Some motherfuckers are always trying to
ice-skate uphill…
25. The
Amazing Spider-Man 2
The
first sequel to a Spider-Man movie
wound up being one of the very best super-hero movies ever made. I don’t know
what you’d call this trainwreck; I’m not even sure the term “movie” can apply. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is bad in a way
that even most bad movies get right--a visual concoction that is so appallingly
awful, it single-handedly ended the reboot series and gave Marvel Studios
enough leverage to broker a deal with the desperate Sony to coproduce all
future big-screen outings with the wall-crawler. I look at this film, and just
can’t help but feel bad for Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, two
supremely-talented actors who get not a single damn thing to do throughout
these films’ two-plus hour runtimes. Some of the Raimi films may not have been
perfect, but they at least got the central core of the character right in each
of their installments, a core that’s so simple it only took Stan Lee and Steve
Ditko sixteen pages to establish in the character’s debut all the way back in
1962. However bad superhero movies have been or may get, I don’t know (and sincerely
hope) if they’ll ever wind up any worse than this.
24. X-Men
Origins: Wolverine
Being
the breakout star of the series, it was all-but guaranteed that Hugh Jackman
would eventually get to strut his stuff in a solo movie all about the character
that made him famous. And while there is a wealth of material to draw upon from
the comics, X-Men Origins: Wolverine
takes only the most basic stuff, cramming the film with so many characters we
start to forget that we’re actually watching a Wolverine movie. The
overwhelming breadth of characters means that the majority of them pose rather
than emote, with only Liev Shreiber as Sabretooth looking like he’s having any
fun at all. Making it all even worse is the god-awful script, which even for a
big summer movie is riddled with mind-boggling ineptitude (Wolverine loses his
memory because of Adamantium bullets? Really?). I don’t know why it was so hard
for the filmmakers and studio to whiff so hard on a surefire character like
Wolverine, but fortunately they got it right the second time.
23. Ghost
Rider
I
don’t know how Mark Steven Johnson tricked his way into directing both Daredevil and this, but Ghost Rider almost certainly guarantees
he’s not likely to ever get his hands on a superhero property again. Nic Cage
gets to live out his lifelong dream and get a superhero role all to himself,
but the movie doesn’t seem to know what to do with him. It seems like it’s
pretty hard to fuck up a movie where a dude with a flaming skull rides a
motorbike and fights demons, but that’s exactly what happens here. The Ghost
Rider effects are impressive, but the way they’re staged show the limitations
of what is not exactly a small budget, with one lifeless set-piece afer another.
Even worse are the Twilight-reject
villains (Twilight wasn’t even a
thing yet!): in a movie-world where Ghost Rider could fight any type of
villain, for some bone-headed reason the filmmakers’ make the Rider’s
adversaries super-lame elementals (there’s a water demon, a gas demon, an Earth
demon, etc.). And in the middle of it all is totally lost Cage, eating
jelly-beans out of a martini glass, ‘cause hey, why not?
22. Elektra
One
of the few unquestionably successful elements of the 2003 Daredevil was Jennifer Garner’s Elektra, so it made since to spin the
character off into her own movie. But that’s about where it ends for Elektra, which is so uber-serious it
never once pauses to let its main star - who is quite charismatic when she’s
allowed to be - do anything other than be dour and fight magic ninjas in
high-class lingerie. This is the type of movie where the line “She whispers in
your ear when she kills you” is uttered with a straight face. Couple that with
the tiring subplot of the young teen girl and her hunky father, and we wind up
with a movie that drains every last bit of whatever excitement it manages to
build in fits in starts right out of each scene. The film was so reviled that
it pretty much ended Rob Bowman’s career as a film director, and killed the
idea of “Jennifer Garner, Action Star” virtually overnight.
21. The
Punisher (2004)
I’ll
say this for Jonathan Hensleigh’s ill-advised Punisher film: it has its heart in the right place, taking the
tough-guy action cinema of the seventies as a guide-post for Frank Castle’s war
on crime. But as much as he seems to enjoy said cinema, Hensleigh just doesn’t
have the chops to bring that type of movie to life believably, and so we end up
with this thudding bore of a movie, in which the Punisher’s master-plan to
bring down crime-lord Howard Saint involves… convincing him his wife is
cheating on him with his second-in-command? Yep, it’s just that kind of movie,
where nothing seems to go anywhere interesting and the tone is all over the
place. “Cliché” is this movie’s middle name: would it surprise you that Frank
Castle’s trademark skull T-shirt was a final gift from his young son, who
claims it’s supposed to ward off evil spirits? Would you be at all shocked to
find the emotionally-disconnected Frank sharing a tenement building with sitcom
characters who all teach him the importance of sticking together? Would you be
baffled to see the scene in which a country-western hitman serenades Frank in a
diner before trying to kill him? It’s all so stupid and trite, made worse by
the fact that Thomas Jane does a pretty awesome job as the lead here. Jane’s
Castle is pitch-perfect, his deadbeat delivery of the line “You shouldn’t play
with knives” after slicing up a thug’s nose being a standout scene. But he’s
surrounded by ineptitude on all sides, including the decision to bring the
quintessentially New York character into the sunny skies of Tampa, Florida.
20. Man-Thing
You’d
be forgiven for never having seen (let alone heard of) this SciFi channel
reject. Taking the most basic pieces of the unfortunately-named Man-Thing
horror character, the only sign that this is a Marvel movie is the flipping
page logo up at the very top. It’s a pretty standard B-movie, what with its
opening scene featuring couple of horny teenagers getting it on in the swamp,
only to be viciously murdered by the Man-Thing. I’ll be honest: the movie has
its charms, whether it’s the slasher gore or Rachel Taylor’s shifting
Louisianan/Aussie accent, I found myself somewhat enjoying the trashy cheapness
on display. But Man-Thing definitely
wears out its welcome before its hour-and-a-half runtime is up, with barely
enough story to get the film across the finish line.
19. Blade:
Trinity
David
Goyer steps behind the director’s lens for the final installment of the
franchise he helped launch, and the results are pretty middling. Without a
stylish visualist like Steven Norrington or Guillermo Del Toro to distract from
the comic book plotting and tin-eared dialogue, this last Blade movie becomes dead in the water real quick. A shame, as Goyer
sets up the pieces for what could have been a cool movie. Blade got his start
in Marvel’s old Tomb of Dracula
comics, and the big bad himself shows up to be Blade’s final adversary, but
Dominic Purcell’s “Drake” ranks just
below Richard Roxburgh’s from Van Helsing
as the worst cinematic Dracula. There is some life through new characters
Hannibal King and Abigail Whistler, played by effectively by Ryan Reynolds and
Jessica Biel, but it comes as too little, too late. Thus, Wesley Snipes wraps
up his tenure on Blade not with a triumphant bang, but a half-hearted whimper.
18. The
Amazing Spider-Man
Sony
scrapped plans for Raimi’s Spider-Man 4
for this reboot, a two-film series that will go down in history for being
nothing more than an oddity. Although it has a leg up on its unbelievably bad
sequel, there’s no question that all involved here deserved much, much better.
The able cast is game, but they’re constantly let down by a piss-poor script that
drops whole plotlines with nary a concern for story logic or clarity (Peter’s
parents? The guy who killed his Uncle Ben?) The effects of Spidey swinging and
doing battle with the Lizard are impressive, but really are just playing from
the same toolbox Raimi invented ten years prior, and - considering this was
released the same year as The Avengers
- just can’t hold a candle to what we expect out of our current superhero
movies. Even worse, the film completely misses the character of Spider-Man,
turning Peter into an edgy, punk skate-boarder type that is in direct
opposition to the meek nerd who learns the value of possessing great power and
responsibility - a line that isn’t
uttered once throughout either of the Amazing
films! Andrew Garfield would have been a fantastic choice to play
Spider-Man/Peter Parker. Too bad he never got the chance.
17. Fantastic
Four (2005)
I’m
not sure what there is to say about the Tim Story Fantastic Four movies. On the one hand, they have a nice, breezy
fun tone that captures the playfulness inherent to the “World’s Greatest Comic
Magazine.” On the other hand, they’re pretty soulless and mechanical, with an
uneven cast that doesn’t seem completely right for their respective roles
(outside of nabbing a pre-Captain America Chris Evans). But probably the
greatest sin of this first one is its complete lack of imagination. The
Fantastic Four came out of the Space Age, an time of unlimited imagination and
possibility, and with this movie they become just another super-team, fighting
to save New York from some threat or other. The movie we got isn’t that bad,
but it’s certainly bland.
16. X-Men: The
Last Stand
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We’ll
get this out of the way: this is not the worst Marvel movie ever made. Many
were ready to write off the film once Singer left (and Matthew Vaughan shortly
thereafter) It has many compelling elements competing for screen-time (a cure
for mutantkind, Phoenix, etc.), but none are given the proper time to breathe.
Perhaps the film’s most egregious sin is the haphazard throwing away of major
characters like Cyclops and Professor X, causing many continuity problems later
on down the line when the X-series
attempted to continue the storyline. But it’s not all bad: Kelsey Grammar’s
Beast is one for the books, and the final confrontation between the mutants
goes big in a way the previous two films never did. It’s undoubtedly a mess,
but not as much as its reputation would suggest.
15. Fantastic
Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Better
than its predecessor, this second Fantastic
Four movie still doesn’t quite hit the mark. Since the hiring of Bryan
Singer for X-Men, Marvel have proven
themselves more than willing to go outside the box and nab filmmakers not
necessarily known for big-budget movies, but Tim Story just doesn’t have a
handle on how to make these kinds of movies in a way that services both
character and spectacle, with both elements being muddled in the process. It’s
a shame, as this film continues the fun tone established by its predecessor,
upping the stakes to bring in Galactus and his herald, the Silver Surfer. And
while the Surfer is brought to life in a faithfully exciting way (courtesy of
Doug Jones and Laurence Fishbourne), the filmmakers wimp out when portraying
the unstoppable Galactus as a giant cloud of dust - robbing us all of what
could have been the most epic sight yet seen in a superhero movie.
14. X-Men
Bryan
Singer’s X-Men film was a giant step
forward for the superhero movie. Whereas previous filmmakers took the concept
as an excuse to drape production design over paper-thin scripts and
wildly-overacting movie stars, Singer took the focus off of the spectacle and
put it squarely on the characters - a spark that started the fire we’re
currently living through, where the MCU films succeed not because of their
dizzying effects or thrilling set pieces, but because they’ve crafted their
entire franchise around the backbone of character. For that aspect, X-Men is one for the history books…
shame that little else about it has aged very well. The focus on character
really only extends to Rogue, Magneto, Xavier and Hugh Jackman’s star-making
turn as Wolverine - the rest of the cast is there to show off their powers and
little else, in a climax atop the Statue of Liberty that’s about as exciting as
watching paint dry. X-Men is an
important film, culturally - doesn’t mean the actual movie is all that great.
13. Daredevil
Mark
Steven Johnson comes from a pure place in attempting to adapt Daredevil to the
big screen, but once again the filmmaker just isn’t up to the task of an
effects-driven blockbuster. The movie clearly started life as a darker, very
R-rated adaptation of Frank Miller’s seminal, grim take on the character, but
with the film following so closely on the heels of the ultra-successful Spider-Man, there seemed to be an
attempt to lighten up the proceedings and fashion a superhero movie more in the
vein of the Raimi film’s romantic heroism. Thus, we have Daredevil, a tonal mishmash of parts that work very well and others
that fall flat on their face. Johnson was inexperienced in the world of
big-budget effects movies, and while there are some beautiful visual moments
(the overhead tracking shot with Daredvil hiding amongst the gargoyles being a
standout), the movie more often than not has a slick, hollow emptiness that the
ten-year-old CGI doesn’t help in the slightest. Jennifer Garner and Colin
Farrell are standouts amongst the cast, both of them seeming to have a blast
playing larger-than-life characters, and even Ben Affleck isn’t all that bad,
when everything’s said and done. There was a Director’s Cut that came out a few
years later, which admittedly does fix many problems the theatrical release had,
but not enough to where I could count it as an actual “good” movie.
12. X-Men:
Days of Future Past
I
feel like this one’s not going to age very well. It has a lot going on in its
favor, what with it combining the excellent casts of both the original series
and their younger versions seen in First
Class, along with some really stand-out set-pieces, but the script is a
bloated mess. If you want to get good and drunk, take a shot every time Michael
Fassbender’s Magneto changes sides for no other reason than its convenience to
the plot. The film is filled with such hacky screenwriter gems, not to mention
a way-too-convoluted set up that is at the very least true to the X-Men comics in how unforgivingly
oblique it is to those who haven’t been paying attention to the series
otherwise. And while it is nice to see all these familiar faces in one place,
the sheer amount of characters means that most are relegated to little more
than cameos. But still, bad script or no, it is a great showcase for all the
leads, with James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and the old
standby Hugh Jackman getting to strut their stuff in a big, showy comic book
movie. As such, it isn’t the worst X-Men movie…
but that ain’t exactly high praise.
11. Spider-Man
3
Everyone
thought this was the worst Spider-Man
movie possible at the time of its release; eight years on and two middling
attempts at a reboot series later, and we can now see that that is far from the
case. Spider-Man 3 is a flawed
installment, no doubt; a patchwork movie made up of disparate elements that
seem studio-mandated into an expensive package that just can’t hold all of that
weight. The black suit and the Ninja Goblin and that damn Venom are certainly
enough to bring the film crashing down in a pile of half-realized rubble, but
the central story of Peter Parker holds it all together, and combined with
Thomas Hayden Church’s exemplary work as the Sandman, we get a film that closes
out Tobey Maguire’s run as the character and more or less completes the arc he
started in the first film by showing forgiveness to the man who killed his
Uncle Ben. And damn the haters: the infamous musical scene is one of the most
fun in the entire Marvel movie canon.
10. Ghost
Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
While
the visual of a flaming, skull-faced motorbike rider is inherently metal, this
movie is pure punk rock - an angry, irreverent shout that gets on pure energy.
The Crank mastermind duo of Neveldine
and Taylor take up the directorial reins for this second go round with the Rider,
and prove to be a match made in hell - the filmmakers’ OTT, cocaine-fueled,
“let’s tie ourselves to a moving vehicle while on rollerblades to get the shot”
style is entirely appropriate for something as juvenile and silly as Ghost
Rider. Gone is the tepid story about lost love and fathers and sons, replaced
instead with a barebones ripoff of Terminator
2, with Nic Cage’s Johnny Blaze this time tasked with protecting a mother
and her young son that may be the Antichrist whilst on the run from the Devil himself.
It’s not subtle or affecting, but it is loud and in-your-face, with a Nic Cage
that’s playing at his “Not the Bees!” best. It’s not much to write home about
at the end of the day, but it’s probably the best we’re going to get from a Ghost Rider movie.
9. Hulk
Unfairly
maligned at the time of its release, Ang Lee’s Hulk is a movie worthy of deeper examination. Too pop for the
critics and too arty for the masses, Lee’s film is an odd duck for sure, but
what the filmmaker accomplishes with a big-budget summer film is worthy of
admiration, at the very least. What we have here is a comic book blockbuster
all about emotional abuse, Freudian psycho-sexual familial ties and repressed
urges, and that’s before you take the giant green rage monster into account.
Eric Bana plays a Bruce Banner who is very convincingly a man with deep,
emotional issues… even before the gamma-irradiated accident occurs, this is a
dude who always seems one hair’s breadth away from blowing up, giant green rage
monster or no. He’s surrounded by the talented ensemble of Jennifer Connelly,
Sam Houston and Nick Nolte (who literally chews the scenery), all of whom add a
layer of emotional reality to the melodrama. And make no mistake: this is pure
melodrama, pitched at such a level it threatens to become comical, but Lee
keeps things mostly out of that realm (give or take a Hulk vs Hulk dogs fight
or two) by focusing so intently on his characters and their relationships. The
CG hasn’t aged terribly well, and the design of the Hulk himself looks all
wrong when viewed now, but Ang Lee’s Hulk
will always have a spot high on my list just for how oddly bizarre and
beautiful it is.
8. X2: X-Men
United
It’s
fairly timid now in our post-Avengers
world, but when this movie came out, it seemed hard to fathom how anyone could
capture that comic book tone as right as X2
does here. With the benefit of hind-sight we can see that what this movie
promised for the X-series never even
came close to fruition, but oh, what a promise it was. With a bigger budget and
a surer hand, Bryan Singer crafts the very first successful superhero movie
with a team dynamic. Wolverine is still the sexiest, and thus gets the bulk of
the screentime, but each character here gets a moment, and that’s all we need.
Whether it’s the quiet scene between Storm and Nightcrawler, the fantastic bit
with Magneto and Pyro (“What’s your real
name, John?”) or the moment Bobby Drake comes out to his parents as a mutant,
the movie makes time for all its (still far too crowded) cast to shine. Couple
that with some of the best on-screen uses of superpowers, and the excellent
Brian Cox in the villain role, and you’ve got another in the long line of
second installments in superhero franchises that outdo the original in nearly
every way.
7. The Wolverine
It
took a wretched first time out to bat to do it, but the X-filmmakers finally succeeded in crafting a good solo outing for
their most profitable character. Darren Aronofsky was originally tapped to helm
the film, and while we can only assume the movie he would have delivered
would’ve been way more esoteric and weird than this, the movie we got still has
that sheen of authenticity to differentiate itself from the rest. James Mangold
was instead given the task as director, and admirably delivers a solemn, quiet
character study that has more in common with a low-budget martial arts film
than the typical superhero movie… up until the very end, where the film’s
relatively low-key tone explodes when Wolverine has to fight a giant,
robo-samurai. But everything leading up to that is pretty stellar, with a
phenomenal cast including Rila Fukushima, Hiroyuki Sanada and the
always-reliable Hugh Jackman at the film’s center. Plus: Wolverine fights
ninjas! I can’t believe it took them five films to get to that.
6. Blade
Marvel’s
first real big-screen success is also still one of its best movies, an
action-horror hybrid that manages to entertain almost fifteen years after
its original release. Screenwriter David Goyer takes an almost-forgotten
character from the seventies and refashions him into something that felt truly
original - a high-tech vampire hunter who fights his prey not with crosses and
wooden stakes, but rather silver-laced, hollow-point bullets and a bitchin’
samurai sword. To be honest, the script doesn’t offer much more beyond that,
but director Steven Norrington frames it all with a violent, blood-soaked style
- The Matrix gets all the praise for
popularizing Hong Kong action in Hollywood, but Blade also deserves some of the credit, with its nonstop,
balls-to-the-wall style that would make Tsui Hark and John Woo proud. Also key
to the film’s success: Wesley Snipes, who here gets the role he was born to
play.
5. Punisher:
War Zone
Another
unfairly-maligned “failure,” critics and audiences got it all wrong when this
movie came out, it’s satirical nature flying right over their heads. Lexi
Alexander takes the extreme violence and self-seriousness of the source
material and mines it for comedic gold, filling the frame with colorful action
and way-overacting caricature to result in a concoction that can only be
described as the Adam West Batman
series on acid. Ray Stevenson plays the titular character as a gruff, monotone
force of nature, and he’s paired with a frenzied Dominic West who’s going big
in the great Frank Gorshin tradition. It may not be for everybody, but it
you’re in on the joke, it’s hard to not to have a hilariously good time with Punisher: War Zone.
4. Spider-Man
The
big one; the game-changer. The film that is almost solely responsible for
kicking off our modern superhero blockbuster dominance, and all because it
takes the time to make us care about the lead character. Before Spider-Man, the cinematic superhero was
little more than a glorified action figure, but here, the titular superhero
doesn’t show up until halfway through the film. Instead, we get to know Peter
Parker, we’re endeared to his character, so when the spectacle starts, it hits
with all the more effect as a result - putting the “special” and “effect” back
into special effects, if you will. Subsequent superhero movies have taken this
approach to even greater heights, leaving this first Spider-Man movie somewhat quaint by comparison, but Sam Raimi’s
film is still a testament to not only Spider-Man, but the superhero as a whole.
3. X-Men:
First Class
The
great mistake of superhero fiction was turning it into a genre in and of
itself. And once it became its own genre, it became constrained by the
self-imposed “rules” that genre requires: what was fresh and invigorating all
of a sudden become stale tropes that the form must follow. No, the superhero
works best when it is instead a concept that can be fluid in how it’s
presented… which is why X-Men: First
Class is such a refreshing breath of air. Matthew Vaughan takes the X-Men
back to their beginnings in the sixties, and bringing the swinging sense of
style that such espionage classics like James Bond and The Avengers (no, the other
Avengers) excelled at during the same period. The cast is still overpopulated
with characters who don’t always get enough to do, but have more than enough
talent to make up for limited screen-time. The political and social climate
allows the inherent “Other” themes of the source material to come out, all
placed together in a fun spy movie package of turtlenecks and secret lairs.
2. Blade II
Blade II is one of the best evocations
of a comic book transplanted to live action. There's not much to the story, which sees a new strain of vampire called Reapers unleashed upon the world, who feed not just on humans, but also on other vampires, but the joy in this movie lies in the style, amped up to 11 from even the previous film. Director Guillermo Del Toro takes
David Goyer’s sparse script and hangs upon that simplistic framework a dazzling
array of comic book action and atmospheric horror. This is a film for true
comic book aficionados, with compositions recalling the work of famous artists
like Frank Frazetta, Jack Kirby, Frank Miller and more, but even without that
frame of reference, Blade II is an absolute
blast of action filmmaking, with just enough character and personality to
distinguish itself from the rest of the pack - a brilliant showcase for Del
Toro’s superior talents.
1. Spider-Man
2
Ten
years on, and Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 is
still the gold standard by which all other superhero movies must be measured. Raimi takes
everything up a notch for the sequel, increasing the pathos of the characters
to a level that these ultra-mainstream movies rarely achieve, let alone even
attempt. With a bigger budget and the clout of the previous film’s success,
Raimi is free to cut loose a bit, bringing more of his trademark, madcap style
to the fore, with shots like the zooming out of Doc Ock’s glasses being a
standout. It's a crowd-pleasing effort in the Spielberg tradition of blockbusters, with the elements of spectacle, character and theme firing on all cylinders and showing the potential of what these summer movies can be, when done right. The love story of Peter and Mary Jane is given more depth and
nuance, and is juxtaposed nicely against the amazing Alfred Molina as Otto Octavious, perhaps
the most sympathetic and well-realized super-villain yet put to screen.All in all, Spider-Man 2 succeeds by providing in a
wonderfully human core to the superhuman spectacle.
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