List of Crap #131 Worst Superhero Movies Ever

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#24

The Spirit ( 2008 )

24 points, 1 list, TIEBREAKER 4.7 IMDb, #2 stansimpson

Studio: Lionsgate
Script: Frank Miller
Producers: Deborah Del Prete, Gigi Pritzker, Michael E. Ulsan
Director: Frank Miller
Cast: Gabriel Macht ( Denny Colt/ The Spirit ), Samuel L. Jackson ( The Octopus ), Scarlett Johansson  ( Silken Floss ), Eva Mendez ( Sand Saref ), Sarah Paulson ( Ellan Dolan ), Dan Lauria ( Commisioner Eustace Dolan ), Stana Katic ( Morgenstern ), Louis Lombardi ( cloned Octopus henchmen ), Jamie King ( Lorelei Rox ), Paz Vega ( Plsastrr of Paris ), Richard Portnow ( Donenfeld )

TRAILER

Director Frank Miller attempts to turn Will Eisner's classic crime fighting detective into a sequel to Sin City ( 2005 ) and ends up with a movie that confuses and frustrates fans of The Spirit. Filmed in a very similar style to Sin City, the entirety of the sets are CGI with the odd prop, and actors are digitally altered for a pen and ink effect. Color is muted, with the exception to the occasional costume, and The Spirit's red tie.  This contradicts with the source material as the comic this came from was saturated with color. Characters talk in cliché comic book dialog. The end effect is a movie that constantly reminds you that it is an adaption of a comic book, which means that every second of this film seems fake. This treatment of a comic book may have worked on Sin City, but in that case Miller was adapting his own comic, so knew when to dial things back.

While Miller had called Eisner a mentor and said he wanted to honor the source material. However, aside from using the names of the characters from the book, nearly everything else has been changed. No doubt to appease studio heads. The Spirit has the ability to leap around the roofs of buildings, and practically parkour his way up and down it's ledges and fire escapes.  He also has the ability to heal, making him indestructible, and even resurrect from death itself if killed.  The Spirit in the original comic books had no powers. He was a masked detective and nothing more. In addition, The Spirit is a ladies man who any woman falls instantly in love with. This is also something not in the comic book. The Spirit's arch enemy the Octopus also has quick healing abilities, making him indestructible as well. In the Comic book, the Octopus is never seen, with exception to the occasional panel has his hands in view.  In this movie we don't just see The Octopus, but he is deliberately out in the open, even facing off with the police at times. The plot is an original story written by Miller, rather than an adaption of any actual Spirit comic. Written so that all the major characters from the comics would be in the same movie. Except for The Spirit's trusty sidekick Ebony White, an African American kid who was unfortunately drawn the way cartoonists drew African Americans kids in the 1940s. There is no reason why Ebony could not be in the movie, provided he wasn't given exaggerated lips, bulging eyes, or a fright wig. Have Ebony portrayed as non-offensive. Nothing offensive about a normal African American as a sidekick. Well, except for the child endangerment bit, which was another thing 40s cartoons had no problem with. The plot has The Spirit's old high school sweetheart and current master thief Sand Saref stealing a macguffin which can bring immortality to whoever drinks it, and The Octopus wants the macguffin for himself. Really not much of a plot other than that. Padded out to 100 minutes. There are some flashbacks to when The Spirit and Sand were teenagers to establish their romantic past, Louis Lombardi as The Octopuses dumber than a box of rocks cloned henchmen who are continuously killed and replaced with new clones. And a lot of endless knockdown brawls between The Octopus and The Spirit, as both can take a lot of punishment.  But really nothing else. 


ORIGIN:
The very first comic books reprinted newspaper comic strips. Realizing that there was a finite number of old comic strips and too many publishers getting in on the new comic book industrial, publisher Jerry Iger championed  the idea of buying original comics from New artists. One of those artists was 18 year old Will Eisner, who sold Iger an adventure strip called Captain Scott Dolton. Eisner, an aspiring newspaper cartoonist, was told about Iger buying original comics by his high school buddy Bob Kane, who was also an aspiring cartoonist. Soon Eisner was creating and selling other adventure comics to Iger.  Within two years of the publication of the first comic book,  the hoard of comic book companies had all run through the backlog of newspaper comic strips, and were beginning to print reprints of reprints.   Iger decided to get out of the publishing business and instead start a firm that sold original comics to comic book companies looking for new material.  Partnering with cartoonist Will Eisner, he founded Eisner & Iger, where Iger acted as the agent, selling Eisner's comics to comic book publishers.

When Superheroes were suddenly the rage, Eisner & Iger were overwhelmed with requests from publishers to draw superhero comics. One of those  was Victor Fox, a publisher of Astrology magazines who suddenly became interested in comic books when he saw the sales figures for Superman. Contacting Eisner & Iger, Fox asked them to create a superhero that looked like Superman, acted like Superman, and had the same exact powers as Superman.  Wonder Man lasted just one issue, after which Fox was immediately sued by National Comics. Eisner was forced to testify as to how he was instructed to rip off Superman.  Fox settled by agreeing never to publish another Wonder Man comic again.  Nearly being sued themselves Eisner decided he was fed up with superheroes and decided never to write another superhero comic again.

The popularity of comic books began to cut into sales of newspapers.  For decades newspapers had been the only place one could read a comic, giving them a monopoly on the popular medium. Comic books didn't just provide readers with an alternative source for comics, but could devote more than one page to a comic, where newspapers devoted one page per strip on Sunday and only four panels on weekdays.ge  Deciding the only way to compete was to copy the comic book format, the Chicago Tribune began publishing a comic book that came free with the Sunday paper. Comic book publisher Everett Arnold  of Quality Comics saw an opportunity to print comic books specifically for the color sections of newspapers. Contacting the Register and Tribune Syndicate who owned newspapers across the country, Arnold inked a deal to publish a Sunday adventure comic book with original stories. Arnold then contacted Eisner & Iger, asking them to supply the material for a weekly comic book. Eisner informed Arnold that in order to complete an entire comic book each week, he would need  to retire from his company, which at the time was very profitable for him and Iger. Eisner eventually agreed to sell his share of the firm to Iger and exclusively draw a weekly comic book for Quality Comics. Eisner wanted to do a comic about a detective. Arnold insisted it be a superhero comic book. Eisner didn't want to do a superhero comic, but compromised by giving his detective a mask.

The book he created, The Spirit, told the story of police detective Denny Colt who is presumably poisoned to death by the villain Dr Cobra. However, it turns out the poison Dr Cobra had given Colt had only put him in suspended animation. Colt wakes up in his own crypt. Deciding to let the world continue to believe Deny Colt is dead, he continues fighting crime as the masked vigilante known as The Spirit, using his own crypt as his base of operation. The first comic book was published June 2, 1940. Eisner contributed eight pages, and other artists di the backup features brining the book to 16 pages. At it's peak, the Spirit Section ( As it was called in most newspapers ) was available for free in 20 major newspapers across the country.  Reprints of the Spirit comics would later be published by Quality in a newsstand comic book.   In 1941 Eisner was drafted into the army for World War II, during which time several artists and writers filled in for him. He returned after the war to continue the comic, but by the 1950s had become more of an editor on his book, overseeing other artists and writes and only occasionally submitting artwork. In 1952 the Register and Tribune Syndicat decided to discontinue including free comic books in their Sunday supplement. By then Eisner had lost all interest in the character, so it ended.

In the 1970s William Friedkin wanted to bring The Spirit to the big screen, so acquired the film rights. He asked Will Eisner to write the script. Eisner told him he wasn't interested in writing movie scripts, and suggested his friend Harlan Ellison could write it. Through the entire writing process Ellison consulted with Eisner. After the script was completed, Ellison was asked to have dinner with Friedkin, during which the director complained about how his film Sorcerer had bombed at the box office. Then Ellison said something. He claims he only commented on how could not believe such a good film would fail at the box office. But Friedkin thought he had either said something else, or perhaps was being sarcastic, and immediately began yelling at Ellison. Before the night was over, Ellison was fired, and Friedkin refused to use his script. No film was made,. In the 80s the rights went to Warner Bros. Television who wanted a Spirit television series. They made a silly little pilot film, and the network never picked up the series.     Producer Michael E Ulsan was the next to acquire the rights in the 90s, and spent the next decade trying to get a Spirit film made. When Will Eisner died, Ulsan went to his memorial service, where he met Frank Miller, who's Sin City had just been released in theaters and was a huge success. When Ulsan learned that Eisner had acted as a mentor to Miller, he hired him as the director.


Reviews
"What is most striking about The Spirit is how little pleasure it affords, in spite of its efforts to by sly, sexy, heartfelt and clever all at once." ~ New York Times

"As a babe-delivery system, The Spirit is a rousing success. In every other sense, it's a pronounced failure." ~ AV Club

"What a shame that The Spirit isn't nearly as good as it looks." Globe and Mail

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#23

Guardians ( 2017 )

24 points, 1 list, TIEBREAKER 4.0 IMDb,  #2 Darth Geek

Studio:  Enjoy Movies
Script: Andrei Gavrilov
Producers: Sarik Andreasyan, Gevond Andreasyan, Vladimir Polyakov, Max Oleinikov, Nikita Argunov
Director: Sarik Andreasyan
Cast: Sebastien Sisak ( Ler ), Anton Pampushnyy ( Arsus ), Sanjar Madi ( Khan ), Alina Lanina ( Xenia ), Valeriya Shkirando ( Major Elena Larina ), Vyacheslav Razbegaev ( Major-general Nikolai Dolgov ), Stanislav Shirin ( August Kuratov )

TRAILER

The state owned Russian news agency RIA Novosti created a list of the worst movies ever made, just to put this movie at the top of that list. So basically Vladimir Putin didn't like this film, and wants the rest of Russia to agree with him. While I wouldn't call this the worst movie ever made, I wouldn't blame Putin or anyone else for thinking that. Basically, a Russian film producer wanted to make a MCU style superhero film, so blatantly ripped of Marvel Comics own Soviet Super Soldiers, which makes no sense as that comic book was never published in the Soviet Union, which means most Russians would not recognize the characters being ripped off, and it could not be marketed anywhere on Earth as a Soviet Super Soldiers film.

Visually, The Guardians is impressive, with only the CGI for the human to bear transformations not being up to par. If you don't care about plot, and have not seen any big budget effects film in the past two decades, then you would probably enjoy this film. otherwise, this is 90minutes of one dimensional characters going through every MCU trope whether the story needs it or not. It is full of inconsistencies. Fr example, when Major Elena Larina is put in charge of the task force called Patriot, her first task is to find the super powered humans the Soviet Union created thirty years ago and abandoned  when the Soviet Union collapsed. Larina complains that she was given only two weeks for her and her team to find the metahumans, and suggests it could take a lot longer to find them. She then asks her team to search the internet, and it only takes them 50 seconds to find all four metahumans. Then there are glairing continuity errors. Like when we get a news report about the Villain, Professor Kuratov, cutting down and stealing a tower. This a full ten minutes before the scene where Professor Kuratov and his clone army cut down and steal the tower. Eiting errors. Like when the film's title shows up twice. Once at the end of the title sequence, and again a few minutes later when Major Genral Dolgov tells Larina the superhero team she will be organizing is to be called The Guardians. There are plot points that just do not make sense. Such as the Guardians being given mechanized outfits when the villain they are fighting can mind control any machine. And of course, the blatant stealing of scenes from other superhero films. From Ler's whip which is basically Whiplash's electric whip from Iron Man2, to the climax of the film that is lifted from the climax of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ( 2014 ), which in turn was lifted from the climax of The Amazing Spider-Man ( 2012 ). They even steal the panel from Batman #497 where Bane breaks Batman's back. Should I bring up how useless The Guardians are for most of the film? Their first attempt at stopping Kuratov fails miserably as they are all immediately captured. The fight on the radio tower ends with the Guardians fleeing, and Kuratov continuing to operate his doomsday machine. The only reason they ultimately defeat him is that in the last five minutes of the film, they learn that if they all touch each other, they can emit a ball of energy that knocks Kuratov's radio tower down. So why didn't they just do that from the start? This may sound like a brilliant parody of the Superhero genre, but that is not what director Sarik Andreasyan was trying to do.

ORIGIN:
Being that this came out of Russia, there is absolutely no data on it's creation, other than director  Sarik Andreasyan admitting that he had access to American comic books when he was a kid, which is where he got most of his inspiration for Guardians. Little doubt one of those comics which inspired him had the superhero team Soviet Super Soldiers.  Debuting  April 1981 in The Incredible Hulk  #258, they were a  Soviet Union version of The X-Men, who even at one time hat future X-Men member Colossus. The lineup of members changed over the years, with the one constant being member Mikhail Ursus who had the ability to transform into Ursa Major, a rather large humanoid bear. And wouldn't you know it, The Guardians also has a member called Ursus who has the ability to turn into a bear. The Soviet Super Soldiers had been created as Marvel knew Contest of Champions was coming up, and they needed the Soviet Union to have superheroes. The original premise of Contest of Champions was that the International Olympics Committee decides to ban superheroes from competing in the Olympics as it would be unfair to normal athletes, but agrees to hold separate competitions that Superheroes can compete in. It was supposed to tie in with the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, but had to be scrapped when The United States and many other countries pulled out of the Olympics in protest of Russia's invasion of Afghanistan. Along with the Soviet Super Soldiers, Marvel had created and gradually introduced  in their books a number of new superheroes from foreign countries, and had many other  newly crated foreign heroes copyrighted and ready to be introduced in Contest of Champions.  The backup plan was to wait until 1994 to tie it in with the Los Angeles Olympics, but then gradually cooled on the idea of superheroes competing in the Olympics. The plot was rewritten to have The Grandmaster abduct every superhero on Earth and force them to compete in his own games. For the Soviet Super Soldiers, this was their first exposure to Marvel fans outside of the Hulk comics. After this, they made multiple guest appearances in several Marvel books, This eventually earned them their own comic book in 1992, which appears to have had only one issue, after which Marvel stopped using the team.


Reviews
"Watching these superheroes save the day will only slow down yours." ~ Times of India

"The film as a whole doesn't have any supernatural abilities, nor anything that makes it unique and unforgettable." ~ Excelsior

[stethacantus]

#22

Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie ( 1997 )

24 points, 1 list, TIEBREAKER 3.5  IMDb, #2 RVR II

Studio: Toei/Saban/20th Century Fox
Script: Shuki Levi, Shell Danielson
Producer: Johnathan Tzachor
Director: David Winning, Shuki Levi
Cast: Johnny Young Bosch ( Adam Park/Green Turbo ), Nakia Burrise ( Tanya Sloan/Yellow Turbo ), Steve Cardenas ( Rocky DeSantos ), Jason David Frank ( Tommy Oliver/Red Turbo ), Austin St. John ( Jason Lee Scott ), Catherine Sutherland ( Katherine Hillard/Pink Turbo ), Jason Narvy ( officer Skull ), Paul Schrier ( officer Bulk  ), Hillary Shepard Turner ( Divatox ), Amt Jo Johnson ( Kimberly Hart ), Blake Foster ( Justin Stewart/Blue Turbo )

TRAILER

Exactly how bad was Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie? As someone not into the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, I can't really tell because all the movies and television series seem equally repulsive. You take a Japanese kids superhero show, film new footage with American actors as the heroes, who spend most of their screen time lecturing each other on teamwork, cut it into the ridiculous Japanese action footage, then sell toys based on the series. A fraction of kids actually enjoyed this setup.  The Power Rangers had a dedicated loyal fanbase on what otherwise appears to be garbage to the rest of us. And what did that fanbase think of Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie? Most of them thought it sucked, with many saying it was so bad that it turned them off of Power Rangers for good. And if Power Rangers fans think this movie is bad, it must really be bad.

The film begins with an unreasonably long Star Wars style text roll, after which cuts to an alien  planet with a dwarf in an unconvincing alien costume, who is supposedly the great wizard Lerigot.  He is being chased by the army of Divatox, who is basically the same thing as the previous villain in the series  Rita Repulsa, but this time with cleavage. Despite being well armed and riding horses, and the troll like Lerigot only able to run at a snail's pace, they fail to capture him, allowing him time to use his magic to transport himself to Earth, where he ends up in an African jungle. Meanwhile, time to get rid of one of the original cast members to make room for a new cast member.  Rocky DeSantos, the Blue Power Ranger, breaks his own back training for a Karate tournament when he misses his sparring partner with a spin kick and end up flying out of the ring. While recovering in the hospital, little scamp Justin goes to visit him, spies on him as his other friends are visiting, and discovers they are all Power Rangers.

The rangers return to their base where Zordon orders Kat and Tommy to go to Africa to find Lerigot. ( And by this time anyone not familiar with the Power Rangers mythos may be lost. Needless to say, the makers of this movie did not bother to make it accessible to anyone who had not watched all the past seasons of Power Rangers before. ) Divatox has arrived on Earth, and now has a submarine. She needs Lerigot because he has the ability to free the demon Maligor from where he is being imprisoned.  She also needs two humans to sacrifice at a ceremony, and captures Jason Lee Scott and Kimberly Hart, two former Power Rangers who were apparently trying to surprise everyone at the Power Ranger base by sneaking in via scuba diving.  Ask most Power Ranger fans an they will say that the inclusion of Jason and Kimberly in the film was the only good part. This despite their characters being useless and failing every escape attempt.  Both characters left the series shortly after the first season due to the fact Saban was only playing the actors  $300 an episode, refused them royalties, and made them tour and promote the show at their own expense.  In fact, Austin St. John who played Jason was one of a handful of actors purged from the show after a failed attempt to unionize the set. Divatox sends a message to the Rangers that they have Jason and Kimberly, and will only return them if they exchange them for Lerigot. The exchange goes bad  as Divatox gets Lerigot and the rangers get decoy mannequins instead of Jason and Kimberly.

Okay, we have now reached the third act. With everything seeming hopeless, and Divatox poised to unleashing a world destroying demon, Zardon announces that he has created new uniforms and cars for the rangers. They are all going to be upgraded to Turbo. The team tries on their new costumes, then tries out their new vehicles, and now it is time for the Turbo Powered Rangers to have their final confrontation with Divatox! Only, the plot takes a U-turn back into the second act, and the team takes a loooong  ride on a ghost ship to the island where Divatox is attempting to raise Maligor. Which is one of the reasons I didn't like this film, that it is too drawn out and too boring. It is basically a plot for a 25 minute Power Ranger episode padded out to 99 minutes. Oh, and just before they leave,  little brat Justin shows up in a Turbo vehicle and announces that Zardon has made him the Blue Turbo Ranger, as a replacement for idiot Rocky who is still recovering in the hospital from his Karate practice injury. 

Finally back in the third act, the team reaches the island, turns into the Turbo Rangers, and somehow Justin grows three feet.  Well, he's going to have to be able to do that if they are going to edit in that Super Sentai footage  during the upcoming series. They get to Divatox just too late to save Jason and Kimberly from being sacrificed in a lava pit, which instead of burning them, turns them into Evil Jason and Evil Kimberly. They fight the Turbo rangers a bit before Lerigot frees them from the demons possessing them. However, Divatox succeeds in raising Maligor, and he turns into a giant. Fortunately the Turbo Rangers have their Turbo vehicles, and they can combine into a single giant Turbo robot. Maligor is defeated, Divatox leaves the island vowing revenge, and the movie comes mercifully to an end with the team members, sans their costumes, winning the Karate tournament.  I mean, I would argue that going into a tournament with secret Turbo power is cheating, but maybe that's just me.


ORIGIN:
Dinosaur Task Force Zyuranger was a Super Sentai series produced by Toie and Bandai to promote a line of action figures. The plot involved five warriors from an ancient civilization of humanoids who evolved from dinosaurs. 170 million years ago they were put into suspended animation, but are revived in present times when their sworn enemy, the witch  Bandora, escapes from the magical container she was entrapped in, and seeks to destroy mankind. To battle Bandora, the warriors each have their own mechanical animal shaped vehicles called Guardian Beasts, who can combine into a larger animal to fight the giant monsters Bandora releases upon the Earth. While visiting Japan, producer Hiam Saban saw the series and thought it would work well in America. As the warriors wore costumes that hid their facial features, Saban realized that he could hire American actors to shoot scenes in English, then edit in the footage from Dinosaur Task Force Zyuranger for the fighting and monster scenes with very minimal action scenes being needed to be shot for the English version. Bandai was on board as all they needed to do was change the name of the toys and sell them in the United States as a tie-in to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. After tree seasons of Power Rangers, Saban ran out of episodes of Dinosaur Task Force Zyuranger to edit  footage from. Since the series only existed to promote and sell action figures, Toie regularly ended their Super Sentai series and a season later launched a brand new Super Sentai series with a new premise and new characters, but always with warriors in bright colored costumes. Saban began adapting other Super Sentai series by rebooting the Power Ranger series with the premise the rangers were being upgraded to new costumes and new Zords ( the American name of the Guardia Beasts ).  The upcoming series Power Ranger Turbo would use footage from Racing Task Force Carranger. The movie wasn't just a cash grab to make money off of Power Ranger fans willing to buy theater tickets, and drag friends and family members along, but as a backdoor pilot for the new Turbo series, and as a way for Bandai, who basically financed the film, to introduce their line of Turbo Rangers to America. It also allowed Saban to write out the character Rocky DeSantos as actor Steve Cardenas was leaving the series, probably for the same reason most of the actors in the series left, because they were being paid next to nothing.


Reviews
"Like the TV series, the pic features makeup and special-effects gimmickry that are far less persuasive than what might be found at second-rate theme-park attractions." ~ Variety

"The dialogue is atrocious, as are the wretched signature Morphin moves: Someone get these Rangers to a martial-arts school!" ~ TV Guide

"It's cheesy-looking and convoluted and has as much character as a bus tire." ~ San Fransisco Chronicle

[stethacantus]

#21

Captain Battle: Legacy War ( 2013 )

24 points, 1 list, TIEBREAKER 1.2 IMDb,  #2 Stethacantus

Studio: TomCat Productions
Script: Keith Parker, Kenny White
Producer: David S Sterling
Director: David Palmieri
Cast: Cuyle Carvin ( Sam Battle/Captain Battle ),  Andrew Mcguiness ( Dr. Brandon Storm), Marlene Mc'Cohen ( Jane Storm ), Jenny Allford ( Necromancer ), Todd James Jackson ( Heinrich Himmler ), Julian Starks ( Colonel  Weiss )

TRAILER

Sam Battle is a soldier in Iraq, presumably è for the American Army as the budget didn't allow for American uniforms. While on patrol he is ambushed by terrorists, and is fatally wounded.  He is brought to the medical tent where doctor Storm decides there is nothing he can do for him. That is until the Colonel reminds the doctor that he was the inventor of a serum that causes the person injected to have super healing abilities.  Sam is injected, and immediately heals. So what does the army do now that they have a super soldier? they  discharge him and send him back home.  Doctor Storm decides to keep tabs on Sam, which is how he meets the Doctor's  sister Jane. She is a reporter who just happened to be in investigating the death of Sam's father, who she insists didn't die in an accident, but was murdered. They both go to Sam's father's old friend for answers, and he reveals that both Sam's father and grandfather were superheroes.  His grandfather was the original Captain Battle, and his father the successor. The friend then gives Sam the Captain Battle costume he had been keeping safe so that he may become the third Captain Battle. 

Meanwhile, Doctor Storm has been kidnapped by a Neo Nazi group headed by as woman villain called the Necromancer. She is after the Doctor's elixir, which can also bring the dead back to life. Her evil plan is to revive Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler. The doctor refuses to give her the serum, so she has his sister kidnapped. The doctor is given little choice, and Himmler is resurrected.  A side effect being that the skin on Himmler's face is turned red.  You would think this would be a perfect time for Sam to suit up and become the new Captain Battle.  But no. Instead he goes to the police. It is only after the police tell Sam that there is nothing they can do about Nazis kidnapping a prominent scientist and a reporter, that Sam finally goes home and puts on the Captain Battle costume. Which includes an eye patch, despite both Sam's eyes being perfectly healthy, which switches eyes from scene to scene.  It took an entire hour of this film for Sam to finally become Captain Battle.

Immediately after being brought back to life, Himmler begins drilling his army of Neo Nazi soldiers in preparation of conquering the United States. The problem being that this movie's budget only allowed for three soldiers.  Although Necromancer says that there are millions of other Neo Nazis across the country, ready to join them. Three soldiers should be no problem for Captain Battle, right? Nope. For the rest of the film, Battle is the punching bag of the villains. Thankfully the Doctor and his sister are able to escape on their own.


ORIGIN:
TomCat had rushed out their own Avengers knockoff called Avenging Force: The Scarab which ended up being released two years before Marvel's Avengers. And that should have been that for ripping off The Avengers. But in 2012, TomCat acquired the distribution rights to The Amazing Bulk. They realized they had knocked off three of the for key Avengers.  Iron Man with their movie Metal Man, Thor with Thunderstorm: The Return of Thor ( because Marvel doesn't own Thor as the mythology goes back thousands of years, so why not blatantly make a Thor film? ), and now The Incredible Hulk. All they needed was a Captain America knockoff, then combine all four in an Avengers knockoff, and TomCat would have it's own cinematic superhero universe. They found their knock off with a public domain golden age superhero called Captain Battle

Captain Battle debuted May, 1941 in issue #10 of Silver Streak Comics, for Lev Gleason Publications, which went out of business in 1955. He became popular enough to earn his own title, but it is unknown exactly when Captain Battle comics were discontinued. Captain Battle's secret identity was Johnathan Battle, a veteran of the first world war who had lost an eye. Determined that no one else should be injured in war, he created his Captain Battle persona as an attempt to prevent World War II from breaking out. A plot device that needed to be altered once World War II actually did break out. While the original Captain Battle had no powers, Johnathan was an inventor who invented various devices which helped him defeat enemies, and later Nazis. One of his sidekicks was Captain Battle Jr., who was his son William Battle. With a costume that looked very similar to that of Captain America, Captain Battle was suitable for a mockbuster. However, TomCat hedged their bet by giving Himmler a red face, making him a Red Skull knockoff. Instead of using Brett Kelly, the director TomCat usually hires for their superhero films, they went with David Palmieri, whose day job is a grip for television shows. While Palmieri does shoot 90 minutes of footage and doesn't resort to unreasonable padding to drag the film out, it is still terrible.  The action scenes have zero energy, the plot is moronic, and despite being a war hardened soldier with supernatural healing abilities, the hero is useless.  Somehow Palmieri was able to make a movie that was far more worse than most of what Brett Kelly directed.

Review
"Don't know what Marvel was thinking with this one" ~ Letterboxd.com

[stethacantus]

#20

Avenging Force: The Scarab  ( 2010 )

25 points, 1 list, #1 Stethacantus

Studio: TomCat Productions
Script: Brett Kelly, Trevor Payer
Producer: Anne-Marie Frigon
Director: Brett Kelly
Cast: Mark Courneyea ( Professor Peter Ward/The Scarab  ), Alix Pasquet ( The Woman in Red ), Jody Haucke ( The Sphinx  ), Jurgen Vollrath ( Professor Joab ), Angela Parent ( Lady Satan ), John E. McLenachan ( The Black Terror ), Mark Redfield ( General Carter ), Andre Givogue ( Bart Hill/Doubledare )

TRAILER

If you handed a three year old your old cell phone and a budget of $1 and asked him to make a 90 minute film, you would get something far more entertaining than the garbage director Brett Kelly has made for Tom Cat films. This countdown is full of examples of his work, and this has to be his worst.

After an unnecessarily long montage of public domain NASA stock footage, an unintelligible voice over explains the back story of a mystical meteor that crashed into ancient Egypt, giving the Egyptians advance knowledge which lead to them building the pyramids.  Meanwhile, the stock footage of Egypt Kelly used to show the meteor crashing,   had the pyramids already built in the background. At a modern day college, professor Peter Ward meets with professor Joab, who has just returned from Egypt and has something important to show Ward. When Joab does not show up to the clandestine parking lot meeting to reveal his amazing secret, and Ward is instead attacked by mercenary goons, Ward decides something must be amiss.  He is saved by a woman in red spandex tights who calls herself The Woman in Red. Together they investigate Jobe's ransacked office, and find a hiding space under the floorboards with a scarab totem. When Ward touches it, he is instantly turned into the superhero The Scarab. The Woman in Red and The Scarab learn that a villain called The Sphinx is after the totem, and also possesses a scroll that gives him the same powers as the Scarab. So they go to The Sphinx 's secret lair in a mattress warehouse and have the lamest battle ever.

This is supposed to be an Avengers mockbuster, and it seems like that is about to happen at the 55 minute mark. With the Sphinx defeated, the Woman in Red introduces the Scarab to the organization she works for, N.E.D.O.R. The head of the organization, General Carter, announces he is starting up an all superhero team called the Avenging Force, and both The Woman in Red and The Scarab join, along with a Punisher rip-off called The Black Terror. ( He originally worked for The Sphinx, but flipped sides immediately when The Woman in Red told him N.E.D.O.R. would pay him double whatever The Sphinx was paying him. ) The fourth superhero, Doubledare, just shows up out of nowhere.  They new team is given their first mission: rescue hostages from some  terrorists. But instead of finally getting to see The Avenging Force in action, the movie cuts to animation.  And by that I mean about four or five poorly drawn pictures of various members of the Avenging Force jumping from helicopters or slugging an armed terrorist,  which the camera pans past or does a close up on as sound effects go off in the background. This goes on for about five minutes with the same drawings being shown over and over again, before cutting to the ending credits ( which credits the animation to Brett Kelly himself. )

This movie has everything you hate about a Brett Kelly film. Bad acting. Dull script. Bad sound. Bad lighting.  Unreasonable locations. 30 minutes of shot footage padded out to 85 minutes via needlessly repeating footage, adding needless establishing  shots of the sky which linger for 30 seconds, slowing down 20 seconds of footage of characters walking so it lasts a full minute, unnecessarily long montages, and his signature slow rolling closing credits, which in this movie are drawn out to 10 minutes.  And added to his shit arsenal, bad animation.  For me, it is the Avenger Force animation that puts this at the bottom.  The movie promises an Avengers knock-off.  Instead we get five minutes of bad animation at the end of the movie of an underwhelming mission.


ORIGIN:
By this time TomCat Films had committed to mockbusting superhero films, had already mockbusted Iron Man with Metal Man, and had gotten into legal trouble with their Dark Knight knock-off The Black Knight Returns. Realizing there were many superheroes from the 1940s who's publishers went bankrupt and had since become public domain, TomCat decided to avoid any further legal trouble by using the public domain heroes on their movies. What legal trouble could they possibly into? Well, they did. With the Doubledare character.  He was based on a public domain called Daredevil. TomCat assumed since the original Daredevil was public domain, Marvel could not sue them for using the name. Inevitably lawyers explain to TomCat that although the character from the 40s was public domain, that Marvel currently owns the copyright to the name Daredevil.  So despite the Daredevil in this film only on screens for a minute, his name was voiced over as Doubledare.  (  Apparently forgetting Nickelodeon owns the copyright to the title Doubledare.  ) meanwhile Marvel had just announced that there would be an Avengers film just as soon as they finished giving Hulk, Thor and Captain America introductory solo films. Without any idea at which date in the future Marvel's Avengers would hit theaters, TomCat decided to beat them to the punch and release an Avengers mockbuster. Which is why Avenging Force: The Scarab was released a full two years beforeMarvel's Avengers. Obviously the movie was planned as a Scarab film, most likely another attempt to mockbust Batman, but retooled as an Avenging Force film. 

The Scarab, The Woman in Red and The Black Terror were all characters first published by Nedor comics. ( as were the villains The Sphinx and Lady Satan. ) Nedor began publishing in 1936 and continued distributing superhero comics until the late 40s when the popularity of the genre plummeted.  Their parent company, Standard Comics, went out of business in 1956. TomCat chose the name of their rip-off S.H.I.E.L.D. to be N.E.D.O.R. as an extra legal precaution against copyright lawsuits from Marvel, as they could claim N.E.D.O.R. was not a spy agency, but a comic book company. Their most popular character was The Black Terror, who ended up in multiple titles and in his own book. He debuted in July of 1941 in #11 of Exciting Comics. His secret identity was pharmacist Bob Benton, who created a chemical that gave him superpowers. His costume was very similar to that of The Punisher, being all black tights with a skull on the chest. But the Black Terror costume had crossed bones under the skull, which was the insignia for pirates. Unlike the Punisher, The Black Terror had a colorful cape. And had powers. The Black Terror in this movie who used guns, so yea, old superhero readapted as a Punisher rip-off. The Woman in Red debuted March 1940  in issue #2 of Thrilling Comics. Her secret identity was Peggy Allen, a policeman who became disillusioned with being assigned duties like meter maid, so decided to don a long red coat and red mask and fight crime on the side. She is believed to be the first female superhero, although  Nedor never put her on the cover of any of the Thrilling Comics she appeared in. Nedor discontinued publishing comics with her in 1945. That same year, July of 1945, The Scarab made his first appearance in issue #34 of Startling Comics. His secret identity was Egyptologist Peter Ward, who after decoding an ancient scroll, became the superpowered hero The Scarab whenever he rubbed his Scarab ring. He would make appearances in various books before Nedor abandoned him in 1947. In 1949 Nedor cancelled the last of the Black Terror comics, ending their association with superheroes.

Daredevil debuted September 1940 in Silver Streak Comics #6 for Lev Gleason Publications. His secret identity was originally Bart Hill, a mute who grew up as an orphan. He had turned mute as a child after witnessing criminals murder his father, then having the  same gang burn him in the chest with a branding iron as a threat so that he wouldn't squeal their identities to the police. The iron left a boomerang shaped scar, so Bart grew up learning and becoming a skilled boomerang expert, so he could use the weapon to fight crime. Daredevil was completely rebooted a year later, changing his identity to Bill Heart, and changing the colors of his costume. Daredevil comics ceased publication in 1950, but a comic with his sidekicks, The Little Wise Guys, lasted until 1956.

Review
"The $5 I'm getting paid to watch this was absolutely not enough" ~ Letterboxd.com

[stethacantus]

#19

Underdog ( 2007 )

27 points, 2 lists, #3 RVR II

Studio: Walt Disney
Script: Joe Piscatella, Adam Rifkin, Craig A, Williams
Producer: Gary Barber, Roger Bimbaum, Johnathan Glickman, Jay Polstein
Director:
Cast: Jason Lee ( Voice of Shoeshine/Underdog ), Alex Neuberger ( Jack Unger ), Peter Dinklage ( Dr. Simon Barsinister ), Amy Addams ( Voice of Sweet Polly Purebred ), Jim Belushi ( Dan Unger ), Patrick Warburton ( Cad Lacky ), John Slattery ( the Mayor ), Taylor Momsen ( Molly ), Samantha Bee ( Principle Hellen Patterson)

TRAILER

Is underdog really a bad film? I have to wonder if the reason why anyone is critical of it is how much reimagining was done to a  classic cartoon. If this movie had ben called Superdog and none of the characters were named after characters in the cartoon series, would I have disliked it as much? Well, it certainly would not be one of my favorite films. It would still be insipid with gags that just don't work, but watchable. The problem is when you gut and reinvent a popular cartoon just to have a barely entertaining formula film.

The original Underdog cartoon series took place in a world where dogs walked and talked and had jobs.  Underdog's secret identity was as a shoeshine boy. Polly Purebred had a job as a reporter. To the humans in the cartoon, the humanoid dogs were perfectly normal.  But the Underdog movie takes place in the real world. Dogs can not talk, do not walk on their hind legs, do not wear people clothes, and do not have jobs. They are animals. So when the dog Shoeshine gains the ability to talk, to the humans it is a miracle.  Instead of replicating the cartoon, Disney chose to have Underdog look like a real dog, with CGI to make him talk.  The dynamics that mad the cartoon work no longer exist.  Setting Underdog in the real world was a terrible decision. Not only would this alienate the fans of the original cartoon, but remove what made that cartoon unique and  fun.

In this movie, a beagle is among the lab animals being experimented on by the mad scientist, Dr. Simon Barsinister. The beagle is exposed to some of the chemical compounds in the lab, and gains super abilities, which allows him to escape rom the lab. He runs in front of the car of Dan Unger and is run over. But thanks to his new super abilities, the beagle is not hurt. Never the less, Dan decides to bring the dog home with him, and names it Shoeshine after it begins licking his shoe. At home, Dan and his son Jack discover the dog can talk, another ability Shoeshine gained from the chemicals in the lab. As Shoeshine begins to realize he has other abilities, such as flying, he decides to become a superhero. Eventually having a showdown with his former owner, Simon Barsinister.

Shoeshine can understand the language of other dogs, which allows a spaniel named Polly Purebred to talk to him in English, while to the other humans, it sounds like Polly is just barking. Dan and his son Jack are characters invented for the movie. In the cartoon Shoeshine Boy did not have any master, nor did Polly Purebred. There is no way Polly would be hired as a news reporter in his film.


ORIGIN:
The advertising agency Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, who would create such iconic campaigns as "Where's The Beef?" for Wendy's, McGruff the Crime Dog for the National Crime Prevention Council and the Duracell Bunny, had picked up General Mills as a client in the late 50s. Needing to create animated commercials for the Cocoa Puffs campaign, they purchased the Mexican animation studio Val Mar, renaming it Gamma Productions. To offset the expense, Gamma animated cartoons for Jay Ward, the first being The Adventures of Bullwinkle and Rocky in 1959.  A year later General Mills asked Dancer Fitzgerald Sample if Gamma could produce a second half hour cartoon similar to Bullwinkle Show which would  include segments with Twinkles the Elephant, the mascot of their latest kids cereal. For that Dancer Fitzgerald Sample founded Total Television, who came up with King Leonardo and his Short Subjects  which featured shorts with the title character, a segment with Twinkle the Elephant, and two other shorts,  The Hunter and  Toder Turtle.  Critics had begun complaining that Saturday Morning cartoons were bad for children, and the FCC responded by demanding the networks  reserve an hour of their Saturday morning programming to be used for educational cartoons. To clear this time, King Leonardo was cancelled. General Mills asked both Jay Ward and Total Television if they could come up with an educational cartoon so they could reclaim that time slot. While Jay Ward was not interested, Total Television came up with Tennessee Tuxedo and His Friends, which was basically the Leonardo show again, and used the shorts that had been produced but never aired. each show opened with a Tennessee Tuxedo short, where each week the penguin would end up visiting professor Phineas J. Whoopee to learn a lesson that would help him with his latest scam.

A year later, two new Saturday morning  slots opened up, and General Mills wanted them filled with two of their sponsored shows. One slot was on ABC, still a new and growing network which  had fewer viewers, and NBC which was the #1 network. General Mills put Jay Ward and Total Television in competition with each other. Whoever came up with the cartoon General Mills liked the most, would have that cartoon put on NBC, while the one in second place would go on ABC where it would earn far less money. Total Television was given one hint; to stay away from frogs. Meaning that the cartoon Jay Ward was creating for the competition had a frog.  Total Television was convinced they had a better chance at General Mills picking their cartoon if  the new character was an animal. But meanwhile, an executive at the parent  company Dancer Fitzgerald Sample decided he wanted the new cartoon to be a parody of Superman. At a meeting, the writes joked that they should ignore the warning not to do a frog cartoon, and instead do a cartoon about a super frog. But at the last minute decided the superhero should be a dog. A remnant of that meeting still exists as part of an inside joke that opens all Underdog cartoons. As a crowd looks up into the sky to se Underdog flying, one yells out "Look, up in the sky!" Then someone yells out "It's a bird!", then the next person yells out "It's a plane, and then an idiot yells out "It's a Frog!" Underdog would respond with the poem. "Not bird. Not plane. Not  even frog. It's little old me, Underdog!" The series Jay Ward was developing was Hoppity Hoper, which ended up on ABC and only lasted a season.

Underdog lasted two seasons on NBC, a respectable run for a Saturday Morning Cartoon. It was picked up by CBS for an additional season, ending it's original run in 1967. CBS also picked up what would turn out to be Total Television's final cartoon series, The Beagles, which CBS wanted as counter programming to ABC's The Beatles. King Features landed the rights to do an animated cartoon of the Fab Four the previous year, and it had been a huge hit for ABC. In a "What the hell were they thinking" moment, CBS thought that they could draw away some of ABC's viewers with a parody of The Beatles and greenlit the series. As opposed to having four Beagles with British accents, Total Television decided the Beagles would be a duo, and modeled their personalities after Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. A new season of Underdog was packaged in with the deal to produce The Beagles. Inevitably ABC did not have the guts to put The Beagles on up against The Beatles, programming it at 12:30 as the final cartoon of the morning, and counter programming Space Ghost against The Beatles at 10:30. While The Beagles ended up in the top ten of Saturday Morning cartoons for the 1966-67 season, CBS chose not to renew it for a second season, cancelling Underdog as well.  Total Television pitched several other ideas for series, none of which were green lit by any network.  Underdog was moved to syndication, initially as a block of random Total Television cartoons, but eventually as The Underdog Show with some new bumpers for the syndicated package. The only other cartoons Total Television produced were the Cocoa Puff commercials. after losing the Cocoa Puffs account in 1969, Total Television was disbanded. The initial run of the Underdog syndicated show ended in 1973. The cartoons returned with cable television in the 80s, and there was talk of possibly producing new episodes. This lead to the idea of an animated Underdog movie, which languished in production hell for years.  The rights eventually transferred to Spyglass Media who opted for a live action movie with dogs similar to what was done with Babe ( 1995 ). The initial idea was for the movie to be financed and distributed by either Universal or Dreamworks, but was finally green lit by a minority owner of Spyglass, Walt Disney Studios, who had released most of Spyglass' productions. Disney had had success in the past licensing and releasing  live action adaptions of cartoons they didn't own, including  George of the Jungle ( 1997 ) and Inspector Gadget ( 1999 ) and saw great potential in a live action adaption of Underdog.



Reviews
"Oh, there's reason to fear. 'Underdog' the movie is here." ~ Bangor Daily News

"par for the course in a town that sees every old idea as something waiting to be deconstructed, reinvented, or reimagined." ~ Filmcritic.com

"The film is a smug and contemptuous mess from beginning to end that is likely to bore little kids and aggravate any adult still holding fond memories of the character from their own childhoods." ~ eFilmCritic.com

"Underdog may have been originally created to sell cereal for General Mills, but this latest incarnation couldn't sell Frisbees at a dog park. " ~ New York Times

[stethacantus]

#18

Suicide Squad ( 2016 )

29 points, 2 lists, #11 stansimpson

Studio: Warner Bros.
Script: David Ayer
Producers: Charles Roven, Richard Suckle
Director: David Ayer
Cast: Will Smith ( Floyd Lawton/Deadshot  ), Jared Leto ( the Joker ), Margot Robbie ( Dr. Harleen Quinzel/Harley Quinn ), Joel Kinnaman ( Rick Flag ), Viola Davis ( Amanda Waller ), Jai Courtney ( George Harkness/Boomerang ), Jay Hernandez (  Chato Santana/El Diablo ), Adewale Akkinuoye-Abaje ( Waylan Jones/Killer Crock ), Cara Delevingne ( Dr. June Moone/Enchantress ), Like Barinholtz ( Captain Hunter Griggs ), Scott Eastwood ( GQ Edwards  ), Adam Beach ( Christopher Weiss/Slipknot ), Karen Fukuhara (  Tatsu Yamashiro/Katana ), Ben Affleck ( Batman ), Ezra Miller ( the Flash )

TRAILER

The MCU exists because Marvel Studios exists. The DCEU sort of doesn't exist because Warner Bros. exists. The MCU was careful pieced together by a production company comprised of Marvel staff members who knew the complete history of their characters.  The DCEU was cobbled together by studio nincompoops who showed no reverence to comic book properties in the past, and instead of studying the history of DC comics to plan the strategy for their DCEU, react to the latest success of the MCU. If an MCU film is a hit, then the DCEU must release a similar film, even if it means re-editing an already completed film. Suicide Squad was the victim of Studio interference, resulting in a confusing edit with missing scenes and inexplicable continuity errors. 

Amanda Waller, the DCEU's version of Nick Fury, decides to put together a team of meta humans called Task Force X, which is to be composed of imprisoned supervillains.  The task force is implemented to fight their first meta human threat; one of the Task Force X members called Enchantress, who has escaped Waller's control, and has taken over an entire city, turning the inhabitants into an army of monsters. The task force has explosive chips put into their heads, designed to explode if they try to escape. They are dropped into the middle of the city and told their assignment is a rescue mission. It turns out the person in need of rescue is none other than Waller.

A lot of this movie seems like someone accidentally showed the reels out of order. And it is probably due to the editing job Warner Bros. did on this film in order to convert it into a Deadpool rip-off. On the one hand, if you don't care about plots, there is enough here to keep you fully entertained for it's entire two hour running time. If you care about coherent stories, then you are out of luck. And if you were a fan of any of the Suicide Squad comic books and were hoping to finally see them come alive on screen, well then my condolences. Once again Warner Bros. proves that they  have more respect for the toilet paper that wipes their ass than they do for their D.C. Comics properties. There is an entertaining film here. But what is here is the horribly mutilated remains of what was reportedly a much better film.


ORIGIN:
The Suicide Squad debuted September 1959 in issue #25 of The Brave and the Bold. Unlike the familiar Squad of today which is comprised of villains, this Suicide Squad was law abiding citizens.  Scientists Hugh Evans, Jess Bright and Karin Grace who are under the command of Colonel Rick Flag. They would take missions that were too dangerous for the army, using their smarts to defeat the enemy.  Of course it helped that the enemy were usually science fiction monsters. The Squad appeared in issues #25, #26 and #27 of The Brave and the Bold in a three issue run. They were replaced in issue #28 by a slightly different team, the debut of the Justice League of America.  After the Justice League's three issue run, the next three issues of The Brave and the Bold featured that famous explorer Cave Carson who's expertise was exploring... you guessed it, caves. The next three issue run featured Hawkman. The Suicide Squad made their triumphant return  in issue #37 in a three issue run in the fall of 1961. And that was the end of the Suicide Squad. The Brave and The Bold would soon after be exclusively superhero stories.  Unfortunately for The Suicide Squad, the world of comic books had changed.  Even as their first three adventures were being published, D.C. was rebooting long out of print superheroes in their Showcase series. A year later The Justice League of America  became a huge sensation, and Marvel responded with The Fantastic Four to be shortly followed by Spider-Man and many other superhero comic books. The Suicide Squad was out of place. Sure they could save cities from giant monsters. But so could a superhero.  And he would do so with powers, not science.  The Suicide Squad had neither powers nor costumes. So D.C. decided never to use them again.

Issue #1 of Legends hit the newsstands in November of 1986. It was something that by that time had become common. A limited series that involved every character in D.C. Comics, and had a story that crossed over to several popular titles.  Something readers had seen before with Crisis on Infinite Earths and Marvel's Secret Wars. Making her debut in this issue was Amanda Waller, a pitbull of a bureaucrat who is obsessed with bringing back the long canceled government agency Task Force X, who in the 60s ran The Suicide Squad.  Amanda wants a new Suicide Squad, only made up of super powered criminals as superheroes refused to work for government agencies.  January 1987 in Legends #3, the Suicide Squad was officially reformed, with Deadshot and Captain Boomerang enlisted in exchange for reductions in their prison sentences.  Also part of the squad were Enchantress, Block Buster and Bronze Tiger, each who willingly joined for their own reasons.  Learning that Task Force X was being reactivated, original team leader Rick Flag enlisted to lead the new Suicide Squad.

The Suicide Squad concept proved popular with readers, and behind the scenes at D.C. wheels began to turn. Two Secret Origins books were published featuring the Suicide Squad history.  One going back to World War II where a team called The Suicide Squadron was formed giving court marshalled soldiers the chance to clean their records by going on suicide missions.  The other detailing the final mission of the 60s Suicide Squad where a battle with a Yeti resulted in the deaths of team members Evans and Bright, which resulted in the government shutting Task Force X down.  In May of 1987 issue #1 of The Suicide Squad was published, featuring the same team from Legends, minus Block Buster who was killed off. Replacing him, two new members Mindboggler and Plastique.  Also joining the team, Doctor Karin Grace from the original Suicide Squad. The book was popular, running for five years and 66 issues, and was followed by several other volumes over the years. While Flag and Waller remain in the series, other team members came and went, often due to getting themselves killed.

While Waller and The Suicide Squad have appeared in some of the animated D.C. shows, and Weller has been a character on both Smallville and Arrow where both times she put a Suicide Squad together. In 2009 Warner announced Suicide Squad among the movies that would make up their D.C. cinematic universe. Of course that meant squat. When it comes to superhero movies, Warner Bros. was a black hole for development, where films are announced, go as far as having Nicholas Cage fitted for his Superman costume, then are canceled on the whim of an executive.  Suicide Squad was on track to descend into that black hole when Guardians of the Galaxy became a huge blockbuster hit for the MCU, which left D.C. scrambling to look through their properties to find anything similar to Guardians of the Galaxy. David Ayer was hired to write and direct it, and was given just six weeks to complete a script. Despite the time crunch, Ayer seemed enthusiastic about the film. Then two things happened.  Deadpool and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Deadpool was a surprises hit which had Warner executives asking "Do we have any D.C. property that is like that?"  Well, they did. Lobo. Unfortunately they didn't even have a Lobo script as that property had been in production hell since 2009. The screenwriter for the upcoming Wonder Woman film, Jason Fuchs, was asked to write and direct  a Lobo film. But realistically, it would be at least three years for Lobo to be completed. Meanwhile, the DCEU had another problem. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice bombed. And by Bombed, I mean it only earned the studio $500 million when they were expecting it to make at least twice as much. And they were expecting every D.C. fan to be jumping for joy to see three of their favorite superheroes on the big screen together for the first time. Instead, they got a lot of bad reviews. One of the biggest complaints was the tone of the movie. "Oh Shit!" they thought to themselves. That was the tone of the soon to be released Suicide Squad. So they ordered $22 million worth of reshoots in order to make Suicide Squad a happier film. Then came the unthinkable. Warner decided they wanted Suicide Squad to be their answer to Deadpool. So they hired a company called Trailer Park Inc. who up to that time only edited trailers, to completely reedit Suicide Squad so it would be just like Deadpool. So Trailer Park cut anything they thought was too dark, which included almost all the Joker scenes. According to Jared Leto, enough Joker footage was cut out of  Suicide Squad to make a complete Joker movie. Trailer Park also added a lot of captions. And a lot of classic pop music which replaced the original score. And they even changed the sequence of the scenes. When they were done, they left behind a big mess. So much of a mess that at the last minute, they hired a third editor to cut together some scenes from the directors cut, and some scenes from the Trailer Park edit. By August 1st the Franken Film was released.

Reviews
"Suicide Squad is a so-so, off-peak superhero movie. It chases after the nihilistic swagger of Deadpool and the anarchic whimsy of "Guardians of the Galaxy" but trips over its own feet." ~ New York Times

"David Ayer's flash-and-dash directing style makes it a challenge to follow the story, not to mention a chore to process the onslaught of violence." ~ US Weekly

"A puzzlingly confused undertaking that never becomes as cool as it thinks it is, Suicide Squad assembles an all-star team of supervillains and then doesn't know what to do with them." ~ Hollywood Reporter

"The year's most muddled piece of storytelling." ~ New York Magazine

"There isn't a moment of spontaneous fun or humor in this long, turgid movie, the latest letdown for DC Comics fans who've been waiting for someone to pick up the baton Christopher Nolan left behind." ~ Miami Herald

"The question isn't whether Suicide Squad is as good as The Avengers, but whether it's as bad as Green Lantern." ~ New York Post

[stethacantus]

#17

Green Lantern ( 2011 )

30 points, 3 lists, #10 RVR II

Studio: Warner Bros.
Script: Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim, Michael Goldberg
Producer: Donald De Line, Greg Berlanti, Geoff Johns
Director: Martin Campbell
Cast: Ryan Reynolds ( Hal Jordan/Green Lantern  ),Blake Lively ( Carol Ferris  ), Peter Sarsgaard ( Hector Hammond  ),  Mark Strong ( Thaal Sinestro), Angela Bassett (  Amanda Waller ), Tim Robbins ( Robert Hammond ), Temuera Morrison ( Abin Sur ), Geoffrey Rush (  voice of Tomar-Re ), Michael Clarke Dunken (  voice of Kilowog ),  Tilka Waitti (  Thomas Kalmaku ), Clancy Brown ( voice of  Parallax )

TRAILER

Imagine you had a magic ring that could instantly create anything that you could imagine, and you did nothing with it.  This is basically the premise behind The Green Lantern, where a human is gifted with a ring that basically turns him into a god, and he spends most of the movie ignoring it. The movie starts with enough mythos to fill several decades of the comic book. In a nutshell, the universe is policed by the Green lantern Corps. who have been around for billions of years. The green Lantern who policed our sector was Abin Sur, who years ago defeated a powerful entity called Parallax, who was imprisoned on a remote planet. That is until some aliens accidentally crash land on the planet, allowing Parallax to basically ingest their essence so that he has enough energy to escape his prison. After eating a bunch of inhabited planets, Parallax hunts  down Abin Sur and morally wounds him. So much for the first five minutes, jammed with tons of exposition and barely acceptable CGI.

Back on Earth we are introduced to hot shot test pilot Hal Jordan. After wrecking a multi million dollar jet doing something maverick, and betting bawled by his bosses for it, we spend another seven minutes meeting his family. Pretty much a time killer as after we meet each individual  family member, they are never seen in the movie again. Best guess, these are supposed to be "emerging characters" who would have a bigger role in the sequels, but for this particular movie, at least five minutes of not getting  to the plot.  Well, if Hal is not going to move the plot along, the movie will have to do it. While walking to his car, he is suddenly encased in a green bubble and taken to the site where Abin Sur has crashed landed. Sur tells Hal that  his ring has selected him as worthy enough to be his replacement as the new Green Lantern. Then before dropping dead, Sur gives Hal his ring and a green lantern and explains how Hal needs to wear the ring  and use the lantern to energize it. Well, that is not so bad, right? We spent fifteen minutes with this character, five of which were him having heart to heart talks with family members. But now that we have gotten past the boring  "getting to know Hal Jordan" part, we are finally getting to the superhero part of the film. Only we don't. First we have to go through a comedy routine of Hal trying to figure out how to energize the ring. Then once he figures that out, he completely looses interest in the ring and goes to a bar. The ring may have chosen Hal Jordan because he was worthy of it, but it failed to chose someone with imagination. If most of us were given a Green Lantern power ring, we would be in the back yard five minutes later playing with it for hours. Hal does nothing with it. That is until he accidentally uses it during a bar fight, creating a giant green fist that knocks out his opponents.

But once again Jordan is not moving the plot along fast enough, so once again the movie takes over, and once again Jodan is transported away in a green bubble. This time to the home planet  of the Green Lantern Corps., Oa.  Ther Jordan is given his Green Lantern CGI uniform, meets his fellow Lanterns, and is trained how to use his ring by Sinestro. There has been a lot of complaints about the CGI in this film. Actually there is nothing wrong about Jordan's Green Lantern uniform, aside from the mask which looks like it was painted on, which begs the question, why did they spend millions to give Ryan Reynolds a CGI mask when for about $10 they could have just painted one on his face and it would look absolutely the same? The only problem with the CGI on Oa is that it is muddy and dark. It is almost as if the CGI wasn't finished in time, so they used filters to blur it out. But otherwise, I would not call this bad CGI. Bland definitely, but not bad. Still, Oa is a fascinating planet, and as such, the movie barely spends any time there. Perhaps the idea was to spend more time on Oa and get to know the Green Lantern Corps. in the sequels. But Jordan only stays there long enough to decide he doesn't want to be a Green Lantern, and go back to Earth where the superhero plot is once again put on hold. Meanwhile, a reimagined version of Hector Hammond is asked by Amanda Waller to perform an alien autopsy on the recovered body of  Abin Sur. While performing the autopsy, Hector becomes infected with whatever attacked Sur, and becomes possessed by Parallax, giving him psychic powers. At a party that Hector's father is throwing, Hector tries to kill him by causing dad's helicopter to crash. But Hal is also at the party, and for the first time in the move, finally, finally, fi-na-ly, does some superhero shit! Putting on the power ring, he turns into The Green Lantern... and turns the crashing helicopter into a green race car, then uses the ring to create a giant hot wheel track for the car to race on. Whaaaaaat?

So basically, that is how the world is introduced to their newest superhero, The Green Lantern. This is one of only three set pieces with Green Lantern acting as a superhero in the movie. Most of the Green Lantern action is saved for the final encounter with Parallax, which like most of the few Green Lantern scenes, is brief and not very imaginative considering Jordan could create anything with his ring, and just creates guns and giant fists. It seems as if too much was held back purposely so it could be used in the sequel. For example, in the few scenes on Oa, Sinestro argues that they should harness the yellow power of fear in order to fight Parallax. In the post credit scene, Sinestro goes ahead and puts on a yellow ring he has just made, turning his uniform yellow. He is about to become the villain we know from the comic book. But like most of everything in this movie, it is too little too late.


ORIGIN:
The first Green Lantern made his debut July 1940 in All American Comics #16 for All American Publications. His credited creator was Mart Dellon, but was mostly created by comic book writer Bill Finger, who a year previous had mostly created Batman. The Green Lantern was railroad engineer Alan Scott, who after wrecking his own train, discovers a mysterious  talking green lantern in the wreckage that promises him power. At the lantern's instructions, Alan makes a ring which can harness the lantern's power. However, he must hold the ring up to the lantern every 24 hours to recharge it. Alan would decide to use his new powers as a costumed superhero.  In 1946 All American Comics, who's roster of superheroes included Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Hawkman and Hawkgirl and Doctor Mid-Nite, merged with National Comics, home of Batman and Superman. With the decline in sales of superhero comics in the late 1940s, National discontinued publishing Green Lantern comics in 1951. In 1959 D.C. decided to bring back their Golden Age superheroes, reinventing most of them. The new Green Lantern was fighter pilot Hal Jordan, introduced October 1959 in Showcase #22.  Jordan discovers a dying extraterrestrial named Abin Sur, who tells him he is a member of the Green Lantern Corps, and his ring had selected Jordan to be his replacement once he had died. Unlike with Alan Scott, who's abilities were limited to super powers, Jordan was able to use the ring to create anything he imagined.  His arch enemy Sinestro was introduced two years later, August 1961, in issue #7 of Green Lantern.

In the mid 90s Warner Bros. became interested in making a Green Lantern film, and offered it to Kevin Smith. At the time his film Chasing Amy was considered a contender for an Oscar nomination, and he had been writing the script for Superman Lives for the studio.  However, his experience writing the Superman script, which involved having to include a lot of dumb suggestions from studio executives, like having guards at Superman's Fortress of Solitude so they could fight polar bears, suggested to him that maybe a superhero film for Warner Bros. would be a disaster.  Batman & Robin released later that year seemed to confirm his fears. So he turned them down.  Warner then asked Quinton Tarantino to write and direct a Green Lantern film, and he turned them down as well. Warner decided they wanted Green Lantern to be a comedy.  In 2004 Robert Smegil submitted a comedic script for a Green Lantern film and Jack Black was cast as the lead. But then Warner decided they maybe shouldn't be turning their superhero properties into comedies, especially after an internet backlash when the Jack Black version was announced.  So that version was scrapped, and David S. Goyer was asked to write and directed a Green Lantern movie. Which he ultimately didn't. 

For a while Warner was toying with casting Corey Reynolds as John Stewart, the Green Lantern who took over when Hal Jordan went insane and wiped out the Green Lantern Corps., and who had been the Green Lantern since the 90s. But then hired Greg Berlanti, the producer and head writer of Dawson's Creek as well as a producer for many other Warner Bros. television series, to write and direct a Green Lantern movie, and Berlanti chose to feature Hal Jordan  in the film. He hired comic book writers Marc Guggenheim and Michael Green to help him write the script. Sinestro was to be an emerging character, who would not become a full villain until the third film. Instead, Berlanti chose Hector Hammond to be the Lantern's first villain. Predating Sinestro by two  issues, Hector Hammond made his first appearance April 1961 in issue #5 of The Green Lantern. After rejecting two of the scripts, Warner Bros. approved of the third script Berlanti submitted, and the movie was greenlit. Except that Warner suddenly had cold feet on a television producer directing a big budget special effects film, and fired Berlanti. Replacing him was  Martin Campbell, who had directed Casino Royale ( 2006 ) two years earlier, and had also directed another prominent Bond film Goldeneye ( 1995 ), and had experience with superheroes by directing the two Antonio Banderas Zorro films. Of course, Campbell had a completely different vision for the film, and hired Michael Goldenberg, the screenwriter working on the latest Harry Potter film, to rewrite the entire script. Instead of delaying the film, Warner insisted on a Christmas 2010 release date, finally moving the date to summer 2011 when at the last minute the shooting location was moved from Australia to New Orleans for unspecified legal reasons, delaying principal photography by two months.  When filming did begin, Goldenberg had not yet completed the rewrite to both Campbell and the studio's specifications. Pages of script would be handed in as filming progressed. The production was so hurried that they began shooting before all of the roles were cast.

Warner's reason for wanting a Green Lantern film as soon as possible was Marvel's announcement of an Avengers film, combining four different superhero franchises. Warner, who had all the D.C. superheroes, began to wonder why there was no Justice League film in their pipeline, and decided that from that point on, all their superhero films would share the same cinematic universe. The Green Lantern was to be the first film leading to a Justice League crossover event movie. That is if a Green Lantern film could ever be completed. Campbell had wanted Bradley Cooper to play Hal Jordan. He had thought he had made this clear to the studio.  Campbell learned from a press release that Ryan Reynolds had been cast as Hal Jordan. This was just the beginning of the studio constantly interfering with the film, culminating with Campbell's directors cut being thrown out, and replaced with a studio cut. Further exasperating things was that Ryan Reynolds and Martin Campbell didn't get along, and would constantly class on set. Then of course there were the rewrites, one of which changed the main character to Parallax. In the comics, Parallax was initially the new name Hal Jordan went by after he went insane. It was later revealed that an entity called Parallax had possessed Jordan, which would later become a villain without a host. In this film Parallax was basically a giant cloud that occasionally manifests a skull. This only four years after Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer turned Galactus into a giant menacing cloud.  The Green Lantern ended up doing so poorly at the box office and getting so many bad reviews that Warner Bros. decided it would not be the first film in their proposed DC cinematic universe. While The Green Lantern ended up an aborted attempt to launch a DC cinematic universe, fired director Greg Berlanti had the last laugh when he was able to accomplish for Warner Bros. television what the movie division wasn't. A shared superhero universe. The Arrowverse began a year after Green Lantern was released with the series Arrow, followed by The Flash, Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow.

Reviews
"Even in the brainless world of cinematic comic books gone bad, it's as bad as it gets." ~ Observer

"Green Lantern fails to shine." ~ US Weekly

"Despite a winning aw-shucks performance from Ryan Reynolds, the film can't overcome its thinly drawn characters and generally hokey execution." ~ Screen International

"Neither amusing nor exciting enough to ensure a long-running franchise." ~ Washington Post

"Green Lantern is a new primer on how not to make a comicbook movie unless you want to screw shit up." ~ Rolling Stone

[stethacantus]

#16

Condorman ( 1981 )

25 points, 2 lists, #1 stansimpson

Studio: Disney
Script: Mickey Rose, Marc Stirdivant
Producer: Jan Williams
Director: Charles Jarrott
Cast: Michael Crawford ( Woodrow Wilkins/ Condorman ), Barbara Carrera (  Natalia Rambova ), Oliver Reed ( Krokov ), James Hampton ( Harry ), Jean Pierre-Kalfon ( Morovich ), Dana Elcar ( Russ ), Vernon Dobtcheff ( Russian Agent ), Robert Arden ( CIA Chief )

TRAILER

Aside from this being a boring unfunny comedy, perhaps the worst thing about Condorman is that it it is a superhero film that isn't a superhero film. Despite being promoted and classified as a superhero film, it isn't. There are a couple of brief scenes that bookend the movie when Michael Crawford dons the Condorman costume, so it just barely counts as a superhero film. But it is all a bait and switch. You went into Condorman expecting to see a goofy superhero film, you end up seeing a bad spy parody instead.

The film opens with a man in a costume  standing on an upper floor of the Eiffel Tower. He announces that he is Condorman, and wings fold out of his costume.  He glides off, but a minute into the flight the wings fail, and he plummets into the river. The man's name is Woodrow Wilkins, a cartoonist who had created the superhero Condorman. For some reason he needs to test out a replica of the Condorman costume, because his readers want realism. In a superhero comic book? Never mind. This was just a plot device to put Woodrow in a superhero costume. Woodrow's brother, who is an agent,  asks him to participate in an easy mission. The CIA and KGB want to exchange intelligence, but need someone neutral to do the exchange. Woodrow takes his role a bit too serious, showing up at the exchange in a trench coat, and deciding he needs a spy name, calling himself Condorman.  Enemy agents show up to steal the briefcase being exchanged, and Woodrow is able to fight them off, but mostly by accident as his stumbling around the room causes agents to punch each other. The KGB agent at te swap, Natalia Rambova, is so impressed by Condorman, that when she contacts the CIA a week later to defect, she demands that they send Agent Condorman. The CIA has no choice but to send Woodrow, who must continue impersonating being a super spy until he is able to smuggle Natalia out of Russia and across Europe.

Michael Crawford comes off as the poor man's Jacques Clouseau rather than a poor man's James Bond. There is a lot of physical comedy here that is simply not funny. And action scenes which are simply not thrilling. The film alternates between boring and annoying for it's entire run time. In the final ten minutes the movie finally gets back to the superhero theme. Natalia has been captured by the film's villain Krokov and is being held at his cliffside villa. Woodrow is able to sneak in, and both he and Natalie are able to escape because he is wearing his Condorman superhero costume with the wings. This time the wings do not break, even though he is carrying the extra weight of Natalie.  Once again in a superhero costume, all Woodrow does is glide down from the cliff of the villa to a marina on the other side of the lake. The most action you see  from the superhero Condorman  is in the misleading animated credit scene in the opening of the film.


ORIGIN:
The Game of X was published in 1965. Written by popular Science Fiction writer  Robert Sheckley, it came out during the spy film craze. The story dealt with William P Nye,  an ordinary man living abroad in Paris who is recruited  for a spy mission by a friend who reveals himself to be an agent. Basically, they need someone to help trap an enemy agent, but it needs to be someone who can't be identified as an agent. Basically all Nye is to do is be bait for the trap. But the mission doesn't go as planned, and soon Nye is mistaken as Agent X. Game of X became one of Sheckley's more popular novels. It was optioned by Disney in the mid 70s around the time they were looking to begin making PG films.  Gradually Game of X was developed to the point it was no longer recognizable from it's source material. Among these changes was to change the lead protagonist  from an unemployed bohemian who is recruited by a friend,  to a cartoonist who is recruited by his brother, and the name of the agent he is mistaken for from Agent X to Condorman. Of course the reason for the name change to Condorman was so the studio could work in the superhero angle. Spy films were  fading in popularity, while the success of the movie Superman had studios looking at the superhero genre as the possible next big thing.


Reviews
"Bland and bizarre attempt at Disneyfied super-heroics." ~ eFilmCritic.com

"Unoriginal, unfunny superhero spoof with a bewildered cast and an obvious plot." ~ Empire

[stethacantus]

#15

Steel ( 1997 )

33 points, 3 lists, #6 Darth Geek

Studio: Warner Bros.
Script: Kenneth Johnson
Producer: David Salzman, Quincy Jones, Joel Simon
Director: Kenneth Johnson
Cast: Shaquille O'neal ( John Henry Irons/Steel ), Annabeth Gish ( Susan Sparks ), Judd Nelson ( Nathaniel Burke ), Richard Roundtree ( Uncle Joe ), Irma P Hall  ( Grandma Odessa  ), Ray J ( Martin ), Hill Harper ( Slats ),  Kevin Grevioux ( Singer ), Charles Napier (  Colonel David ), Kerrie Keane ( Senator Nolan ), Thom Barry ( Sergeant Marcus ), Rutanya Alda ( Mrs. Hunt )

TRAILER

Military weapons designer John Henry Irons resigns in disgust after his close friend and co-worker, Susan Sparks, is paralyzed in a weapons test gone wrong. This is the fault of private Nathaniel Burke, who turned a test weapon up to it's highest setting and fired it without authorization, causing the building they were all in to collapse.  Burke ends up court marshalled and dishonorably discharged from the army, but decides to steal a bunch of Iron's weapon designs before he leaves. Months later Irons witnesses a bank robbery using his laser weapons, and decides he has to do something to stop them. Convincing Sparks to join his crusade, he takes her to his secret workshop under a pile of trash in a junkyard.  Together they design weaponized armor that Irons uses to fight crime as the vigilante called Steel. The police do not appreciate this armor wearing vigilante, and set out to arrest him. They eventually arrested Irons because they suspect the weapons on Steel were his design. He is eventually released for lack of evidence, and discovers that Burke has been selling his weapons on the internet.  As Steel, Irons invades one of Burke's weapon auctions and fights him and his men, eventually defeating Burke when the laser Burke fires at him bounces off his armor and back at Burke.


ORIGIN:
Steel first appeared Jun 1993 in issue #500 of The Adventures of Superman as one of the four superheroes claiming to be Superman after the real Superman had just been killed by Doomsday in the infamous Death of Superman story arc. It was later revealed that Steel wasn't a reincarnation of Superman, but arms designer John Henry Irons, who felt he owed a debt because Superman had once saved him. Steel would go on to his own title. 

One fan of  Steel was Quincy Jones, who inquired about the film rights. Warner wanted to do a film adaptation of The Death of Superman in a film called Superman Reborn which would probably include Steel, so agreed to allow Jones to produce a Steel film as a spinoff. However, as Superman Reborn fell apart and morphed into another proposed adaption of Superman's death called Superman Lives that didn't have Steel, a spinoff movie was no longer needed. Presumably Warner didn't want the bad press from cancelling an Africa American superhero film, so decided to make a Steel film that didn't involve Superman in his origin. But they also wanted it made on the cheap. So they hired Kenith Johnson to write and direct it. Johnson was a television director known for directing shows in the science fiction genre, and had two feature films to his credit; Short Circuit 2 and D3: The Mighty Ducks, both shot under budget.  Shaquille O'neal was signed as the lead.  Since Shaquille was playing for the American Olympics Basketball team, Johnson was given only seven weeks to shoot all of Shaquille's scenes, which left no time for retakes.  During one take part of the Steel costume fell off. Since it would have taken nearly an hour to remove the broken costume and replace it with a different one, Johnson had little choice but to write the blooper into the film with voice overs claiming the weapons the thugs were using against Steel caused his armor to break.

Midway through filming, Shaquille's acting career ending movie Kazaam was released.  However, I doubt the speed up shooting schedule or depression over the Kazaam disaster could be blamed for how this film turned out. Johnson wrote a script that was designed to make a film that was as low budget as possible.  And it was full of humor that wasn't funny. It was frankly a bad script.  For example, taking advantage of the fact that Shaquille O'neal was a world famous basketball player, a scene was written where Shaq is walking past friends playing basketball in the park, tries to throw the ball in the basket himself, and misses. Through the movie  this gag is repeated, with Shaq tossing various things at garbage cans and missing.  During the climatic battle, a grenade is tossed into a closed room with Steel, and the only way he can get rid of it and save his friends before it explodes, is to toss it through a small opening conveniently cut into the  mesh fencing surrounding the room. Steel is finally able to make the shot, and it lands in the next room, taking out one of the bad guys. Groan.


Reviews
"Slow to gather momentum and generates little excitement or tension." ~ New York Times

"Packs the entertainment oomph of a free throw." ~ Jam! Movies

"It could be worse. Shaq could be rapping." ~ eFilmCritic.com

[stethacantus]

#14

Hulk ( 2003 )

34 points, 2 lists, #8 stansimpson

Studio: Universal
Script: James Schamus, Michael France, John Turman
Producers: Avi Arad, Larry Franco, Gale Anne Hurd, James Schamus
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Eric Bana ( Bruce Banner/Hulk ), Jennifer Connely ( Betty Ross ), Sam Elliot ( Thunderbolt Ross ), Jesse Lucas ( Glenn Talbot ), Nick Nolte ( David Banner ), Lou Ferrigno and Stan Lee ( Security Guards )

TRAILER

Ang Lee's Hulk is more of a work of art than it is a piece of entertainment.  The Incredible Hulk is probably the easiest Marvel character to write a script for. The basic story: Scientist is pelted with Gamma rays. Scientist discovers when he gets angry, he transforms int green giant. All his clothes rip except for his pants. The green giant goes on a rampage. The army shows up to stop him, The green giant smashes the army. They name him The Hulk. Scientist tries to cure himself of turning into The Hulk, but fails. People keep getting scientist angry, causing him to turn into The Hulk again and again. Which causes him to fight the army again and again. Another monster shows up and The Hulk battles it. Hulk wins, turns back int scientist, and then decides to go some place where no one can find him and he can work on a cure.  So basically, you combine Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde with Frankenstein and you have your plot. Easy, right?

But for some reason you get an overcomplicated origin story. In the comics Bruce becomes The Hulk due to being exposed to Gamma rays. In this movie the origin begins before Bruce is even born. Bruce's father is a scientist working on a super soldier formula for the army. After being told to shut the experiment down, he decides to test the formula on himself and ejects the formula into his own arm, resulting in nothing happening. However, when Bruce is born a year later, his father notices something wrong with his eyes, and looking at Bruce's blood in a microscope, realizes he is a mutant. But wait, there is more. The army discovers his father is still experimenting on the super soldier formula and orders him off the base. He retaliates by causing a reactor in the lab to explode, causing a mushroom cloud of radiation which toddler Bruce is exposed to.  Years later Bruce is now a scientist who is part of a team working on another super soldier formula using nanobots who are activated by a small blast of Gamma rays. So far every time they test the nanobots on a frog, it explodes into goop.  There is a lab accident where  Bruce breathes in a cloud of nanobots, and shortly after is exposed to a full blast of gamma rays. So basically it is altered DNA, exposure to radiation as a kid, nanobots and a full blast of Gamma radiation that turns Banner into The Hulk. Really? Did his origin need to be that complicated? Did they need to tack on all that other extra stuff like mutant DNA and nanobots? It should be pointed out that Bruce's father later becomes a variation of The Absorbing Man, and his origin story is overcomplicated as well.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this film is that Ang Lee is a director who makes dramas. So most of this movie is about character development, and very little is about Banner turning into the Hulk. It takes 45 minutes before Banner finally turns into The Hulk, and even then the scene where he destroys his lab is brief and takes place in the dark, then it is back to another 20 minutes of character drama before Banner turns into The Hulk again. To make up for the lack of action, Ang Lee chose to transition from scene to scene by pulling back to reveal  the previous scene in a comic book panel in a book where other scenes are inside panels and, and then zooming in on a panel that has the next scene. He said that he did this in tribute of comic books. But this is as much of a tribute to comic books as a minstrel show is a tribute to African Americans. At least he didn't flood the sets with primary colors as other directors do when they are paying tribute to the comic book format.

The only time this movie works is whenever The Hulk is finally on screen and we get exciting action. But it is only four scenes. There is The Hulk's battle with Banner's laboratory at the 45 minute mark, The Hulk's battle with mutant poodles ( yep, that happens. ), The Hulk battling the entire Army, and The Hulk battling his insane father as an Absorbing Man. It is probably best that three of those battles take place in the dark of night, because the CGI is slightly sub par, even for the year this film was released. The color of The Hulk is just slightly off, making him a shade too bright green, which makes him stick out as an obvious CGI character. Also, it appears motion capture was not used, resulting in The Hulk's movements not looking natural. This is especially evident when The Hulk makes long leaps. Sub par CGI is forgivable when the plot is exciting, as it was with the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man film. But not when the film is as ponderous as this one is. There is also some surprisingly bad performances for an Ang Lee film. Jennifer Connelly acts as if she is stunned for the entire film. Nick Nolte delivers an over the top performance as Bruce's insane father. And Joss Lucas gives a campy performance as Glenn Talbot, completely ignoring that he is the only actor in this movie doing this.


ORIGIN:
With the success of The Fantastic Four, Marvel Comics publisher Martin Goodman wanted Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to come up with more superheroes. Lee had noticed that The Thing was the most popular character in The Fantastic Four, and decided the next superhero should similarly be a powerful monster. Drawing inspiration from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and from some of the science fiction anthology books he had been writing for in the past few years, Lee devised a character that turns into a powerful monster.  In the first issue of The Incredible Hulk, published May of 1962, scientist Bruce Banner notices that a teenager has driven onto a test site for the army's lates weapon, a Gamma radiation bomb. Bruce is able to run out into the field where Rick Jones is sitting in his car, and get him into a protective ditch before the bomb goes off, but is unable to get into the ditch himself before the bomb goes off, exposing him to a direct blast of Gamma radiation. Bruce survives, but discovers that at night he turns into a giant grey creature. ( The skin color would change to green when it was discovered the printers could not properly print the shade of grey Lee wanted. )

At this point I would like to go off topic a bit, but this the one problem I always had with The Hulk's origin story. Lets say Rick Jones had never driven out onto the test range that day. The test would have been a success, and the army would have never known the side effects of the G Bomb was that it turned people into hulks. Years later we would be dropping the G Bomb  on terrorists, and suddenly be attacked by an army of angry jihadists hulks.

From the beginning Stan Lee found it impossible to write Hulk stories. He was supposed to be a superhero, but acted as a mindless beast. In the first issue it is actually Banner who acts as the hero. The Hulk and Rick Jones are captured by The Gargoyle who wants to use mind control to make The Hulk a weapon for the Soviet Union. However, by the time The Hulk is brought to Russia, the sun comes up and he turns back into Banner. It is Banner who tells The Gargoyle he can cure his physical deformities. When this is done, the grateful Gargoyle releases Banner and Jones, then blows up the Sovie base they were being held at. In the second issue Earth is being invaded by an alien race called the Toad Men. While the Hulk briefly fights the Toad Men, he mostly spends the issue fighting the army, and it is once again Banner who saves the day by inventing a weapon that disables the Toad Men's armada of spacecrafts. Lee continuously adapted the book to try an make The Hulk a superhero. First, by giving Rick Jones the ability to control The Hulk and order him to smash the bad guys. Then for Banner to build a gamma ray gun so they could turn him into The Hulk whenever it was needed, and turn him back into Banner whenever the threat was gone. Finally Banner altering the Gamma gun so it turned him into The Hulk, but with Banner's mind still intact. In issue #6, the ray gun fails to turn The Hulk back into Banner. When faced with staying big and green forever, he goes into a rage, which causes him to finally turn back into Banner. Deciding exposure to the Gamma Ray gun was becoming too risky, Banner decides not to use it again. This was actually the final issue of The Incredible Hulk. By giving him the mind of Banner, it had made the character less interesting, and sales dropped off, so the decision  was to cancel the series. But before the Hulk disappeared completely, he needed to make one last appearance. Fantastic Four fans had ben begging to have a story where The Thing and The Hulk battled each other. So the same month The Incredible Huk was cancelled, he made what was to be his final appearance in Fantastic Four #12.

A few month later Goodman wanted another superhero team, this time teaming up all the superheroes Lee had created in the past couple of years. The Hulk was brought back to be a founding member of The Avengers, along with Iron Man, Thor and Ant-Man & Wasp. By now The Hulk was altered yet again so he no longer had Banner's mind, and the Gamma Ray gun used to transform him back into Banner no longer exists. In fact, The Hulk never seems to transfer back into human form, and for a while his human identity is retconned as someone called Don Blake. Once again Lee found The Hulk hard to write for, so decided to get rid of the character after the first issue. In Avengers #2, Ant-Man reviles he can transform into Giant-Man, and The Hulk decides to quit. In issue #3 he returns as a villain the Avengers need to stop, and from that point on would be a recurring villain in various Marvel comics.

Tales to Astonish began as an anthology comic, but after publishing the short story that introduced Ant-Man, soon became that hero's book, with a Wasp story as a backup feature.. In October of 1964 it was decided to make Tales to Astonish a split comic with two superheroes who each had half the book. The Hulk was brought back beginning in issue #60. This time there was no attempt to make The Hulk a hero, as he only occasionally fought villains whenever they angered him, or whenever he sometimes befriended  a hero. It became established that Banner turned into The Hulk whenever he became angry. With issue #70 Ant-Man was replaced with Sub-Mariner, a one time superhero from the 1940s who returned in the 60s as a villain after nuclear bomb tests destroyed his underwater kingdom. Tales to Astonish allowed both him and The Hulk to become Marvel's anti-heroes. In April 1968 Sub-Mariner was given his own comic book, and with issue #102 Tales to Astonish was dropped from the title and it was officially retitled The Incredible Hulk, confusing comic book collectors for decades trying to find issues #7 trough #101 of The Incredible Hulk. 

In 1977 Universal made a deal with Marvel Comics to adapt a number of their superheroes for live television. The first hero they chose was The Hulk, but only because producer Kenneth Johnson was inspired by the book Les Misérables and wanted to do a series featuring a fugitive character. Having never read a comic book before, Johnson realized he didn't like any of the source material, so decided to abandon all of it and make a more realistic version of The Hulk story. It also helped the budget to do away with The Hulk smashing entire armies and instead having him just strong enough to throw around men, turn over a car or smash a hole in a wall. Deciding The Hulk's dialog in the comic books was silly, Johnson decided The Hulk should not have the ability to talk. He also decided to do away with every supporting character from the book, including Rick Jones, Betty Ross, General Ross, and even Bruce Banner, who is the slightly different character David Banner in the series. He also changed The Hulk's origin to Banner self inflicting gamma rays on himself in a lab experiment rather than from a bomb test. Once again this was mostly determined by the budget. The one thing Marvel stopped him from changing was The Hulk's color, which Johnson nearly changed to Orange. The Incredible Hulk became a hit series for CBS, lasting five seasons between November of 1977 and May of 1982. In 1988 NBC aired a reunion move called The Return of the Incredible Hulk which also featured the first television appearance of Thor. It was successful enough for a second Hulk tv movie to be made, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk ( 1989 ) which also marked the first screen appearance of Daredevil and Kingpin. It was also the first Marvel fil Stan Lee made a cameo in. A third movie, The Death of the Incredible Hulk  ( 1990 ) ended with Banner dying on the ground after falling from an airplane as The Hulk. Marvel promised The Hulk would be brought back to life in another television film, The Revenge of the Incredible Hulk, but tat was cancelled due to the real death of Bill Bixby who played David banner in the series.

There were plans for a theatrical version of The Hulk as early as 1990, but Universal kept pulling the plug on a Hulk film whenever it got close to principal photography for budgetary reasons. A Hulk movie probably never would have been made if Ang Lee had not decided he wanted to direct a comic book movie. A director  of acclaimed dramas like The Ice Storm ( 1997 ), he had huge success with a martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ( 2000 ) which had earned over $200 million at the box office, and was nominated for several awards including the Best Picture Oscar. All of Hollywood was itching to work with Lee. So when he picked up the latest script for a Hulk movie and told Universal he was interested in doing it, they immediately greenlit the film. Lee then had his writes rewrite the script to his specifications. The movie ended up a critical disaster, with some critics praising it as an ambitious experiment on the comic book genre, but most critics giving it bad reviews, and almost every comic book fan calling it terrible.  Ang Lee regained his credibility two years later with Brokeback Mountain, but Universal cancelled all plans for any Hulk franchise, only making a second Hulk film at Marvel Studio's insistence, as they wanted the character rebooted for the MCU.


Reviews
"Incredibly long, incredibly tedious, incredibly turgid." ~ New York Times

"An arty-farty super-hero flick." ~ Seattle Times

"Unlike your average comic-book blockbuster, The Hulk isn't a bad cartoon. It's a bad modern Greek tragedy." ~ Slate

[stethacantus]

#13

The Pumaman ( 1980 )

34 points, 2 lists, #5 Darth Geek

Studio: Metropolitan/ADM Films
Script: Massimo De Rita, Luigi Angelo
Producer: Italo Zingarelli
Director: Alberto De Martino
Cast: Walter George Alton ( Professor Tony Farms/The Pumaman ), Donald Pleasence ( Korbas ), Miguel Angel Fuentes ( Vadinho ), Sydne Rome ( miss Jane Dobson ), Silvano Tranquilli ( Ambassador Dobson ), Benito Stefanelli ( Rankin )

TRAILER

In ancient Aztec ,  a U.F.O. that answers the question "What would you get if the Death Star f#@ked the mother ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind?" lands and gives the inhabitants  a golden mask of unspeakable power. ( Or at least the movie never speaks about just what the hell this mask actually does. ) The U.F.O. then tells the inhabitants that the guardian of the mask will be his son ( Soooo... the Death Star's grandson? ) The U.F.O.'s son will have the powers of a god, and will pass those powers and the mask guardian job down to his son, who will pass it down to his son, and so on. And the guardian shall be known as Pumaman.  After the opening credits the movie abruptly cuts to the lair of the film's villain Kobras who is in possession of the mask. Oh well, so much for a Pumaman protecting the thing. Kobras figures out one thing the mask does. If you point it at someone in the room, it creates a clay replica of their head, and from that point on they are under the mind control of the person who used the mask. Which he has done to  Jane Dobson, an archeologist who he had invited over to decipher the writing on the mask, which is the legend of the Pumaman. Strangely enough, he turns Dobson into a mind slave after she has read the inscription. Considering Kobras prefers wearing what amounts to a leather fetish outfit, and has his henchmen wear the identical outfit, and we see that Miss Dobson is wearing the same outfit which he presumably asked her to wear, then that means a visiting archeologist agreed to wear something so ridiculous before she was mind controlled?

Kobras decides that they need to find the current Pumaman and kill him.   So he sends his henchmen to find every American in England who's parents were both killed in plane crashes, and who's father was a doctor. They find at least four of them, each who are killed by being thrown out of windows in high rise. Okay, so Kobras knows this specific detail of the current Pumaman, that he is the American son of a doctor who was killed in an airline accident who is currently living in England. And he doesn't know his name? The henchmen toss four men out the window. There were at least  five American men ( including the next Pumaman ) living in England who's doctor father was killed in a plane crash? How many plane crashes are there in England? The only way this statistically makes sense is if there was some sort of doctor's  convention in England, they all took the same airliner, and they all sent their kids ahead in a different airliner who became orphans and sent to a British orphanage instead of being sent back home to live with relatives. American professor Tony Farms of the British Museum is warned by a police officer friend that he matches the description of the murdered men, but Tony ignores him. Wile working in the museum, a large muscular Mexican grabs him and throws him out the window, where he survives a three story fall without a scratch. The Mexican tracks him down again and tells him that he survived the fall because he is the Pumaman, then vanishes. He meets Jane Dobson, who still under the power of Kobras, invites him to her house for a dinner party. This is a trap by Korbas, who has narrowed the possible Pumaman candidates to Tony. While getting dressed for the party, the large Mexican enters his room and introduces himself as Vadinho, the high priest of some Aztec  religion that worships Pumaman. He tells Tony that he is the next Pumaman, and that the party at Jane's house is a trap. Tony doesn't believe him, and goes to the party anyway. It does turn out to be a trap, and Tony ends up being chased onto the roof by gunmen. From the ground, Vadinho tosses Tony a belt, and tells him to put it on.  He does, and transforms into Pumaman, then very awkwardly flies off. 

Now that Tony believes Vadinho that he is the Pumaman, he allows Vadinho to train him. Meanwhile Kobras is using the mask to control the leaders of the world. Pumaman tries to get the mask back, but is thwarted by a forcefield.  Korbas then uses the mask on Tony, who is able to resist it's powers. But it also saps him of his Pumaman powers. So Tony plays dead, and Korbas' henchmen take his body to a warehouse and dumps it. They return to Korbas' lair where Korbas orders Jane to shoot tony. But because she has fallen in love with him, cant do it, which causes her to completely break out of Korbas' control. She then breaks the clay replica of Tony's head, and he regains all his Pumaman powers. He chases after Korbas, crashing the helicopter he was trying to escape in. With the mask recovered and Tony fully trained as the new Pumaman, Vadinho contacts the U.F.O. to take him and the mask back to his temple.  But as he leaves, tells Tony that he will return when it is time to train his son to be the next Pmaman.


ORIGIN:
After the success of Superman (1978 ), Italian producer Italo Zingarelli was convinced he could make his own superhero film that would be just as successful.  He hired Alberto De Martino to direct. Martino specialized in making knock-off films.  Perhaps the most notorious being a knock-off of the Bond  series starring Sean Connery's brother Neil called OK Connery ( Originally distributed in America as Operation Double 007 ). Since they didn't have the rights to Superman, they would need to create an identical superhero. However, Martino became obsessed with his movie not being anything like Superman. Perhaps most notably his decision that he wanted the actor playing Pumaman to pretend to be swimming during the flying scenes.  To make matters worse, the crew could not figure out how to operate the special camera Zingarelli purchased to film the flying scenes, so instead ended up using  blue screen. Actor Walter George Alton was cast as Pumaman. A trial lawyer who decided to switch careers to actor at age 30, his only screen credit was a small role in the comedy 10 ( 1979 ). However, he was one of the actors Warner Bros. screen tested for Superman, and came close to getting the part. Or at least that is what his publicist was saying, which was good enough for Zingarelli. The cast was rounded out by Sydne Rome, an American actress who, after being unable to find work in America, ended up in Europe where she became a major star in Italian cinema. Th Pumaman was being shot in sync sound English so it could be targeted at the American film market, and Zingarelli wanted American actors for the leads. And casting Sydne made the film bankable in Italy. Sydne agreed to the role as she believed it would  allow her to finally become a celebrity in America. However, it ended up being distributed in America by Cinema Shares,  a company that specialized in foreign exploitation films, mostly martial arts, and distributed exclusively to grindhouses. Needless to say it wasn't a blockbuster hit in America, where most Americans saw it on MST3K years later in 1998. Playing Korbas was Donald Plesance, a character actor who first got international attention in The Great Escape ( 1963 ). While Plesance was cast in a lot of major Hollywood films and television shows, he would accept any role for a quick paycheck.  As he had done a couple of  years earlier for a low budget slasher film called Halloween.  He was the most prominent actor on the set, so director Martino didn't dare correct him when he kept mispronouncing Pumaman.


Reviews
"A superhero who flies poorly and complains a lot." ~ Film Frenzy

"Pleasance lends this trash some class, but it's mostly an experience you can ignore, and isn't exactly crying for a reboot." ~ Cinema Crazed

[stethacantus]

#12

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance ( 2011 )

35 points, 2 lists, #8 RVR II

Studio: Columbia Pictures/Sony pictures
Script: Scott M. Gimple, Seth Hoffman, David S.Goyer
Producer: Steven Paul, Ashok Amritraj, Michael De Luca, Avi Arad
Director: Neveldine/Taylor ( Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor )
Cast: Nicholas Cage ( Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider ), Johnny Whitworth ( Ray Carrigan/Blackout ), Fergus Riodan ( Danny Ketch ), Clarán Hinds ( Roarke/Mephistopheles/the Devil ), Violante Placido ( Nadya Ketch ), Idris Elba ( Moreau ), Christopher Lambert ( Methodius ), Anthony Head ( Benedict ), Jacek Koman ( Terrokov ), Vincent Regan ( Toma Nikasevic ), Spencer Wilding ( Grannik )

TRAILER

From the changing in setting from the American west to eastern Europe, a completely different tone and the script completely ignoring the canon established by the first film, this film reeks of reboot.  It's as if Sony realized how much of the first film was a mistake, and to save the franchise, rebooted everything, but then forgot to recast Nicholas Cage.  So what is different? Remember how Johnny Blaze had the chance to get rid of the Ghost Rider curse at the end of the first film yet chose to continue being Ghost Rider to fight evil? In this film it is once again a curse he is trying to get rid of. Or how about how Ghost Rider can't exist in the sunlight? In this film Ghost Rider chased the villain in broad daylight.  Although I am pretty sure they were shooting day for night, and forgot to tint the film.

Mephistopheles, who in this film goes by the name Roarke, has sent out his minions to find a boy named Danny and his mother, and a religious order hires Johnny Blaze to find them first and protect them. For payment, the monks promise they can permanently lift the Ghost Rider curse from him, should mother and child be delivered to their monastery safely. It is a formula plot with an easy to guess it is coming plot twist. But it is all basically a Mcguffin for the Ghost Rider action scenes. But just because you have a good enough script does not mean you get a good film. It took two men to screw up this film; the directing team called Neveldine/Taylor. The duo shot to prominence after writing and directing the successful low budget action film Crank ( 2006 ), and were known in the industry for being capable of directing on a low budget. And while Sony wanted a Ghost Rider sequel, they wanted it at half the budget. Basically a straight to video budget.  The problem was that Neveldine/Taylor  was a bad fit for the genre they were asked to direct. The fancy editing used to enhance Crank only served as a distraction on Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Another problem was Neveldine/Taylor not properly directing the performances of their actors, or in this case, one actor in particular.  This technique may have worked on Jason Statham who has a very limited acting range. Allow him to run with a performance and he will give you the exact same performance as he did in the Transporter films. But you can't just let Nicholas Cage do whatever he wants to do, because he will take you down shit alley and think he has earned himself another Academy Award.

The end result is a good David S. Goyer script being ruined with a low budget, cheap effects, inadequate directors, and a Nicholas Cage performance that seems far further off the meds than in the previous film. Sadly, you can detect what film Goyer had written had it only been executed better. Sort of like being able to tell that you almost got a spectacular performance out of a figure skater who is currently lying face down on the ice after a failed leap. And the sad thing is that this film could have been a vast improvement over the first one.


ORIGIN:
Somewhere around the time critics were savaging the first Ghost Rider film and it was underperforming at the box office, Columbia executives must have been thinking "Oh shit! We took a superhero film that was written by David S. Goyer and allowed the director of Daredevil to rewrite it." So they were damn sure to get Goyer to write the sequel. But then allowing the team who wrote the script for Jonah Hex to direct? According to Goyer, the sequel takes place eight years later, which was a diplomatic way of saying his script would be ignoring the events in the first film.


Reviews
"Spirit of Vengeance is weighted down for long stretches in the middle, as it starts to treat its own religious hokum plotline with undue seriousness." ~ Variety

"Ordinarily I'd be into the idea of seeing Nicolas Cage's face burn, but alas, "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance" is not a documentary." ~ New York Post

"This is a movie about a flaming skeleton that rides a motorcycle -- there's no excuse for it to be this dull." ~ The Wrap

"Like a laboratory experiment on how often a movie can spin from bad to good and back again." ~ Los Angeles Times

[stethacantus]

#11

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace ( 1987 )

35 points, 4 lists, #11 Pac-Man

Studio: Cannon
Script: Lawrence Conner, Mark Rosenthal, Christopher Reeve
Producer: Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus
Director: Sidney J. Furie
Cast: Christopher Reeve ( Clark Kent/Superman ), Gene Hackman  ( Lex Luthor/voice of Nuclear Man ), Mark Pillow ( Nuclear Man ), Jackie Cooper ( Perry White ), Marce McClure ( Jimmy Olsen ), Jon Cryer ( Lenny Luthor  ), Sam Wanamaker ( David Warfield  ), Mariel Hemmingway ( Lacy Warfield  ), Margot Kidder ( Lois Lane )

TRAILER

In his autobiography, Christopher Reeve gave a good explanation as to what went wrong with Superman IV:

We were also hampered by budget constraints and cutbacks in all departments. Cannon Films had nearly thirty projects in the works at the time, and Superman IV received no special consideration. For example, Konner and Rosenthal wrote a scene in which Superman lands on 42nd Street and walks down the double yellow lines to the United Nations, where he gives a speech. If that had been a scene in Superman I, we would actually have shot it on 42nd Street. Richard Donner would have choreographed hundreds of pedestrians and vehicles and cut to people gawking out of office windows at the sight of Superman walking down the street like the Pied Piper. Instead, we had to shoot at an industrial park in England in the rain with about a hundred extras, not a car in sight, and a dozen pigeons thrown in for atmosphere. Even if the story had been brilliant, I don't think that we could ever have lived up to the audience's expectations with this approach.

The building that doubled for The Daily Planet in the first two Superman movies was the Daily News Building on 42nd Street and 2nd Avenue.  I have walked from the buildings lobby with it's iconic globe built through the floor, and took the walk from the building to the United Nations.  It is a one minute walk from the lobby to 2nd Avenue, then another three minutes from second, passing under the Tudor City overpass, to reach 1st Avenue. Once past the overpass, the United Nations building comes into full view. Technically another four to five minute walk to get to the security gate, but this scene could have been filmed without an edit in under five minutes.  Like Reeve said, extra shots of people waving from the windows could have been used to shorten the march to a couple of minutes.  This scene was written knowing the short distance between the building used for the Daily Planet and the outside of the United Nations, and for no other reason.  What is infuriating is that if Cannon could not afford to film in New York City on the exact location, then the scene should have been scrapped, and replaced with stock footage of the outside of the U.N., followed by Superman standing in the assembly hall.  Instead Cannon had the scene shot, with Superman and a few dozen people walking from a building that looks nothing like the Daily Plant building from the first two movies, across a parking lot next to it, and up to a  building that looks nothing like the United Nations.  Somehow it never occurred to  Cannon that the scene as filmed made no sense whatsoever. 

Not that the script made much sense to begin with. Superman has decided to end the nuclear arms race by gathering up all the nuclear missiles on Earth and tossing them into the sun. So every nation obligingly gives Superman the weapons they just spent billions of dollars on, and he flies around the planet putting them in a giant net. Because there is nothing dangerous about a net stuffed with hundreds of nuclear missiles clanging together, passing over major cities. Once the missiles have been tossed into the sun, the Earth faces a brand new threat.  Thanks to a generous paycheck and the promise of second billing, Lex Luthor is back. And he has stolen a strand of Superman's hair from a museum, which combined with a nuclear missile, results in the instant creation of Nuclear Man. There is a worldwide battle between Superman and Nuclear Man, using mostly green screen and stock photos. But since Nuclear Man is radioactive, Superman grows weak and is defeated, even losing his cape when Nuclear Man delivers the final blow. Nuclear Man then conveniently falls in love with the daughter of the owner of the Daily Plant, and drags her against her will into outer space, where for some reason her head doesn't explode, nor does she suffocate. Superman returns to his home, because it turns out common radiation is more deadly to him than Kryptonite.  Fortunately his birth parents left a healing crystal in his rocket that can only be used once. Rejuvenated, Superman battles Nuclear Man again. But this time Nuclear Man pile drives Superman into the surface of the moon. Superman then pushed the moon out of it's orbit, blocking sunlight from reaching Nuclear Man, who immediately loses his powers. Nuclear Man is then tossed into a nuclear power plant  where he turns into electricity.  There is also a subplot about the Daily Plant being bought and the new owner firing Perry White, but who gives a shit?

ORIGIN:
After Supergirl bombed, Alexander Salkind decided the Superman franchise had run it's course.  At the 38th Cannes Film Festival, Salkind sold the rights to the franchise to Menahem Golan and Yoram Golbus of Cannon films for $5 million. Most of the original cast returned for higher paychecks.  Reeve also wanted to do a story he wrote about Superman bringing an end to the nuclear arms race, and he wanted to direct the movie.  The studio allowed him to shoot some second unit footage, after which everyone, including Reeve, agreed that he did not know how to direct. Just before filming began,  Cannon decided to cut the budget from $32 million to $17 million, cutting corners on every scene, and any special effects. Money was even saved with the opening credits, which was done on video using a home computer to generate  the text. Even with the cost cutting, the studio ran out of money with a third of the movie yet to have been filmed. Cannon scraped together enough money for the director to film a few more key scenes, but the final edit is an incomplete film with many scenes missing. The film did poorly enough that Cannon canceled a proposed fifth Superman film where the Man of Steel would be killed by Brainiac.  After which they wanted a film where Superman would meet another superhero the studio recently acquired the rights to, Spiderman.


Reviews
"Superman IV is cinematic kryptonite. Not only could it kill the Superman series, it might also leave filmgoers feeling weak." ~ Orlando Sentinel

"The enthusiastic hamming can't hide the clunking direction by Sidney J Furie and the sub-standard special effects" ~ Radio Times

"Godawful, pointless, preachy sequel" ~ San Fransisco Examiner

"More sluggish than a funeral barge, cheaper than a sale at K mart, it's a nerd, it's a shame, it's Superman IV." ~ Washington Post

"About as dreary as a summit conference in Belgium." ~ Time Out

"Superman IV is a pathetic appendage to the series, a dull, shoddy film that makes the minimal 1950s TV series seem rife with production values by comparison." ~ Chicago Tribune

[LucasM]

#19

Underdog ( 2007 )

...Underdog's secret identity was as a humble and loveable shoeshine boy. ...

There... fixed it for you!