Top 15 Favorite Stan Lee Film Cameos

Greetings, true believers! Today’s post doesn’t need much of an introduction, and to be perfectly blunt, it’s going to be a refreshingly short one compared to the massive endeavor that was the Annual End of Summer Fan Poll’s Results Post. In honor of what would’ve been his 101^st birthday, today we’re celebrating one of the biggest icons in the world of comics, Stan Lee. Along with other comic legends such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Lee helped co-create some of the most iconic heroes from the Marvel Comics universe, from everyone’s favorite webslinger Spider-Man to the Children of the Atom AKA the X-Men. But in later years, as he transitioned into being more of the public face of Marvel Comics, Lee also became known for his numerous cameos in the various films and TV shows based on his iconic creations, which were a staple of Marvel’s media productions up until his passing on November 12^th, 2018 and a delight to look out for, both for fans of the man himself and the beloved properties that he helped to create. So today, I decided to make a ranked list of my personal favorite Stan Lee cinematic cameos. For today’s post, we’re going to focus solely on his film cameos, meaning that I won’t be covering the likes of his cameo in Insomniac’s 2018 AAA blockbuster video game Spider-Man and the subsequent in-universe tribute to him in its 2020 sequel Spider-Man: Miles Morales or any of his various cameos in Marvel’s numerous animated shows. And in this instance, I decided that a basic Top 10 list simply wasn’t enough for such a legendary figure. Nope, today we’re going to do a TOP 15 LIST to truly honor the legacy of the one and only Stan ‘The Man’ Lee. Excelsior!!

First up, let’s celebrate a few honorable mentions, which we’ll go through in the chronological order of their respective films’ releases. First up, from the 2005 adaptation of Fantastic Four, we have the first instance where Lee played a character that he created, Willie Lumpkin, the friendly mailman of the titular superhero quartet who greets them when they first enter their new base of operations, the Baxter Building.

Moving onto our first Marvel Cinematic Universe release in today’s post, we have his cameo in the first Thor film, where he and a bunch of residents from the town of Puente Antiguo, New Mexico try to lift the mysterious hammer that has landed in a nearby desert. Lee appears as a truck driver whose attempt to pull it out with his truck results in the truck’s cargo bed getting ripped off, resulting in him poking his head out of the window and asking “Did it work?”

Moving onto the other MCU film of 2011, Captain America: The First Avenger, Lee appears as a U.S. Army General attending an award ceremony for Captain America after his successful rescue of the 107^th Infantry Regiment from HYDRA forces. But when the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan doesn’t show up and the Senator in charge of Cap’s promotional tour is informed of this by one of his associates, Lee’s character confuses the associate for Captain America and notes, “I thought he’d be taller!”.

Cut to 2014 and we’ve got the first Walt Disney Animation Studios production based on a Marvel property, Big Hero 6. While he may not have had a hand in this superhero squad’s creation, it would’ve quite frankly been a shock if Lee hadn’t cameoed in this film, where he plays the father of the team’s resident slacker (with a fire-breathing dragon suit for good measure), Fred. After originally just appearing via a photo cameo in Fred’s family mansion, where he implies that his parents are on vacation, Fred’s father finally appears onscreen in the film’s post-credit scene, in which his son comes across a secret lair full of superhero equipment. Lee would then go on to reprise his role in the first two seasons of the follow-up series Big Hero 6 – The Series, where he was revealed to be an in-universe superhero named Boss Awesome.

Going back to live-action, we have his appearance in 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse. While it’s only a non-vocal cameo, in which he observes the sudden launch of all the world’s nukes as orchestrated by the titular antagonist Apocalypse, it’s notable in a heartwarming sense since it’s the only one where he got to star alongside his wife, Joan Lee. It was her first live-action cameo in a Marvel production after previously having voice roles in various Marvel TV productions from the 90’s… and her last on-screen appearance before her passing on July 6^th, 2017.

Speaking of the X-Men universe, there’s his appearance in the 2017 short No Good Deed, a special teaser to 2018’s Deadpool 2 which gave audiences their first look into how the character was being handled under the direction of David Leitch. Lee only appears in the version of the short that was released online rather than the version seen in theaters in front of that year’s Logan, but it’s still an enjoyable cameo nevertheless as Lee praises Deadpool’s suit before the Merc with a Mouth tells him to zip it… and, of course, given Deadpool’s fourth-wall-breaking habits, he directly refers to Stan by name.

 Finally, let’s go over his final two appearances in an Avengers film. In 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War, he’s the bus driver for Peter Parker and his classmates who pokes fun at his passengers’ stunned reactions to the appearance of Thanos’ herald Ebony Maw’s ship above the skies of New York (“What’s the matter with you kids? You never seen a spaceship before?”).

 And finally, there’s his final cameo in a Marvel film, 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. In this film, Lee appears during the sequence where Iron Man and Captain America travel back in time to 1970 to collect the Tesseract AKA the Space Infinity Stone when their original attempt to do so in 2012 failed. Lee and his female companion (with Lee digitally de-aged to look like he did in 1970 and his companion modeled after his wife Joan) drive by the S.H.I.E.L.D. base at Camp Lehigh, New Jersey, with Lee shouting “Hey man, make love, not war!”. And on his car’s bumper sticker, we see one of his most iconic catchphrases, “Nuff Said!”

15. Chess-Playing New Yorker – The Avengers

As a bunch of news reports cover the Avengers’ successful defeat of Loki and the Chitauri, Lee appears as an interviewee who remarks “Superheroes in New York? Give Me a Break!”. He had a different yet equally delightful cameo that wound up on the cutting room floor where, during a scene where Captain America is at a diner and hit on by a waitress, he tells Cap to “ask for her number, you moron!”.

14. Fed-Ex Delivery Man – Captain America: Civil War

After the intense conflicts of the third Captain America film, and especially after a scene where Tony tries to help his pal Rhodey deal with the spinal injury that he suffered during the Avengers’ airport skirmish, Stan Lee gets to provide some much-needed levity when he appears as a Fed-Ex driver delivering a package to the Avengers’ compound… the only problem is that the name on the label was misspelled, resulting in him asking for a “Tony Stank”. Rhodey promptly and delightfully revels at this hilarious misnomer.

13. Sakaarian Barber – Thor: Ragnarök

We can thank good ol’ Stan for Thor’s new haircut in Thor: Ragnarök as he’s the Sakaarian barber who trims the God of Thunder’s blond locks before he’s sent off to compete in Sakaar’s Contest of Champions. A lot of great banter here between Lee and Chris Hemsworth (which is fitting since Lee has gone on record stating that Hemsworth was always one of his favorites to work with onscreen) as Thor boldly proclaims that the barber will never cut his hair… but then, after Stan turns on his haircutting device, Thor starts to get desperate and pleads with the “nice old man” not to cut his hair.

12. Graduation Guest – The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Peter Parker barely manages to make it to his high school graduation before his name is called. When he first gets there, he nearly goes onstage wearing his Spider-Man mask before he remembers to take that off… but not before Stan ‘The Man’ spots him and proclaims, “I think I know that guy!”. Lee would end up saying the exact same thing to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man as part of a series of commercials advertising ABC’s coverage of the NBA Finals around the time of Spider-Man: Homecoming’s release.

11. Not on the Guest List – Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

A great example of how a Stan Lee cameo could be done in a manner that feels quite relevant in the context of the comics is in the second 2000’s era Fantastic Four film, 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which saw Lee attending the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm… only to get denied entry because he wasn’t on the guest list.

10. San Francisco Resident ­– Ant-Man and the Wasp

During the climax of Ant-Man and the Wasp, a Pym Particle disc hits a car, which causes it to shrink as the owner remarks “Well, the ’60s were fun, but now I’m paying for it!”. A basic cameo, admittedly, but one that is made even more memorable by the numerous alternate takes that can be seen in the film’s outtakes. For all we know, that man probably stole that car… either that, or he’s lucky that it was only a rental. But wait, did he leave his sandwich and/or coupons in there? Well, if anything, at least he was able to find a parking spot in San Francisco…

9. A Stan Lee Cameo in a DC Movie??? – Teen Titans Go to the Movies

Yes, as crazy as it may seem, Stan Lee made a prominent cameo in a film based on a DC Comics property; the film in question being the animated genre spoofer that was Teen Titans Go to the Movies. As the Teen Titans walk through the Warner Bros. studio lot, Lee, first seen sweeping in the background, shifts the focus over to him and proudly announces that he’s here for his “subtle cameo”. But then someone tells him that he’s in a DC film, promptly resulting in him leaving… before he returns during the climactic chase scene involving the Titans and the forces of their enemy Slade where he jumps on their golf cart and proclaims that he doesn’t mind the fact that he’s in a DC production. He just loves making cameos!

8. Mallrat Stan – Captain Marvel

2019’s Captain Marvel was the first MCU film released after Stan Lee’s death, and sure enough, Marvel Studios went all out to pay tribute to the man, the myth, the legend. In fact, it all starts at the very beginning of the film as the traditional character-filled Marvel Studios logo is replaced with photos and clips of the beloved Marvel icon. And at the end of this whole sequence, a simple yet poignant message appears on-screen; “Thank you Stan”. As for his in-film cameo, we have a moment that directly ties into Lee’s career given that the film is set in 1995. As Captain Marvel pursues a Skrull operative on an LA subway train, she takes note of an old man reading from a film script. When she pulls down his script, he flashes his lovably warm smile which she promptly reciprocates. A nice, sweet cameo all-around, but also a fun one for those in the film fan community since the script that Stan is reading from is Kevin Smith’s Mallrats, where he, of course, made one of his first notable cinematic cameos.

7. Drunk War Vet – Avengers: Age of Ultron

Another fan-favorite cameo of Lee’s sees him attending the Avengers’ party in Avengers Tower, where Thor brings out a flask of an ancient Asgardian ale. While he warns the partygoers that it isn’t meant for mortal men, one World War II vet is willing to give it a try. But sure enough, it leaves the old man flat-out drunk as two guys carry him out; as this happens, the veteran woozily utters a single word, “Excelsior!”

6. Smithsonian Security Guard – Captain America: The Winter Soldier

As the climax for Captain America’s second MCU solo film ramps up, the titular hero steals his original World War II-era uniform from the Smithsonian Museum’s Captain America exhibit before he and his allies begin their attack on the HYDRA-compromised S.H.I.E.L.D. We learn about this as a security guard notices its absence and laments “Oh man! I am so fired!”.

5. “You Look Great, Hef!” – Iron Man

Lee’s first cameo in a Marvel Cinematic Universe production is often cited as one of his best, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a simple yet hilarious cameo in which Tony Stark AKA Iron Man attends a charity event and passes by a man who he thinks is Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, only for the man to turn around and reveal himself to be our favorite Marvel icon. This approach for a Stan Lee cameo would be repeated in the sequel, 2010’s Iron Man 2, where he’s referred to as radio host Larry King by Tony’s chauffeur and bodyguard Happy Hogan as he and Tony travel through the crowd at the Stark Expo and converse with the latter’s fans.

4. Watcher Informant – Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

The second cinematic outing for everyone’s favorite band of intergalactic a-holes gives us a definite answer on the nature of Stan Lee’s cameos in the MCU. As it turns out, he’s an informant for the all-knowing group of sentient cosmic beings known as the Watchers. First appearing in a scene where his conversation with them gets interrupted by Rocket, Baby Groot, Yondu, and Kraglin traveling through a bunch of hyperspace jumps to get to Ego’s planet, Lee’s informant then proceeds to talk about the time that he worked for FedEx. In the film’s final post-credit scene, the disinterested Watchers leave without giving their informant a lift home. Sure, this cameo may have instigated a bit of a continuity error since Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 is set before the events of Captain America: Civil War, but it still presents a delightful way of explaining Lee’s cameos that isn’t far off from what the common fan theory was at the time that suggested that he’d be revealed to be the most famous Watcher, Uatu.

3. Unaware Librarian – The Amazing Spider-Man

Andrew Garfield’s first outing as Spider-Man resulted in one of Stan Lee’s most hilarious cameos during the sequence where Spidey fights Dr. Connors AKA The Lizard in his high school. At one point, they rampage through the library all while the librarian on duty is just going about his business and listening to classical music on headphones, completely unaware of what’s going on behind him even when a table nearly gets thrown at him, which Spidey thankfully catches.

2. Man in Times Square – Spider-Man 3

Stan Lee’s first two cameos in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy were the very definition of a basic cameo; in both instances, he appeared briefly as a citizen who pulls someone out of the way of falling debris during Spidey’s first fights with the Green Goblin and Doc Ock, respectively. But as revealed in the films’ bonus features, there were some alternate ideas as to how he’d appear in them. In the first Spider-Man from 2002, he almost appeared as a street vendor at the World Unity Fair selling sunglasses that, as he put it, were the kind “they wore in the X-Men”. In Spider-Man 2, he almost appears as an onlooker who remarks that Spider-Man stole a kid’s sneakers. Ultimately, his best Raimi trilogy cameo occurred in the final installment of the trilogy, 2007’s Spider-Man 3. After Spidey rescues Gwen Stacy from an incident with a faulty crane, he learns that he’s set to be honored by the city of New York from one of the news tickers in Times Square. A man standing next to him remarks “You know, I guess one person can make a difference. ‘Nuff Said!”. I think most will agree that this is easily one of Lee’s best cameos; in just a single line, the well-spoken Marvel icon makes a poignant observation about the importance of superheroes. And on that note…

1. Costume Shop Owner – Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

We’ve covered plenty of great Stan Lee cameos today, many of them delightfully wacky comedic moments that perfectly matched Lee’s lovable on and offscreen persona. But for the Number 1 pick, I decided to go with the most poignant cameo of them all; the first proper Stan Lee cameo that was released after his death in the Phil Lord and Chris Miller-produced Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. In the film, Lee plays the owner of a costume shop where new Spider-Man Miles Morales buys a Spider-Man costume in the wake of his universe’s Peter Parker’s death. When he brings the costume up to the register, the owner laments that he’s going to miss Spider-Man and notes that he was friends with the web-slinger. When Miles inquires about the possibility of having to return the costume if it doesn’t fit, the owner notes that “it always fits, eventually”, a seemingly sweet gesture… before the camera pans over to the sign behind him that states his no return policy.

I decided to go with this one because I think it perfectly sums up Lee’s legacy, especially since everyone’s favorite webslinger may quite arguably be his most famous creation. This scene between Lee and the new Spidey, Miles, sees the former have some of the most poignant dialogue that he’s ever delivered in a Marvel film before ending with a classic bit of Stan Lee humor. This touching tribute is then extended to the film’s credits, which pays tribute to both him and Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko, who had passed away that past June. The following quote, “That person who helps others simply because it should or must be done, and because it’s the right thing to do, is indeed without a doubt a real superhero”, appears over an image of a pair of familiar-looking glasses. Cut to the following statement, “Thank you, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, for telling us we aren’t the only ones”.

And that concludes my list of my Top 15 personal favorite Stan Lee cinematic cameos. Thanks for following along and be sure to sound off in the comments below with your own personal favorites, including all those shows and video games that I didn’t tackle in today’s post.

Top 10 WORST Superhero Films (Aside from Batman and Robin)

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’. 

Top 10 WORST Films of 2015: #5-1

Welcome back to Rhode Island Movie Corner’s end-of-they-year Top 10 list of my picks for the Worst Films of 2015. This is the second half of a two-part post and today I’ll be listing my Top 5 Worst of the Year. For the other half, numbers 10-6, please click the link provided below. Let’s not waste any more time and get on with the rest of the list…

PART 1: (http://rimoviecorner.blogspot.com/2015/12/top-10-worst-films-of-2015-10-5.html)

Starting today’s post off is my Number 5 pick, another lousy horror flick whose short runtime was really the only thing that kept it from getting any higher on this list.

5. THE LAZARUS EFFECT

At the very least this film sort of has an interesting idea for a horror film. Basically the premise is that a group of scientists have created a special serum code-named ‘Lazarus’, hence the title of the film, that resurrects things from the dead. This serum is then used on one of the lead scientists (Olivia Wilde) when she is killed during one of the tests but when she is resurrected, things start to take a turn for the worse. What follows is… just your average horror film. Seriously, there’s not much that I can say about this film. It has some good people in it, like Wilde, Evan Peters, Donald Glover, and Mark Duplass, but it’s extremely clichéd and mediocre in almost every aspect; the ‘horror’ elements, the deaths, the fact that the black guy is the first to die, etc. As I just noted, the only major redeeming quality about the film is that it’s mercifully short at only 83 minutes long. But at the same time, that also means that it doesn’t leave any major impression whatsoever and is just another bland PG-13 rated horror film. Many of you know that I’m not too big on the horror genre in general so like ‘Unfriended’ you can chalk this up as another horror film that I’m likely never going to watch again.

My Number 4 pick has a bit of history to it due to the fact that it took four years for it to get released… watching this film, it’s clear why…

4. THE LOFT

This film was originally shot four years ago in 2011. Yet it was only released this year mainly due to a change in distributor. Originally produced by Dark Castle Entertainment and intended to be released by Universal, it ended up getting transferred to Open Road Films when it got pulled from its original August 2014 release date. It’s also worth noting that this is the second remake of a 2008 Belgian film by the same director, Erik Van Looy, and even starring one of the same actors, Matthias Schoenaerts (there was also a Dutch version produced in 2010). I haven’t seen either the original ‘Loft’ or the Dutch version but I hope that they’re at least better than this version. It’s an erotic thriller that lacks in both the erotic and the thriller elements. It’s annoyingly shot and edited, with a whole bunch of awkward wide angle lens close-ups and overly artsy edits that just seem pretentious. But perhaps the worst part of the film is that it’s full to the brim with terrible characters. The main plot of the film revolves around five friends trying to figure out the details behind the death of a young woman in their shared loft apartment… a loft that they all use to cheat on their wives. So despite the fact that there are some good people in the cast like Karl Urban and James Marsden, you don’t like any of these a-holes because they are all, to quote an unintentionally ironic line from the film itself, ‘pigs’ and you don’t even get to know anything about them. In short, this is just an ugly film in every sense of the word that very much fits the bill of a ‘January release’.

How fitting… my Number 3 is the third film in its franchise… a franchise that went downhill fast right after its first installment with its latest installment being the franchise’s all-time low.

3. TAKEN 3

Talk about a franchise that went immediately downhill after its first film, sort of like ‘The Hangover’ trilogy. And the interesting thing about this franchise was that no one really expected much out of the first ‘Taken’ film in the first place, even its star Liam Neeson. He thought that it was just going to be a direct-to-video release. But when the film was released in the U.S. in January 2009, it became a smash hit and as a result, Liam Neeson’s career was changed forever. Now he was known as the Charles Bronson-esque action star and that would become a major influence on many of his subsequent action films… but perhaps maybe a bit too much of an influence was made. Since the first ‘Taken’, Neeson has starred in numerous action films in which it seems like he’s playing the exact same character every time. Thankfully Neeson has recently stated that he’s planning on moving on from the action genre in a few years which is good given the argument that his action films are beginning to look more and more alike. And in the case of the ‘Taken’ franchise, getting worse and worse. ‘Taken 2’ was released in 2012 and did not attract the same positive reception amongst audiences. A change in director led to faster and more erratic editing, something that many cinefiles feel is one of the biggest problems today with action films. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t ‘hate’ ‘Taken 2’. Yeah it’s stupid and has the aforementioned editing problem but it doesn’t bother me as much as it did other people for some reason. I could at the very least tolerate the film. ‘Taken 3’ on the other hand…

If you thought the editing in ‘Taken 2’ was bad, just wait until you see ‘Taken 3’, which easily has the worst editing job in recent film history. Director Oliver Megaton clearly isn’t very good at shooting and editing action and it shows in the film with extremely choppy and fast editing in almost every scene. There’s seriously a scene in which Bryan Mills is just jumping over a fence and yet it cuts to somewhere around 15 different angles in the span of like 8 seconds. There are also scenes in which the editing and frantic camera movement destroy any sort of logic within the action sequences. Like in one scene, Bryan crashes a car down an elevator shaft and it explodes. And despite giving us no clear shot of him getting out of the car before he explodes, somehow the film then cuts to him out in the open, making us question just how the hell he got out of that situation. Pair all of this with a story that’s trying to be more dramatic than it is and you have what is easily one of the worst action films in recent years. Not even Liam Neeson, who at the very least is still a likable enough action lead, can save this train-wreck. When this film was first announced, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who questioned how this series could even continue after the second film. Was Liam Neeson going to have to rescue his kidnapped dog? Was he going to kidnap himself? Well now that this film is out, we can maybe rest assured knowing that this will hopefully be the last film in the franchise.

My number 2 is a big one. 2015 wasn’t as good of a year for superhero films as 2014. Now I’m not talking about the two Marvel Studios releases this year because, of course, both of those films were excellent. I’m talking about the other superhero film released this year. Not only is it one of the genre’s absolute worst, but it’s also my pick for the most disappointing film of the year. Yes… I actually was looking forward to this film.

2. FANTASTIC FOUR

Despite all of the controversy surrounding this film, I was actually looking forward to it. I thought that this was going to be the film that would redeem the ‘Fantastic Four’ film series after a string of less-than-stellar adaptations of Marvel’s ‘First Family’. Despite all of the skepticism surrounding the film, I was hopeful that it was going to be awesome. It was to be directed by Josh Trank, fresh off of directing one of my favorite films from 2012, ‘Chronicle’. And despite the usual backlash that comes with every superhero casting, I thought that the studio went with a really nice cast of leads in Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan (racists be damned), and Jamie Bell to take on the roles of the Four with Toby Kebbell, fresh off of a terrific villainous turn as Koba in ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’, taking on the role of Dr. Doom. But in the months leading up to the film’s release, there was controversies everywhere you looked. There was the rumor about how the film was going to make drastic changes to the characters, including making Dr. Doom a hacker. Then Fox announced reshoots in January 2015 and reports stated that the studio wasn’t happy with Trank’s original cut of the film along with other reports that Trank had behaved erratically during filming. Despite all of this, I was still hoping for the best when it came to this film… how wrong I was.

Now for the record, I don’t entirely blame this on Josh Trank. This was probably just a case of a young director being unprepared to tackle a big-budget superhero film after working on the lower-budgeted ‘Chronicle’. Not only that, but Trank himself confirmed that the studio had made numerous changes to his original cut of the film, basically screwing him over in the process. That’s something that you can definitely tell based solely on the final cut. The reshoots are obvious, with the most infamous example of this being Kate Mara’s frequently changing hairstyle, and the plot feels completely garbled at times. After the Four first gain their powers, the film literally cuts to a year later when they are already in control of their powers and working for the government. What happened in this year could’ve led to some nice bits of character development but instead they just cut that part out entirely. But that doesn’t mean that Trank is off the hook because he was responsible for one of the major problems of the film; its dour tone. Simply put, it’s not fun to watch. I get that they were trying to not go too far into goofy territory like the previous ‘Fantastic Four’ films did but they should’ve just taken notes from what Marvel has been doing with the MCU in terms of overall tone. And yes I know that there are some who complain about the MCU’s supposed overly silly nature but even if that was true, and quite frankly it isn’t, I very much prefer the MCU films over something like this that’s actually kind of depressing.

The jumbled final product, as well as Trank apparently telling the actors to be as ‘dull’ as possible in regards to their performances, also has a severely negative impact on the overall character development. The four main characters in this film never once act like the Fantastic Four of the comics. Heck, they’re only together once in the entire film and that’s right at the end of the film. When they first acquire their powers, Reed (AKA Mr. Fantastic) leaves the group for that aforementioned year that we don’t see in order to find a cure for the group’s newfound powers. It isn’t until the finale when the four are onscreen together and as a result, they never once capture the personalities and relationships that define their characters in the comics, aside from maybe ‘a little’ of the friendship between Reed and Ben at the beginning. Speaking of that finale, it is literally the only major action set piece in the entire film. Yes, that’s right, a superhero film released the same year as ‘The Avengers: Age of Ultron’ has only one major action sequence and it’s directly at the end of the film. And it’s a pretty terrible action sequence to boot, which makes me think that it was thrown in at the last second because the studio realized that they hadn’t done anything superhero-related in the span of an hour and a half. In other words, this is a pretty damn boring superhero film. Sure the beginning of the film is kind of interesting as the Four, along with Victor von Doom, build the teleporter device that sends them to the world where they acquire the powers but after that… nothing happens whatsoever. I couldn’t even do a Spoiler Post for this film, like I usually do for superhero films, because there was literally nothing to spoil. They get their powers, spend some time working for the government, fight Doom, The End.     

And finally let’s talk about Doctor Doom, arguably Marvel’s greatest villain of all-time. He has never been done justice on the big-screen. First there was the Doctor Doom from the 1994 unreleased ‘Fantastic Four’ film who, to put it quite simply, was a major pussy who kept getting his ass kicked by the Four and was sometimes completely unintelligible due to a clear lack of ADR work. The ’05 film version of Doom was also lackluster, with Julian McMahon being majorly miscast in the role. As for this Doom… he’s barely in the film. After the power-gaining incident, he’s left behind on the parallel dimension referred to as ‘Planet Zero’ and isn’t seen again until the government returns to that dimension. And then after that, he’s just evil because… he’s evil and wants to be left alone on that planet. So in short, you’re actually rooting for him to get his demands. It’s definitely a waste of Toby Kebbell, who’s covered in makeup (I think; it may have been CGI) so much to the point where, as the internet has put it, he looks like a damn crash test dummy. So that’s the 2015 ‘Fantastic Four’ reboot… the worst interpretation of the Four to date. It’s so bad that the 1994 unreleased ‘Fantastic Four’ film is actually better by comparison. It’s so bad that I’m no longer afraid to admit that I actually do like the 2005 ‘Fantastic Four’ film and its 2007 sequel, ‘Rise of the Silver Surfer’. And while I can’t really defend either of those films that much because they’re definitely some of the lesser films of their genre, they’re at least better than what we got here. Hopefully the rights to the characters will revert back to Marvel Studios soon. Fourth time’s the charm?

So what can be worse than ‘Fantastic Four’, you ask? Well, thankfully not a lot of people have seen this one but I did so I have to talk about it. And for the first time on this blog, I have to talk about the infamous duo of stinkers that have produced some of the worst films of all-time. That’s right, for my Number 1 worst film of 2015, it’s time to talk about… Seltzerberg…

1. SUPERFAST

Since this is the first time that I’m talking about this two on here, I better start off with a history lesson about the masters of crap that are Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. These two got their start writing the screenplay for the 1996 Leslie Nielsen starring spoof ‘Spy Hard’, directed by Friedberg’s father Rick. Similar to how their future films turned out, the film received highly negative reviews from critics. But that didn’t stop them from getting more work and in 2000, they collaborated with the Wayans on that year’s big box office hit ‘Scary Movie’, parodying 1996’s ‘Scream’ and effectively spawning the formula for all future spoof films. In 2006, the duo finally moved into directing with ‘Date Movie’ and have since produced other ‘spoof’ films such as ‘Epic Movie’, ‘Meet the Spartans’, ‘Disaster Movie’, ‘Vampires Suck’, and ‘The Starving Games’. Each of their films have been rightfully panned for being incredibly unfunny and being nothing more than brainless films that are just meant to cash in on whatever’s popular at the time, even if it has nothing to do with the supposed ‘genre’ of the film. For example, ‘Epic Movie’ spoofed films like ‘Nacho Libre’ and ‘Borat’. Epics? And as a result, the ‘spoof genre’ that had once dominated the film industry with classics like ‘Spaceballs’ and ‘Airplane’ is now home to godawful films that have forgotten about what made the spoof films of the past work so well.

So what was it about those classic spoofs that worked so well? Doug Walker of Channel Awesome and former Channel Awesome member Welshy both gave some solid answers to this question. In his video ‘My Problem with Current Movie Spoofs’, Welshy noted that one of the reasons why spoof movies of the past worked as well as they did was because the actors treated the material seriously even if it was intended to be comical, whereas nowadays actors in spoof movies are fully aware of the intended tone and just act all goofy. In his video ‘Is Parody Dead?’, Doug noted that one of the biggest strengths of the genre’s earlier days was how the comedy came from the filmmakers not just making reference after reference but taking the original story that they were satirizing and viewing it from a different perspective. The primary example that he used was the film that basically kick-started the whole spoof genre in general, Mel Brooks’ ‘Young Frankenstein’, which took the classic horror story and turned it on its head while still maintaining the general atmosphere of the original film, like having the kind old man that looked after Frankenstein’s monster be clumsy and having Frankenstein’s assistant Igor be unaware of his hunchback nature. Nowadays, the ‘comedy’ that comes from spoof films is just a series of references that are made to satirize whatever’s popular at the time. And right at the top of this ‘craze’ is the duo of Seltzerberg. Their newest film, ‘Superfast’, is, as you might have guessed, a spoof of the ‘Fast and Furious’ films. Particularly it’s a ‘re-do’ of the first film, even though the official series’ seventh installment was just released this year.

So yeah, if you’ve been unfortunate enough to have seen any of Seltzerberg’s films, you know what to expect from this film. Unfunny humor, dumb references, and awkward gross-out moments. The main characters are literally just named after the actors who played the real characters in the ‘Fast and Furious’ films. Dom is ‘Vin’, Letty is ‘Michelle’, Mia is ‘Jordana’, etc. And then they made their version of the Brian character a total dumbass, which is actually rather offensive to Paul Walker’s legacy if you ask me. If you want to talk about some of the cheapest films ever produced, not in regards to overall cost but quality, a Seltzerberg film is the prime example of the lowest of lows in the film industry. If there is any bright side to this, it is that since ‘Vampires Suck’, the duo’s films have not actually been getting wide releases. Originally, their films were released by Fox under their Regency label. Both this and ‘The Starving Games’ were released by an independent distributor so maybe these two will finally be stopped one day. However, they’re already working on a ‘Taken’ ‘parody’ (the term parody of course is used loosely in this context) titled ‘Who the F#@K Took My Daughter?” so we’re not out of the fire yet…

And those are my Top 10 worst films of 2015. What are yours? Be sure to sound off in the comments below. Thanks for going along with me on this ‘cleansing’ and be sure to tune in soon to me ending the year on a positive note and listing my Top 12 favorite films from this past year.