I have a feeling the formula worked for him and me much better because we grew up reading marvel comics and saw MANY attempts that were pretty terrible to adapt those stories to tv and screen.
I grew up with marvel comics. I actually bought them at the corner shop in my home country reliably for over a decade.
In addition because of how TV worked in my home country, TV shows and the like where on something of a 10 year delay. So I grew up with 90s animated adaptations of Marvel stuff (its own mini universe in a way).
I just see no benefit to film adaptations. In terms of adaptation, a film is the WORST medium for a ongoing or long story. Maybe books (of a certain length) adapt sorta well to film. But thats about it. Give me animated series with a good voice cast and talented animation crew, if I want a adaptation at all.
Why would I want a hyper condensed version of the original stories condensed into the same bland formula? Like yeah they did make it more streamlined and cut the fat in parts, but in other ways they really removed the OOMPH from so many stories because they had to follow the exact same goddam formula.
And I am so fucking tired of films with buckets of animation in them. Just fucking make a animated film at that point and get somebody with a talented design aesthetic.