Why do they Debuff comic characters in movies all the time?

This is why great film-makers like Martin Scorsese often talk about "frame fills" and film-makers like Quentin Tarantino leverage it.

In particular, the idea is that given a before and after image, the mind will fill in the blanks between the two scenes - often with a movie of its own that is better than any film-maker could actually shoot. That's a big reason for the distinction between porn and first-run movies: a first-run movie will show two people flirting and leading up to their passionate first kiss. Then a quick fade to black and back shows them getting dressed in the morning. The more disheveled the woman looks going into the shower, the greater the movie that plays in the mind. In contrast, porn focuses on showing you every minute detail of what happened in between - often to the exclusion of the before/after details.

Tarantino is cited as a film-maker that makes good use of this because I'm thinking of the scene in Reservoir Dogs, where Michael Madsen is cutting off the ear of the cop they're holding hostage. He turns up the 70's music (stuck in the middle with you) and approaches the beaten cop tied to the chair with duct tape with a straight razor. Then the camera slowly pans away to a corner of the ceiling, and all you hear is the cop screaming in terror and agony for what was probably less than 20 seconds, but it felt like 2 minutes as your mind fills in the blanks of what could be going on. Then the camera pans back to the cop, with blood everywhere, in particular down the right side of his shirt - he's clearly bleeding around his ear and you're left wondering if he really cut his ear off with the straight razor. There's enough blood. The only thing Tarantino screwed up is that he actually showed you that his ear was cut off. If he could have shot the scene leaving the audience wondering if the ear was really cut off or not, that would have been a much more powerful scene.

But cinematographers don't think like that anymore. It used to be that less was more. and the limitations of the medium resulted in them using insights like this to great effect. But now, with computer graphics being so cheap, easy and pervasive; and people being increasingly unwilling to think or imagine on their own, film-makers are routinely showing you things that are better left to the imagination. As a result, all they end up doing, ironically, is showing the limitations of their own imaginations.

This is related to the idea of expectations, and how the greatest perception of disservice anyone can do to you is to not live up to your expectations. Your expectations were high and they didn't live up to it; debuffing characters, etc.

You've actually picked up on a very important idea. Please carry it with you as you move forward in your career, as I'd like to see a return of the more classic wisdom used by the older generations of film-makers, so that we end up with much less tripe like this recent Disney/Marvel BS.

Probably comes down to budget. I hope they don't do this with Dr Strange