I grew up on comic books. On Russian translations of Spider-Man comics to be specific. These comics introduced me to the X-Men and the Avengers.

These are my comics. I know them by heart. I can name 120 Marvel characters in Russian. They are called "Spectacular Spider-Man" and are a kids' version of the usual comics.

Here is the English version of one of these comics.

I put this here to emphasize how important comics are to me. But this article is actually about movies.

My first comic-book movies were the two Raimi "Spider-Man" films. The first comic-book movie that I saw in theater was the first "Iron Man" (2008). After that there were the X-Men movies that I had not seen previously. The second "Iron-Man" was kind of a disappointment after the first one, but it was still fun. At the same time I saw some serious comic book movies -- around 2011 I saw "Watchmen" and "Sin City." And then in 2012 came "The Avengers"...

This not the first movie that I saw that did not live up to the hype for me -- a year earlier there was "The Green Hornet," but the Avengers movie had everything I dislike about Hollywood adaptations.

It had both too many special effects, and too few. On one hand it seemed that Michael Bay was hiding behind the scenes with the constant explosions, but on the other hand when the Hulk smashed into a building, the building would just go on standing there. Or, even more importantly -- when an alien ship fell onto a street, it didn't cause a massive earthquake.

The only character I liked was Iron Man, but you could see how the character at that point was being written for the fans of Robert Downey Jr. (something that is becoming more and more of a trend -- just watch the last season of "Sherlock").

The one important female Avengers character -- the Black Widow -- had exactly one superpower -- "woman." At the same time the X-Men were establishing the tormented and strong Mystique and the two-sided Jean Grey.

While the Black Widow taught me that even Scarlett Johansson can't hide a badly written script, Mystique was trying to get people to like her as she was -- not fit into the human standards of beauty (Shout-out to the Orcs in Warcraft 2016).

I gave Marvel a second chance by watching "Guardians of the Galaxy," but it seamed to rely on basic fan-satisfaction even more. I do not watch Avengers movies anymore because they don't treat me or their own characters like human beings (or just beings). If I want a good, big comic book movie - I'll rewatch "X-Men: Days of Future Past" or "Watchmen."