The upcoming release of Marvel Entertainment's
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer has the resident geeks at YourHub.com caught in a quandary.
We await this film with the white-knuckled intensity of a child staring at the wrapped Christmas gifts underneath the tree, shaking with near epileptic lack of control because of the anticipation. On the other hand, Hollywood has managed to mangle so many comic book movies that dropping the $9.50 it now costs to unwrap that present is a prospect fraught with fear.
We hold these contradictory thought in our heads as we contemplate comic book movies past and offer you here, dear reader, our nominations for the best and the worst comic book films of all time. Enjoy.
Sean Cronin,
community assistant, North Team
Best: Batman Begins
Bruce Wayne is a dark, dark dude. He is self-loathing, brooding mess of psychoses that cause him to dress up in a black suit and crack the skulls of two bit Gotham thugs. No other comic book film has done justice to the genesis of its central character quite like this one. Tim Burton's films were dark, but in a cartoony way that didn't give his Batman the chance to really become the reluctant badas-s of Frank Miller's Batman: Year One. The fight scenes kick butt, Scarecrow is one of the coolest villains of all time, and any film with Ken Watanabe has to be good.
Worst: Hulk
Any comic book film in which the title character - especially one as cinematic as Bruce Banner's green inner monster - takes an hour to appear is not OK in my book. And that ethereal fight in the clouds with his father was nonsensical enough to just make me mad.
John Eisel,
Community Journalist, Westminster, Broomfield, Adams County
Best comic book movies of all time
1.
Superman - The first is the best. The most underrated part of this movie is the late Christopher Reeve's simultaneous portrayal of Clark Kent and Superman, as best shown in the scene where Clark and Lois are mugged. Lois (Margot Kidder) tries to confront the mugger, who falls and fires his gun. Clark catches the bullet and falls to the ground, as if he had passed out. When Lois runs to his aid, scared that he had been shot and killed, Clark meekly answers that he had passed out, bringing a confused pity from Lois. As Lois walks away, Clark instantly turns to Superman in one perfect look. He knows that no one was ever in any real danger and that his performance as a mild-mannered reporter is working to perfection.
2.
The Crow - The vision in this movie is seamless. The acting, costumes, script, set and music all work together to bring this gothic story of supernatural vengeance.
3.
Spider-Man 2 - You know everything is going to be ok for Peter at the end of the movie. However when Mary Jane announces her engagement, Harry nearly picks a fight with him in the same scene and all awhile he's questioning whether he wants to be Spider-Man, you really do wonder how everything's going to work out.
4.
Batman Begins - This is the only Batman live action movie that actually gets all the characters in the movie right - especially Batman/Bruce Wayne.
5.
X-Men 2 - The acting and script really bring out each of the characters in this movie, which was my main criticism of the first movie.
Honorable mention: V for Vendetta, Casper, Constantine, Blade, X-Men 3, 300, Rocketeer, Sin City, Road to Perdition, History of Violence, Adams Family, Batman, Superman II, 300
List of shame
1.
Batman and Robin - I could go in so many ways with this, but I'll just say that Batman doesn't have a credit card with his logo on it.
2.
The League of Extraordinary Gentleman - Sean Connery did an interview about this movie. He said that he got the script for The Matrix. He didn't get it, and passed on it. He got the script for Lord of the Rings. He didn't get it, and passed on it. Then came LEG. He didn't get this one, either, but seeing the success of his first two passes, he decided to take this gig. He hasn't acted in a movie since.
3.
Superman Returns - If I wanted to watch the original Superman, I'd pop the DVD in. I didn't want to see it again. And don't get me started on picking up the Kryptonite island.
4.
Mystery Men - Great concept, great cast, not funny at all.
5.
Crow: City of Angels - It has all the gloom of the first movie, and that's about it. It's hurt because it has to get compared to its predessor.
Dishonorable mention: Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Men in Black II, Hulk, Captain America, Spawn
Eric Lubbers
Community Journalist, Denver
Best: Batman (1966)
"Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Adam West may have tapped a new vein of fame via
Family Guy, but let's hope that most of the audience remembers what made the sonorific leading man a household name in the first place:
Batman. By the time the TV show hit the big screen, the cast and crew had honed self-parody into a hilarious, multi-faceted weapon and had all the splashy Day-Glo graphics and ill-fitting spandex to make it an art form.
There never had been, and most certainly never will be again, a more bafflingly hilarious moment on screen than Batman, Robin, Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara standing uncomfortably close while attempting to solve one of the Riddler's riddles. I quote, here, or you can
watch it here to get the full brunt of the awkwardness:
Batman: Look at this pair of joking riddles.
Chief O'Hara: [reads] What does a turkey do when he flies upside down?
Robin: He gobbles up!
Chief O'Hara: Of course.
Batman: And, number two...
Commissioner Gordon: [reads] What weighs six ounces, sits in a tree and is very dangerous?
Robin: A sparrow with a machine gun!
Commissioner Gordon: Yes, of course.
I can explain in two words why
Batman succeeds in making jaw-dropping fallacies hilarious where others have and continue to fail: "of course." That one statement transports you to a world where Polaris missles can skywrite in perfect block letters; where four-person marching bands and roving packs of nuns can spoil even the best attempts to safely dispose of a giant, cartoonish explosive; where every helicopter comes equipped with not one, not two, but four types of sea animal repellant spray and where every major distillery owner has a name like Commodore Schmidlapp.
It's a world that I only wish I could live in.
Honorable mentions:
X-Men II (beneficiary of the "second movie in the trilogy is always the best" phenomenon),
Sin City and the above film's relative in name only,
Batman Begins.
The worst
I've identified a thread tying all the worst comic book movies of all time together in a bushel of suck: the leading men.
Brandon Routh,
Ioan Gruffudd and
Eric Bana all occupy the same white, generic, bland, unlikable, rage-inducingly-boring space that made
Superman Returns,
Fantastic Four and
The Hulk suck so insistently. Superman didn't punch
anybody
, Mr. Fantastic looks like my little sister could beat him up and have a better chance of landing
Jessica Alba and Bruce Banner sucked so much I wanted
Nick Nolte to
win! That's how low I sunk, people. I wanted Nick freakin' Nolte to come out the winner. Shame on you.
Kevin Villegas
Community Journalist, Aurora
Best: Sin City
Call me crazy, but I like Sin City a lot. I, by no stretch of the imagination, keep my comic book obsession on the backburner. I read seven comic titles a month and never fail to visit my local Mile High Comics every Wednesday. That might be why I like Frank Miller's comic-book style adaptation for the silver screen. The mostly black and white film, with intermingling of big, bold colors like red and yellow, creates an interesting juxtaposition of accent and drabness. Most important of all, it reminds me of a comic book with its emphasis on impossible feats, disproportionate body parts and detail in exposition of the story. Plus, who doesn't like to see Nick Stahl get eunuched by Bruce Willis?
Worst: Batman Begins
I hate Batman. He's a guy in a suit and he doesn't do any one thing particularly well, except maybe put fake abs on his suit. And the worst of the bunch is Batman Begins. Look, I already know that Batman is dark. I don't need Chris Nolan pounding it into my head.
You know what other movie was God-awful? Constantine. I tried to watch it the other night and the part where Keanu Reeves holds the cat while his feet are in the broiler filled with water made me laugh out loud. And, of course, he goes through a hardship that changes him forever, as he ... stops smoking. Hmmm. Call me a weirdo, but I want a guy to smoke if he is kicking serious demonbutt but will go to hell regardless.
John Zwick,
Community Assistant, Denver
Best:
Ghost World's mutants don't get their power from eye lasers and super strength, but from their crippling mediocrity. The simultaneous mockery and celebration of the mundane and grotesque of the world pre-empted the streak of sometimes cruel and voyeuristic freaksploitation comedies to come (
Napoleon Dynamite I'm looking in your direction), and did it with an uncommonly humane touch.
What makes
Ghost World work is hard to put into words, though. On its surface, another coming-of-age comedy with two cynical teenage girls (
Thora Birch and
Scarlett Johansson) navigating the suburban wasteland sounds like a two-hour episode of
Daria at best. But there's a sharp severity to the girls' wits and hidden nuance in every awkward moment.
And while the movie takes a pretty big departure from its source material, it rounds out the characters, rather than providing a cheap retcon. It may have marked the first time ever that
Steve Buscemi would play a painfully human character, rather than a one-dimensional oddball.
It also marked the last time curvy Thora Birch would be hot before her Lohanesque metamorphosis into another dime-a-dozen bottle-blonde starf*cker.
Honorable mentions:
An honorable mention goes out to
V for Vendetta. Parallels between
Alan Moore's totalitarian Britain and the erosion of privacy and personal liberty today are easy low-hanging fruit and
V offers nothing in the way of real solutions, but it's hard to care about that. You'll cheer for V's revenge and every victory after bloody victory against the shadowy Norsefire government. It works under the
Raiders of the Lost Ark theory: nobody misses a fascist, so spare no expense in blowing them to kingdom come.
The Josie and the Pussycats movie is actually way too smart and subversive for its own good. That's what happens when you hire clever writers and directors for a destined-to-bomb remake.
And before I forget,
Spider-Man 2 is probably the gold standard for a straightforward, rock-solid superhero flick.
The worst:
You're going to be hard-pressed to find worse than
Blade: Trinity. The series that started with truckloads of ass-kicking, thumping techno and sweet swordplay hits its nadir with overused computer imagery, an insipid plot and the most insulting product placement to date, using
Jessica Biel to hock iPods.
Parker Posey pretty much reprises her domineering b*tch role from
Best in Show, but as a vampire. How far have you fallen, P? This disaster is too bad even for camp value.