What are the bottom five super-hero movies based on comic book characters, the ones that should have never been made? (Thanks to Tyler Hicks for the question.)
Well, let's be honest, there are a lot of bad comic book movies out there, and many of them come from the 70s made for TV set. But to be fair, I'm not going to count those. I'm only going to include the ones that hit the theaters and were supposed to be something great.
And NO, HOWARD THE DUCK IS NOT ON MY LIST. I actually like that movie. Don't ask, and I won't tell. It's better that way. Trust me.
2. Superman III -- While I love Richard Prior in most of his flicks, particularly The Toy and Brewster's Millions, he ruins this turkey of a film.
3. Batman and Robin -- I won't waste your time with an explanation on this one.
4. Superman Returns -- This one is worse than the Green Lantern movie. I mean really, did the writers even know who the characters were?
5. Steel/Spawn (tie) -- How did they mess up these? The source material was awesome.
Why wasn't ____________________ on your list?
1. Catwoman -- Sure it wasn't about Catwoman, but if you start over from the title and tweak the dialog, you're got a watchable movie.2. Green Lantern -- It had big green explosions. I wasn't really looking for much more than that.
3. Daredevil -- Ben Affleck isn't the greatest actor known to the industry, but this movie wasn't that bad. Slow at times, and the normally wonderful Jennifer Garner was out of place as Elektra, but not nearly as bad as people make it seem.
4. Howard the Duck -- Shut up. This movie is fun.
5. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen -- Nothing like the book. I get that, but like Catwoman, if you stop thinking of it in terms of the source material, it's not so bad at all. Kinda fun, actually.
Good call on those, but I maintain that the Ang Lee version of Hulk is the WORST MOVIE EVER (except then I saw Stan Helsing, and my lifeforce was drained by the stupidity of it). When the animated character is better than the award winning actors around it, then we have a problem!
ReplyDeleteAlso, Howard The Duck rules, not just because of Lea Thompson, but because even going away from the source material, it maintained humor much like the original book! So don't go bad mouthing Howard - the theme song alone should make you want to get up and dance!
I'm the guy who actually likes the Ang Lee Hulk flick, except for the Hulkdogs. But I don't mind the psychobabble scripting of it all.
DeleteI'm with you on HOWARD THE DUCK, DAREDEVIL and LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN. In fact, if I had my way, I'd use modern technology to replace the guy-in-a-duck-suit with a CGI Howard and re-release the movie as it is. Even though DAREDEVIL should have been subtitled; "Frank Miller's Greatest Hits" I enjoyed Ben Affleck a lot and there were many scenes when as Matt Murdock he looked exactly like a John Romita, Jr. drawing of the character..
ReplyDeleteMan, I'd love to see HtD redone that way. It's such a fun flick.
DeleteWell, I hate to sound like I'm jumping on the bandwagon here, but I have always defended Howard the Duck.
ReplyDeleteThere have to be some allowances for the adaptation of a comic book property to film because after all, while the comic book creators are only limited to their imagination on paper, movie creators have to do deal with such pesky things like budgets, gravity, box office results, and other realities.
With that said, I agree with both lists. It's a shame there were never more "League" movies, although I do question why Green Lantern was presented in 3D, because that only worked for the outer space scenes.
And I must humbly disagree with Derrick on one slight point. I would not have rendered Howard the Duck in CGI until after he arrived on Earth. The Duck Suit was disconcerting from his arrival on. But Howard was just one duck amongst many on Duck World, so I had no problem with the suit in those scenes.
Gotcha. I still don't really mind the duck soup. But a new CGI version would be cool too.
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