them aren’t willing to take.

Therefore, these movies obviously have to be taken with a grain of salt; they’re not going to be what you, the longtime fan, want them to be. Watch them as you would read fanfiction—amusing in its own right perhaps, but not something you would ever take seriously.

This goes for the newcomers, too. If you really want to be a passionate fan of the Avengers, that’s cool. But you’re not getting the real picture from the films.

I suggest you go to a comic book store and explore the realm for yourself.

There’s one downtown. And if you find out you’re not really that interested, you can pet the store’s mascot, MODOK the pug—he’s nice.