Nolan's Batman films have been over rated enough as they are, they really don't need to be brought into every comic book movie discussion just for the sake of stroking it's ego even more than it already has.
Nobody is stroking it's ego, I don't even know where you got that from. We're talking facts, and the fact is, Superman & Spiderman, two of the lightest, brightest superheroes there are, were both brought up in conjunction with TDK when discussion of their new direction took place, in some way, shape or form.
This has nothing to do with TDK and personal feelings about it, the fact is that it was a huge movie that made billions of dollars and overtook Spiderman as the premier flagship superhero property, at least right now. To think that Sony would have took a new Spiderman in a gritty direction without the existence of TDK's success is just naive, I even question if they would have rebooted the series in that situation, given that SM3 was financially successful.
Everybody keeps bringing up that Raimi was finished after 4 and would have left anyway, so if that is the case, why would a reboot be a prerequisite? Plenty of directors left movie series and they continued without them, especially when they were successful, and no comic series has been more successful than Raimi's Spiderman. Different cast, different directors, different stories and different tone don't mean you have to reboot the whole series and rewrite what's come before, unless you plan on drastic changes. Personally, I can welcome a bunch of those changes, but one thing I'm worried about is making the film too dreary and not fun enough for a flick with a wall crawling teen in it.
Plenty of other people have the same concerns, it's not like this is some crazy concept only a handful of people are worried about. If they announce right now that the next Batman movie won't have Bale or Nolan and it will be lighter, and more upbeat, this whole website would explode in outrage. But the dichotomy is that in reality, a light Batman isn't nearly as foreign to his comics as a gritty Spiderman is.
Furthermore, a whole lot of this comes down to fanboys finding some kind of weird pleasure in the fact that a comic movie can and should be looked upon as high art now by the general public, like it matters, almost like calling a comic a "graphic novel" makes it something more. Some things in comics are inherently silly, and you can't do anything about it, treating it "more mature" somehow shouldn't make you feel better about it, and it shouldn't validate it, if you grew up reading these stories that's validation enough. Spiderman at his core is for kids, with themes that adults can enjoy too. His whole coming of age speaks to teenage angst and awkwardness, and it's that emotional core that kids relate to, and that adults remember. There's really nothing gritty about it, it's just classic storytelling, and it works fine just like that, it's already been proven...
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