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We all know there have been a big burst of comic book based movies in recent years. Some of them have been spectacular. Hell, some of been Oscar Nominated for things other than effects. Here are, in my mind, the ten greatest comic book based movies of all time. I'm sorry for doing a few reprints but my thoughts haven't really changed and I needed some extra time this month for various December distractions.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: I think I've seen this one close to 20 times. I never tire of it. Seeing it again a few years ago, it still holds up. For the first few minutes during that rewatching I thought it was cheesily shot. Then I realized that was part of the director's intent. Not only is this a subtle spoof on comic book films, it is also a knowing and loving send up on martial arts films of the 1970s. Those were always shot on the cheap and somewhat crappy looking. They actually do a fairly good job making the Carolinas look like New York. Most of the money for the film went to creating the Turtles and Master Splinter. Those weren't done cheaply. The animatronic suits were designed and built by the Jim Henson Creature Workshop. They were some of the last creatures Jim Henson had even a small part in designing. As such, you know in your head that they are just guys in costumes but your imagination breathes life into them just the same.
- Spider-Man: When I first heard Tobey McGuire was set to play Spider-Man, I was a little surprised. Then I watched Pleasantville and said: "I can't wait to see Spider-Man." His performance was strong but J.K. Simmons steals every scene he is in. The movie boils Spider-Man down to his essential elements and just has a blast. Spidey is one of my favorite Marvel characters and his first shot at the big screen was almost perfect. While Green Goblin was not Spider-Man's first major foe, he is by far the most iconic. Sam Raimi is a huge Spider-Man fan and for the first two movies I think that shows. He takes a lot of care to make sure that everything in the films works not only to please long time fans but also makes a good movie.
- X-Men : While it doesn't adapt any particular X-Men story per se, it captures the spirit of the early days fairly well even if they included many characters like Storm, Wolverine, Rogue and Mystique who should not have been around. The casting was, for the most part, spot on especially Sir Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart. The only small quibble on casting is that Hugh Jackman was too tall to play Logan by about a foot.. Other than that, Jackman is Wolverine without question. The story was strong and the acting was good so these flaws could be overlooked.
- The Dark Knight: Best Batman movie ever. For one thing- you have a Joker who is actually creepy. You have a city that is really ready to explode. You have a Batman being pushed to his absolute physical and emotional limit. The movie takes Batman to a place where there is a distinct possibility that he will lose. Then it never quite lets him leave. Not even at the end of the picture. When all is said and done- Batman does not win. Gotham City wins. Jim Gordon wins. Batman just survives.
- Watchmen: Someone once said this comic series would be unfilmable. That someone was series creator Alan Moore. The end result proved him wrong. While it was not Moore's graphic novel by any means, the spirit of the story was preserved. There were a few small changes to make it slightly more palatable to a movie going audience but they were small. One of them was somewhat forgivable because then it would sort of turn into a remake of an episode of The Outer Limits. The movie and comic are not quite the same animal and both a good a what they do. They do it extremely well.
- Road to Perdition: This is one very few people think of as a comic book movie even though it was. It had Tom Hanks acting against type which was a plus. It was a great story about fathers and sons. It works as a really great gangster film. Unlike many old school gangster films- it doesn't glamorize it. It's more about a child looking back and needing answers. It's got a gripping story and great performances. Also- a fun bit of trivia: the character of Rooney in the movie was named Looney graphic novel. It was changed because they producers though it was too comicbooky. The really funny thing- Looney was one of the real life figures Max Allan Collins pulled into the graphic novel. They changed a real person's name for sounding too fake.
- Men In Black: This film is way off from its source material. This however, doesn't matter. This Hollywood blockbuster is just an excuse to show the world that Tommy Lee Jones can do comedy. Though Will Smith, Rip Torn, Vincent D'onofrio and Tony Shaloub are damn funny too. It's a sci-fi action comedy without the all too common case of funny equals stupid. It's smart comedy. Sci-fi comedy movies tend to hit the obvious notes more and more often than not and don't try for anything higher than that. . It's just absurd enough to stand the test of time. In fact the scene with Zed and the bouncing ball is pretty much how my average day at the office goes, only I'm the bottom of the totem poll.
- Superman: This movie really takes me back to when I was about three or four years old. My sister and I would watch it every time it came on TV. It not only launched the career of Christopher Reeve but also has a great comic performance by Gene Hackman. There is someone else who doesn't get as much attention from the fans for his role, at least in a positive sense, as he deserves. I'm talking about Ned Beatty. He took what could have been a lame goon and turns him into a rather endearing character. The movie works as a super hero film on so many levels. I think I enjoy watching it more as an adult than I did even back then and I was nuts about this movie when I was three. I put on underoos and towel and everything.
- Persepolis: I have seen both versions of this movie. When I saw it in theaters I saw it before it was a hit at film festivals. Which meant it was in French with English subtitles. My DVD also has the dubbed version with lots of famous people's voices in it. I prefer the French version, since the dubbed version tones down the language- to the point of gutting the impact of two very important scenes. Even the French version waters down the message of the original graphic novel- cutting out about half of the second book- but it is still an amazing film. It is animated but not for the kiddies. It is mesmerizing and really worth seeing.
- American Splendor: Harvey Pekar was an absolute genius. The movie is just as brilliant as the comic. It weaves back and forth between the real Harvey Pekar and actor Paul Giamatti. The performance is so perfect that your mind can play tricks on you. There are times when it is hard to tell the two of them apart. To add another layer of surreality, they keep in the scene from the comic where Harvey goes to a musical based on his comic... where you see an actor doing an impression of Giamatti doing an impression of Pekar. It boggles the mind.
I just showed you guys a list of some of the best comic book movies ever made. It was great. Every film on the list is worth seeing. This month's bonus list- not so much. It's different. For one thing it goes up to 11. If you have seen any of the movies on this list either: a) you are a masochist b) you are an idiot c) your bosses didn't like you so they shot you into space or d) your name Jason and you live in Vermont.
- Batman- The Movie (1966): Adam West is amongst the least talented people ever to grace the big or small screen. Up there with David Caruso, William Shatner and Andie McDowell. Yet somehow this one didn't plummet to the very bottom of the list. His stilted acting couldn't sink it. Neither could Cesar Romero and Burgess Meredith chewing the scenery. Not Frank Gorshin fluctuating between mania and a dour look which says, "what the hell am I doing in this movie?" I'm a real actor for crying out loud! The only thing really saving this hunk of camp is its self awareness. It has just enough self parody to keep it from being completely unwatchable. It is merely three 3/4 unwatchable. It's just a 90 minute movie that is about sixty six minutes too long. It should have ended after that. "Sometimes you just have to get rid of a bomb" bit at the end of the first act. I know this is a top ten list, but this is a special case. This movie is bad... but not bad enough to actually be considered one of the worst comic book movies ever made. It gets worse from here on in.
- Hulk: Ang Lee's attempt to do the Hulk was a mess. It was trying to do too many things. It was trying to be an origin story. It was trying to look like a comic book. It was trying to integrate elements of the 70s TV series. It was trying to adapt about three dozen Hulk stories by more than a half dozen writers including: Stan Lee, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Roy Thomas, Peter David, John Byrne, Bruce Jones and Bill Mantlo. That's too many things to try to be in two and a half hours. Choose one and stick to it. A film professor once told me "try to produce a product at least a small group will be happy with. Otherwise you just end up creating something nobody, not even you- can stand to watch." No matter how much I want to smash my memory of this movie- the sequel is a vast improvement.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2- The Secret of the Ooze: I have seen this movie roughly 25 times. (I was eleven, sue me.) Looking back, it is a far inferior film to the original Ninja Turtles movie in every respect. The replacement April didn't click as well with the Turtles (She's a little too perky like the cartoon April.) Keno came off as a total whiner. The new mutant animals were just too damn toyetic. Without Casey Jones there was just something missing in the interplay between the Turtles. Don't get me started on Vanilla Ice. Why- if it weren't for an extremely valiant struggle by David Warner the whole movie would probably have collapsed in on itself. Even he can't save it. Then again, he was in Quest of the Delta Knights and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Even brilliant actors are sometimes just in it for the bucks.
- Man-Thing: How do you write a story about a mindless monster? Easy- you make it less about the monster and more about the people around it. Whereas comics writer Steve Gerber understood that this idea could be used to show that human beings are much more horrific than anything we can possibly imagine, director Brett Leonard and his screenwriting team seem to miss this important aspect- even though they named one of their characters Steve Gerber. An attempt is made to adapt bits and pieces of Gerber's story but not their spirit. It comes off not as a disturbing morality tale of humanity's own inner horror but more like a generic monster movie. Even more depressing- even while they were made almost 20 years apart the effects didn't seem that much better than the Swamp Thing movies. This movie is so bad that while it was intended for a full nationwide theatrical release, that did not happen in the United States. Though this weapon of mind destruction was released on our enemies in Singapore, Russia, Germany, Spain and Belgium. I assume they are our enemies... if not why did we send them this movie? Well, if they weren't our enemies before they probably are now. The rest of the world had this turd buried on TV and DVD instead of where it belongs- in New Mexico along with E.T.: The Video Game.
- Steel: In the 70s, Christopher Reeve asked us to believe a man could fly. America believed. In the 90s, Shaq asked us to believe a basketball player could act. Even after the movie Airplane! had proven it possible, America was skeptical. However I won't lay the blame this disaster entirely on Shaq's shoulders even if they are large enough to carry it. Shaq getting hired was just a symptom of a much larger problem. It had a bad script. It had bad effects. It had props and sets that had to be recycled from Alien Nation: The Series. The film had problems long before they got stuck with Shaq. Much like other spin-offs on this list, they couldn't even license out some of the other characters. Face facts, they could have gotten Will Smith, Forrest Whitaker or Morgan Freeman for the role and there is still no way in hell you could have gotten a good movie out of it.
- Constantine: I think where this movie went wrong can be summed up in two words: Keanu Reeves. Constantine is supposed to be a snarky, wiseass, half con man, half master wizard and very, very British. He is not supposed to sound like a 1980s surfer. He's supposed to look like something the cat dragged in, ate, puked up, ate again and again until it finally came out the other end of its digestive tract. The change was made in pre-production. At least Steel the movie tried to get a tall, African American man to play a tall African American man. There are plenty of other ways the movie went horribly horribly wrong but when you start from there it is hard to ever really recover from casting choices of this craptitude. Then while they were at it, the studio changed the whole message of the character. After all his ordeals in the movie, Constantine gives up smoking. In the comics- he is and always will be a heartless, unrepentant chain smoking, alcoholic bastard and damn proud of it.
- Superman IV- The Quest for Peace: Not to speak ill of the dead, but 9 times out of 10, if you let the star of the movie have a hand at the screenplay, the movie is going to suck. For every Woody Allen or Charlie Chaplin there is a Christopher Reeve or William Shatner waiting to happen.(Third Shatner related insult this column-ouch.) Now, the idea that Superman would want to rid the world of nuclear weapons to prevent Earth from becoming a dead planet like Krypton is a solid concept. In execution, it turns out to be very poorly done. Not only that, but it gets relegated to a subplot while Superman deals with Lex Luthor and his experimental love child of Firestorm and Bizarro. I mean really, what the hell? Also, Jon Cryer's Lenny is not an adequate substitute of the amazing Otis.
- Supergirl: Okay, on the one hand, I see where there the Salkinds were coming from. Superman made tons of money. Charlie's Angels and Bionic Woman were hits. So why not remake Superman: The Movie with a female lead. Why not? I'll tell you why not! Supergirl never really developed out of Superman's shadow. You need him around if only on the periphery of her supporting cast- to make this character work. Every comics writer- even Peter David, had Superman show up a few times a year to boost sales. I mean to lend moral support, Yeah that's what I meant. Moral support. Now the movie has Supergirl landing on Earth and then just zips through her years at the orphanage and y'know meeting Superman or knowing she has any connection to him other than being from the same solar system. Yet, she somehow- by chance- meets up with Lucy Lane. The sister of her cousin's ex-girlfriend. Also making a contractually obligated attempt to weave this into the continuity of the Superman movies comes Marc McClure as Jimmy Olsen. What? Was Ned Beatty at the dentist that day? Supergirl fights a sorceress for reason that are really vague. The villain's magic seems to work in the most pathetic fashion. It's almost like they let their five year old kids write the script fifteen minutes before shooting each scene, assuming they even bothered with a script.
- Howard the Duck: As a comic book Howard the Duck ranks up there as one of the best comics Marvel has ever produced. It is some seriously gut ripping satire. Howard the Duck: The Movie is moronic, pun laden, poorly produced piece of schlock that completely misses the point of Steve Gerber's comic book. It is one of those notoriously bad movies that is cliché to make fun of but it is cliché for a reason. While the people who claim it is one of the worst movies ever made clearly have not seen Bela Lugosi meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, Manos: The Hands of Fate or Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. It might be one of the top 20 worst films of the last thirty years. On those grounds I can think of only a handful of movies that are worse- Pokemon II, Super Mario Brothers: The Movie and these two.
- Batman and Robin: This movie almost ruined "Oh, Brother Where Art Thou?" for me. I want to be able to watch NCIS: Los Angeles but I can't bring myself to do it. I find it hard to watch George Clooney or Chris O'Donnell in anything, no matter how good it is without having horrid flashbacks to this movie. It isn't their fault. They signed on before they had a script. Back when Patrick Stewart was still in consideration for Victor Freeze. A role which somehow inexplicably went to Arnie. It was also before they added Alicia Silverstone and Uma Thurman for eye candy. The fault goes to Joel Schumacher- the man who killed the franchise for almost five years. Say what you will about the occasional lapses in Tim Burton's Batman films but Joel Schumacher reduces Batman back into the camp that Burton spent two movies trying to escape. Schumacher, a director so bad he couldn't keep a Batman on board for more than one movie at a time even when they would lose money for doing so. . (He had another movie planned and it probably would have been sans Clooney.) This is a movie that once George Clooney got serious Oscar cred he felt a need to apologize for on television in front of millions of people. Which means I can finally watch the Cohen Brothers in peace.
- Catwoman: So Warner Brothers decided to make a movie about one of Batman's most notorious enemies. Okay, lets do an inventory check. Halle Barry in a leather catsuit- check. A bullwhip, check. Any relationship to The Batman properties? What's that? I didn't hear you. What do you mean "no check?" Okay, let's move on. Plot about robbing banks and/or stealing jewels? What? That's not there either? Then what is the plot of this movie? Some sort of conspiracy and anti-aging cosmetics? Gene altering whozamagigs? What the hell does this have to do with Batman or the comic book? About as little as this film had to do with quality. As an adaptation of Archie/Red Circle's "The Jaguar" this could have made a half decent movie but as Catwoman it uses up ten of its nine lives.
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