The Worst of Marvel

Marvel is on a roll, with the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) being both wildly successful and consistently good. But Marvel has had its share of artistic failings, always when someone else’s hands were in the pie. So, to celebrate the release of Civil War, I’m going to dwell for a moment on the worst Marvel, costumed, superhero films.

The failures tend to be of two types: campy kid’s stuff or self-important whining. In a few cases, the films manage both simultaneously, going way over the top with silly super-villain dogs or dance routines while keeping to a self-important tone. Those can be the worst. If you are going to fail, choose the camp kid’s route. At least there can be some fun there.

I stuck with theatrical releases for this list, thus ignoring the direct-to-video, TV, and never released flicks like Captain America (1990), The Fantastic Four: The Movie (1994), Generation X (1996), and any of those Bill Bixby Hulk TV movies. Those are on a different level, more primitive in every aspect of production, but more fun if you happen to have friends over and a lot of beer. Yes, they are all horrible, but it’s a different form of horrible.

In making this list, I intended for each film to take its own place, but similar films kept tying or ending up next to each other. So in the end, I grouped some together: 12 films in 7 slots.

If you’ve avoided any of these, good for you. Keep up the good work. All of them are embarrassments.

 

#7 Spider-Man (2002)/Spider-Man 2 (2004)/Spider-Man 3 (2007)

Raimi’s Spider-Man films still fit together not only by being terrible, but by being the same damn film. It’s a common mistake of sequels to cling close to the original, but my God this is ridiculous. Which of the three films is this: A hopeless miscast and sleepy Tobey Maguire stars uncharismatically as Peter Parker, a 27 plus-year-old teenager who can’t deal emotionally with his powers, moons over Mary Jane who he dumps, and fights an enemy who coincidently is personally known to him and gained his powers in a “science” accident? Yeah.

All three mix super-serious pretention with camp. But there are fun games to be had. You could argue over who is the worst actor between Tobey Maguire, Kristen Dunst, and James Franco. Or you could search for the exact moment when Willem Dafoe, J.K. Simmons, Alfred Molina, and Topher Grace forgot it was a live action film and just started playing animated characters. Or you can rattle off other ways to kill off Uncle Ben, because, wow, that guy needed to die.

#6 Fantastic Four (2005)/Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

So, Reed Richards is an idiot. That was an interesting choice to make. And that is the only time the word “interesting” is appropriate for these flicks. The films are scripted, and sometimes adlibbed, as sitcoms, but without anything funny.

The acting is universally lousy, but I think it is safe to blame that on director Tim Story. Ioan Gruffudd and Jessica Alba come off particularly poorly, though Alba is attractive—which is all she brings to the table. At least she is bringing something. Gruffudd had too much trouble hiding his accent to manage believable speech. When Julian McMahon’s Doctor Doom is the high point of the character work, you’re in trouble. Then there’s that Chris Evans kid. I can’t see a future for him in superhero films.

These two Fantastic Four films are the purist camp on my worst list. They are childish films, so perhaps enjoyable for your young child.

 

#5 Daredevil (2003)/ Elektra (2005)

I planned to rank these two separately, but they ended up next to each other, with their order being determine by how much you are attracted to Jennifer Garner in a cute ninja outfit.

Even if Daredevil is Batman 2.1, there are good things to be found in it: mainly some nice posing. And if you like Evanescence, the music’s pretty good. But it just doesn’t fit together into a movie. It’s like a lot of moments, some pretty good, some pretty awful, just laying in a row. Partly that’s due to the characters never feeling real. Mainly it is incompetent filmmaking.

As for the martial arts/Hallmark drama that is Elektra, at least the title character gets to be an assassin instead of whatever it was she was in Daredevil. Again, it is pretty at times with a few isolated moments worth seeing, but it doesn’t add up to a movie. Jennifer Garner looks great running around in her cute ninja outfit, so, it’s got that.

The later-released, longer, director’s cut of Daredevil gets a worse ranking. That film’s saving grace is that it moves at a swift pace and is over quickly. Slowing it down adds boredom into the mix.

 

#4 The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)/ The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

It is hard to get past how unnecessary The Amazing Spider-Man is. No one needed a second telling of Spider-Man’s origin story in ten years. I wasn’t all that fond of Raimi’s, but that didn’t mean it needed to be redone. If Sony insisted on doing it all again, they should have tried to do something—anything—better. Instead they once again failed with humor (Spider-Man is supposed to be funny) and gave us characters I am excited to ignore. Every second of family melodrama is unpleasant and there is a lot of family medodrama.

They added an espionage side-story that ran on into the sequel but never arrived anywhere. Maybe if the super secret spy Parkers had a purpose. Or maybe if Uncle Ben was less Yoda.

The sequel does everything wrong that the first did (as well as all the Raimi sequels), plus whatever the hell Dane DeHaan was doing as undead Harry. The one reason to rank this film lower (as in better) is that it killed the series, and put Spider-Man into the arms of Marvel.

 

#3 Fantastic Four (2015)

While the 2005 version of Marvel’s first family went the camp route, this reboot, quickly made to keep the rights to the characters, went for whining. This somber, plodding, desolate snooze-fest has no more fun than it has meaning. It is a giant hole of a movie whose director tweeted that it was garbage before it was released (not a way to sell tickets).

If I hadn’t seen the actors in far, far, far better projects, I’d assume they were all unskilled amateurs on downers. The editing is worse than the acting. No one is “fantastic” till an hour into an hundred minute movie. Mainly it is unlikable characters acting in uncomfortable ways. And why exactly is Sue, one of the “4,” not one of the four that goes to the CGI planet?

They wrote a kiddy film, then played it like The Crucible. A film has to be pretty bad to be worse than this.

 

#2 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)

Welcome to worse. While Spidermen, Daredevil, Elektra, and Fantastic Fours are rotten movies, they are actual movies made by professional, if not sufficiently talented filmmakers. Ghost Rider 2 is a rough cut made by drug-addled teens. There is nothing competent in this film. It belongs with the direct-to-video Captain America, except it got a real release.

Made on the cheap in Eastern Europe, the cheapness is on display in every scene. They certainly didn’t spend money on script rewrites, or continuity. Characters make no sense. The plot is “things that happen.”

Star Nicholas Cage is never a good actor, but sometimes he’s a fun actor. And sometimes he is a Freshman theater student. Guess which he is this time. The first Ghost Rider film is dumb, but kinda fun (not that it is that far off this list). This is just dumb.

 

#1 Hulk (2003)

Before Zack Snyder became the master of brooding, boring, whine-fest, superhero films, there was Ang Lee. Rule: Do not hire a director who hates/does not understand the source material. Lee has some skill as a director, but has no idea what to do with a comic book. Hulk is two hours of unpleasant, drab characters, speaking in slow, drab fashions, occasionally pausing for poor drab special effects—and Nick Nolte being wacky. It’s soulless while also filled with endlessly junior high school philosophizing. It’s self-important and deathly serious while also camping it up. It’s a mess. This is the ultimate whine movie.

What was the poorest decision? Making Hulk about child abuse? Hulk dogs? A cloud monster? Giving The Hulk nothing to fight? Casting Eric Bana? Telling Bana and Connelly to pretend to be dead in all of their scenes. At least Nolte shows signs of life, but what is he doing in this film?

The horrible-looking Hulk was not due to poor 2003 effects skills, but was a purposeful decision by Lee. They brought Lee a better looking Hulk, but his “vision” called for lime green without depth, which pretty much describes the film.

 

Those are the films to avoid. Now lets wash them from our brain with Captain America: Civil War.