All the Live-Action Super-Hero Screen Adapatations reviewed!

I’m only dealing with adaptations of comics, so “The Greatest American Hero” doesn’t count, and I’m not discussing cartoons or we’ll be here all day.

There were a bunch of super-hero serials (Batman, Superman, Captain America(?), Captain Marvel(?) ) from the '40s that I don’t remember well enough to review (Superman vs The Mole Men was good. I remember that much) and honestly, I don’t remember enough about the Superman TV show from the '50s to judge it fairly.

Starting with the '60s, we have the Adam West Batman. I don’t really count that as an adaptation, since it was nothing like the comic. For what it was, it was a lot of really stupid fun, but it wasn’t “Batman” (even the Batman of the time, which was Julie Schwartz and Carmine Infantino’s “New Look” Batman who was a super-detective)

The '70s:

The Hulk: Little House on the Atomic Prarie. Touched By A Gamma Bomb. Yuk. Crappy maudlin plots and (with the exception of the incomparable Bill Bixby) ungodly bad acting. Plus it was overkill. You really don’t need the Hulk to deal with wife-beaters

Spider-Man: Um…they didn’t get the costume right, he threw nets, not webbing and same flaws as The Hulk. No action.

Dr Strange: (Made for TV one-shot) Actually damned good. They f*ed up the origin, but it wasn’t bad at all. Except for the bad '70s hair.

Shazam!: Live action glurge about a teenage Billy Batson in a Winnebago with an old guy helping other teens solve their problems. Glurge. Serious glurge.

Wonder Woman: Lynda Carter! Yowza. IMO, the best of the made-for-TV stuff in the '70s. Action/adventure with very little treacle. Plus Lynda Carter! Yowza!

The only super hero movies I can think of from the '70s are the Superman movies. Even though they continued into the '80s, I’m gonna do 'em in a batch:

Superman 1: Chris Reeve was Superman, but more importantly was Clark Kent. Margo Kidder wasn’t Lois so much, but she was OK. Unfortunately, whazzhisname as Lex was horrible as Lex (great actor, badly miscast. Same with Marlon Brando as Jor-El). He’s supposed to be smart, not a two-bit conman. Some of the bits were great (The phonebooth gag), but others (Lois’s interminable “Ode-To-A-Tree” reading of the “Can you read my mind” song) just didn’t work. And there really wasn’t a plot, just a bunch of stuff that happened. And what plot there was made little sense. (Why does turning the earth backwards reverse time as opposed to causing massive earthquakes?). The pacing was terrible and there was never any real feeling of menace/tension/anything. Despite all it’s flaws though, it did have a certain raw charm. So it worked on at least one level. (and I did* believe a man could fly. :wink: )

Superman 2: The best of the lot. Bad guys, romance, adventure: an actual plot (with rising action, a climax, etc. as opposed to just a bunch of stuff that happens) good stuff. I could’ve done without the amnesia kiss at the end, but :: shrugs :: at least there was a coherent story.

Superman 3: Bad. Richard Pryor didn’t work, The story was dumb and Chris Reeve was looking tired/bored.

Superman 4: Bad beyond comprehension. Manos: The Hands of Fate bad. Gibberish plot. Horrible acting, preachy STUPID message (“Yes. Little Timmy. I WILL take everyone’s nuclear weapons away. However, the biological and chemical weapons are OK for them to have.”). And any time the writers resort to giving a hero a new power to get him out of a fix, you know you’re in trouble (Superman gained “Rebuild the Great Wall of China-vision”)

The '80s

Marvel had a couple of apparently horrible movies that I never saw, but since they were “Five years in the making, five seconds in the theater” types they were most likely as bad as their rep suggests…FTR, they were Captain America and The Punisher.

There was also a Fantastic Four movie made that never got released. I got to see a bootleg of it and…y’know? It was cheesy, the special effects were so-so and the acting ranged ran the gamut from A to B, but…it had a sense of fun and excitement to it that redeemed it from a lot of flaws. Marvel will never let it be released, but I’d like to own a copy. It was fun.

There were a couple of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies that I never saw but were apparently not bad. (The tech from the Turtles movies was used in the Fantastic Four movie to make the Thing’s head)

The Batman Movies:
I only saw the first three, and for me the problem with all of 'em is that they weren’t Batman movies, they were Batman’s villians movies. They were also a triumph of style over substance: Burton made 'em look great, but…there just wasn’t much there.

Batman 1: Hated the change in the origin (pre-Joker kills the Waynes) a lot, Nicholson was great as the Joker, Batman was ok,but not very interesting.

Batman 2: Divito was atrocious as the Penguin, Pfieffer was OK as the Catwoman, the plot was iffy at best (though there was some great imagry) and Batman was ok, if not very interesting.

Batman 3 was just bad, Jim Carrey was horrible as the Riddler and I don’t even remember who all the other villans were (Two Face and someone else?) Batman was less than OK, but not interesting at all and the only thing I remember about Robin is wondering why his body-armor had nipples. I rather thought it shouldn’t.

I’ve heard that Batman 4 rivals Superman 4 for stupidity.

The '90s.

The Mask: Fantastic adaptation of the comic (although the Mask persona was toned WAAAAAY down for the movie). Excellent acting, good special effects, coherent plot. 'nuff said, true believer!

There was a made-for-tv Generation X movie that (IIRC) wasn’t bad at all. But I don’t remember it all that well.

X-Men: Good: solid plot, competent acting, decent action sequences. It’s big flaw is there were too many characters so we never got to know any of 'em. Still, worthwhile.

Spider-Man: Wonderful. A near-perfect movie, super-hero or otherwise. Some people were bothered by the CGI. I wasn’t. The CGI Spider-Man had exactly the skittery, slightly too fast sort of motion that I’ve always imagined Spider-Man (esp. Ditko’s) should have. Toby Maguire was great as Peter (more Romita’s than Ditko’s but that’s ok!) and the scene where he’s stopping all the crooks was fantastic. I believed a man could web-sling. Only real flaw was that Green Goblin’s costume looked dumb. I’ve heard that Rami said that a rubber mask like Norman wore in the comics looked even worse than the “Power-Rangers” mask. And whoever played Jonah stole the show. Prob. the best super-hero movie to date.

I’m probably missing some, but that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Thoughts/opinions?

Fenris

You missed a few…
The Rocketeer {Excellent. Jennifer Connelly…mmm…}
The Shadow {Stupid, but fun. Had to dig Alec Baldwin`s nose}
The Phantom {Ditto. Billy Zane was too damn cheery, though}
Judge Dredd {Not strictly a superhero. Not Sylvester Stallone, either}
Tank Girl {I know, not really a superhero either. Critics hated it. Everyone I know who saw it, liked it}
The Punisher {You mentioned it, I know. Diabolical. Dolph Lundgren pays the rent for another month}
Spawn {Woeful. Martin Sheen and Nicol Williamson pay their rehab bills for another month}
And last, but not least…Howard the Duck {I dunno, some guy called Lucas made it}

Well there was my personal favorite The Crow. A great adaptation of an incredible comic.

There’s also Blade which, to my tastes, was a fairly entertaining way to spend an afternoon at the movies.

Wasn’t Men in Black adapted from a comic?

For pure “Wow, that was nifty” factor, you need to find a copy of Legends of the Super-Heroes, a live action series (although only two were aired) made in '77 with basically all of the major DC heroes against their arch-enemies. Think the Super-Friends, but live with 70’s special effects. Copies are available. I don’t have one but a friend of mine back home does and I’ve watched it a couple of times.

Oh and I almost forgot The Shadow, The Phantom, Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon. Although I suppose you may not consider those as answering the OP as they were based on comic strips and not comic books. Or maybe you’ve just try to pretend that they never existed in the first place.

The 80’s Captain America I don’t remember as being bad in the way that the last two Batman or Superman flicks were–mostly it was just very forgettable. I saw it on late night TV at some point in the early 90’s–from the quality of it, I’d assumed it was a made-for-TV affair. It was actually in theaters?

The Blade films were entertaining; a lot of folks who liked the first seem to have a serious hate-on for the second, but I’m not among them. If anything, I thought the first one took itself too seriously for its own good, but then again vampires in general just don’t do anything for me.

Spiderman, well, I think it’s a better movie than X-Men, but after seeing it, I have to say that I enjoyed X-Men more. On reflection, I’m pretty sure that this was because X-Men, in contrast to every other first-of-a-series, it wasn’t an origin story. I find that I just don’t care all that much about plot rigmarole trying to justify how demigods came about–it’s simply more interesting taken that as a quick given, and going about the plot business. About the only origin story that’s ever grabbed me was Unbreakable–and that wasn’t a traditional “origin” movie at all, inasmuch as it took 2.odd hours to do what the typical one stampedes through in 40 minutes.

And on preview, The Crow simply rocked. Shame about the sequels.

I think the original poster was talking about the early ninties Captain America movie. There were two TV movies from the seventies that weren’t nearly as bad though they still weren’t good.

The first Turtles movie wasn’t bad but the second two dropped into the stinky range (the second made a big deal out of an appearance by Vanilla Ice).

Men in Black was indeed taken from a comic book.

No fair just talking about the television projects from the seventies. Running down the list of really awful live action superhero stuff for television that has been missed there was a JLA pilot produced and never aired, GenX TV movie, Nick Fury TV movie, the Hulk TV movies are notable because one was a pilot for a potential Daredevil series and another featured Thor. There was a Superboy television series that was syndicated. Night Man was another character who briefly got his own syndicated series.

Birds of Prey is being adapted for television this fall but I haven’t seen it yet so I won’t comment there.

I did enjoy the Flash television series (a big deal was made at the time that it was the most expensive television show ever to produce) but the Flash has always been one of my favorites.

And how could you have overlooked Smallville and Lois and Clark. I didn’t care for them myself but I know a lot of Superman fans who are fond of them.

I overlooked a lot of stuff 'cause I was doing it off the top of my head. I overlooked “Lois and Clark” because it sucked (same as the Hulk: Glurge in Tights . You don’t NEED Superman to handle a wife-beater (yes, I remember the story from one of the first issues of Action where he does just that…but he didn’t spend a 1/3d of the book getting in touch with his feelings about it. )

Fenris

According to the IMDB, it did. In Israel of all palces. I’ve seen a copy. I’ve seen worse. Not much, mind you. David Ogden Stiers is totally unrecognizable as the Martian Manhunter. Oh, and he doesn’t really do anything.

Read the review.

Steel A horrible adaptation of a fairly cool second string DC hero. Starred Shaq (Need to know more?)

There’s also the incomprehensable Mutant X TV series, loosely based on Marvel’s X-Books.

I had the same beef with the movie. I simply could NOT take GG seriously with that silly mask (Esp. since the rest of the suit was high-tech armor). They should have done the same thing X-Men did with the X Men’s and Magneto’s costumes, as well as the Toad’s appearance in general: ignore the comic book look completely, and redesign their looks for the movies. GG did NOT need to have a silly mask to work as a villian. Some basic makeup to go for a greenish demonic look would have worked much better.

Oh, yeah. Forgot to mention the graphic noveil adaptation of From Hell, the Jack THe Ripper movie. Haven’t seen it yet, so I can’t judge how good it was.

Also, was The Fifth Element a graphic novel adaptation?

**
Despite what they may NOW be saying, IIRC it originally had nothing to do with Marvel. I remember the ads used to have a disclaimer about “We are not affilitated with Marvel Comics and our character is totally different” or words to that effect.

I recall reading the The Fifth Element was an old idea of director Luc Besson, and he gets credit on the imdb for both the story and the screenplay. The graphic novel may have come after the film, as was the case with Sam Raimi’s “Darkman”. After the film came out, Marvel had a short-lived comic book based on the character.

And as for the X-Men movie, my opinion is if they wanted to make a Wolverine movie, they should have just done so. Instead they throw out the story and origins that formed the fanbase of the characters for the past 30-40 years.

For example - Why was Mystique running around naked? (Oh right, for the teen boys. Good reason.)

Rogue, a Southener, started out as a villian raised by Mystique. Now she somehow hooks up with Logan in Cananda?

The original X-Men were Cyclops, the Beast, Angel, Jean Grey, and Iceman. The film makes no mention of Beast or Angel and Iceman is seen briefly in a classroom scene.

And then there’s the costumes. Some people liked the black costumes. For comic book fans, the costumes are as much a part of the character as the personalities. When the people making the film decide to forget the costume and make their own stuff, that’s sign #1 that they aren’t going to respect the rest of the stories and characters that made the comic a hit in the first place. I can overlook some of it (in fact Cyclops’s line to Wolverine, “What would you prefer - yellow spandex?” was a clever little nod to the comic costumes and a way of pointing out how silly some of them would look on screen), but the X-Men movie, while not bad, was not the X-Men IMO.

And while Hugh Jackman did a good job as Wolverine, the only character the writers seemed to give any real personality too, many of the other actors just seemed to show up when needed as their parts were woefully underwritten.

For my money, Spider-Man is the best film adaptation of a comic book I’ve seen yet. It told the human story instead of just the super-human. The characters were characters instead of just cardboard cutouts choreographed to fight one another. It stuck to the themes and ideas that made this character Marvel’s most popluar for the past 40 years. And one of the executive producers is an old guy named Stan Lee. Some people have heard of him apparently.

The storyline with the Goblin and Spidey was lifted directly from the comics (screenwriters have 40 years of material to adapt in most of these cases making comic book films, why do they always try to write their own stories?) The only major changes were the absence of Gwen Stacey (in the comics, she was Spidey’s girlfriend who was killed on the bridge by the Goblin) and Spidey’s organic webbing instead of man-made web-shooters. This is justified by director Sam Raimi (a fan of the comic, and it’s got to be nice to have the director be a fan of the material) who said, “it was more credible to have Peter shoot web this way than for a high school boy to be able to produce a wonder adhesive in his spare time that 3M could not make.”

Mystery Men was an adaption of comic book characters as well, I believe. Mediocre but amusing, but understandably annoying (sometimes enraging) to anyone who dwells on how much better it should have been–of course, that’s most any flick, especially superhero ones.

And to break one brief bit of the OP’s focus, I really wish the complete animated The Tick would get a DVD release. (The less said about the live-action attempt, the better.)

What, no one remembers the pilot for Aquaman? It was from the late 60’s or early 70’s.

I think that was the only episode ever made. Good riddance, too. It had it all–stupid plots, bad acting, and ridiculous fight scenes. The villain was some dude with a potassium deficiency so bad that he’d die if he didn’t eat a banana every half-hour. I don’t really remember any other details, but that one stuck with me.

The first Turtles movie is surprisingly good, and aside from a few cowabunga-type kiddie concessions, is very close to the original Eastman and Laird indie comic. My only real gripe with the first Turtles movie is that it was overly dark; a lot of scenes could have benefitted from better lighting.

Both of which were wretchedly horrible. Daredevil was a guy in a black(!) bodysuit with black goggles covering his eyes, and Thor … well, Thor had no resembalance whatsoever to his comic incarnation. It was an excuse to have a tall blonde guy yell like an idjit and act like a buffoon, nothing more.

Amen, hallelujah. This little fangirl, while quite satisfied with Mr. Jackman’s performance, now goes into little spastic twitching fits every time Anna Paquin or Halle Berry appears anywhere. Why did they make the seductive Southern belle – who, I have heard (though I don’t have a cite),was actually supposed to be middle-aged in her earliest comic appearances – into the Shadowcat/Jubilee figure for Wolverine to daddy? And why didn’t they get someone, oh I don’t know, African-looking to play the African weather goddess? Halle Berry’s Storm was an utter travesty and an insult to the dignity of Ororo herself. Oh, and I love how the comics all changed their look to go along with the movie. Very subtle marketing, Marvel.

::seethes::

I think that’s exactly the problem that most comic book adaptations (or book adaptations period) have had.

What about Popeye? I don’t think I’ve seen it all in one one piece, but from what I can remember, it wasn’t all that grand. Of course, huge prosthetic forearms might have something to so with that memory.

Not what I said of course, but since a movie is a different medium from a book or comic book, I have no problem with the story being different. Judge the movie by its own merits, not because they forgot that The Ochre Doodlebug was the villian that actually used atomic death bombs against Spidy.

On further thought, I think one of my major disappointments in Spiderman was that at no point did he pelt a villain with Hostess Fruit Pies.

I’m going out on a limb here and guessing your not a fan of the comics then? Imagine if they had changed the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird for a happy ending and let Atticus win the case? Picture the uproar if the writers had taken some drastic artistic licenses with Harry Potter or LOTR films, changing the fundemental stories people have read and enjoyed. Do you judge the film on its own merits then or do you compare and contrast it to the source material?

Sure, some things need to be adapted and tweaked from time to time and the rabid, hardcore fans should suck it up and realize that happens when media is crossed, but at the same time, some of these comic book films have shown no respect to the source material at all (Batman & Robin!), alienating the fan base that made the material popular enough to warrant a film version in the first place.

When you adapt from one medium to film, I think the filmmaker has a responsiblity to stay as faithful as possible to the source material, since the fan base is going to be those who made the source material popular enough to even get the film made. And there’s a reason the source material was popular and well-liked, why stray from what made the idea popular in the first place?