I believe before we get down to the nitty-gritty of this Geek VS Geek battle, we should take a moment to realise how far comic book movies have come. Only a few decades ago we were looking at the sad demise of the Superman movies. Batman (1989) saved the ‘industry’ for a while and made what was to come possible. But why was and is there an ‘industry’ at all? Making movies from source material known only to those on the fringe of society (there you go, Will, offend your audience in the first paragraph…) doesn’t seem like much of a business model. And whilst you could at least rely on the fact that most people had at least heard of Superman and Batman, what would attract the general public to anyone else?

A Marvel supporter, like my formidable opponent, would argue that this question has been answered. And to a small extent I agree. Certainly X-men, Spider-Man and Iron Man are good examples that you can make successful blockbuster movies from comic books that had been around for at least 50 years but still hadn’t managed to work their way into the mainstream (perhaps this is a bit harsh on Spider-Man, but come on, how many would have heard of Tony Stark before the last few years?). So it is possible that good comic book movies are possible despite a lack of interest, or knowledge about the source material.

A DC movies supporter, like, well… me, would argue that for every success there have been at least ten failures. And it’s only going to get worse. The comic book movie ‘industry’ is ramping up like never seen before, and Comic-Con is now a required stop for A-listers on the movie publicity tour (even if your movie has dubious connections to comic books), but still there are few signs that we have actually learnt anything. Most comic book movies are still god-damn awful.

And why do I think they are awful? People think they can just convert any comic book into a movie. Some comic books, no matter how good they are, simply don’t translate to film, no matter how much money or scriptwriters you throw at it. I believe DC knows this, and so is hesitant to rush its material onto the silver screen. Marvel however is either ignoring this wisdom or simply doesn’t care, and is planning to flood the market with what will mostly be terrible, but sadly profitable, comic book movies.

In summary, DC has decided for a quality over quantity motto, and Marvel has gone for your wallet, not showing a care in the world for how bad its movies are.

In truth, Marvel isn’t entirely to blame for this development. Certainly my opponent will bring up Superman IV, Return of the Swamp Thing, Catwoman and…(shudder) Batman and Robin as examples that DC can also make movies for profit with little regard for the necessity of a coherent storyline. But DC has moved on from this terrible phase (we all did crazy things in the 80’s and 90’s we are not proud of), and has shown much more patience since then. Marvel has therefore had the benefit of hindsight and yet has made and is in the process of making the same mistakes.

Alright, that’s enough serious talk. Let’s get to the whole point of writing this article; making fun of some truly horrible Marvel movies.

Marvel – The first Blade-cut is the deepest….

That Marvel has built their ‘movie empire’ on the back of the ‘success’ of the ‘movie’ Blade truly does warrant a requestioning of the laws of physics (vampirism itself doesn’t seem to follow the second law of thermodynamics). How the hell did that happen? And with Wesley Snipes of all people, who would later go on to make memorable direct-to-DVD classics such as The Marksmen, The Detonator, and The Contractor (am I alone in believing that these three had the same script?), Blade: Trinity and the not-at-all-timely comedy classic, Honey, I Forgot To Pay the Taxes Again So I’m Going to Jail!

And yet it did. Blade finally got Marvel off the ground following the false starts of The Punisher (1989), the unbelievably racist Captain America (1990 -- of which less said the better) and Fantastic Four (1994). No, not the one in which Jessica Alba gets her kit off, but the unreleased low-budget movie where a bunch of D-grade actors were tricked by the producers into making what they were told was going to be a blockbuster release, but was really just a piece of junk that was never planned for release and served only to keep the rights to the Fantastic Four franchise (an early sign of where Marvel was going…).

Blade was followed by X-Men, which I have to say, I do like. It didn’t try to do too much, unlike its sequels, the promising but largely unsatisfying X2 and the woeful, self-destructive X-Men: The Last Stand. X-Men had a story, and didn’t compromise it with having to go into the back-story of every single character (a tough task in what was essentially an ensemble movie). That said I would have liked to see in Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants line-up both Quicksilver (a core BOM character) and Scarlet Witch (because she is hot). But if they had appeared, it wouldn’t have been as good of a good movie.

Spider-Man, too, is actually a good movie. There, I said it. That’s the most you’re going to get from a pro-DC fan. It does what Marvel does best, have a superhero who is fallible because of his humanity. But I’d also argue that Spider-Man, like Batman and Superman before it, was a massive hit because he is the closest Marvel has to a household name, which is what is needed to really rake in the big bucks. Spider-Man is still the highest-grossing Marvel film at the US box office, and the second most successful comic book movie, behind, of course, the king of comic book movies, The Dark Knight.

And this is the point where things start to go pear shaped for Marvel. With Spider-Man being such a huge financial success, clearly there was pressure to get as much of its source material out there as possible. And this was somewhat understandable; comic book movies were finally ‘in’ again, after being nearly killed off by Batman and Robin. But rather than wait until they had some decent scripts to use, I suspect a lot of these movies went into production on little more than a whim. How else could you explain what was soon to follow?

Elektra, or ‘Oh God, why am I being punished?’

Since Spider-Man, there have been nineteen films in eight years from Marvel, including a staggering ten sequels and three reboots, with The Punisher getting rebooted TWICE. And how many did DC put out over the same time? Only seven, or five if you don’t count Watchmen and V for Vendetta as DC movies (V for Vendetta was published under its Vertigo imprint, and Watchmen was before the Vertigo imprint was around), which I believe most people wouldn’t given their content (likewise, I haven’t counted Kick-Ass as a Marvel movie, which was published under its Icon imprint). There is also no apparent easing off from Marvel, with five more slated for release in the next two years, and several more in development.

And in those nineteen films there are some truly shocking ones. It would take far too long to detail as to how near universally all of these films manage to both suck and blow at the same time. But the worst of the worst would have to be:

• Hulk (2003). Being Marvel comics’ second biggest name, you’d think they’d make sure this worked. Going with Ang Lee was a bold step, but clearly there were way too many spoons stirring the broth on this one. A truly woeful film, made more woeful by trying to make a movie principally about a large, green monster who acts with uncontrollable rage and is capable of unbelievable death and destruction….into a PG13 film. The scene that best sums up my uncontrollable rage against this movie? When the Hulk throws a tank about a mile into the side of a mountain, the producers, with their minds obviously transfixed on the movie ratings, felt the need to include a bit with the people inside the tank saying over the radio that they are all okay. Ah…no, you’re not okay. You’ve just been turned into Hulk Play-Doh.

• Daredevil and Elektra. Uggh. I don’t even want to remind myself of how bad these were. I remember watching Daredevil with a fellow Geek Speak contributor, looking at each other, constantly asking ourselves “they didn’t just do that, did they?”. CGI that was truly laughable, and pathetic storylines that made no use of the darkness of the Daredevil and Elektra comics. I didn’t even get to the end of Elektra, so if it got better I apologize (I severely doubt it). I did however last long enough to see Ben Affleck’s cameo, which must rate highly on a ‘least effort put in for a cameo' scale. As of 2005, my worst three movies of all time were Hulk, Daredevil and Elektra (soon to be joined by Transformers).

• Ghost Rider. No, just…no. Move on, there is literally nothing to see here.

• The Punisher: War Zone (2008). I haven’t seen this film, but I think it still deserves a mention, because it again highlights how simply inept the Marvel business model is. There was no one, bar a very small minority of hardcore Punisher fans that actually wanted this movie. Hell, I’d argue even they didn’t want it, after seeing Punisher ruined twice before with their 1989 and 2004 efforts. The only thing I’d credit Marvel for with this film is letting it have an R rating. But that is where the kudos ends. The movie’s director was essentially cut out of editing by Marvel execs, and its writer Kurt Sutter chose to remove his name from the writing credits, believing he didn’t deserve credit for the film as the shooting script was nothing like the screenplay he had turned in to Marvel. So with all this, it should come as no surprise that it made less money at the box office than any other wide-release Marvel film.

And of course, there are the many soul-crushing sequels. It would be easy to ridicule Blade: Trinity as the most obvious example of Marvel spewing out drivel with no script only for the purpose of taking more money from our wallets (I’d like to point out I haven’t paid to see a Marvel film in a long while), but that would let movies such as The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Spiderman 3, and X-Men: The Last Stand off the hook from being seen as the drivel they truly are.

So how is this any different to the DC meltdowns of the Superman and Batman franchises of the 80’s and 90’s? Consider that in both cases, despite the phenomenal successes of the first films, DC did not rush many of their other characters onto the silver screen. Between Superman (1978) and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) only The Swamp Thing and Supergirl were made (and I’m going to make no attempt to explain or defend Supergirl; yes, it is terrible). And no other DC movies were made between Batman (1989) and Batman and Robin (1997), apart from the low-budget Steel, also released in 1997 (see Supergirl, I’m not going to get caught up defending this. Shaq? Really?). Remember that Marvel would later make EIGHTEEN films over the similar period of time. So both of Superman IV and Batman and Robin films really just failed under the weight of being sequels, which happens to the best of movie genres (I still stand behind Godfather III, though I know there aren’t many who support me).

So why are DC movies any better? or ‘I still remember Richard Pryor’

In contrast to Marvel, DC treated the success of Batman Begins (2005) very differently. The financial success of Spider-Man made DC reconsider the Batman and Superman franchises, thankfully so, because it would have been a shame to leave Batman how it had ended. Of the two resultant reboots, Batman Begins and Superman Returns, arguably only Batman Begins succeeded (Superman Returns isn’t a bad film, just not a good one; it tried to do something different not seen in other comic book movies, which perhaps the audience wasn’t up or ready for yet).

Just on Batman Begins for a moment; some might say that Batman Begins took a leaf out of the Spider-Man movies and endeavored to make the very human Bruce Wayne more the main character instead of the ‘Caped Crusader’. I think this goes some way to discredit some of the excellent storylines going on in the Batman comics during the late 90’s and 2000’s, which no doubt were aimed to remind readers that Batman was never meant to be the pitiful Batman seen in Batman and Robin. The Hush, No-man’s Land and Jason Todd story arcs are all fantastic, and along with the brilliant miniseries The Long Halloween, these brought the mafia and hoods back to the streets of Gotham, who would be used so superbly as core elements of the Batman Begins and The Dark Knight storylines.

For me, what separates DC from Marvel is what it did next, following the success of Batman Begins. Or more importantly what they didn’t do. They didn’t make any films.

Hang on? Whoa?

Think about it. Remember how many times you heard a Wonder Woman movie was about to be started? It never happened. Reasons differ depending on whom you listen to, but most revolve around DC execs not being happy with the scripts. If this is even 10% true, it’s 110% more restraint than Marvel execs ever showed. Joss Whedon was for a long while tied to a potential Wonder Woman movie, but never managed to convince DC to move forward with his ideas. Marvel instead signed him in a heartbeat and had him paraded along with the actors also signed up for an Avengers movie that has no script. Hmm.

Other DC movies importantly not made before their time; A Flash movie (there are so many Flash characters nowadays where would you begin?), both a Shazam movie and then a Black Adam movie (the Rock as Black Adam…brother, please!!!) and then there was that woeful Justice League idea with D-grade actors that almost, almost was made. Boy, oh boy, did we dodge a bullet there.

And why weren’t these made? DC figured out that these movies either weren’t up to scratch, or the general public wasn’t ready for them. I’m not saying I don’t want to see a Flash, Wonder Woman or Justice League movie, I really do, but I want DC to make sure everything, absolutely everything is in place before standing up on stage at Comic-Con, and that includes having the best script ever written.

Remember that almost all of the DC comic movies in the last forty years have been Batman and Superman titles, despite the depth and breadth of the DC lineup, now nearly eighty years old. Swamp Thing, Steel and Jonah Hex are the only other non-Batman/Superman derived movies, and it comes as no surprise that none of these are particularly good.

The only other would be Watchmen, which was a noble attempt to bring an impossibly complex multiple plot storyline to the screen. It would have been easy to criticise it for what was not in the film (about 80% of the graphic novel), but for the sake of the movie storyline it was far better that only a few plots were used in the film. No doubt the near twenty years it was in development led to the success of making sure the plot could at least be followed in one sitting. Besides, like James Joyce’s Ulysses, how many people have actually read quite possibly the best comic of all time? And did it really matter that the giant squid wasn’t in the movie?

Consider the other DC title that more than a few fan boys would kill to see. Ever since it was published, many have wished to see Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns up on the big screen. An old, angry Bruce Wayne returning to the cape to reclaim Gotham, taking on a corrupt US government and Superman. Yes, Superman. Rightly recognised as one of the best graphic novels of all time, so why no film yet? Apart from the fact it would be difficult to explain to (most) audiences why a Batman, completely non-canon to the Batman in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, was beating the crap out of Superman, the reasons why the story worked so well as a comic book would be the same reasons, much like *Watchmen, why a movie adaptation couldn’t ever get the whole story across.

Conclusion

In summary, I believe DC makes better movies, not just evidenced from the ones it has made, but the ones it hasn’t. This ensures that, for the most part (there will always be movies like DC’s Jonah Hex and Marvel’s Punisher: War Zone), DC will continue to produce quality movies at the expense of quantity. The Dark Knight is a perfect example of this.

In contrast, Marvel will continue to flood the market with more generic, mind-sapping yawnfests. And even if the occasional one is okay (Spider-Man, Iron Man), there will be plenty that aren’t. If any of the next ten movies Marvel makes over the next three years are decent, I’ll be surprised. The Avengers movie is doomed to fail, not at the box office, but almost certainly critically. And from what we’ve seen of the Thor footage so far, that doesn’t look promising either (anyone else think Anthony Hopkins is channeling Prince Vultan from Flash Gordon?).

DC meanwhile are working away on what they hope will (finally) be their third film franchise after Batman and Superman, that being Green Lantern. And good luck to them. They’ve waited until filmmaking technology would be good enough to bring Oa and alien green lanterns like Kilowog, Tomar Re and Boodikka to the screen properly, and they’ve stuck to just one green lantern, Hal Jordan.

All we can do now is hope it doesn’t suck…like almost all Marvel films do.

-- William Cashin

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Further Reading

The Top 13... Superheroes Without Superpowers, this issue
Geek Speak's Superman review by K. Burtt
Geek Speak's Blade II review by K. Burtt
Geek Speak's Spider-Man review by Brad Crammond
Geek Speak's Daredevil review by Rachel Hyland
Geek Speak's Howard the Duck review by Rachel Hyland

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