Yeah, I actually agree with you here, call the movie a failure when it hasn't even been out for a full weekend is incredibly premature.
Its wanting to say,
"Ah! Another DCEU failure!" Different year, same rinse-and-repeat whining included.
But I'm assuming when they were creating the character, they started right off planning for it to last more than one issue, and no matter how long the series lasted, they had to no that the character was not going to stay exactly the same the entire time.
Unlike some (not meaning you) who know about as much about history as a lint trap, real creators of the period in question had no expectation of their new character lasting--the was no precedent for superheroes to base such a nonexistent belief on, and they certainly did not believe it would span generations with dozens of strangers all contributing to this lasting character.
Anyone attempting to sell the idea that early superhero creators were just gifted with such prescience either knows nothing about the creative process of those working in that period, or are showing their cult-like devotion to Weisinger's version of Superman (and that which he influenced), as if it was all
expected to take on so many forms. Superheroes were a gamble at best in at the start of the sub-genre, with many losing out with new creations. For every Superman or Captain America, there were dozens of failures most have long forgotten. That gamble was not based on shaking the 1930s equivalent of the Magic 8-Ball and hoping the message read:
"It Will Be a Success With Many Faces".
History did not unfold in that way.
I'm not talking about that exact version, just one that is closer to what people are used to seeing in the comics and other adaptations.
Really? If what you're saying held water at all, Burton's 1989
Batman (despite my own distaste for the film) would not have been the biggest film of the year, because up to that time, the world had been inundated--for 23 straight years--with the Dozier
Batman TV series, running constantly to a wider audience than the comics.
That was the Batman most John and Jane Q. Publics were familiar with, yet it did not harm the film at all. Audiences were looking for another kind of Batman--they had evolved with the times and did not give two craps about Dozier's series being emulated.
On the other hand,
Superman Returns was a slavish tribute / sequel to the Salkind's
Superman films (arguably a version people were used to seeing thanks to then-decades of home media releases), yet it was rejected for the very reason mentioned time and again: it was not 1978 any longer, and no one was looking for that kind of interpretation in the 21st century.
It is no wonder the
"oohhh! It's s-s-so daaarrrk!" Man of Steel was a far more successful film, with Cavill's interpretation celebrated...to this day. Dwayne Johnson was not just being a salesman when he said Cavill was the Superman of our time.
