This was, by far, the most sincere adaptation of Batman to the screen, bar none.
On the subject of "fuck the general public", I would agree in sentiment alone. However, my view on comic book films, and really any film derived from a previous source material, is that it should always, always, always be adapted true to its source as close as possible. I'm okay with modification and formatting to allow the story to live in a film, as simply translating a comic book...panel-to-frame...gives you extremely boring movies (i.e. the first Spider-Man for me).
In that sense, it should appeal to the general public anyway, because, there's a reason it appealed to the masses in the first place in comic form. If you keep the soul of the material, you keep the reason it is what it is, and why it's worthy of making into a movie in the first place.
In the end, it's not how close it is to the comic books themselves. It's how close it is to what makes those stories special. The core and reasoning behind those characters, and what they mean. In other words, translate why those comics were special in the first place, not just the surface glitz.
