Even though there’s been a strong wind behind every comic book movie to date, there’s no such thing as a sure thing. Just ask Martin Campbell, the director of Goldeneye, The Mask Of Zorro and Casino Royale. Surely a perfect fit for bringing a big action comic book movie to the big screen. Instead, we ended up with The Green Lantern.

Ditto with Michel Gondry, the visual genius behind Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, directing a script written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg – who have also given us comedy gold with Superbad and This Is The End – and we wound up with The Green Hornet.

When Man Of Steel came out, there was a glint of optimism, since it was being produced by Christopher Nolan, written by the guy who gave us Batman Begins, and director Zack Snyder may have a chequered history, but his comic book adaptations – 300 and Watchmen – were both pretty great. Then the movie came out to middling reviews (55% on Rotten Tomatoes) and decent but not stellar box office ($670 million worldwide, on a $225 million budget without promotion).

With the announcement of the upcoming sequel Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, all those nay-sayers of Man Of Steel galvanized their hate into a big nasty pessimistic cloud over the movie’s release. They didn’t like the fact that it’s been less than four years since Batman was on screen before they bring him back, then they didn’t like the casting of Ben Affleck, but so far the biggest target has been the expanded character-list.

On top of Batfleck, we’re also getting Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (played by Fast & Furious 5’s Gal Gadot), Bruce Wayne’s trusted man-servant Alfred (Jeremy Irons), Superman’s arch-nemesis Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), little known but much loved character Victor Stone/Cyborg (played by little known but much loved theatre actor Ray Fisher), while there’s still rumours of Jason Mamoa joining the cast as Arthur Curry/Aquaman, as well as undisclosed roles played by Scoot McNairy and Holly Hunter. And that’s just what we know so far.

Admittedly, that is an awful lot of characters, which is where Guardians Of The Galaxy comes in. While it took The Avengers a good few movies to assemble, Guardians went at it from the get-go, and none of these characters had any of the in-built recognition that Iron Man or Captain America would have already had. We got Peter “Star Lord” Quill, Gamora, Drax The Destroyer, Rocket, Groot, Ronan The Accuser, Nebula, Yondu, Korath, Nova Prime, more time with The Collector and the first proper introduction to Thanos. Now THAT’S an awful lot of characters, and not one of them has the rooted fanbase of Batman or Wonder Woman, and yet Guardians Of The Galaxy pulled off the character balancing act with aplomb.

Here’s the thing that Guardians has proved, and The Amazing Spiderman has helped to back up: we don’t need another hero’s origin story. Just because the individual-film-leading-up-to-the-team-up formula worked for The Avengers, it doesn’t mean it has to be applied elsewhere. If we’d gotten an origin story for Star Lord, an origin story for Gamora, another story for Drax and so on, would Guardians Of The Galaxy been any better? Doubtful. Did we need to see The Amazing Spiderman get bit by a radioactive spider again? Probably not. Was Tim Burton’s first Batman movie an origin story? Hell no, and it was all the better for it, because he assumed correctly that we all knew Batman’s origin story.

Man Of Steel did a good job of setting up Clark Kent/Kal-El, Lois Lane, General Zod, Ma and Pa Kent, Jor-El and Perry White, and that’s a good thing because it had actually been 35 years since a movie last tried to tell Superman’s origin story. Now they’ve created the world, they can fill it with characters we already know, and don’t need explained to us. So bring on Dawn Of Justice, we’re ready for it!