With the recent success of Iron Man and the impending film The Dark Knight, comic book films have become a genre in their own right and will continue this trend into the future. However, this was not always the case with film adaptation of your favorite comics. I have compiled a list of what I consider the worst of the lot to be. Feel free to add more in the comments section. I will not rank these in any order because, well they are all pretty terrible.
Spawn. Why Todd, Why?
Quite possibly the most shockingly bad of any comic book film ever made, and that is quite a list. Horrible casting (John Leguizamo and Michael Jai White), ghastly special effects, laughable dialog, and the film looked to be shot by a veteran Power Rangers director. There were simply no redeeming qualities to the movie although it will be forever remembered as a waring to others, “We don’t wan this to look like Spawn!”
Hulk. The Big Green Disaster.
After the brilliant work of Ang Lee on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon we all expected that Hulk would follow suit. Unfortunately this was not the case. Not at all. Hulk was riddled with problems that not even the intelligence of Mr. Lee could undo. My theory is that the studio thought that the film needed someone that was unfamiliar with the source material and therefore would be reckless (read: irreverent) in the direction of the film. A Hulk that grew larger as he grew angrier, giant mutant poodle dogs, and a chameleon magnetic Nick Nolte is what really happened.
Batman & Robin. Why?
They had nipples on their costumes. Plastic Bat-Nipples. I really don’t need to say any more, you know the rest anyway.
Catwoman. No patience, none.
Her name is Selina Kyle, not Patience Phillips, there truly was no need to change her name and rewrite her history. But I guess if you want to make Halle Berry into a superhero there, certain rules must be bent. I like Halle Berry just fine, but not as a superhero, not even Storm (I would have preferred Jada Pinkett-Smith), but Catwoman is seriously stretching it.
Spiderman 3. Yes, I went there.
I’m sure that not everyone feels this way, but Spiderman 3 was the most disjointed and overly complicated comic book film that I have seen in some time, especially with expectations running so very high. There were three villains, plus the black suit, his girlfriend forsook him, the hero cried five times throughout the film, by simply brushing his hair forward he became a ‘bad boy’, and the list goes on and on. Why couldn’t't the symbiote have came back on Jameson son’s space craft, it did in the comics? End of Rant.
Part 2 will be coming soon…
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July 11th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Batman & Robin and Catwoman did really suck, but I don’t agree with the others. John Leguizamo did do his best to ruin Spawn, but it’s not one of the worst. The first Hulk movie had some great action scenes. Spiderman 3 did botch the entire Venom storyline, but it was fun otherwise. You are forgetting there was a time in which horrible comic book movies were made on shoestring budgets. There was a terrible Punisher movie made in 1989, an even worse Captain America movie in 1990, and the worst of them all is the Fantastic Four movie made in 1994. All of those movies were so bad that I don’t think they got released to theaters. If you don’t want to include films that never got released to theaters, then you have turds like Supergirl, Superman IV and Daredevil.
July 11th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Good Points! My main idea behind this article was to point out the films that really had potential and had enough money to back them up, but failed in the outcome, in other words, giant letdowns.