The Bottom 5: Comic Book Movies

Well hey everybody, happy Monday and hopefully you had a great post Fourth of July weekend. I certainly did, there was a party, I made my own tiny pizza, and I even played Civilization 5 with my wife and waged war against several completely innocent bystanders just because I had nothing better to do with my made up life.

Recently said wife and I had a conversation about Catwoman (don’t ask why) and in this conversation I said something along the lines of “Catwoman the movie was probably one of the worst 5 comic book movies ever” and it was as if the heavens had opened and the light of a thousand jello’s shone upon me and thus I decided to write a blog called:  

The Bottom 5: The Worst Comic Book Movies 

5. Ghost Rider 2

 Nicolas Cage… what hast thou wrought? Let me be VERY clear on something: I love Ghost Rider. He’s awesome! He’s still responsible for one of my favorite movies posters of ALL time. I mean he’s a skeletal motorcycle rider ON FIRE who fights demons and is awesome, how hard is it to make a good movie out of that? Apparently really REALLY hard, because we failed at this not once but twice! Ghost Rider 1 was at least somewhat passable as long as you closed your eyes for all the parts Nicolas Cage was on screen and not on fire. The same could be said of Ghost Rider 2 really except for the fact that the stupid that makes up the rest of the “not on fire” portions of the movie is so bad that it will seep through your closed eyes and rot your brain like so many episodes of The Vampire Diaries. Marvel recently re-acquired the rights to Ghost Rider (paying four dollars and a ham sandwich)  so hopefully they can save him like they saved The Hulk but we’ll see. Though if someone out there is super bored and wants to make me a “All On Fire” cut of Ghost Riders 1 and 2 I will pay you TWO ham sandwiches! I know… I’m so generous.

If only the movie had been half as awesome as this single image…

4. Fantastic Four

Let me be VERY clear on something: I hate the Fantastic Four. I know there very important to the history of comics or whatever but that’s like saying I should drink from a carton of milk from the 90’s just cause it was an important part of my childhood. I mean when you’re a child playing superhero how many of you said: “I want to be really really stretchy!!” The answer: none of you. Being stretchy is like being the bass player in a band with a great lead guitarist and Wolverine on vocals (consequently I played Bass on rockband with some friends this weekend and it was the sickness, as was I). Here’s the roster of the Fantastic Four:

Mr. Fantastic: Stupid name. Stupid powers.

Mrs. Fantastic: Power of invisibility (cause we can’t have no woman on the front lines now can we) and the power to make shields that make her nose bleed if she has to hold them for more than two seconds.  Also, she was played by Jessica Alba in the penultimate example of why Jessica Alba is not a good actress. As if Jessica Alba felt it necessary to send up a flair that spelled out “Never take me seriously as an actress” in bright blue burny lettering.

The Thing: The Hulks stupid younger cousin who has less powers, less of an interesting character, and none of the sweet anger issues. If the Hulk is an eagle soaring majestically into the Heavens on the wings of Mark Ruffalo, then the Thing is a flying fish with a broken wing… who was eaten by a shark.

The Human Torch: The only really cool member of the Fantastic Four, the Human Torch is a guy who can spontaneously light himself on fire and throw fireballs. Let me remind you that this makes 1 of 4 members of the Fantastic Four that isn’t lame, sexist, or done MUCH better elsewhere.

Add all of that into the fact that the script for this movie was probably written by a drunk parrot in a tutu and that I’m sure there were six different studio executives constantly telling the drunk parrot conflicting things that he should write about and you have yourself a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad movie.

3. Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer

But wait—there’s more!! Because this movie took all of the things that were bad about the first movie and somehow succeeded in making them much much MUCH worse. Including (but not limited to) Mr. Fantastic (every time I type that name my keyboard comes to life and punches me in the face) using his stretchy powers to (cough) dance and flirt with women. Women (assuming any of you are still reading this after my unprovoked attack on Vampire Diaries) can you think of anything less attractive and more creepy then a guy using his stretchy powers to pull you onto the dance floor?? Yeah… I thought not. Also: they take one of the most interesting and coolest characters in comics (the Silver Surfer) and completely ruined him. It’s horrible, and sad and just a waste of 2 hours’ worth of movie time. Never. Ever. Watch this.  

2. The Hulk

Oh the Hulk, to think that he made such a journey from here to the Avengers. I mean this movie was atomically bad. Eric Bana running around looking like an idiot, the Hulk being hilariously poorly animated, the brilliant majestically terrible idea that were: “Hulk dogs”, and then some sort of transformy hulk-daddy to round out the package of complete stupidity that was this movie. I mean it took Edward Norton (underrated performance in an underrated The Incredible Hulk movie), Mark Ruffalo, and Joss Whedon just to save the Hulk from the rancid, pickle scented pile of terrible that was this movie. I still have no idea at all what happened at the end of this movie. I mean there was a cloud and some green light and someone screamed something about “TAKE IT ALL” and then we were in South America. No idea what went down there.

Hulk angry at bad movie!!

1. Catwoman

Another character that was recently saved from terribleness by another actor (Anne Hathaway in a kick butt role in The Dark Knight Returns) the movie Catwoman stands not just as one of the worst comic book movies ever but as one of the straight up worst movies of all time. It makes one wonder how we didn’t realize that Halle Berry couldn’t actually act at all MUCH earlier. I mean watching her “slink” around in this movie is one of the most hilariously sad, weirdly terrible things ever. I mean it shouldn’t be hard to make catwoman attractive right? Tight pants, crazy athletic abilities, intelligence and after that you’ve pretty much got it, right? But no, somehow we couldn’t even get that out of Catwoman. What we got instead was a terrible movie, with laughably horrible dialogue, a story that is both confusing and completely disjointed and a hilariously bad leading actress surrounded by a somehow worst supporting cast. Like you’ve really got to work to find people worse at acting then Haley Berry in this movie but the people behind it somehow managed to accomplish it, and that feat alone ensures them first place in the Worst Comic Book movies ever listing.

Dishonorable Mention:

X-men 3: X-men United: This was like taking a delicious double decker ice cream cone (X1 and X2) and putting a stick covered in stomach acid in it. I don’t know whether it was Bryan Singer or some Sony studio exec but somebody decided “Hey this is the last movie in the trilogy let’s put every X-man that we haven’t put in a movie yet in this movie regardless of how stupid and pointless their stories are! Also, let’s take our two worst actresses Famke Jensson and Halle Berry and give them really big, emotionally intense roles, so that they can tank them entirely and ruin the series!!”

Ghost Rider 1: See Ghost Rider 2.

Superman Returns: Close competition between this and Ghost Rider 2 for the 5^th spot. Ghost Rider 2 won (if we can call it that) because at least I feel like you could make a really good Ghost Rider movie if you got the right people whereas they got the right people to make Man of Steel and still only ended up with a kind-of-good movie anyway.

And there you have it comic fans! The five movies that no one should ever watch but that I (because I love you all so much) sat down and went through them. Thanks for reading everyone, check back on Thursday as I write some things with some words about some things!