20 greatest big-screen comic book heroes

Mystery Men does not need to be on that list.

Fantastic Four needs to be way lower on the list: how did it beat Batman? Knolan's Batman is going to really take the series to a new level.

The Hulk is going to get a huge facelift and I hope the same happens for Swamp Thing and the Phantom.

There are so many comments I want to make about that list but I'll leave it at this.

I take some offense to seeing The Hulk so high up on the list. It was a dreadful movie. With Edward Norton, Liv Tyler and a new director on the horizon the new installment should be much better flick in the next go-round.

At least Catwoman was left off the list. Me-yow or Me-yuk? ^_^

-An

I'd love to see a Swamp Thing film that really captured the feel and attitude of Alan Moore's run back in the 1980s. I gotta admit, though, that as a kid I absolutely loved the stupid first film. ("The formula . . . simply makes you more . . . of what you already are . . . ")

I agree that FF doesn't belong anywhere near the top of the list, and I'm a bit baffled by the presence of Constantine! Love the comic (at least in its first five years or so), hate the flick. I'm pleased to see The Phantom creep on here, and I'd also vote for The Rocketeer, which not only captured the essence of Dave Stevens' comic, but was also just a good time.

I'm a Batman nerd, so I'm always pleased to see Batman on these lists. I'm pretty excited about the next installment.

So, who's ready for the Watchmen movie?

Not a strict comicbook tie-in, but one of, if not THE best superhero movie has to be The Incredibles.

definately ready for Watchmen.

And The Incredibles is what FF should have been. Maybe they should get Brad Bird to direct the third FF. I know I would if I was paying for it.

I cannot emphasize how stoked I am about the new Incredible Hulk. Edwarton Norton has proven how good he is at playing a "dual character" or split personality. And what is the Hulk other than a coping mechanism that expresses itself physically for meek Bruce Banner.

Did you know that Norton wrote the screenplay.


Also -did anyone disagree with Ghost Rider being a success? I think that one needs to join the Daredevil as a black sheep project. I hope both get a do-over.

The fact that Superman didn't even make the top 10 shows just how little thought or appreciation went into the making of that list.

Were they rating the heroes by the success of the movies, the heroes they were based on, or what? Costume, coolness - those aren't worthy judging points.

I think Superman Returns was one of the best super-hero films ever made. Definitely in the Top 10, in my opinion.

The main fan-boy complaints all seemed to boil down to the fact he didn't punch anybody.

Axler said:

I think Superman Returns was one of the best super-hero films ever made. Definitely in the Top 10, in my opinion.
The main fan-boy complaints all seemed to boil down to the fact he didn't punch anybody.

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My main complaint was that I'd seen it before. Title should have been Superman Remade. Though admittedly, the plane rescue was pretty awesome and you got a real feel for the speed and power of the guy.

I also liked that you saw the true hero in Supes. That having been rescued after the showdown with Luthor, he goes back, knowing that he doesn't have the staggering power he can usually rely on. It's easy to be a play hero when you're basically invulnerable, can fly, have super strength and speed. But take those away and to STILL go and face your enemy is real heroics.

I just wish that had happened in an original movie.

Or Superman Reintroduced.

I think that regardless of the Superman screenplay, there will always be elements that a certain segment of the audience (like us) have seen before...simply by dint of the fact that it's about Superman.

I certainly didn't think Superman Returns was the perfect film about the character...I missed seeing a little twist at the end like the final scene between Zod and Clark in Superman II, which harkened back to so many classic 1950s-60s Superman comic stories.

When I first heard Superman Returns would be loosely connected to the first two films, I was skeptical, but then figured...why not? To redo the whole franchise would result in substantially the same backstory.

After reading the truly atrocious Tim Burton and McQ treatments, I think Bryan Singer's approach was the best and most logical.

As for Brandon Routh...I believed him. His performance was sufficiently nuanced with just enough echoes of Christopher Reeve's portrayal so he seemed comfortably familiar without coming off as a straight imitation.

Batman Begins was a complete do-over and it made sense to go in that direction, particularly after the bloated "gay Fantasia" of Batman and Robin, but there was little reason to come at Superman with that mind-set.

Axler said:

When I first heard Superman Returns would be loosely connected to the first two films, I was skeptical, but then figured...why not? To redo the whole franchise would result in substantially the same backstory.

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Only thing I'd read, re: scripts, was the Kevin Smith one. If you knew Supes, it was pretty good, but I suspect pretty inaccessible to the casual movie-goer. Plus as he has discussed, he was working to a producer's ideas as well.

I had heard that the basic idea was that SR picked up after SI and II and they were gonna basically pretend the poor III and IV had never happened.

I liked that. And yeah, we do get a nod towards two, talking about Luthor's release from prison (though why his parole hearing rested solely on Supes' testimony, I don't know), but then the basic plot is identical to SI. I find it hardto believe that the combined creative talent couldn't have reintroduced the character to the cinema audience and STILL been original.

They also did something with Supes that usually only really happens when there is a Supes/Bats corssover. When you get those two together in a comic, usually Bats comes off as the borderline psycho, grim, violent headcase, and Supes comes off as the slightly naive boyscout, last son of Hicksville. In their own titles, when handled by competent writers, both characters are way more nuanced and subtle. All we got here was 2D version.

And for someone who could do something so complex and character intensive as The Usual Supects, I expected more. I mean, Singer is onvolved in House, that character is so multifaceted that even a fraction of that in Supes would have lifted it.

I can see everybody's points and agree with some of them.

However, when it comes to movies based on comics characters, I judge them primarily on whether it "feels" like the real character. If that can be accomplished, then I think the film is basically a success.

So, in the case of Superman Returns, the character felt the genuine article to me.

Was anyone else a little disappointed with the casting choices for Watchmen?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen_(film)#Cast

wordmonkey said:

Only thing I'd read, re: scripts, was the Kevin Smith one. If you knew Supes, it was pretty good, but I suspect pretty inaccessible to the casual movie-goer. Plus as he has discussed, he was working to a producer's ideas as well.

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"Again with the *$&@! spider!"

Excelsior said:

"Again with the *$&@! spider!"

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Funniest thing about that is the same producer made a movie soon after, based on a certain sci-fi-ish Western TV series and lo-and-behold, the villain has a giant, mechanical....

wordmonkey said:

Funniest thing about that is the same producer made a movie soon after, based on a certain sci-fi-ish Western TV series and lo-and-behold, the villain has a giant, mechanical....

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Yeah...if they'd gone with the plot I'd written that had already been optioned for development, there wouldn't been a giant crawling land-crab.

Just a couple of giant flying bat-winged airships...the prototype of which had already been introduced in the selfsame sci-fi-ish Western TV series.

Personally, I really enjoyed the Fantastic Four, even with the minor tweeks they made to the origin story and what they did to Doc Doom. I think they captured the give-and-take between the Human Torch and Ben Grimm fairly well.

I never did see The Phantom, and I was always curious why The Shadow didn't do very well. I thought that was a faithful retelling.

I'm really looking forward to Iron Man and I would hope one day they do a decent retelling of Captain America and not some wimpy guy who wears a football helmet and rides a motorcycle.

Excelsior said:

The fact that Superman didn't even make the top 10 shows just how little thought or appreciation went into the making of that list.

Were they rating the heroes by the success of the movies, the heroes they were based on, or what? Costume, coolness - those aren't worthy judging points.

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They might have been going by "does it suck?" Which to me, the Superman franchise, especially with Christopher Reeves, sucks. Granted I haven't seen "Returns" yet, so maybe there is hope.

But then I wasn't keen on the Tim Burton Batmans either. I did like the retelling of "Begins" in that case. Even if it seemed like they stole a lot from the origin story of the Alec Balwin The Shadow movie to make it.

If you thought the Christopher Reeve Superman films suck, then Superman Returns will have you throwing a Gollum-like fit of horror.

My list... Presented in alphabetical order instead of numerical (just to be different).

300
Batman Begins
Blade II
Bulletproof Monk
The Crow
Daredevil
Fantastic Four
Hellboy
The Mask
Men in Black
Men in Black II
The Punisher
Sin City
Spiderman
Spiderman II
Superman
Superman II
TMNT
V for Vendetta
X-Men

This is of course subject to change once Iron Man and Watchmen come out.

Actually, I would have been surprised if the Reeve movies would have made it; they're pretty cheesy, especially as they get higher in number. Heck, the first one made cheesiness records simply by having Superman do the "reverse time by flying around the world" thing...

Then again, there are a number of films that made the Top 20 that really surprised me, either because they were so bad (Swamp Thing), had almost nothing to do with their comic book counterpart (Constantine), or were simply not comic books (Unbreakable). Of course, I'm still trying to figure out what Mystery Men is doing on any Top Whatever list (it just came off as being way too clever, rather than actually funny...sort of like a number of random skits put together that happened to have a plot rather than being written that way in the first place). But that's just me...

RG

FinbarReilly said:

Actually, I would have been surprised if the Reeve movies would have made it;

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By those standards, the first three Star Wars films are cheesy and Raiders of the Lost Ark came out of a dairy.

That people still have fond memories of the first Swamp Thing film always perplexes me. It was one step above a fan film...the only memorable thing about it was Adrienne Barbeau's semi-nude scene.

Axler said:

By those standards, the first three Star Wars films are cheesy and Raiders of the Lost Ark came out of a dairy.

That people still have fond memories of the first Swamp Thing film always perplexes me. It was one step above a fan film...the only memorable thing about it was Adrienne Barbeau's semi-nude scene.

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I'm not sure how you can call Star Wars or Raiders as cheesy.

As far as the Swamp Thing, ug. I hated that and I never understood the attraction of Adrienne Barbeau. She wasn't much to look at and her acting was not so good neither.

This list is a travesty! Where is the 1986 classic Howard the Duck? Best movie about a talking alien duck starring Lea Thompson ever!

Axler said:

By those standards, the first three Star Wars films are cheesy and Raiders of the Lost Ark came out of a dairy.

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The main difference is that Raiders was fun and is solid enough that you can watch it a lot of times and feel that you are getting something different each time. I know it was written as a homage to the old serials, but it's somehow better than they are. The first three Star Wars movies also were a homage to serials, but they have a definite philosophical bent that gives them a solidity that makes them fun to talk about beyond mere symbology....

In short, the Superman movies are pretty much see-once-and-forget movies, but the Indy and Star Wars movies aren't...

FR