Something I've noticed about superhero movies

Watching the FF-2: Rise of the Silver Surfer trailer again for about the 80th time, something occured to me about superhero movies: they're no longer self-concious.

Remember the first Punisher movie, the one where Dolph Lundgren refused to wear the Punisher's costume? For the longest time comic movies proceeded from two assumptions: ordinary people wouldn't get comics and so you needed to make the movie look as little like a comic as possible.

In the first X-men movie, the costumes are very military. And you almost never see anyone fly. The powers are really understated in that movie.

It struck me how far that has changed with this trailer. Johnny Storm just runs off a building, yells "flame on!" and he's on fire and flying.

Sure there was some "can he or can't he fly" in the first movie, but they didn't shy away from the costumes, the powers or even the taglines. He actually just says "flame on" and makes it sound like the coolest, most natural thing you could say when bursting into flames while flying off a building.

Bout damn time.