Ranking 20 Marvel Comics-Based Flicks
Created by fundater2000 on 21 May 2009 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
With X-Men Origins: Wolverine debuting this weekend, we decided this week’s Total Recall would be the perfect place to pay homage by looking back at every theatrically released adaptation in the studio’s history. Unlike most Total Recalls, there are no surprises here: rather than cutting off the list after the top 10, we excluded only the movies that weren’t produced for theaters (thus, regrettably, ruling out David Hasselhoff’s made-for-TV turn as Nick Fury) or were waylaid somewhere between the set and the cineplex (depriving us of an in-depth discussion of Dolph Lundgren’s Punisher). Still, what our Marvel recap lacks in suspense, it makes up for in scope and breadth; from Howard the Duck to Punisher: War Zone, all of the comics giant’s theatrical exploits are present and accounted for, including the highs (X2, Spider-Man 2, Iron Man) and the lows (Elektra, Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider). Ready to relive your favorite Marvel moments? Let’s get started!
20. Elektra
Goodness gracious. Given that we’re talking about a stable of characters that includes a talking duck and a motorcycle-riding skeleton with a flaming head, you’d hardly expect a movie about a scantily clad ninja assassin to be Marvel’s darkest critical moment — but then again, maybe you’ve seen 2005’s Elektra, in which case you understand all too well (and have our deepest sympathies). After the drubbing taken by Daredevil in 2003, a spinoff might not have seemed like the likeliest of projects, but 20th Century Fox was sufficiently impressed with Jennifer Garner’s sai-twirling abilities to invite her back into the red leather uniform for her own full-length feature. Unfortunately, neither Elektra’s long-running popularity with Marvel readers nor Garner’s athletic screen presence were enough to salvage Elektra from a screenplay that many critics felt sapped the character of its essential appeal — such as the New York Daily News’ Jami Bernard, who bemoaned the loss of “the unrepentant ferocity that made her a crossover hit in the first place.” Elektra ultimately performed so poorly at the box office that its videogame tie-in was never released — but with a rumored Daredevil reboot on the horizon, we may yet see the character return to the big screen.
19. Howard the Duck
It was a Universal picture, so Marvel can’t take all the blame, but it still marks the first major movie adaptation of one of the publisher’s characters, so we’re counting it as Marvel’s debut — and therefore one of the least auspicious beginnings in cinematic history. The anthropomorphic duck (voiced here by Chip Zien) was undeniably an odd choice for the leadoff spot in Marvel’s filmic batting order, having wavered in and out of the comics company’s print lineup since the early 1970s — and always existing on the periphery, only interacting occasionally with the likes of Spider-Man, Man-Thing, and the She-Hulk. But if he has few friends in the mainstream Marvel universe, Howard found moviegoers and film critics an even less hospitable lot: Howard the Duck went down as one of the most notorious duds of all time, barely recouping its $37 million budget and earning heaps of negative reviews from the likes of Filmcritic’s Bill Gibron, who wrote “It really is that bad.” Finally out on DVD, Howard eventually acquired ironic cult status, but its failure highlighted the many difficulties inherent in bringing a character from comics to the screen — difficulties that would keep Marvel out of theaters for many years.
18. Punisher: War Zone
The Incredible Hulk wasn’t the only Marvel reboot to hit theaters in 2008 — with Punisher: War Zone, the studio took its third crack at adapting the one character that, by all rights, should have been the most eminently adaptable of all. Initially planned as a sequel to 2004’s Punisher, War Zone slowly morphed into a reboot, partially as a result of Thomas Jane pulling out of the project after three years spent, in the actor’s words, “sweating over a movie I don’t believe in.” With a new Punisher (played by Ray Stevenson) and a new director (kickboxer and Green Street Hooligans helmer Lexi Alexander), War Zone looked to provide the franchise with its darkest, bloodiest spin on the character yet — and on that front, at least, it succeeded, earning the comic fan’s coveted “hard R” for “pervasive strong brutal violence, language, and some drug use.” By pretty much any other measure, however, War Zone was a severe disappointment: not only did its domestic gross peter out at a dismal $8 million, but critics gave it a beating worthy of the Punisher himself; the New York Post’s Kyle Smith, for instance, decried its “dopey fight scenes, grimy look and goopy gore,” saying it was “so far from ept that inept is the wrong word. It’s anti-ept.” As the lowest-grossing Marvel-branded theatrical release to date, War Zone seems likely to keep the Punisher off our screens for some time, but as long as the character is selling comic books, the possibility of a fourth film remains undimmed.
17. Fantastic Four
Even if it had 45 years of history to contend with, 20th Century Fox’s Tim Story-directed Fantastic Four had at least one thing going for it right off the bat — namely, that no matter how badly it bungled the opportunity to bring Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s quartet of radiation-powered crimefighters to theaters, it literally had to be better than 1994’s Fantastic Four, a $2 million quickie produced by Roger Corman as part of a deal arranged to help Constantin Film hang onto its option. On that front, Fantastic Four certainly succeeded; thanks to nifty special effects, a plum summer release date, and a game cast that included Michael Chiklis as the Thing, Chris Evans as the Human Torch, and Ioan Gruffudd as Mr. Fantastic, it sold $330 million worth of tickets worldwide. Those numbers provided more than ample justification for a sequel, but they weren’t quite large enough to drown out the howls of protest from critics who derided the movie as a disappointingly bland adaptation missing much of the charm and family drama of the comic that inspired it. Jessica Alba was frequently singled out — and eventually earned a Razzie nomination — for her misguided appearance as the Invisible Girl, but as far as many critics were concerned, the whole thing was a mess; the Hollywood Reporter’s Michael Rechsthaffen summed up the overall tenor of most reviews when he called it “a tone-deaf mishmash of underdeveloped characters, half-baked humor and unhatched plotting drenched in CGI overkill.”
16. Ghost Rider
To many longtime Marvel readers, Ghost Rider is one of the more dependably awesome characters in the publisher’s pantheon; though he’s frequently flitted in and out of active duty since being introduced in the early 1970s, it’s pretty hard to mess up a comic book protagonist with a predilection for leather jackets and chain whips, a motorcycle that runs on hellfire, and a flaming skull for a head. When it comes to bringing said protagonist to the screen, however, things can get a little more complicated — as evidenced by 2007’s Ghost Rider, which starred Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze, the stunt rider who cuts a deal with the devil and becomes a sort of supernatural bounty hunter in the bargain. Cage came to the film as an avowed fan of the comics — an attitude that should have been familiar to director Mark Steven Johnson, whose leading man for Daredevil, Ben Affleck, expressed a similar level of personal interest in his character. Unfortunately, the similarities don’t end there; like Daredevil, Ghost Rider went down as a critical dud whose respectable performance at the box office was overshadowed by the beating it took from writers like the San Francisco Chronicle’s Peter Hartlaub, who said it “has everything you don’t want from your superhero movie, including lack of logic, boring action scenes, bad acting in the supporting performances, a brutally slow 114-minute running time and cringe-worthy dialogue.” Still, with Cage ready to rev up for a sequel, perhaps smoother roads lay ahead for the franchise-in-waiting.
15. Blade: Trinity
From Spider-Man 3 to Jaws 3-D (more on that first one later), third installments have historically been tricky propositions. Even the best film franchises (see: Godfather, The) haven’t been able to avoid the curse of the number three, so it stands to reason that a critically scorned series about a vampire hunter would have a particularly difficult time. And so it was with 2004’s Blade: Trinity, which attempted to freshen up Wesley Snipes’ third go-round as the star of the series by surrounding him with fresh, uh, blood — Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds added their pretty faces to the cast for a story that found Blade going mano a mano with none other than Dracula himself (here going by the somewhat less intimidating Drake). Unfortunately, neither critics nor audiences were impressed with the new additions; Blade: Trinity failed to match Blade 2’s grosses, and was savaged by critics like the Washington Post’s Desson Thomson, who held it up as “a case for quitting while you’re behind” and called it “ready to be buried in a vat of garlic.” Snipes, perturbed at having to share screen time with Biel and Reynolds, eventually sued the filmmakers — who, in turn, seem to be using Snipes’ incarceration as an opportunity to reboot the franchise with Michael Jai White.
14. The Punisher
The reviews for 1989’s Dolph Lundgren-led Punisher weren’t completely bad — really, they weren’t — but scrubbing the direct-to-video stain from the perennially popular Marvel title was nevertheless a high priority for fans of Frank Castle, the titular ex-Marine-turned-vigilante who had been upping the bloodletting quotient in various titles since the mid-1970s. Thomas Jane assumed the starring role for the 2004 reboot, squaring off against John Travolta as Howard Saint, the ruthless mobster who commissions the brutal execution of Castle’s entire family. Turning a simple revenge story with a built-in audience into box office gold should have been easy, but a lot can happen between page and screen — as director Jonathan Hensleigh discovered when he tried to turn an abbreviated shooting schedule and a $15 million budget into an adaptation capable of satisfying the fans, the studio, and the critics. Needless to say, The Punisher didn’t quite hit the mark; its 29 percent Tomatometer rating was just as disappointing as its $33 million domestic gross. Ultimately, DVD sales were enough to convince Lionsgate to keep the franchise going, despite the carnage wrought by critics like the Globe and Mail’s Stephen Cole, who referred to The Punisher as “an overemphatic revenge fantasy devoid of even a trace of excitement or wit.”
13. The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
In a way, Tim Story had it better than either Sam Raimi or Bryan Singer while making the Fantastic Four sequel, Rise of the Silver Surfer — where both of those directors had to contend with the weight of crushing expectations, both from fans of the comics they were adapting and moviegoers who enjoyed the earlier installments of their respective franchises, Story was blessed with the opportunity to follow up a film that people turned to for mindless summer entertainment in spite of all the critical enmity it earned. With the bar set relatively low, Story and his cast were free to improve upon the first Fantastic without suffering undue scrutiny. And improve upon it they did, if only slightly; Rise of the Silver Surfer’s Tomatometer, while still Rotten, inched a few notches higher than the original film’s, and although its box office total fell roughly $40 million short of Fantastic Four’s $330 million, it still generated a pretty hefty pile of dough. For all that, however, Rise of the Silver Surfer nonetheless went down as a missed opportunity — to turn Fantastic Four into a viable franchise, to provide a launchpad for a spinoff starring one of Marvel’s most unique (and let’s face it, downright silly) characters, the Silver Surfer, and most of all, to entertain critics like Scott Brown of Entertainment Weekly, who sighed, “if you swept the cosmic dust of the superhero boom into a flimsy dustpan, you’d have the Fantastic Four franchise.”
12. Daredevil
After the mammoth success of X-Men and Spider-Man, Hollywood opened the Marvel floodgates, unleashing a torrent of long-plotted adaptations previously seen as too difficult or obscure to attempt. 2003’s Daredevil fell into the latter category; though well known to comics fans, the character — who defended the unjustly accused as blind attorney Matt Murdock by day, and used his superhuman powers of sensory perception as a costumed vigilante by night — wasn’t one of Marvel’s most bankable properties. He’d always had a passionate core following, however — including Ben Affleck, who pursued the starring role in the film partly out of fear that someone else would, in his words, “screw it up.” It’s impossible to find fault with Affleck’s intentions, but the finished product is another story — despite a global box office tally that approached $180 million, Daredevil was widely seen as a failure, due in no small part to the largely negative critical reception afforded the movie by writers like Tom Long of the Detroit News, who pronounced it “completely devoid of subtlety or sense,” going on to condemn what he saw as “a series of bad scenes connected by empty characters, most of whom seem like leftovers from scripts abandoned long ago.”
11. Blade
After the scent of Howard the Duck’s rotten egg wore off, Marvel went through a period of rights entanglements, false starts, and films that either went straight to video (Dolph Lundgren’s The Punisher, 1990’s Matt Salinger-led Captain America) or never came out at all (the infamous, Roger Corman-produced Fantastic Four). Of all the characters in the Marvel stable to end what ultimately became a 12-year drought, the superhero vampire hunter Blade was an unlikely choice — though he was introduced as part of the Tomb of Dracula series in the early 1970s, he languished in obscurity until the early 1990s, when he resurfaced as a supporting player in the rebooted Ghost Rider before eventually acquiring a limited-run solo book in 1994. But just because he wasn’t a big name in the Marvel universe, that didn’t mean Blade couldn’t scare up healthy returns at the box office: Blade earned over $130 million, giving Wesley Snipes his very own action franchise and the distinction of starring in what was, to that point, the best-reviewed Marvel-derived movie in history. Okay, so the competition wasn’t exactly stiff, but when you can get the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle to praise you as being “meticulous and subtle,” that’s nothing to sneer at.
10. X-Men: The Last Stand
After two top-grossing, well-reviewed installments, the X-Men film franchise was due for a fall — and with 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, it arrived in the form of a second sequel whose $400 million-plus grosses were overshadowed by poor word of mouth and a rash of negative reviews that prevented a Fresh certification for the first time in the series. Though 56 percent isn’t a terrible Tomatometer rating — and some critics enjoyed the movie, such as the New York Observer’s Andrew Sarris, who wrote that he was “strangely moved” by it — the lukewarm response was a significant comedown for the franchise, particularly after Bryan Singer, who directed the first two installments, left the project to take on Superman Returns, taking the previous installment’s screenwriters with him. New director Brett Ratner took his fair share of critical lumps (the Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday accused him of “[making] hash of the story and characters”), but there was plenty of blame to go around; in the words of the Chicago Reader’s J.R. Jones, “despite all the grand gestures of climax and resolution, there’s a pronounced sense of autopilot.”
9. Blade 2
It’s a late-period Wesley Snipes movie and the sequel to a vampire flick, but don’t dismiss 2002’s Blade 2 out of hand; for starters, the second installment of New Line’s Blade franchise brought in Guillermo del Toro to take over for original director Stephen Norrington, lending the sequel more smarts and visual flair than you might otherwise expect from a film including a scene that takes place in a vampire nightclub. Though the plot is bogged down with more double-crosses than a bad heist movie (and giggle-worthy stuff like UV grenades), screenwriter David S. Goyer was smart enough to include plenty of action — and to set up a third installment in the epilogue. At 57 percent on the Tomatometer, Blade 2 ain’t exactly Citizen Kane, but it’s the best-reviewed of the Blade trilogy, and its $150 million worldwide gross makes it the most financially successful, too — something several critics attributed to the change in director. “If you can keep your eyes open amid all the blood and gore,” wrote the Denver Post’s Steven Rosen, “you’ll see Del Toro has brought unexpected gravity to Blade 2.”
8. Hulk
After having success blending costumed action with heavy subtext in the X-Men and Spider-Man movies, it was only natural that Marvel would take a similar approach for the first big-screen appearance of the gamma-powered monster known as the Hulk; indeed, the long-running title’s exploration of psychological issues — particularly the repressed rage of the Hulk’s alter ego, mild-mannered physicist Bruce Banner — has provided grist for some of the publisher’s most enduring storylines, and the ’70s television adaptation, while cheesy, proved that the books were a solid foundation for a live-action exploration of identity issues, even when budgetary and effects limitations required the use of a bodybuilder covered in green paint. With realistic CG graphics eliminating the need for a real-life Hulk, all the project needed was a director who could bring the action without losing track of the subtext — and Ang Lee seemed like the perfect fit. What looks great on paper doesn’t always translate to the screen, however, as proven by the nonplussed reaction that greeted Hulk: though it broke the $100 million mark at home, and grossed nearly $250 million worldwide, Hulk seemed like a letdown compared with the mind-boggling totals earned by Marvel’s heaviest hitters — and at 61 percent on the Tomatometer, it underperformed critically, thanks to lukewarm reviews from writers like Salon’s Charles Taylor, who waved it away as “leaden,” “pretentious,” and “just schlock art for the NPR set.”
7. Spider-Man 3
The Blade and X-Men trilogies both took a tumble with their third installments, but part of Spider-Man’s charm is that, costumed shenanigans notwithstanding, he’s always been one of the least outlandish and most relatable superheroes around — so you’d think he’d stand a better chance of avoiding the second-sequel curse. Going strictly by Tomatometer, you’d be right; at 62 percent, Spider-Man 3 is easily the best reviewed of Marvel’s third chapters (and probably one of the highest-rated movies ever to have a “3″ in its title). In the context of the Spider-Man franchise, however, it’s is easily the black alien symbiote — er, sheep — of the bunch; whether it’s because of the tangle of storylines, the infamous “emo Peter” scenes, or the simple fact that Venom’s long-awaited film debut arrived in a PG-13 production, Spider-Man 3 is almost universally regarded as the weakest of the trilogy. (In the words of Roger Ebert, it has “too many villains, too many pale plot strands, too many romantic misunderstandings, too many conversations, too many street crowds looking high into the air and shouting ‘oooh!’ this way, then swiveling and shouting ‘aaah!’ that way.”) Not that the mixed reviews put a dent in the movie’s theatrical run — though it was a mild disappointment domestically, its $890 million global total is the highest of the series, setting a high bar for Spider-Man 4 to cross in 2011.
6. The Incredible Hulk
Five years after Ang Lee’s Hulk was met with a resounding shrug, Marvel and Universal tapped Louis Leterrier to direct what would eventually be termed a “requel” — a movie that essentially ignored Hulk while still using it as an introduction to the character, thus eliminating the need for a lot of pesky exposition in the first act. With Edward Norton on board to star as Bruce Banner — and eventually rewrite Zak Penn’s script — The Incredible Hulk became the second Marvel-branded superhero movie of 2008 to attract a marquee cast; Norton’s list of co-stars eventually grew to include Tim Roth, William Hurt, and Liv Tyler. Unfortunately, all that star power — and all those script rewrites — didn’t have much of an impact on the requeled Hulk’s bottom line, which was only slightly better than the original’s. Part of the problem, according to critics, was the film itself — the New Yorker’s David Denby groaned that “when you’ve seen one half-ton piece of metal flung through the air, you’ve seen them all” — but for many, The Incredible Hulk’s biggest flaw was simply that its central character isn’t really all that interesting unless he’s smashing stuff, and may be better suited to action-injecting supporting roles (like, say, as the rumored villain in 2012’s The Avengers) than as the focus of his own film. On the other hand, Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno managed to keep TV audiences tuned in for five seasons of big green fun, so a rock-solid Hulk movie may not be impossible — and execs at Marvel and Universal remain committed to the franchise, so we’re likely to see at least one more attempt.
5. X-Men
Blade’s reign on top of the Marvel movie critical heap was short-lived, quickly yielding to the movie many fans point to as the first true example of what could happen when a comic book’s transition to film was handled with enough care (and a big enough budget). Turning the long-running X-Men series was a huge gamble, both for Marvel and for Fox; not only is it a cornerstone of the Marvel empire — and thus vulnerable to enormous fan backlash if done wrong — but the series has always been known for its dense, soap-worthy plotlines and unwieldy cast. In an earlier era, X-Men would have been almost impossible to translate successfully, but with Fox’s $75 million, Bryan Singer at the helm, and a picture perfect cast that included Patrick Stewart as Professor X, Sir Ian McKellen as Magneto, Halle Berry as Storm, and (of course) Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, the summer of 2000 brought Marvel’s favorite mutants to the big screen in style, racking up almost $300 million in worldwide grosses and a healthy stack of positive reviews from critics like New York Magazine’s Peter Rainer, who deemed it “A rarity: a comic-book movie with a satisfying cinematic design and protagonists you want to watch.”
4. X2: X-Men United
Given the long odds it faced just getting to the screen, let alone pulling off the transition so successfully, it seemed altogether unlikely that X-Men’s inevitable sequel would be able to achieve the same standard, let alone exceed it — but that’s exactly what 2003’s X2: X-Men United did, both at the box office, where it grossed over $400 million, and among critics, who praised it even more highly than its predecessor. This was, appropriately, accomplished two ways: One, the screenplay satisfied critics and longtime fans by tackling the comic’s long-running sociological themes, most explicitly the fear of “outside” elements (in this case, sexy super-powered mutants) and how that fear is channeled by xenophobic authority figures; two, the sequel ramped up the original’s gee-whiz factor by introducing characters like the teleporting, prehensile-tailed Nightcrawler — and daring to tease at the Marvel title’s Phoenix storyline, one of the most beloved, brain-bending plots in the publisher’s history. The result was a film that remains both a fan favorite and a critical benchmark for writers like Variety’s Todd McCarthy, who lauded X2 as “bigger and more ambitious in every respect, from its action and visceral qualities to its themes.”
3. Spider-Man
After 40 years in the comics, a handful of animated series, and one supremely silly live-action television show, Marvel’s iconic webslinger finally made his way to the big screen with 2002’s Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man. All those years of pent-up expectations cast a long shadow, but Raimi’s vision for the wall-crawler held up to the scrutiny, both from fans — who forked over $821 million in ticket receipts — and the critics whose near-unanimous acclaim sent Spider-Man all the way up to 90 percent on the Tomatometer. Like X-Men, Spider-Man would have been almost impossible to make before the advent of realistic CG effects — and as with X-Men, the fanciest special effects in Hollywood wouldn’t have mattered if the screenplay or the cast hadn’t been up to par. Fortunately, David Koepp and Alvin Sargent were able to split the difference between paying tribute to the character’s rich history and serving up two hours of bang-up entertainment — and Raimi’s cast, including Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker/Spider-Man and a scenery-chewing Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn/The Green Goblin, tackled the material with enough panache to achieve the massive suspension of disbelief the material required. Ultimately, the responsibility for bringing it all together was Raimi’s, and his success was duly noted by critics like Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers, who gave him credit for “[giving] this unapologetic fluff a mind, a heart and a keen sense of fun.”
2. Spider-Man 2
Sam Raimi knew he was setting up a franchise with 2002’s Spider-Man, but still, following up that kind of success must have been daunting, especially given the studio’s immediate hunger for a sequel, not to mention a protracted search for a workable script which saw Raimi and the producers turning to a succession of writers — including Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, David Koepp, and Michael Chabon — before ultimately turning to Alvin Sargent, who stitched together the most workable elements of the previous drafts to come up with a story that centered on Spidey’s struggle to conquer his own self-doubt while battling Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina). It might sound like a piecemeal approach, but it worked; although Spider-Man 2 didn’t meet or exceed Spider-Man’s global box office tally, it came close — and critics actually liked the second installment better than the first one, sending it all the way up to 93 percent on the Tomatometer on the strength of reviews from writers like Lou Lumenick, who wrote, “sequels don’t get much better — or smarter.” While touching on a dizzying array of storylines from the comics, Raimi and Sargent delivered a bigger, more intense version of the original that still managed to keep the action streamlined (and, of course, set up a third installment in the process).
1. Iron Man
It’s easy to forget this now, but before Iron Man debuted in May 2008, a not-inconsiderable number of people were skeptical of its chances for success; despite an incredible cast that included Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, and Terrence Howard, a passionate director in Jon Favreau, and a $50 million marketing campaign, many regarded the character as too obscure to draw a blockbuster-sized audience to theaters. What the doubters failed to recognize is that any movie that can combine a compelling storyline and character development with killer set pieces involving a man in a metal suit that can fly and shoot lasers (okay, repulsor beams — whatever, nerds) is probably going to do all right for itself at the box office. Iron Man did just that, amassing more than $580 million worldwide — and the critical response wasn’t too shabby either: 93 percent of critics were sufficiently impressed with Ol’ Shellhead’s cinematic debut to deliver a Fresh rating. More often than not, the accolades had less to do with the iron-plated action than the smart, funny screenplay (written by John August with a slew of uncredited writers) and the top-notch acting. Downey, capping a hard-fought comeback, received some of the kindest words from critics, among them the Boston Globe’s Wesley Morris, who wrote that “his sarcasm and almost drunken Tony Curtis body language transform the scenes.”