In honor of the release of The Fantastic Four last weekend, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some really bad superhero movies. Actually, what made me think of this was seeing that Batman & Robin was available on Netflix. I saw that and thought it would be fun to go over a list of bad superhero movies, maybe a list of the 5 worst superhero movies. Then FF came out and the whole mindset of this list changed. I have put together a list of really bad superhero movies that are better than FF. Better according to whom? Rotten Tomatoes, of course. If you haven’t heard, Fantastic Four is sporting a not so fantastic (yes, I went there) Rotten Tomatoes score of 9%. That is so horrendous that I felt like we needed to give some context. I went through a quick list of really bad comic book flicks and found that quite a few of the ones that are generally considered just awful actually scored better than FF. The only one that I thought of that didn’t was Catwoman, which tied at 9%, so it wasn’t worse. Let’s begin the list and you’ll get the idea as we go along.
Amazing Spider-Man 2
My first thought was to include Spider-Man 3, the original killer of the franchise, but it turns out this sequel was lower on the tomato scale, coming in at 53%, less that Spider-Man 3’s 63% (really?! 63%? Wow.). Both films suffer from way too many bad guys and not enough good story or character development. Amazing 2, however, was the one that finally forced Sony to consider working with Marvel, instead of against them. This film was bewildering for me. Was Electro the bad guy, or was it the Goblin, and why was Rhino even in it at all? I give them credit for “going there” with Gwen Stacey’s death, but it wasn’t enough to cover up everything else that was wrong with the film. It was too bad, because I thought the franchise had so much potential. As bad as it was, though, it almost 6 times better than Fantastic Four. Honorable Mention: Spider-Man 3 63%
Elektra
I really wanted Daredevil to be on this list, but as I went through these movies, I remembered that there was this quasi-sequel that probably belonged more. Daredevil was a bad movie, scoring only 44% on Rotten Tomatoes. You know what makes an even worse movie? When you make a kind of sequel to a horrible movie starring one of the side characters. This was a bad idea from the start, and when I look at the reviews and the images from the film, I am just thankful that Daredevil and all the characters that go along with him are back in the Marvel fold. The score for this movie is 10% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s still 1% better than Fantastic Four. Honorable Mention: Daredevil 44%
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
There was a time in the late 00’s when Fox was just done with the X-Men. First they made X-Men: The Last Stand, which was almost laughably bad, then they decided to take it even further by trying to ruin all the coolest X-Men characters and one of the better origin stories, all with the same movie. That Masterpiece of disaster was X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I don’t know how this movie gets made. The pitch had to be “We want to take Wolverine’s awesome origin story and just ruin it completely. Then we want to take Gambit, who everyone has been waiting to see on film, and just make him totally lame. Then we are going to throw in Deadpool, you know, the Merc with a Mouth? Get this, we are going to take aways his mouth. In the end , we are going to have a big pile of garbage, but it will make lots of money.” I figure they must have had something pretty good on Hugh Jackman to blackmail him into coming on board for this film. Despite all that, it was 4 times better than Fantastic Four with a score of 38%. Honorable Mention: X-Men: The Last Stand 58%
Superman IV- The Quest for Peace
It’s a bad sign when a sequel is given a subtitle and none of the other films in the series has one, that is typically a bad sign. Run away from that movie. That was the case for the needlessly named Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. It is the worst of the four Superman films and the reason why we didn’t see another Superman movie until he returned in 2006. Now, I have gone on record as saying that I have a soft spot for this movie because I remember seeing it in the theaters. I was 5 at the time, and all I cared about was being my favorite superhero, Superman, and I saw him so the movie was great. I can fully recognize, now, that this is a wretched film that should be avoided. Just trust me on that. Despite all of that, the film scored 12%, which is still higher than Fantastic Four. Honorable Mention: Superman III 26%
Batman & Robin
Batman fanboys seem to believe that Batman can do anything. Well, apparently the one thing Batman couldn’t do was save this film. It is so painful to watch, yet you can’t seem to turn away. It is probably one the most universally disliked films ever, unless you are Arnold Schwarzenegger. Pretty much everyone agrees that the performances in this film were just awful, unless, again, you are Arnold Schwarzenegger. This took everything that was wrong with Batman Forever and magnified it and made it worse. And then there’s the issue of bat-nipples. Why? This nightmare, however, beats Fantastic Four by 2%, coming in at 11%. Honorable Mention: Batman Forever 41%
Finally, a film that most people probably didn’t know existed. A film that at first glance looks like the worst one on this list. A film that proves that this latest Fantastic Four movie may be the worst Fantastic Four film of all time. I am talking, of course, about 1994’s unbelievably bad Fantastic Four, which scored 33% on Rotten Tomatoes. In other words, this is better than the high budget, “blockbuster” that was just released last weekend:
Even Doctor Doom looked better in that one. What do you think? Are all of these movies really better than the new Fantastic Four? Has the new FF set the new low for superhero movies? Let me know in the comments, or contact me directly at [email protected].
