My Favorite Super-hero Movies II

#20

Captain America: The First Avenger

• Released in 2011 & directed by Joe Johnston (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Jumanji, The Rocketeer), Captain America: The First Avenger stars Chris Evans (Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four 2), Tommy Lee Jones, & Hugo Weaving. Captain America: The First Avenger, the last of five super-hero films released in 2011, grossed $366 million worldwide making it the second-most successful of the five.

• Captain America: The First Avenger is the fifth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe & the final film in the series setting up the 2012 release of The Avengers.
• Alan Menken (famous for composing the music for many 1990s Disney songs) wrote the music for the song “Star Spangled Man,” while David Zippel wrote the lyrics.

• Captain America: The First Avenger contains a few discrepancies from its comics source material:
• Neither the Red Skull nor Howard Stark (Tony’s father) was involved with the Super-Soldier program.
• Bucky did not die (or appear to die, as comic characters do) during World War II. Bucky appeared to die in the same incident that left Cap frozen in the Arctic.

#21

The Incredible Hulk

• The Incredible Hulk, released in 2008 & directed by Louis Leterrier (Clash of the Titans [2010]), stars Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, William Hurt, & Tim Roth. The Incredible Hulk grossed $263 million worldwide, besting the 2003 film, The Hulk, by less than $20 million.

• The Incredible Hulk is undeniably a better film than 2003’s The Hulk, benefitting from a tighter, quicker plot & a stronger performance in the lead role. However, The Incredible Hulk suffers from overall weaker casting choices. Jennifer Connelly was unquestionably superior to Liv Tyler as Betty Ross. (Ironically, the two played sisters in the 1997 film, Inventing the Abbotts.) While William Hurt is, perhaps, a better actor than Sam Elliot, Elliot was perfectly cast as the bellicose General “Thunderbolt” Ross.

• In 2007, Marvel Studios began independent funding, development, & production of several films based on Marvel characters. Part of the reason for this was Marvel’s dissatisfaction with how true to the comics previous film productions had been. The Incredible Hulk was the second film so-produced, set in the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe. If this is so, then I cannot help but wonder why the film is so out of whack with the comic book Hulk, almost as much as the television Hulk & the 2003 film, The Hulk. The comic book Hulk’s transformation is due to accidental exposure to a nuclear warhead explosion, not some medical lab experiment. Although Bruce Banner’s vocation in this film is unclear, he does not seem to be a nuclear physicist. (I am perfectly sympathetic with homages to the TV show. However, I think that Lou Ferrigno’s cameo in addition to his role as the Hulk’s voice & the footage of Bill Bixby in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father were sufficient to this end. No need to introduce the extreme changes to the character & his origin as an homage.) Why is the Hulk two feet taller in this film than the comic version? Why does he not speak more? In the comics, Betty Ross is not a scientist of any kind. Furthermore, Sam Sterns (the Leader) was not a scientist either; he was a manual laborer. Having someone who is already brilliant transform into a brilliant super-villain is on a par with leaving Peter Parker a science whiz but taking away his invention of web-shooters. Why is Rick Jones omitted from this film? Last but by far the worst changes in my view are the egregious modifications this film inflicts on the Abomination. (They made an abomination of the Abomination!) First, Blonsky was a KGB agent, not a Royal Marine for Pete’s sake! And the film version of the gamma-powered villain looks nothing like the comic version. So, I ask again, if Marvel was upset at the mistreatment of their classic, iconic characters, why did they allow it to occur once again?

#22

Fantastic Four

• Released in 2005, Fantastic Four, directed by Tim Story, stars Jessica Alba (Dark Angel), Ioan Gruffudd, Chris Evans (Captain America: The First Avenger), & Michael Chiklis (The Shield).

• Fantastic Four grossed $330 million worldwide.

• Fantastic Four is so-so. It could’ve been worse. The three worst things about Fantastic Four are Ioan Gruffudd’s acting, Ioan Gruffudd’s accent, & Doctor Doom’s ravaged origin & character. All that remains of one of Marvel Comics’ all-time greatest villains is his name, his ultimate appearance, & two perfunctory references to Latveria. Additionally, the Thing’s face doesn’t look right—I think because they gave him lips & a normal-looking nose. The two best things about Fantastic Four are Jessica Alba as Invisible Woman & Chris Evans as Human Torch.

#23

Daredevil

• Released in 2003 & directed by Mark Steven Johnson (who also directed Ghost Rider), Daredevil stars Ben Affleck (Good Will Hunting, Dogma), Jennifer Garner (Alias, 13 Going on 30), & Colin Farrell (SWAT).

• Daredevil’s domestic box office take was $102 million, placing it at #27 for 2003. Notably, Daredevil’s gross was exceeded by X2 & Hulk in 2003.

• Daredevil features several departures from the comics.
  1. In the film, Kingpin is Black.
  2. In the film, Matt has brown hair (rather than red).
  3. The film implies that Matt’s super-senses somehow enhance his strength. This does not make a bit of sense.
• I am a Daredevil fan, but I was really irritated that Daredevil got a big-budget film before such great heroes as Green Lantern, Iron Man, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Arrow, the Wasp, Scarlet Witch, She-Hulk, et cetera.

#26

The Shadow

• Released in 1994, The Shadow was directed by Russell Mulcahy (who also directed Highlander) & stars Alec Baldwin (Beetlejuice, The Hunt for Red October, 30 Rock), Penelope Ann Miller (Adventures in Babysitting), John Lone (The Last Emperor, Iceman), Peter Boyle (Young Frankenstein, Johnny Dangerously, Everybody Loves Raymond, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman), Jonathan Winters (It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Mork & Mindy), Ian McKellen (X-Men series, Lord of the Rings series), & Tim Curry [Legend, Muppet Treasure Island, The Three Musketeers (1993), It, Annie, Loaded Weapon]. Grossing $48 million on a $40 million budget, The Shadow was a box office disappointment.

• The inception of the character of the Shadow is strangely convoluted. The Shadow first appeared in 1930 as the narrator of The Detective Hour radio serial, but nothing was revealed about the character himself. Realizing the popularity of the Shadow, the show’s creators commissioned Walter Gibson to write tales about the Shadow in an eponymous pulp magazine starting in 1931. The Shadow’s first tale, which has since been published in novel form, was entitled The Living Shadow. In the pulps, Kent Allard is the Shadow’s true identity; Lamont Cranston is one of many aliases. Later, in 1937, the Shadow returned to the airwaves in his own serial, which centered on his adventures & ran until 1954. The radio serial establishes Lamont Cranston as the crimefighter’s true identity. Orson Welles was the first of many actors to voice the Shadow on The Shadow radio program.
• The villain of the film, Shiwan Khan, a descendant of Genghis Khan with psychic powers similar to those of the Shadow, first appeared in The Shadow pulp magazine.

• The Shadow—with his distinctive garb, mysterious powers, & multiple identities—was a proto-super-hero, who inspired many later comic book heroes, notably Batman. Gibson has said that the Shadow was himself inspired by Dracula.

#30

X-Men: First Class

• Released in 2011 & directed by Matthew Vaughn (Stardust), X-Men: First Class stars James McAvoy (Children of Dune, Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe), Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, & Rose Byrne (Attack of the Clones, Troy, Bridesmaids). X-Men: First Class, the third of five super-hero films released in 2011, grossed $352 million worldwide making it the third-most successful of the five. X-Men: First Class also has the lowest domestic gross of the X-Men film franchise.

• Hugh Jackman makes a brief cameo as Wolverine.
• Professor X, when reading his thesis to Mystique, makes two biology errors regarding the evolution of humans. 1) Xavier (or the writer who scripted the line) makes the common error of assuming that Homo sapiens is plural & rendering the singular form as Homo sapien. 2) Xavier refers to Homo sapiens as “more evolved” than Homo neanderthalensis (and, indeed, Sebastian Shaw later refers to mutants as “more evolved” than humans). This actually contains two errors. First, the species name of Neanderthals is usually given as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, while modern humans are Homo sapiens sapiens. Second, all life on Earth is descended from a common ancestor that appeared some four billion years ago. All extant species have existed in some form or another for precisely the same amount of time & therefore have the same amount of evolutionary history. No living species can be “more evolved” than any other. Some species may be more advanced in the sense that they retain fewer ancestral characteristics & more new ones.

• X-Men: First Class contains many discrepancies from its comics source material. I wish the producers had spent half the effort they spent on presenting realistic foreign-language dialogue—the film contains scenes in German, French, Spanish, & Russian—on the comic history of the X-Men.
• This is not a discrepancy of X-Men: First Class specifically, but of the X-Men franchise as a whole. It just shows more in X-Men: First Class. Professor Charles Xavier is not British (although he did attend Oxford)! He was born in New York.
• Sebastian Shaw is not German, nor is he more than 50 years old.
• Mystique was not raised with Professor X.
• Dr Moira MacTaggert is a Scottish geneticist, not an American CIA agent.
• If Alex Summers/Havok (Scott Summers’/Cyclops’ younger brother) were 21 in 1962, then Cyclops would have been older than 59 in 2000 (the year of the first X-Men film). Actor James Marsden was just 27.
• Finally, my biggest issue with this film lies in its treatment of Hank McCoy (the Beast). When Hank had a fully normal appearance, he did not have opposable big toes. More significant, however, is the praise lavished on Hank’s intellect. In the film, Hank designs Cerebro & the Blackbird. In the comics (and the previous films), Professor X & Magneto designed Cerebro. While Hank may be a brilliant biochemist, he is not the genius that Charles Xavier or Magneto is. This view is borne out in the Marvel Superheroes RPG published by TSR in 1984. In this RPG, the Reason rank of Professor X & Magneto is Incredible, a Reason rank they share with Tony Stark. All three are one rank higher than Bruce Banner & Kitty Pryde, whose Reason is Remarkable. And Banner & Pryde are one rank brighter than Peter Parker, Scott Summers, &, yes, Hank McCoy, all of whom have a respectable Reason score of Excellent.

#31

The Phantom

• Released in 1996, The Phantom was directed by Simon Wincer & stars Billy Zane (Tombstone, Titanic, Dead Calm), Kristy Swanson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hot Shots!, The Chase, 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag), Treat Williams (Hair), Catherine Zeta-Jones (The Mask of Zorro, The Legend of Zorro, Chicago), & Patrick McGoohan (The Prisoner). The Phantom was a box office disappointment.

• The comic strip hero the Phantom was created in 1936 by Lee Falk (who also created Mandrake the Magician). The Phantom was the first costumed crimefighter with a skin-tight costume and a mask that shows neither his irises nor his pupils. The film is set in 1938. Since the Phantom’s first appearance was in 1936, the producers’ rationale for choosing 1938 is unclear. The film’s plot contains many elements of three early Phantom tales, but the magic skulls bit was added by the film makers. This is my only major peeve with the film, as the Phantom, although he was a friend of Mandrake, seldom dealt with the supernatural, instead battling pirates & more mundane foes.

• The exterior shots of the Palmers’ mansion are, in fact, shots of Playboy Mansion. Hugh Hefner is a longtime fan of the Phantom. The name of the Palmers’ butler, Falkmoore, a combination of Falk & Moore, is an homage to both the creator of the Ghost Who Walks & the Phantom newspaper strip’s first artist, Ray Moore.

#33

Ghost Rider

• Released in 2007, Ghost Rider was directed by Mark Steven Johnson, who also directed Daredevil, & stars Nicholas Cage, Eva Mendez, Sam Elliott, & Peter Fonda.

• Ghost Rider hauled in $115 million domestically.

• Ghost Rider received generally poor critical reviews. I was never a huge fan of the comic character, but I thought the first half of the film was interesting, & Sam Elliott’s ride at the end was cool. But the villains seem underdeveloped & run-of-the-mill.

#34

The Legend of Zorro

#37

Batman Returns

#38

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

#40

Supergirl

• Released in 1984 & directed by Jeannot Szwarc (director of Somewhere in Time, Jaws 2, one episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, & 13 episodes of Smallville), Supergirl stars Helen Slater (in her first motion picture role), Faye Dunaway, Peter O’Toole, & Mia Farrow.

• Supergirl only grossed $14 million domestically.

• While Slater’s performance is inspiring & well-intentioned, this film lacks the dire villainy & breakneck action that drive a good super-hero tale. For most of the film, Selena (the witch played by Dunaway) & Kara seem to be fighting for the affections of a rather ordinary guy with all the intensity of two cheerleaders competing for cheer captain.

• Slater went on to star in The Secret of My Success, The Legend of Billie Jean, Ruthless People, & City Slickers. Since 2007 Slater has played the recurring part of Lara, Clark’s biological mother, on Smallville. Slater also provided the voice of Talia in four episodes of Batman: The Animated Series.

• Christopher Reeve was supposed to do a cameo, which he later declined, & Demi Moore was originally cast as Lucy Lane, but she bowed out. I doubt their presence would have helped the film much, if Faye Dunaway & Peter O’Toole could not.
• The comic book Kara Zor-El has undergone a plethora of costume changes over the years (as have most super-heroines), but the costume worn by Supergirl in this film is subtly different from any worn by her prior to the film. The costume resembles Supergirl’s first, but the skirt was blue. The first costume worn by Kara post-crisis (circa 1988), however, is the one from the film.

#41

Superman III