A-List: Five Worst Comic Book Movies
By J. Don Birnam
July 7, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Here’s a challenge: make a list of the top five worst comic book-based movies of all-time. It’s not easy, as there are many of them. To make my life easier, I winnowed it down as follows: sequels and remakes don’t count. So, as much as I would like to include some of the most recent Superman movies or some of the Batman sequels, I’m going to stick to first time offerings to make matters a bit simpler.
As usual, there will be a lot of (dis)honorable mentions of flicks that weren’t quite as bad as some of the disasters that do make the list. I’ll probably get skewered for this, but I thought the Watchmen movie was pretty terrible, but its redeeming qualities (the artsy and interesting cinematography) keep it off my list. Fantastic Four was also pretty disappointing, but at least the eye candy of some of the stars (Chris Evans, Jessica Alba) keeps it as a somewhat tolerable (drunk on an) airplane movie. And I didn’t think that Nicolas Cage could ruin movies more until I saw Ghost Rider - that movie was one big flop and I would not force it upon my worst enemy. Alas, I can think of at least five other comic book-based movies that are worse than that train wreck.
Here we go.
5. The Green Lantern
What a disappointment. Not even the eye candy of Ryan Reynolds can keep this movie off the list, despite my earlier exclusion of Fantastic Four for a similar reason. The acting is pretty terrible and the story is convoluted, confusing, and uninteresting. Not even the effects are that memorable. It’s hard to find anything to even write about the movie other than I was so glad when it was over, and I have never said that about a Ryan Reynolds movie - not even some of his other duds.
4. Spawn
I mean, I should not have been surprised - I don’t think this comic translates into a movie as some others might. Part of the problem for this movie was that it was made in the 1990s, when effects were worse and the genre hadn’t really been perfected. Arguably, comic book movies took a turn for the better with the advent of Spiderman in 2001, but a few years before that duds like the Batman sequels and Spawn were littering the theaters at a consistent clip. And who played the lead character? I bet you couldn’t remember that with a gun to your head. Michael Jai White. That’s right. Do you remember ever hearing from him again? Not only did Spawn arguably ruin his career, it ruined comic book movies for me for a very long time.
3. Elektra
Sorry, Jennifer Garner, but this is another disaster that many saw coming. Daredevil was a solid, enjoyable movie in the early days of the comic book apogee. But the Elektra character has never been that interesting to me and the movie proved me right: the plot was contrived and trite at the same time, an unimaginable feat. Part of the problem, of course, is that the Elektra character is so derivative in a sense from many action heroes of old (there are hints of Spiderman and Batman in her story that are impossible to ignore) and part of it was that the filmmakers decided to divorce the character from her Daredevil origins. Making the movie even worse is Jennifer’s horrific acting. She’s pretty good when she plays goody-two-shoes-slash-naïve debutant a la Juno, but she needs to leave super heroine acting to Angelina, Scarlett, or even Jennifer Lawrence. It’s an additional shame given that Daredevil was a good movie. But heck, at least Jennifer got her marriage to pretty boy Ben Affleck out of it, right?
2. The Hulk
It saddens me to have to include a movie by one of my favorite directors, Ang Lee, on this list, but fair is fair. Surprisingly, The Hulk is NOT one of the worst reviewed comic book movies out there. But, to me, the Eric Bana/Jennifer Connelly version of the movie just doesn’t work. Lee tried to get cute with the split screen action in the movie, but, at the risk of sounding simple, it was confusing and at times distracting. The reality probably is this: Lee is too good to make a comic book movie of this sort, and his artistic genius hurt rather than help in this case. And the effects are also to blame for The Hulk’s misfire - I don’t know if it was a Crouching Tiger hangover, but most of it seems almost fantastic rather than an attempt at reality, and the action is at times even cartoonish.
Fortunately for The Hulk, the franchise was revived by the Avengers with Mark Ruffalo (after another fail attempt with Ed Norton), so all’s well that ends well. Most of the other movies on this list cannot say the same thing, as the franchises have essentially disappeared due to the atrocity of the quality.
1. Catwoman
You’re not really surprised, are you? Famous for being Halle Berry’s first post-Oscar role, Catwoman is a dud at every level. The acting is simply horrendous; the plot line tries so hard to be different and inventive and fails miserably. The effects are atrocious. The villain is more sympathetic than the heroine, and the overall feel of the movie is long, boring and tedious. Not only is Catwoman likely the worst comic book based movie of all eternity, it is one of the worst movies of all-time, period. Berry’s career arguably never recovered from that, and neither did most of the viewers - the trauma of this movie was so great that I think the genre took a full two year hiatus to recover. Do not try this at home, kids.