This weekend sees the release of the first big superhero
film of the year, ‘Deadpool’. Starring Ryan Reynolds as ‘the Merc with a
Mouth’, a major fan-favorite character amongst comic book fans, many are
hopeful that this film will do justice to the character on the big-screen,
especially after he was severely misused in 2009’s ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’. For
those who haven’t seen it, the writers of that film made several changes to
Deadpool’s character, resulting in him acting nothing like his comic-book
counterpart. It was one of the many issues of that highly disappointing ‘X-Men’
spinoff. With that in mind, today I’ll be doing a list that I’ve been wanting
to do for a while now; my Top 10 WORST superhero films of all-time. Because for
every great superhero film that has come out over the years, from the MCU films
to Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy, there have also been some real stinkers that failed
considerably in regards to doing their main character(s) justice on the
big-screen. Now for the record, I haven’t seen all of the infamous ‘bad’
superhero films, like ‘Blade: Trinity’ or ‘Ghost Rider’. And while quite a lot
of people are more than likely to put films like ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’,
‘Spider-Man 3’, ‘Daredevil’, and the 2000’s era ‘Fantastic Four’ films on this
list given the harsher reception that they’ve gotten from fans, you will not
see those films anywhere on here because, yes, I do like those films. Finally,
as a way to keep things interesting, ‘Batman and Robin’ will not be included in
this list. I’m not saying that it doesn’t deserve to be here but I think that
it’s time to point out some of the other lousy superhero flicks that have come
out over the years. So without further ado, these are my personal Top 10 worst
superhero films of all-time. I don’t have any dishonorable mentions this time
so we’re going to get right on to the list.
The lower half of
this list is mostly going to consist of films that I don’t fully ‘dislike’ but
are still really disappointing efforts from the genre. And I know for a fact
that my Number 10 pick was a severe disappointment for fans of this character.
10. GREEN LANTERN
Before Ryan Reynolds took on what could very well be his
first major successful superhero film role with ‘Deadpool’, he had quite a bad
run when it came to the superhero films that he starred in. First, there was
‘Blade: Trinity’ and without having seen it, I’m aware that this is an instance
where he definitely didn’t help make things better based on the footage that I
have seen of him as the overly cocky and rather douche-y Hannibal King. Then he
made his first on-screen appearance as Deadpool in ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’,
where at the very least he proved to be a solid choice for the role. But of
course, that film screwed the character over big-time, hence why Reynolds now
has a chance to do it right this year with the ‘Deadpool’ film. But his most
infamous turn to date in a superhero film was not a Marvel project, but a DC
project; 2011’s ‘Green Lantern’. Upon release the film was subjected to
extremely negative reviews from critics and just barely made back its massive
$200 million budget, which shut down any plans that Warner Bros. had for a
sequel. But like how Reynolds was a good choice for the role of Deadpool, he
actually did a pretty fine job in the role of Hal Jordan, who takes on the
mantle of Green Lantern when the dying Lantern Abin Sur gives him his Power
Ring. While there is literally a point in the film where Jordan, rather
cowardly, runs away from his duties as a member of the Green Lantern Corps,
Reynolds, at the very least, does his best with the lackluster material that he
has to work with in this film.
The film even features a particularly standout performance
by Mark Strong in the role of legendary Green Lantern baddie Sinestro. However,
Sinestro is not the main villain of this film. Instead he spends most of the
film just like how he started out in the comics; as a member of the Green
Lantern Corps. The ‘villainous’ nature of his character is pushed aside until
the post-credits scene, where he takes on the power of fear (via a special
Yellow Power Ring) in a sequence that clearly tried to set up a sequel that
clearly wasn’t going to happen. The actual main villains of the film are
scientist Dr. Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) and the fear-bringing entity
known as Parallax… and boy are both of these villains woefully underdeveloped.
There’s a bit of potential with Hammond given his connection with childhood
friends Hal Jordan and his main love interest Carol Ferris but at the end of
the day Hammond does little and just ends up getting killed off, rather harshly
I might add, by Parallax who consumes his life force. And as for Parallax, he’s
basically just a big CGI cloud that literally gets defeated in like ten
minutes. While I haven’t read much of the ‘Green Lantern’ comics, it seems to
me like this film really didn’t do much to capitalize on the lore of the
franchise, as it spent more time on Earth than it did on the planet Oa where
the Green Lantern Corps reside. Pair that with a lackluster script and the
questionable choice of Martin Campbell, AKA the guy who brought us two of the
best James Bond films of all-time in ‘GoldenEye’ and ‘Casino Royale’, directing
the film (though ultimately it isn’t really his fault in regards to how the
final product turned out) and you have one hell of a disappointing superhero
film. Here’s hoping the upcoming reboot ‘Green Lantern Corps’, set for a 2020
release, turns out better.
My Number 9 pick goes
to the film that sent its franchise on a pretty severe downward spiral that
wouldn’t be stopped until 2011 when the franchise’s original director made a triumphant
return (albeit not as a director initially but that’s beside the point) that
would eventually lead to the franchise’s redemption.
9. X-MEN: THE LAST STAND
As just a regular summer blockbuster, I don’t really ‘hate’
‘X-Men: The Last Stand’ that much, hence why it’s so low on the list. I do
think that it’s actually a decently entertaining popcorn flick if you don’t
take its place in the franchise that much into consideration. But ultimately it
is because of how it serves as an ‘X-Men’ film that makes it such a colossal
disappointment. After directing the first two X-Men films, Bryan Singer dropped
out of directing this film in favor of ‘Superman Returns’. Ironically that
didn’t turn out well for Singer either so he returned to the franchise in 2011
as a writer/producer for ‘X-Men: First Class’. The success of that film led
Singer to finally return to the role of director for 2014’s franchise-best
effort ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’. Now Singer is back in control of the
franchise and I’m sure I’m not the only one who is highly anticipating the
upcoming ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ that is set to come out this May. But as for ‘The
Last Stand’, Brett Ratner was chosen as Singer’s replacement in the director’s
chair. Simply put, that proved to be the wrong choice as Ratner, to put it
bluntly, definitely wasn’t as good of a director compared to Singer and it
definitely showed with ‘The Last Stand’. Ultimately though, the real issue of
the film lies within its script. Primarily based on one of the most famous
‘X-Men’ storylines of all-time in ‘The Dark Phoenix Saga’, in which X-Men
telepath Jean Grey is corrupted by the power of ‘the Phoenix’, X-Men fans were
severely disappointed by how the film handled that iconic storyline.
Instead of just focusing on the ‘Dark Phoenix’ story, the
film is a mix of two separate storylines from the comics, the other being
‘Gifted’, which was notably written by ‘Avengers’ director Joss Whedon, where a
mutant cure is developed that proves to be very divisive amongst the mutant
community. By combining these two storylines into one, the film ends up being a
fairly jumbled mess that tries to cover the plots of both storylines in just
one film but doesn’t succeed in doing either of them full justice on the
big-screen. Not only that, but then there’s also the film’s questionable
handling of some of the main characters. Sometimes it severely diminishes the
roles of characters like Rogue and Mystique. The former decides to take the mutant
cure and is absent for the final battle while the latter is only in the film
for a few minutes before she gets affected by the cure and completely abandoned
by Magneto, her closest ally. Not only that, but the film even kills off a few
characters as well. Cyclops, who’s only in the film for about 10-15 minutes or
so, dies as a result of Jean’s powers, as does Professor X when he confronts
her in her childhood home. And while these deaths actually could’ve worked in
regards to the story, instead they come off more as shock value than anything
else. With all of this in mind, it was a good thing that the ending of ‘X-Men:
Days of Future Past’ erased the events of both this film and ‘X-Men Origins:
Wolverine’ from the series’ canon. Say what you will about the franchise’s
rather messed-up continuity prior to the events of ‘Days of Future Past’ but considering
the quality of the third and fourth films, I think we can all agree that this
was ultimately the best move for the ‘X-Men’ series.
Another superhero
film that ended up derailing its franchise takes the Number 8 spot. While not
as bad as its immediate successor, it still ended up marking a noticeable drop
in quality for the franchise.
8. SUPERMAN III
Decades before the modern era of superhero films and
cinematic universes, Richard Donner gave us the first ‘big’ superhero film in
1978 with ‘Superman’, starring Christopher Reeve in the title role of the ‘Man
of Steel’. Originally, Donner was also tapped to direct the follow-up as well and
because the two films were shot simultaneously, Donner had gotten about 75% of
‘Superman II’ completed before filming went on a temporary hiatus in 1977 so
that Donner could have time to get the first film finished in time for its
release. However, due to a considerable amount of tension between him and
producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind and Pierre Spengler over scheduling and
budgetary issues, Donner ended up getting kicked off the sequel in 1979 and was
replaced by Richard Lester. Lester had recently directed the producers’ 1973
production ‘The Three Musketeers’ and its 1974 sequel ‘The Four Musketeers’,
which ironically was another case of a two-part film project, and had been
brought in as an uncredited producer to serve as a mediator for the two
parties. Obviously things didn’t work out between them and it wasn’t until 2006
when Donner finally got the chance to present his version of the film,
‘Superman II: The Richard Donner
Cut’. However, upon initial release, Richard Lester’s ‘Superman II’ still ended
up doing pretty well both critically and commercially. As a result, Lester was
brought back to direct the next film, ‘Superman III’… and this is where the
series officially began to take a severe nosedive in terms of quality.
When watching ‘Superman II’, you can most definitely notice
the difference between the scenes that were shot by Donner and those that were
shot by Lester. While Donner handled the material in a more serious manner,
Lester’s footage was more comedic in nature. So because Lester was the sole
director for ‘Superman III’, the entire film takes on a much campier tone than
its predecessors. That’s most evident from the fact that the film stars
comedian Richard Pryor in a major role as bumbling computer genius Gus Gorman,
so much so that he arguably has more screen-time than Superman. And as for the
villain? He’s just a tobacco multimillionaire, whose sister ends up getting
turned in a supercomputer… no I am not making this stuff up. That is literally
what happens in this film. In short, this is a really, really goofy (and not in
a good way) superhero film and there are only two things in it that keep it
from being any higher on this list. The first is that Christopher Reeve is
still great in the role of Superman despite having lousy material to work with
that hinders the potential that comes from the plot-line of Superman being
corrupted by false kryptonite and taking on a more sinister persona as a result.
The other highlight of the film is the fight in the junkyard between Superman’s
evil side and his good side, represented as his alter-ego Clark Kent. But at
the end of the day, ‘Superman III’ is still the film that was responsible for
commencing the decline for the original ‘Superman’ film franchise… and things
would only get worse with the next film.
There are quite a few
superhero characters who have yet to get a well-received film adaptation. The
Punisher is one of them and this is one of those failed attempts.
7. THE PUNISHER (2004)
Frank Castle AKA The Punisher first made his film debut in
1989’s ‘The Punisher’, starring Dolph Lundgren in the title role. However, the
film, as is pretty much the case with every Marvel film at the time (on a side
note, two of ‘those’ films will be appearing later on in this list), never saw
a theatrical release, due to its distributor New World Pictures dealing with
financial issues at the time. Instead, it was released direct-to-video two
years later and ended up faring poorly with both critics and audiences. In
2008, Marvel attempted a more over-the-top take on the character with
‘Punisher: War Zone’, starring Ray Stevenson as Castle. However, while this
film did end up getting released in theaters, it too ended up being a critical,
as well as financial in this case, disappointment, although it has gained a bit
of a cult following in recent years. Thankfully it seems like the Punisher’s
losing streak when it comes to his live-action appearances might end soon by
means of Jon Bernthal’s upcoming turn as the character on Season 2 of
‘Daredevil’. But as far as ‘Punisher’ films are concerned, Thomas Jane’s
performance in the role in 2004’s ‘The Punisher’ is usually regarded as the
best take on the character to date performance-wise. Jane’s take on the
character was so well-received by both critics and comic book fans that Jane
ended up reprising his role in an independent short film that he produced
called ‘Dirty Laundry’ that first premiered at Comic-Con in 2012. But as for
the official ‘Punisher’ feature-length film that he starred in, it’s quite the
mixed bag.
At times, the film is overly depressing. I mean sure that
sort of makes sense given Castle’s darker and more tragic backstory but the
filmmakers sort of went a bit too far when it came to this idea, especially in
the sequences where Castle’s family is murdered as ordered by vengeful crime
boss Howard Saint. It also doesn’t help that the film maintains a generally
drab color sequence throughout the entirety of the run-time. But then the film
tries to liven things up with ‘silly moments’, like a scene where Castle’s
flat-mates start dancing to classical music all while Castle is fighting a big
Russian hitman in the other room. In short, the film sort of has an identity
crisis. It tries to more serious than other comic book films but also attempts to
have a few moments of levity on occasion so that the film wouldn’t be entirely
somber. Believe it or not, I do appreciate that the film at least tried to
lighten up from time to time but ultimately it wasn’t able to succeed in that
regard. By comparison, films like ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ and Christopher
Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy were much more successful in regards to
maintaining a generally serious tone throughout while still managing to throw
in a few moments of comedic levity from time to time to liven things up when
necessary. As stated earlier, Thomas Jane truly was excellent in the lead role
but ultimately he was let down by a mediocre script and the end result is a
fairly misguided take on Marvel’s legendary vigilante.
Just missing the
Bottom 5 is the first in a line of attempts to bring one of Marvel’s most
iconic superhero teams to the big-screen. Obviously none of them have really
worked so far.
6. THE FANTASTIC FOUR (1994)
(For my original review of this film, click Here)
I already talked about this film in my ‘Fantastic Four’
retrospective last summer so I won’t try to repeat myself too much here. Simply
put, this is the most infamous example of Marvel’s low-budget attempts to bring
their characters to the big-screen in the early 90’s. Produced on just a $1
million budget, the film never saw an official release, either because Marvel
never intended to release it or because they didn’t want it to ruin the
franchise (You Decide!). And yes, the film’s low-budget nature is obvious
throughout. There’s literally a ‘fight scene’ where the sole ‘action’ in the
scene is the camera rapidly spinning around to ‘simulate’ the ‘action’. Also,
Doctor Doom clearly didn’t have any ADR work done because there are numerous times
in this film where he’s completely unintelligible. This Doom is also arguably
the weakest superhero film supervillain of all-time as he spends most of the
runtime getting his ass kicked or having his plans fail almost immediately
after he sets them into motion. At the very least, this film does actually have
a decent amount of heart to it. In fact, dare I say it has more heart than any
of the subsequent ‘Fantastic Four’ films… and that’s saying a lot. I’m not
saying that it’s a ‘good’ film and there are quite a few cheesy moments from
time to time, including a scene where Sue and Johnny Storm’s mother literally
calls the group ‘The Fantastic Four’. But even with that said, I can at least
tell that the cast and crew were putting their all into it despite the
limitations that they had to deal with, primarily in terms of budget. And I do legitimately
feel bad for them in regards to the fact that this film that they spent a lot
of time working on never got to see the light of day until it got leaked onto
the internet in crappy quality. Still, there’s no denying that the first
‘Fantastic Four’ was a lackluster outing for Marvel’s First Family. And as we
all know, things weren’t going to get better for this franchise in the years to
come.
The film that
compelled me to finally do this list starts off the Bottom 5.
5. X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE
Believe it or not, there actually was potential in regards
to this ‘X-Men’ spinoff centered on the film series’ most popular character.
Wolverine of course had been played perfectly by Hugh Jackman in the previous
‘X-Men’ films, even after some were initially skeptical about a
Broadway-trained actor like Jackman taking on the role of the iconic
adamantium-clawed mutant. And he’s still great in this film… it’s too bad then
that he has lousy material to work with here. This film tries to do a lot in
the span of 107 minutes and as a result it pretty much glosses over the
entirety of Wolverine’s rather expansive backstory. The end result is a fairly
dull superhero film with generic action sequences and woefully underdone CGI,
particularly in regards to Wolverine’s adamantium claws. And of course, I’ve
already gone over how the film screwed over the character of Deadpool so that’s
just an extra issue that the film has. Thankfully, Jackman got the chance to
work on a better Wolverine spin-off in 2013 with ‘The Wolverine’, inspired by
the famous comic storyline of the same name from 1982 by Chris Claremont and
Frank Miller. And of course thanks to ‘Days of Future Past’, the events of
‘Origins’ have now been retconned from the series’ canon and I think we can all
agree that the series is better off now because of it. But now all eyes are on
what is set to be Jackman’s final outing in the most famous role of his career
in the upcoming third ‘Wolverine’ solo film. Here’s hoping it ends his
phenomenal run as Wolverine in the best way possible.
How ironic. The
fourth, and worst, installment of this franchise takes the Number 4 spot.
4. SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE
The original ‘Superman’ film series actually has a fairly
identical history to the pre-Nolan ‘Batman’ film series in regards to the
overall quality of their first four respective films. The first film in each
series was a major critical and commercial hit and both were pretty much responsible
for setting a new standard for the genre at the time of their release. Their
first sequels, while not as well-received as their predecessors, still did
solidly with both critics and audiences. Things started to get a bit more
complicated, though, with the third film of each series (note: though in
reality I’d argue that ‘Batman Forever’ is actually superior to ‘Batman
Returns’) as each saw a drop in critical reception compared to their
predecessors. And as for their fourth films… well, ‘Batman and Robin’ and
‘Superman IV: The Quest for Peace’ ended up bringing both of their franchises
to a screeching halt and it would be years before either series would make its
own big-screen comeback. ‘Superman IV’ was not produced by the Salkinds this
time around and was instead produced by Cannon Films. In the 80’s, the company
was run by the duo of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who were known for
producing a lot of B-movies out of ‘bottom-barrel’ scripts. And as for
‘Superman IV’, Christopher Reeve has gone on record saying that the film was
severely affected by budget cuts, with the original budget being cut by more
than 50% as a result of Cannon being involved with around 30 other film
projects at the time of production. And boy does it show... visible wirework,
clearly fake backgrounds, and some laughably bad green-screen effects. And for
the record, this is all coming from the franchise that actually made all of
that stuff look really good back in its early days.
If you thought the plot of ‘Superman III’ was ridiculous,
just wait until you see what happens in ‘Superman IV’. In this film, Superman
announces to the world that he’s going to get rid of all of the planet’s
nuclear weapons and is then able to do so without anyone stopping him. While
all of this is going on, Lex Luthor takes a strand of Superman’s hair, attaches
it to one of the nuclear missiles that Superman destroys by throwing them into
the sun, and the resulting reaction spawns ‘Nuclear Man’. Do I really to say
anything more about this lunacy that is the plot to this film? At the end of
the day, I actually think that this film is ‘worse’ than ‘Batman and Robin’.
Because at the very least, ‘Batman and Robin’ at least has that ‘so bad it’s
good’ vibe going for it as a result of its ridiculously campy nature. ‘Superman
IV’ doesn’t really have that same advantage. Sure it’s overly campy as well but
it’s much more sluggish in comparison to ‘Batman and Robin’ with its lousy
‘fight scenes’ (a term used fairly loosely in this case), bland storyline that
tries to tie in with the Cold War, and the aforementioned piss-poor visual
effects. Not even Christopher Reeve could save this from being the absolute
worst ‘Superman’ film of all-time and the film that effectively derailed the
franchise for nearly two decades until 2006’s ‘Superman Returns’. And while ‘Returns’
did fare better than ‘Superman IV’ from both a critical and commercial
standpoint, it too ended up halting the series for a while until yet another ‘reboot’
came out seven years later in the form of ‘Man of Steel’, whose follow-up ‘Batman
v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’ will be hitting theaters next month.
‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ is easily
one of my all-time favorite superhero films. The same cannot be said for Cap’s
previous foray in film. That film in question takes the spot of my Number 3
worst superhero film of all-time.
3. CAPTAIN AMERICA (1990)
Before Chris Evans took on the role of Captain America in
Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, there was another ‘Captain America’ film that was made
in the 90’s. And as you might have already guessed given the other
aforementioned Marvel films that came out at that time, like 1989’s ‘The
Punisher’ and the 1994 ‘Fantastic Four’ film, it ultimately never saw an
official theatrical release. And also like those other films, you can
definitely see why when watching it. But ultimately the biggest flaw of the
film is how it portrays Cap and his main adversary, the Red Skull. Matt
Salinger does a decent job in the role of Cap but the character in this film
barely resembles the iconic hero as he has been portrayed in the comics. This
Cap spends most of the film running away from danger, getting his red, white,
and blue ass handed to him by his enemies, and at one point even steals a car
by pretending to be sick, getting out, and then rushing back to the car and
taking it once his companion walks over to him… twice! As for the Red Skull,
he’s only in that get-up for about… five minutes. After Cap gets frozen in ice
for five decades and the film jumps ahead to 1993, he is revealed to have
gotten plastic surgery in order to look more ‘normal’. So with that said… why
is he still intended to be referred to as the ‘Red Skull’ if he doesn’t have a
frigging red skull? Bottom line, when it comes to ‘Captain America’ films,
you’re much better off with ‘The First Avenger’ and ‘The Winter Soldier’, as
both of those films did a much better job at conveying the true character of
the iconic Marvel Avenger.
While the thought of
a spin-off film featuring this character had potential, the final result was…
well…
2. CATWOMAN
What more can be said about this film that hasn’t already
been said before? This easily has to be one of the most disastrous films of all
time, and not just in regards to the superhero genre. And like I said before,
there really was some potential for this spin-off centering on the iconic
Batman anti-heroine Catwoman, especially when considering that this was
originally conceived as a spin-off of the Burton era Batman films and was going
to have Michelle Pfeiffer reprising her role from ‘Batman Returns’. Obviously
that didn’t work out and instead Halle Berry took on the role of an entirely
different character named Patience Phillips who, despite having the exact same
‘origin story’ as Pfeiffer’s Catwoman (aka the incredibly ridiculous ‘dying and
then resurrected by cats’ plotline), was pretty much nothing like the Catwoman
of the comics. And that’s really this film in a nutshell… it has nothing to do
with the comics whatsoever and is instead just an overly-sexualized superhero
film, right down to Catwoman’s ‘bikini’ costume, with poor CGI (a good chunk of
Catwoman’s actions in the film were done with a digital double), lousy writing,
and so on and so forth. Halle Berry, at the very least, tries her best to work
with this terrible material but that’s really the only positive thing I can say
about this film. My advice? Just ignore this ‘strange’ attempt at a film based
around the legendary DC anti-heroine and stick with Michelle Pfeiffer and Anne
Hathaway’s far superior turns in the role in ‘Batman Returns’ and ‘The Dark
Knight Rises’, respectively.
And finally, here is
my Number 1 worst superhero film of all-time. It does pain me in a way to have
to do this, but I have to give the honor to one of the most disappointing films
that I have ever seen.
1. FANTASTIC FOUR (2015)
(For my original review of this film, click Here)
(For the second half of my ‘Top 10 Worst of 2015’ list, in which I put
this film at the #2 spot, click Here)
I’ve thought about it these past few months and ultimately I
did come to the conclusion that the 2015 reboot of ‘Fantastic Four’ is the
absolute worst superhero film that I’ve ever seen. And it legitimately
disappoints me to have to say that because, as many of you know, I was one of
the few people who were actually really looking forward to this film. I was
hopeful that this could finally be the first ‘great’ ‘Fantastic Four’ film.
After all, it was to be directed by Josh Trank, fresh off of 2012’s superb
found-footage film ‘Chronicle’, and contrary to internet opinion, I thought the
filmmakers had picked an excellent group of leads in Miles Teller, Kate Mara,
Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell to take on the roles of the Fantastic Four as
well as casting Toby Kebbell, fresh off of his great villainous turn as Koba in
‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’, in the role of Dr. Doom. But as we all know,
the film turned out to be a disaster in every sense of the word. Now for the
record, it’s very much clear that Josh Trank was screwed over by Fox in regards
to them taking control of the film away from him. The cut released to theaters
was clearly a case of a studio trying to salvage the material that it had and
failing to do so, from obvious re-shoots (e.g. Kate Mara’s changing hair) to
the fact that the film literally skips over an entire year of what could’ve
been quality character development for the characters. But that doesn’t mean
that Josh Trank is entirely off the hook when it comes to some of this film’s
biggest issues.
Apparently he was the one who was responsible for the film’s
dour tone and telling the cast to be as dull as possible in regards to their
performances. As a result, the film is a complete downer of an affair, which is
definitely not something that you want to see in a superhero film. It’s also an
incredibly dull superhero film as well, with the only major ‘action sequence’,
and a lame one at that, occurring at the very end of the film. As for the Four
themselves, they may be played by a talented group of actors/actresses but they
never once display the characteristics of the heroes that they’re playing. It
doesn’t help that they spend most of the film apart from each other and only
appear together on-screen at, you guessed it, the very end. And then there’s
Doctor Doom, arguably Marvel’s greatest villain… who’s yet to be done right on
film, from the wuss Doom of the ’94 film to Julian McMahon being severely
miscast as Doom in the ’05 film and now Toby Kebbell’s underused and
underdeveloped Doom in this film. In short, this is easily the worst ‘Fantastic
Four’ to date. You know this film is bad when the un-released 1994 ‘Fantastic
Four’ film isn’t as bad by comparison. And at the end of the day, it really does
disappoint me that this film ended up the way it did. Unlike a good chunk of the
internet, I legitimately was hoping for the best when it came to this film. I
was hoping that this would end up being one of those films that would prove the
internet fanboys wrong and turn out to be great. Obviously that wasn’t the case
and now we can only wait and see what happens next for the ‘Fantastic Four’
franchise. Back to Marvel Studios? Fourth time’s the charm?
So there you have it… my Top 10 worst superhero films of all-time.
As with any Top 10 list, you’re certainly going to get different results when
you ask different people to name their least favorites of the superhero genre.
So with that said, be sure to sound off in the comments section below to list
your own picks for the worst superhero films of all-time. And to keep things
interesting, try to name some other than ‘Batman and Robin’.
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