It’s said the West was built on legends. Tall tales that help us make sense of things too great or too terrifying to believe. One such legend comes from the strange and distant land of Hollywood, where it’s accepted as God’s own truth that it’s impossible to do very wrong if you base your film on a successful Marvel® comic book property.
Yeah. Right.
At first I’d planned to make this week’s clash a head-to-head battle between Ghost Rider and Howard the Duck, but really, the field of botched Marvel adaptations is just too rich to limit it to just those two. Admittedly, slagging the 1979 version of Captain America or the 1977 version of Spider-Man is kind of like beating up a kid in a wheelchair, and until this morning I didn’t even know there was a 1944 version of Captain America, but…
Dolph Lundgren as The Punisher? There was a 1990 version of Captain America? The last X-Men movie was released in 2020? There was a Ghost Rider 2?
Who knew?!?!?!
So today I’m throwing the discussion wide open. Which of these, or any others you can think of, is in your considered opinion without question the worst adaptation of a Marvel comic book ever brought to the screen?
Well, yes, going strictly by box-office failure it was Man-Thing, but aside from that one, which of these films made you say out loud, “My God, has anyone involved with making this picture actually read the damned comic book?”
Or contrarily, is there any film here that you feel unfairly gets a bad rap?
Have fun, and see you tomorrow.
~brb
They all kind of suck in my opinion. Except for Iron Man.
ReplyDeleteI'm still waiting for somebody to make a better superhero movie than the 1978 version of Superman.
Or how about this? I'm just waiting for someone to make a movie that isn't a superhero movie. They're just not that interesting, y'all.