On why comic book movies are so terrible

"Tell everyone waiting for Superman that they should try to hold on the best they can. He hasn't dropped them, forgot them or anything, it's just too heavy for Superman to lift."

--The Flaming Lips

We all know that video game movies suck. There is no questioning that. The fact that Prince of Persia was the highest grossing video game movies does not impress me in the least, considering it was following on the heels of the Uwe Boll epidemic (Far Cry, BloodRayne), Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within, Doom, and the granddaddy of them all...Super Mario Bros. High-paid, popular actors cannot save video game movies. Really, nothing can. The same goes for comic book movies. High-paid, popular actors and directors sign on to turn comic book heroes into film heroes. Most of them fail.

"But what about Christopher Reeves as Superman, the Spiderman series and the Batman series?"

Well hypothetical critic, I can give you part of the Batman, but if you are talking about quality cinema, I will only accept the Michael Keaton/Tim Burton and Christian Bale/Christopher Nolan versions of Batman. Besides, Joel Schumacher nearly destroyed the franchise. As for Superman, while one of the original Superhero movies, and having Christopher Reeves, Marlon Brando etc., the films were campy jokes. Spiderman was just awful and sacrificed accuracy for showy graphics. People started to realize how bad the series was when they made Spiderman 3. Not to mention for every halfway decent comicbook/graphic novel movie there are at least three terrible ones made. Need I remind you about Ang Lee's Hulk disaster? How about Tom Jane as Punisher? Or, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner as Daredevil and Elektra.

I know this is may be an unpopular view especially with the upcoming superhero films that will eventually lead to the Avengers film(s). Aside from Iron Man and possibly Thor, the rest of those films will suck. Yes they will put a lot of pimply, bored or otherwise fat/bloated asses into seats this summer, but they will not be worth your 6-18 dollars depending on where you see it and if it will be in Imax or 3d. Hollywood is well aware that these movies make money but are terrible, because there are a number of actors who have doubled up superhero roles (Chris Evans: The Human Torch, Captain America; Ryan Reynolds: Deadpool, The Green Lantern). There is also the quick replacement-of-popular-actors-with no-names-to-put-out-a-probably-straight-to-DVD-sequel-move (Tom Jane replaced by Ray Stevenson to play Punisher).

But, dear readers (if I call you true believers I will probably get a nice cease and desist order from Stan Lee--Excelsior motherfucker*), I like to believe there is hope. I have hope not because the movie industry has some genius chained and flogged until he churns out a good idea, but because of a certain Pulitzer Prize winning author. Michael Chabon gives a good explanation of the fledgling comic book industry and its rise to prominence. It's a long quote so bear with me.

The drop-off in quality that followed the original-content revolution was immediate and precipitous. Lines grew tentative, poses awkward, composition static, background nonexistent. Feet, notoriously difficult to draw in realistic depth, all but disappeared from the panels, and noses were reduced to the simplest variations on the twenty-second letter of the alphabet. Horses resembled barrel-chested, spindly dogs, and automobiles were carefully effaced with sideed lines to disguise the fact that they lacked doors, were never drawn to scale and all looked the same. Pretty women, as a requisite arrow in every boy cartoonist's quiver, fared somewhat better, but the men tended to stand aroun in wrinkeless suits that looked stamped from stovepipe tin and in hats that appeared to weigh more than the automobiles, ill at ease, big-chinned, punching one another in their checl-marked noses. Curcus strong men, giant Hindu manservants, and breechclouted jungle lords invariably sported fanciful musculature, eyeceps and octocepts and beltoids, and abdomens like fifteen racked pool balls. Knees and elbows bent at painful, double-jointed angles. The color was murky at best, and at worst there was hardly any color at all. Sometimes everything was just two tones of red, or two tones of blue. But most of all, comic books suffered not from insufficient artwork--for there was considerable vitality here, too, and a collective Depression-born urge toward self-improvement, and even the occasional talented hard-luck compentent pencilman--but from a bad case of the carbon copies. Everything was a version, sometimes hardly alteredd at all, of a newspaper strip or a pulp-radio hero. Radio's Green Hornet spawned various colors of wasp, beetle, and bee; the Shadow was himself shadowed by a legion of suit-wearing, felt-hatted, lama-trained vigilantes; every villainess was a thinly disguised Dragon Lady. Consequently, the comic book, almost lacking purpose or distinction. There was nothing here one could not find done better, or cheaper, somewhere else (and on the radio one could have it for free). [Chabon, 76-77]

Does this sound familiar at all? Comic book movies have a ton of amazing visual affects, but deep down they lack depth, content, and in many cases, a plot. The comic book era was looking for someone to save them, to bring them into prominence. They had success with "The Shadow," but the industry needed someting to put them in the lime light and they got it in the summer of 1938 when "Superman" hit stands for Detective Comics (now known as DC). Right now the comic book movie industry is looking for that Superman. Spiderman 2, no matter how awful it actually is would be "The Shadow"** in this analogy, especially since it is one of the highest grossing films of all time somehow. In fact we already have our Superman, and it was The Dark Knight. Not because of Christian Bale's portrayal, but because of the late Heath Ledger. Ledger created a villain worth watching, a villain that you wanted to root for. Ironically, for the film industry and the comic book genre film, Heath Ledger/The Joker was that Superman.

If the film industry can learn to create characters--both heroes and villains--as compelling and memorable as Ledger's Joker, then this genre will endure, and even win awards. Instead of throwing gobs of money and names at these movies, Hollywood needs to make an actual effort to treat this genre as more than just a bunch of seat-filling, summer block buster, action films.

I don't recommend holding your breath though.

*Yep Stan Lee has trademarked the word Excelsior. ** The Shadow (film) can be filed under super-shitty comic book film, that not even Frank Miller could save.