Comic Book Movies, they are all the rage now. The Dark Knight, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man 1&2, X-Men and X-Men 2, are all staples of what Comic Book movies are all about. But with the good must also come the bad, but as stated in the title this is IMO (In My Opinion) and these are the Top 5 Worst Comic Book Movies That Should Have Been Epic!
5) Superman Returns
Since Superman 4: The Quest For Peace, movie goers have been deprived on The Big Blue Boy Scout stopping Lex Luthor and fighting bad guys. On the small screen we have had the truly fantastic Smallville to keep us satisfied, and it has done. We have a truly evil Lex Luthor and a brilliantly portrayed Clark Kent struggling with his powers and what he should do with them.
Along comes Bryan Singer, fresh off of making X-Men and X-Men 2, he is given a mega budget and told to make a Superman movie. The movie world was a veritable buzz of information regaridng this movie, not only where we getting Superman, but the man behind the first 2 X-Men movies was taking the helm. The cast was announced and one cast member really caught everyone's attention: Kevin Spacy as Lex Luthor. This was going to be good, we all knew it.
How wrong we were.
Superman Returns was awful, it told a slow plodding story that was in the end pointless. The crux of the matter was : Does The World Need Superman? He had been gone in space for X number of years and was now back, but did the world need him? Now if this was my movie, I would have thrown down a super villian that only Superman could deal with and have them slug it out. This movie? Have Lex Luthor involved in a real estate scam and have Superman not throw a single punch. Everything about this movie was bad, it was slow, it was boring and by the end of the movie you just didn't care about anyone involved, least of all Superman.
Warner Bros are considering a new Superman movie and the new rumour is that it is a complete reboot of the Superman franchise, if not it better be one hell of a sequel.
4) X-Men 3
When you have 2 films as good as X-Men 1 and 2, there is always the fear that if you plan on making a third movie it could be terrible. But if you lay the groundworks of a good story arc in place, then you don't have a lot to fear. You have good characters in place, good backstory, and story arcs that weave throughout all the movies. The first X-Men movie was an introduction to the characters, it told a story but it was just a taste of what was to come, X-Men 2 was the first movie on speed. We have more mutants, more action and one truly epic moment, the mansion attack! Troops raide Xavier's mansion hunting the mutants and Wolverine defends the mansion against the attack, everything about this scene is great. The movie delvers into Wolverine's past, Magneto escapes from prison and joins forces with the X-Men for a time, before betraying them and Jean Gray sacrifices herself to let the X-Men escape. She is engulfed in a tidal wave of water as a damn bursts and using her power she holds the water back just long enough for the X-Men to get out before it kills her. As the second movie ends, the camera pans to the lake where she died and skims the water, and under the water we see a shape forming before it cuts to black. The shape fortold the coming of Phoenix. Everything was in place for a third chapter to this story. Bryan Singer opted out of the third chapter to do Superman Returns and instead we got Brett Ratner. Ratner is only of note for the Rush Hour movies and the movie Red Dragon. Of them he only got Red Dragon right.
Ratner is like Michael Bay, he sees the need to throw in over the top action sequences where they do not need to be. And that is what this movie felt like, a huge long action sequence. Now don't get me wrong, action movies are awesome and to see more of Wolverine slicing and dicing is great, but with the X-Men movies you have great character scenes as well, that built up the characters as well as told the story. Let me give you an example of one of the best scenes in X-Men. Right at the end of the movie, Magneto is being held in a plastic prison, far away from any metals, and Charles Xavier is there in the cell visiting him. They are playing chess and talking, because before their conflict, they were friends. And they sit talking to each other. But its not idle talk on their lips, no Magneto is still trying to bring Charles around to his way of thinking and Vice Versa. Both Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart are at their best in these scenes, because they can flex their acting muscles. It has my favourite exchange of dialogue in any Comic Book movie ever:
Magneto: Doesn't it ever wake you in the middle of the night? The feeling that someday they will pass that foolish law, or one just like it, and come for you and your children?
Professor Xavier: It does, indeed.
Magneto: What do you do when you wake up to that?
Professor Xavier: I feel a great swell of pity for the poor soul who comes to that school looking for trouble.
Scenes like that are all through the first 2 X-Men movies, however in X-Men 3? GONE! G-O-N-E! Replaced with....action sequences, that make no sense. Also one plot point that annoyed me to no end, was the fact that the movie centers around a mutation "cure". In the comics there is no cure, I really hated that storyline from the movie and the only way to rectify it, is to do a fourth movie and they find out the cure wears off after a while and in fact starts killing mutants.
And don't get me started on the Phoenix Storyline because I could go on for days about how badly that was done. And for some reason the makers of all 3 movies hated Cyclops, because he was supposed to be the leader of the X-Men but instead was an ass. And then in the third movie, they didn't even give him an on screen death, so it made you think he was going to show up at the end and save the day....but no.
X-Men 3 was a wasted opportunity and pretty much destroyed my faith in the series. The next X-Men movie is a movie based around Wolverine's Origins, I just hope it gets the care and attention the first two movies got.
3) Spider-Man 3
Oh where to begin with this one. Spider-Man came out to huge acclaim in 2002, it was among the first films to get a comic book movie right. It was a fun, non-stop rollercoaster ride of a movie and was a smash hit to boot. Needless to say a sequel was forthcoming and not only did it better the first movie but added a lot of character development and paved the way for the third installment.
The director Sam Raimi had a clear idea of what he wanted to do in this movie, he wanted to introduce The Sandman and have Harry Osborn become the next Goblin. However the studios demanded that Venom be brought into the movie also and forced this storyline upon Raimi. As such Spider-Man 3 became the film it is now.
Spider-Man 3 is a horrible mish mash of storylines and feels like its going in one direction then goes in another. Some parts of the story are rushed, others are too long, and on a whole the movie is disjointed. As I have said in my gamers blog, I am a huge Spider-Man fan and am willing to forgive a lot when it comes to old webhead, but I could not enjoy this movie. I felt Sandman was a terrible villian and could not understand his motivation at all, the Harry Osborne subplot should have been an entire movie in itself or they could have removed Sandman and had the Venom storyline weave in with the Osborne storyline and finish Spider-Man 3 with Venom appearing and that would lead into a fourth movie. Lets talk about Venom. Everyone wanted to see Venom on the big screen but we all knew the backstory would take a long time to explain, or you could shortcut it in this movie and just say it was alien goo with no real backstory. So when Spider-Man was shown wearing the black suit in posters people got excited. We knew the beginning of the Venom storyline was here, what we didn't know is that the whole Venom storyline was there and it was going to suck balls. A lot of people criticised Topher Grace as Venom, I don't. I think he was a good choice, but we needed more of Eddie Brock's background and we needed more of his transformation to Venom. We needed to see what he could do and what his plans were. Venom was rushed, rushed to the extent where it ruined the whole storyline and then when he was destroyed we were left thinking, "is that it?". Well yes it was. Sam Raimi was forced to add it and now its gone.
This movie being terrible is a crime, but this is due to studio pressure and not the fault of Sam Raimi. I wish I could say I like it on some level, but I really don't and I am huge Spider-Man fan. It has been announced that Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire have signed on to make a fourth and fifth Spider-Man movie with the fourth being slated for release on 2011. We can only hope these films repair the damage of the third installment.
2) Hulk
A lot has been said about Ang Lee's Hulk movie. And rightly so, it is a stinking pile of horse crap. This is what is referred to as the "art house Hulk". Now if you watch the movie you can see what Ang Lee is trying to do and that is tell a complex story for this movie but what Ang Lee doesn't get is that the Hulk ISN'T a complex story and we don't want it to be. So here are my issues with the film in list form:
The Hulk doesn't appear for a full hour into the movie! Yes we have to wait an hour for the Hulk to show up. We're going to the movie to see The Hulk so why wait an hour before we see him. It's like going to see Quantum of Solace and James Bond doesn't appear until an hour into the movie.
Why are there Giant Poodles in this movie? Okay I get that the Hulk needed some monsters to fight, but Giant Poodles? There was no reason to add them but they did.
Hulk's main enemy was Bruce Banner's father who is repsonsible, partly, for the creation of the Hulk. And when Bruce eventually confronts him as The Hulk to end it all, his father becomes some kind of elemental creature which is never really explained.
Why does the Hulk get bigger the angrier he gets? I felt that was a silly addition to the series, and made him nearly invincible, think of it like this: a big monster comes after the Hulk and attacks him, with each attack the Hulk gets angrier and bigger, eventually he will get bigger than the monster and it will no longer be a threat.
So all of those things annoyed me about the film, but the worst thing of all was that it was so boring! It was long, slow and ponderous and we were all dragged along in this story and felt every single second of it. I have never been able to watch the whole film in one sitting, it would be torture to do so.
Thankfully they corrected the mistake of Hulk this year with the awesome Incredible Hulk movie starring Edward Norton as Bruce Banner. This is a reboot of the story, kind of, and tells the origin story of the Hulk in the opening credits and has Bruce Banner searching for a cure when the film starts. The film is short, an hour and a half in length but packs a lot into it and leaves you satisfied at the end. Its great fun and I advise anyone to check this out rather than the Ang Lee movie.
Joint 1st Place) Batman Forever & Batman and Robin
Deep breaths, deep beaths. Ooooh sa! Ooooh sa! Try to remain calm despite the fact that both movies fill you with MURDEROUS RAGE!
Batman and Batman Returns where good movies, Tim Burton had created 2 creative and fun movies with really dark undertones to the characters. Aimed less at kids and more for adults, these films where what people wanted. Micheal Keaton had portrayed an excellent Bruce Wayne and good Batman to boot and people knew a third movie would be forthcoming, they just didn't know when. Then Tim Burton said he wasn't doing it and Micheal Keaton also declined to return.
Later Val Kilmer was contracted to be Batman and everyone seemed quite pleased with this, and felt he could fill the role. Then Joel Schumacher was contracted to direct the movie and that's when it all went to hell. First off we found out that Robin would be in this film, he had been added into the script of Batman Returns but removed due to too many characters. So they added him into this movie. Then the villians were choosen, first off Robin Williams was asked to play The Riddler, he turned it down so the new flavour of the month, Jim Carrey got the part. Tommy Lee Jones was contracted to play Two Face and right away the part got credibility, until people saw how Jones portrayed the character.
Schumacher agreed with the studios that the Batman films should be aimed at kids and that is what he decided to make. Gone were the dark streets of Gotham, replaced with Neon everywhere and obvious studio sets and bag CGI city backgrounds. Batman's car, The Batmobile changed from a two person armoured tank to a one person parade float that someone with severe penis size issues would drive.
Right away it felt like a kids movie, the introduction of Robin was botched, The Riddler as a villian was terrible and Tommy Lee Jones played Two Face like a knock off of the Joker instead of the three dimensional character that Two Face actually is. Val Kilmer as Bruce Wayne and Batman was.... kind of okay, he was a little too whiny as Bruce Wayne instead of tortured and as Batman he was too wise cracking. Robin was played by Chris O'Donnell who tried his best but the part was terrible. From the opening scenes with Batman rescuing a security guard who was like something out a 50s movie, having to explain everything that's happening whilst screaming for help ("oh my god help me, look coming out the floor...it's boiling acid") was the first sign things had gone wrong. They did not improve from there. By the end of the movie you have a bad taste in your mouth. Schumacher himself said he had a terrible time filming the movie, that Val Kilmer was hard to work with and Carry and Tommy Lee Jones did not work well together because Jones felt threatened by Carrey.
The film was a commerical success because of the kid like tone in it. So instantly a sequel was commissioned. Schumacher decided that he wanted to pay homage to the camp Batman TV series in this movie. And the movie they made was a near two hour gay joke. George Clooney replaced Kilmer as Batman, O'Donnell returned as Robin and we got 2 new villians in this movie. First of Arnold Schwarzenegger played Mr Freeze and Uma Thurman turned up as Poision Ivy. Every line Mr Freeze said in the movie was a quip to do with things being cold. Then they decided they needed more girls to watch this movie so they introduced Batgirl played by Alicia Silverstone.
The film was a horrible mish mash of campness, gay jokes and rubber suits with nipples. Hell Batman even produces the Bat Credit Card at one point. Joel Schumacher was said to have said before each take "Remember everyone, this is a cartoon." Warner Bros signed everyone back on to make a direct sequel to this movie before it was even released. But as soon as the reviews came in, they canned the project, the film made some money but the reviews killed it. And by the time the smoke had cleared even Joel Schumacher himself was apologising for the movie.
So that is the Top 5 Worst Comic Book Movies That Should Have Been Epic, my next IMO: Top 5 will be Top 5 Worst Video Game Mistakes.
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