Nolanization

I think it's important for people to realize that grounding Batman in realism for the Nolan series wasn't just a stylistic choice. Since the question of Batman, and his extreme vigilante tactics, being necessary was so central to Nolan's vision, it was important that everyone he faced was, rule of cool aside, pretty much just terrorists. As seen in The Amazing Spider-Man, you can browbeat all you want about Spidey being a bad thing, but who else is going to fight the giant reptile monster? But the League of Shadows and the Joker could conceivably be handled by law enforcement, insomuch as any threat can be handled by a non-hero in an action movie scenario.

In other contexts, though, like when you've already got a human-looking alien who flies around in a cape and tights and shoots heat from his eyes, it's posturing, and one of the reasons Smallville was a consistently awful show. "HEY GUYS, IT'S TOTALLY REALISTIC THAT AMERICA WOULD CALL A SUPERHERO 'THE BLUR' FOR SEVERAL YEARS AND HE'D ANSWER TO IT, BUT THEN SUDDENLY HE'D WANT TO BE KNOWN AS SUPERMAN FOR SOME REASON AND PEOPLE WOULD CALL HIM THAT AND ALSO HE WOULD BE AN EVEN BIGGER DEAL THAN THE SEVERAL SUPERHEROES WHO OPERATED ACTIVELY LONG BEFORE HE DID ANYTHING PUBLICLY."