Strikingly, this regime is a marvel of corporate capitalism, a machine for global moneymaking — superheroes work for worldwide audiences in ways that no other entertainment can match — that is also intensely defended by people who think of themselves as rebels, outsiders, weirdos, freaks. The Western in its Ford-Wayne heyday knew itself to be mainstream and middlebrow, but even in its gazillion-dollar apotheosis the world of “genre” still maintains a fan base that imagines itself eccentric and disrespected and oppressed.

This nurtured sense of grievance explains the online anger every time somebody like Scorsese dares to doubt the aesthetic merits of the new regime. And it may be a strength of the superhero order, a source of resilience, that so many of its fans continue to answer Andrew O’Hehir’s 2012 question, “at what point is the triumph of comic-book culture sufficient?”, with a zealot’s absolutism: Not until the last film snob shuts up; not until Scorsese breaks down and makes a Batman sequel.

But maybe that zeal hides an uneasy conscience, a buried knowledge that while “genre” cinema can be as great as any other form — I’m counting down the days to the new Dune adaptation — its complete commercial takeover has been obviously bad for popular culture and pop art.

The superhero regime has wasted far too much talent on stories that are fundamentally unworthy of the actors and directors making them. It has empowered and interacted with corporate consolidation, including the devouring power of a Disney empire that is now literally disappearing classic movies from the theater circuit into its corporate vault. And it has habituated adult audiences to stories that belong — with, yes, exceptions — to the state of arrested development in which far more of Western culture than just Hollywood is trapped.