Marvel @ the movies: The best & worst

[hobbyfan]

Note that this is strictly on what I've seen at the theatres, and we're talking 20 years worth of ground to cover. We'll start with what I consider the worst.

1. Howard the Duck. Where to begin? Bev Switzer is rebooted as a punk rocker (Lea Thompson), which is just an excuse to justify the soundtrack. The script came across as a bunch of ideas thrown on a velcro dartboard, and that's just being kind.

2. Hulk (2003). Making the title character a CGI was a good idea. However, that was topped with about 2 dozen bad ideas. I don't know when it was established in Hulk continuity that Bruce had been abused, but that was tossed into the script, and on top of that, gave the old man a gamma-irradiated alter ego of his own, the movie version of Zzzax, I believe. Glenn Talbot was 100 times more of a jerk than was even suggested in the comics. Come to think of it, Talbot was more of a Frank Burns type of jerk in the comics, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

3. Fantastic Four (2005). Way too many liberties taken here, tying in Dr. Doom's origin with the Four themselves was way wrong. They also gave Doom a makeover of sorts, rebooting him as a successful businessman instead of the gypsy's son we know and despise.

4. Elektra (2005). Marvel was 2-for-2 in the bad movie department. More emphasis was placed on Elektra's training as a ninja, and Typhoid Mary, an enemy of Daredevil, was placed with the Hand. As with FF, they didn't bother doing enough research with the source material at hand. I think they wrote this film expecting people to see this and assume that Elektra is no different than Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner's "Alias" character). Man, were they wrong.

The best:

1. X-Men & X2: X-Men United. As with the cartoons, they opted to take the best of the original team and the 70's team and bring them together, with the rest of the familiar players coming along slowly. X2 used "God Loves, Man Kills" as a template, completely bypassing the Dark Phoenix era, although they may come to that soon enough. No one is watching Patrick Stewart play Professor X and think of him still as Jean-Luc Picard.

2. The Punisher (2004). Go ahead, laugh at this one. Sure, they moved the setting from New York to Miami, but with Garth Ennis' work as a template, this was surprisingly good. Much better than the first attempt some 15-odd years earlier.

3. Spider-Man 1 & 2. The only mistake made was bypassing Gwen Stacy & Betty Brant and going straight to Mary Jane Watson as Peter Parker's love interest. This, I think, can be blamed on the fact that in the comics Peter & Mary Jane have been wed for nearly 20 years real time, and to a generation of readers, MJ's the only girl for Peter. Tobey Maguire has nailed Peter. I also disagree with the idea of organic webshooters, but Marvel's taken that ball and run with it, for better or worse.

4. Blade: Trinity. The only one of the series I've taken the time to see. Not quite as bad as people claimed it was. Ex-Onyx frontman Sticky Fingaz has a tough act to follow bringing Blade to TV later this year.

Honorable mention: Daredevil.

[BCVM22]

As with FF, they didn't bother doing enough research with the source material at hand.

Where does the assumption that "they didn't do enough research" come from? Perhaps the writers and such did research enough to recite the entire continuity to you from memory, and simply decided to omit or modify certain elements of the character. Whether that's a good idea or not is certainly open for much debate, but to assume that they simply "didn't do the research" is poor logic.

[bigddan11]

I have to disagree with your opinion. I'd place Spider-man 1 & 2 in the top spot with X-Men 1 & 2 in the second place. Third for me is Fantastic Four, then Daredevil at 4th. I haven't sen any of the Blade movies, but I've heard they took quiet a few liberties with them. As far as the worst area goes, I'd defintley place Elektra at the worst, but Howard the Duck would be a close 2nd.

[Wonderwall]

I agree with most of that though I liked Hulk, and his dad was supposed to be their version of the Absorbing Man I believe.

[Stu]

I thought the movie version of Dr. Doom was utterly poor. It didn't help matters that he got his ass kicked in the first big fight in the film, but Dr. Doom is one of the coolest villains ever - here, he's resorted to a poor man's Norman Osborn with Electro's powers. I admit to enjoying a lot of the Fantastic Four film, but the villain was absoloutly atrocious.

Spider-Man 2 is still the best Marvel has to offer at the movies. A great plot, a fantastic villain and so much fun to be had I think they'll have a very hard time topping this next summer. Both X-Men films suffer from pacing problems and a lot of thier other films were simply cut up by the studios - Daredevil being the worst example. The Directors Cut is so much better than the theatrical.

I couldn't bring myself to see Elektra...

[Knight]

Except for Blade most of the marvel movies havent done much for me. They have been good but I cant say that one was really better than the others but Elektra and Howard the duck would be at the bottom of my list.

[Azrael24]

Havent seen howard the duck so im placing hulk as the worst marvel movie

and i also agree that the Xmen movies are at the top. altho i loved the spiderman movies, they just seem kinda boring to me. i dunno why they just do :shrug: they're still awesome tho

[dc_gothamite]

Straight up, the only Marvel movies worth noting for me are the X-Men films and first two Blade films.

The Spider-Man films were way overrated, IMO. My friends and I saw both movies, opening day each, and we walked out remarkably disappointed... I dunno...

In Part I, I think they nailed Peter Parker, pre-spider-bite... he was nerdy, a push-over, etc... but post spider-bite, I still didn't buy it... I never thought for a minute Peter could be the wise-ass Spider-Man that I've been reading since i was a kid... and when he did say something "witty", it just came off corny...

Spider-Man 2 didn't fare so well with me either... something about it just rubbed me the wrong way... when i heard about the plotline of Pete giving up the mantle, I was actually jazzed... considering that one part was lifted straight outta the comics ("spider-man, no-more")... but it just seemed... poorly done... I mean I could live with all the problems he had, but losing his powers because he didn't feel he needed them was too much of a stretch...

and then there are those points in both movies where the citizens of NY came to spider-man's aid... yeah, a bit too corny for me too... the Green Goblin was supposed to one of the baddest MF-ers on the planet, and he was subded (for a bit) by a bunch of NY-ers throwing crap at him? ok...

my friends were laughing during the "you'll have to get through me" scene on the train... i hate to admit it, but that was way to corny for me as well...

I can understand how the Spidey films are such a success... they tug at the heart, and they give a good dose of action... i guess the movies aren't the Spider-Man flicks I wanna see... my friends and I have basically stuck to the animated series from the 90's :sad:

[Condiment King]

Fantastic Four was an awful film all around. Bad acting abound, terrible script. Johnny Storm's character was so over-the-top with the cultural references that his humor was all annoying to me. Ben Grimm's voice as the Thing was weird. It was different from what I imagined. Julian MacMahon was so miscast as Dr. Doom. First of all, he's a businessman with this pedestrian voice that eventually degrades into this even more generic mechanical voice under a Doom mask. Movie Doom would be a C list villain in an X-Men movie. And of course, it goes without saying that Jessica Alba is tremendously miscast as the intelligent Susan Storm, that apparently now doesn't really know anything and just stumbles from emotion to emotion. The soundtrack was annoying, some of the scenes were pointless and unneeded. The movie felt long and it was only an hour and a half.

Daredevil was just underwhelming. They took my favorite Marvel character and made him uninteresting as Ben Affleck. I just dislike Jennifer Garner as an actress as she parlays her forgettable performance into a sequel called Elektra, which I didn't entertain a notion of seeing for a nanosecond.

While I enjoyed the Spidey movies, I personally thought neither was fantastic. X2 was better than both, and X-Men is my current favorite Marvel film. And this is coming from a guy that doesn't really like the X-Men as comic characters at all. Despite the move to Ratner, X3's trailer looks awesome.

I probably won't waste a rental on Hulk, considering my disinterest and the tremendous amount of bad reviews towards it. But hey, if its on USA one afternoon and I'm bored, I might eventually see it. I have a mild interest in seeing The Punisher and may rent it sometime down the road, but I'm not expecting alot.

[ManicWebb]

I didn't enjoy The Hulk at all, but I suppose it would've helped if I didn't think Hulk was a boring character to begin with. I love the smart-alec Professor Hulk with Banner's intellect, and I even like the mean jackass Grey Hulk, but the traditional Savage Hulk has always been a one-trick pony to me. "Hulk get angry, Hulk smash. Hulk possibly stop smashing for a few minutes if Hulk see Betty. The end." Plus the scene where he gets hit with the gamma radiation felt way too underwhelming for me.

I thought Daredevil was decent when I first saw it, but I loved the Director's Cut. It actually had a second Act, instead of stumbling from the overall set-up into the conclusion. Why Fox feels the need to cut their movies down to 1 1/2 hours (missing character development be damned) is beyond me.

[CyborgRex]

I don't have a favorite but I do like the Spiderman and X-Men movies a lot and can't wait to see the third in each respective series.

The worst is the Hulk hands down. To long and boring. My biggest beef with the movie is that when Hulk is running in the desert he stops and acts calm. WTF! Shouldn't he turn back to normal if he's calm, come on.

I thought Fantastic Four was okay until the went into the Baxter Building and didn't do anything intresting or anything that realy count as a story. It was a superhero movie with one fight scene. As soon as it ended I thought "that was it?"

[ManicWebb]

I think the problem with the Fantastic Four was that it felt like it was being written by sitcom writers. This is the origin movie that was supposed to dazzle us, but we were given the everyday antics of the Baxter Building. The first Spider-Man movie had a fun montage of Spidey rounding up thugs, and the streets abuzz with his name. Fantastic Four gave us a montage of Johnny pulling summer camp pranks on Ben, and Reed reaching for the toilet paper across the hall.

[solarflere]

Marvel's good movies:
Spiderman 1
Spiderman 2
Blade 1
Blade 2
X-men 1
X-Men 2 (X2: X-Men United)
The Punisher.

Fantastic Four was OK.

Marvel's Bad movies:
Blade 3 (Thiriny)
The Hulk
Daredevil
Electra

Marvel movies I am waiting for that I think will be awesone:
Iron Man (whats the news on that one, did they start casting yet?) Wasn't Tom Cruze looking to do it?
Ghost Rider: with Nicolas Cage should be realy good.

Marvel's Trilogy I am waiting for that will be awesome:
Spiderman 3
X-Men 3 (X3 The Last Stand).

And Marvel's Sequals:
Punisher 2 (hope its gonna be as good as the first or better)
The Hulk 2 (better make a lot of changes, the first one sucked).

[FroBro]

tom cruise as iron man?!?!? that would be amazing! with awsome couch jumping skills and knowlodge of scientology he is easily be the best choice for iron man.i cant wait to join him on his quest to get south park off the air.

[Spider-Man]

As much as I love the character and enjoy the movies the first two Spider-Man movies don't have a strong rewatch value. The first Spider-Man movie has a great first hour but slides downhill after he dons the costume for the first time. I just find it so difficult to watch. The second Spider-Man movie is better but I also find that I just don't have the enthusiasm to watch them over and over.

X2 has probably become my favorite Marvel movie. The pacing slips a bit in the middle but its such a well done movie and wonderfully put together. That one is easily the best Marvel movie in my opinion. I also think that Hulk is very underrated as is The Punisher. The second Blade movie is probably the best of that franchise. Much like the Spider-Man movies I have a harder time sitting through Daredevil (either the theatrical or Director's Cut) with each viewing.

Elektra and Fantastic Four need to be forgotten as they were just horrible. I read there is a director's cut of Fantastic Four coming but I don't know if that can save it.

[Agent S7]

Iron Man (whats the news on that one, did they start casting yet?) Wasn't Tom Cruze looking to do it?

Please tell me that was intentional. Tom Cruise can't be working on Iron Man, right? I mean, seriously. You'd think he'd be against iron suits of technology used to help a guy live, being against all medicine.

Iron Man was one of my favorite heroes from my childhood. IF THEY DARE to cast a bully and a nutcase like Cruise...I don't know what I'd do.

This has to be a joke. Someone confirm this rumor's joke-iness. :sad:

~s7

[Stu]

Please tell me that was intentional. Tom Cruise can't be working on Iron Man, right? I mean, seriously. You'd think he'd be against iron suits of technology used to help a guy live, being against all medicine.

Iron Man was one of my favorite heroes from my childhood. IF THEY DARE to cast a bully and a nutcase like Cruise...I don't know what I'd do.

This has to be a joke. Someone confirm this rumor's joke-iness. :sad:

~s7
He was in the running, but eventually backed out, due to scheduling difficulties I believe. This was years ago, and Iron Man hasn't had any forward movement since they announced a director, who may or may not still be attached to the project.

I think Cruise would be perfect for the part, with the right beard. :)

[ManicWebb]

Please tell me that was intentional. Tom Cruise can't be working on Iron Man, right? I mean, seriously. You'd think he'd be against iron suits of technology used to help a guy live, being against all medicine.
Iron Man also has a chemical dependency.

[Wonderwall]

Last I heard, the current plans for the Iron Man movie were scrapped and that Marvel wanted to make it under its umbrella.