Your vote counts!

[trinityvixen]

No, I'm not talking about the election or politics or anything so boring. I am instead, of course, as ever, talking about....MOVIES!

(surprise!)

The question arose from a conversation held with feiran on our way back from The Incredible Hulk. More, I was pondering it at her while she sat there and went, "You know I haven't seen any of the movies you're talking about, right?" (It's true; she hasn't. This is why I beat her ass at Marvel Scene It.)

The question was this: What is the worst comic book movie adaptation...ever?

Now, to answer, first we must have ground rules.

One: Yes, it can be any movie that was a comic book or graphic novel first. (American Splendor counts as does From Hell, etc.) It is not limited to superhero comic book movies.

Two: By "worst," we're talking about the whole production, start to finish. Worst script, worst direction, worst acting, worst effects, worst editing--if it is part of making the movie, you can find fault with it, and it's fair game. (Note, however, that you cannot fault older films for their special effects unless those special effects were notably bad at the time of production. Fair's fair. No one had ILM or CGI even twenty years ago.)

Three: Consider also, when determining "worst" what so-bad-it's-funny value some movies have. If you can laugh at it, it's not the worst comic book movie ever.

Four: Sequels are different movies, so not liking most of a series doesn't count. You have to pick one film. If that means you have to weigh the camp of Dolph Lundgren against the camp of John Travolta in deciding which Punisher movie was worse, so be it.

Five: There is no rule five. Just get started commenting already.

So as not to bias anyone, my personal choice for worst comic book movie ever is behind the cut. My vote has to go to The Hulk. While The Punisher and Elektra were dead boring, and Spider-Man 3 and X-Men: The Last Stand both broke me, and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer made me laugh at its ridiculosity hard enough to cry, and Daredevil featured Ben Affleck in red leather (enough said), and don't even get me started on the nipple-suit Batman movies...

The Hulk? Worst comic book movie ever. Absolutely not-a-thing redeemable about it. Bruce Banner wasn't even Bruce Banner. (Look it up for yourselves if you don't believe me--DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE, USE THE INTERNET!) Jennifer Connelly--Oscar-award winning Jennifer Connelly--is easily outmatched in a role played later by Liv Tyler--Aerosmith-video-lesbian Liv Tyler. Nick Nolte. For the love of God, NICK. NOLTE.

And that's just the cast. There was a scene wherein a flashback contained a dream sequence. I expected that to keep going down the story-telling ladder until there was a flashback of a dream character's dreaming about a flashback of a dream, ad nauseum. (I know I was nauseated.) The Hulk looked less real than Flubber. I think Nick Nolte ended up becoming God or something by credits' end. If that's not enough to make you shudder and doubt that there even is a God, I declare that you, sirrah! Are not, cannot possibly be human. Robot apocalypse, here we come.

In short, The Hulk is so bad. How bad is it? Here's how bad: I don't even remember half of it. This? Is monumental. I still remember most of just about every other movie I've ever hated. Ask me about Swordfish some time. I can remember the plot of The Crow: City of Angels. (To be fair, that's more out of the mortification that my father walked in on a scene set in a sex club where a guy is beating off. ::sigh:: Sorry, Dad.) But I can't remember half of The Hulk. I saw it for free in the theater, and I wanted my money back.

Worst. Comic. Book. Movie. Ever.

Comments

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

Fun!
Okay, I agree, The Hulk was awful. But I think, as worst comic book movie ever, it gets beaten out by my candidate:

Barb Wire.

Yes, Barb Wire. Produced in 1996 and starring none other than Pamela Anderson.

Need I say more?

[avram]

No one had ILM or CGI even twenty years ago.

Kids today. ILM was founded in 1975 to do the effects for Star Wars. They were doing CGI in 1982.

I actually didn't hate The Hulk as much as most people, though I thought it could have been improved by chopping off the last third or so.

Yeah, Barb Wire was pretty awful, but the two Swamp Thing movies from the 1980s get my vote.

I suspect 3 Dev Adam is worse than any of these, but I've never seen it.

[cagexxx.livejournal.com]

The worst comic book movie I can think of is Catwoman, which I'm surprised didn't get at least an honorable mention from you. It's one of maybe three or four movies I've seen in theaters that really tempted me to walk out, and I thought it was a lot worse than The Hulk, although I can't remember the plot of either movie anymore.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

The worst comic book movie I've ever seen has to be Batman and Robin. Keep in mind, I try to avoid crap, so I'm sure there's worse out there. Batman and Robin, though, is the particular tragedy of taking what was a good series and phenomenal source material and turning it into technicolor crap.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

Hands down? It's a tie between Batman and Robin (aka BTG what did you do to Bane? ) and Spiderman 3 (aka BTG how can you do that to Venom? ). I mean come on, there aren't enough drugs out there to explain the crap these two movies were. Both seemed like they were trying to beat Highlander 2 (the movie that doesn't exist) in just how much one could wreck a series.

I didn't hate The Hulk. Sure they pulled crap out of every orifice one could think of (and a few new ones) but in the end the one thing they got right was the personality of the Hulk himself. In my eyes that one thing was significant enough to raise the rest of the movie out of the craper.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen that one. It's entirely possible, with that sort of record, that it's abysmally bad. But is it THE WORST? I'll have to Netflix this and compare.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Bah on your numbers! Why, the 1990s were just...just...EIGHT YEARS AGO? HOLY SHIT WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN?

Swamp Thing had kitsch value, did it not? Or am I mixing up my salad-on-legs monster genres?

And no fair using movies from other countries that weren't even licensed! (I'm guessing; I looked at the artwork and assumed.) Man, I didn't think I had to even include that as a rule.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

Swamp Thing was actually sort of fun, at least back when I first saw it (as a kid). The second one is truly awful though, I agree.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

Abysmal is the word, all right. If you do Netflix it, have plenty of alcohol on hand to deaden the pain.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

You may want to restrict the field a little more to exclude, say, the Captain America TV movie of the 70s or the Superman movie serials.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Hrm, you're right: Catwoman was pretty unforgivably bad. I remember thinking it was neat that she behaved a little like a kitty in less sex-kitty ways (i.e. anything that wasn't her in costume).

I kinda liked Sharon Stone in that, too, vamping it up. Hrm hrm hrm. Must compare some time soon, for Catwoman is a worthy challenger to The Hulk...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

George Clooney was a decent Bruce Wayne, and, when he was allowed to, Arnie was actually good. (He wasn't Victor Frieze, but he did a fair job at emoting.)

Then again: nipple suits and Alicia Silverstone. Yeaaahh....

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

Having not seen Catwoman or Howard the Duck, I have to vote for either the 70s Captain America or Alien vs Predator (how can the summation of two awesome franchises and a great comic-book series be so bad?!!)

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Nipple suit nothing. Thong suit. And Poison Ivy. There was a part of the movie where I thought we'd gone into a dream sequence. But we hadn't. That was just the movie.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Oh god! Howard the Duck! I watched that as a kid because it was a George Lucas film and I'm still traumatised.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Only you would use this discussion to trawl for things to Netflix.

"This tastes terrible! Have some!"

[avram]

See, I think of Spiderman 3 not so much as a really bad movie, but as a decent-to-good movie that had some sucky parts. The big two-on-two fight scene was really well done.

Ang Lee's The Hulk had a scene where a helicopter fires a missile at the Hulk, and Hulk grabs the missile out of the air, bites the warhead off, and spits it back at the copter. That one scene right there redeems it in my eyes.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

While The Hulk is far from a masterpiece, I don't know where this hatred for the film's CG comes from, at least on The Hulk himself. I don't know what people want out of it, but my take on it is, he looks like he's made out of sort of a thick rubber -- even if it isn't what skin looks like, it allows me to place him as a physical object in his environment (Shrek's skin, visually, makes me think the same thing). In my opinion, this is more that can be said of The Hulk in the trailers for the new one, which looks abysmal (critics over-apply this terminology, and I hate to use it, but he looks like a video game character).

I think you are allowing the awful-looking hulk-dogs and the really stupid finale where Nick Nolte turns into water to skew your opinion of the visual effects of the rest of the movie.

I think the lighting on these examples sell it for me, anyway. I'll admit that his pants look wonky in the second shot, but I would easily say both are better than what I've seen in ads for Hulk 08.
http://media.movieweb.com/gallery/71/19.jpg
http://www.cinemacomrapadura.com.br/filmes/imgs/hulk_2003_img_1.jpg

Maybe we're just looking for different things in the CGI. I don't need it to look a lot like Bana nor do I need it to be perfectly realistic or even unidentifiable as CG. But it does convince me that Bana's Hulk is occupying physical space in an environment next to actual people, and that he has weight and mass. And I can't fathom why people would say he blends less with his environment and looks less realistic than this:
http://www.comingsoon.net/imageGallery/The_Incredible_Hulk/The_Incredible_Hulk_21.jpg
http://www.comingsoon.net/imageGallery/The_Incredible_Hulk/The_Incredible_Hulk_22.jpg
http://www.comingsoon.net/imageGallery/The_Incredible_Hulk/The_Incredible_Hulk_28.jpg
http://www.comingsoon.net/imageGallery/The_Incredible_Hulk/The_Incredible_Hulk_4.jpg

That just basically looks bad to me.

Anyway, as for the rest of the movie, I thought it was alright enough (with the exception of the hulk dogs) until the last third, which was terrible, especially Nolte.

As for my vote, Batman & Robin definitely deserves more credit (or less credit) here. Don't forget the nonstop "Freeze" puns, "I want the car. Chicks dig the car.", inflataBane, the Bat-Credit Card, the fact that the Dynamic Duo enter the movie by sliding down a dinosaur back Flintstones-style before popping out ice-skates and hockey-puck a diamond around a museum, the ending where Batgirl joins the team, and on and on and on.

[viridian.livejournal.com]

The Hulk probably gets my vote, too, because I LIKED Van Helsing (was that comic-adapted? I thought it was, anyway.) I heard that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was pretty awful, too, though I think the main complaint was comparison to the source material.

None of the Crow sequels were worse than The Hulk? REALLY?

[cbreakr.livejournal.com]

I still don't get everyone's beef with the first Hulk. It felt like a real film and not a comic-book movie, and was visually beautiful and well-crafted in so many ways. It had a palpable feeling the whole way through, which most movies in general don't have. Hell, it even had a Danny Elfman soundtrack. It actually one of my favorite superhero movies because it never resorted to cheesiness or fanservice of any kind (except Stan the man and Lou, but that's required).

Anyway, my vote goes to Spawn. I came close to screaming on several occasions in the theater when faced with the true horror of what bad film could be (this was pre my Manos etc exploration days and, now that I think about it, may have prompted that journey). Everything about it was awkward, every single scene was painful, and it had Johnny Legzo as a short, fat clown just to drive home the point that the film was clearly created so that David Lynch could record audiences trapped within a prison of their own choice before slowly zooming in on Legzo's bright blue cheeks.

[cbreakr.livejournal.com]

The second Crow was god-awful, but it had a couple awesome scenes and still worked a tight soundtrack. There was a power ranger in it, too.

[cbreakr.livejournal.com]

Thank you, finally someone else who doesn't hate the old Hulk! We are not alone!

[viridian.livejournal.com]

The Hulk gets my hate mainly because I saw it with trinityvixen, and her lack of enthusiasm can be contagious. The others I saw with crowds of people, and probably marginally more booze in my system beforehand. I am pretty sure we walked through Harlem in 80 degree weather to see The Hulk.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

Hey now, I liked Howard the Duck! After watching the movie I took a look at a comic or two with Howard and was left going "What the hell is this?" to the pages. Though seeing zombie Howard biting Ash's head off was kind of funny (YAY Marvel Zombies vs. The Evil Dead).

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

I couldn't get past what they did to Venom to be honest. Had they just said that it was Carnage then maybe I could have gotten over that (ignoring the issues I had with their version of Sandman). But really the BS they pulled with Venom rendered the movie beyond redemption in my eyes (the only movie I hate more at this moment is Brazil). The 70's Spiderman TV show was better than Spiderman 3, and that's a scary thing to say let alone believe.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

You haven't seen the 4th Crow movie have you? You can't bad mouth the 1st three Crow movies after you've seen the 4th. Just ask TV.

And hey now, you're telling me when you saw the second Crow movie that there wasn't a standing ovation when and how the power ranger bought it?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I feel I must. In order to be objective about this totally subjective judging of the best/worst of all time. I also find movies adapted from comics/graphic novels to have some special appeal. For one, I can turn my science brain off upfront and not spend the entire time DYING like I did when I saw The Day After Tomorrow. For another, they're usually silly-bad as opposed to just bad-bad.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, now that the old roommate is gone, we can keep our liquor in a more easily accessible place.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I'm half wondering if I needs must revise my rules on this sequel thing. Because truly awful movies that are parts of franchises often get a pass as a result of other installments being good. I'm not about to argue that any of the sequels to The Crow were great (only one was even remotely watchable), just that the connection to beloved mythos almost half-pardons them. As in, "Well, at least they didn't come up with something this bad in a vacuum. This is just franchise rape."

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

To be fair, I've mostly blocked it out, too, so it's a fair assumption that it's that bad. Still, it was almost a parody of itself and very much in a vein with the old television show. Now, you may not like that, but that was a valid interpretation of Batman in itself, and I felt like the Schumaker films were just like that only with a better budget. I kinda shrug it off more easily.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Venom and Bruce Campbell are the only things keeping Spider-Man 3 from rock bottom with The Hulk. While Venom was bastardized, Eddy Brock was decent enough, the kid playing him wasn't bad, and the special effects for the symbiote suit were amazing. See, that's why The Hulk is worse: not only is it bad story/acting/directing, it's also not redeemed by amazing effects or middling-ly acceptable action pieces.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The 1950s Superman serials? How could I? They're pretty fabulous in their own right. The Captain America movie, if it's for TV, does not count. If I wanted to do that, I could then count the Generation X movie that made Emma Frost a drag queen. (I'm joking, but I'm not.)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Hey, you back off Aliens vs Predator. That at least looked awesome.

kent_allard_jr says the Cap'n movie was for TV, which takes it out of contention because the budgets and constraints of TV cannot be reasonably compare to those for film.

Howard the Duck, though...hrm....

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I think I'm in the trauma boat with you. It doesn't help me to get over it knowing that Jeffrey Jones (who played the alien or whatever) got busted for kiddie porn some years later...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

God, Wicked Prayer might be. I dunno, I probably have to get into relative awesomeness of starting with a Crow movie versus starting with the Hulk. If that's the case, even though Wicked Prayer was way, way worse, The Hulk would be worse still by virtue of not even really being a great property. (It's totally a 20th century Frankenstein/Jekyll and Hyde. I mean, it's pretty blatantly all about that.)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Wicked Prayer. Yeah, I might have to change my vote. Because everyone else has come up with some things, but nothing approaching the level of loathe I save for The Hulk. That, however, might be it: the worst movie ever based off a comic. Wow.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Never saw Spawn. Another to consider once I give it a watch-through. I can remember seeing some special on the making of it and thinking that, if nothing else, the costume design was pretty fabulous. It did look like a MacFarlane drawing.

As for The Hulk, I'm now 99% positive you're not even talking about the same film I am. "It felt like a real film"!? It was hackneyed, cliched, and, contrary to what you're claiming, it tried very consciously to ape a comic book. In both the sheer ridiculousness of the villain and the direct video style. You had panels of action--you had panels! Panels! Panels work in print to set pacing--things happening with time versus things happening immediately. Action bleeds over a panel or words do. You set the pace and you connect over the gap somehow to relate the pictures and words to the ongoing story.

Instead, with The Hulk, you had action going on inside each panel, but they were mainly isolated. You could have done it better with cuts because who really needs to see the entire spool of cameras A, B, C as they lower Banner in his box into a hole? Not me!

Danny Elfman writes the soundtracks for every movie John Williams doesn't, so that proves nothing.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

As I said above: be wary of criticizing Batman and Robin too much for what it wasn't. It was not the sequel to the Burton films. It was basically a 1960s Batman brought to the movies in the shape of the Burton films. The puns, the overacting, the ridiculous Bat-[fill in the blank] are all straight out of Adam West territory. I hesitate to put myself in the place of defending that sequel, but nothing in it behaves abnormally if the TV is your point of reference. (Right down to the inclusion of Batgirl to get the women watching.) It's also visual crack, so there's that. I hated it, but it's not the worst comic movie ever made.

From the examples you give above, I can't see how you can argue that the Hulk is no less real looking than the Incredible Hulk. The problem with the CG in The Hulk was the color palette of the whole film. It was, on the whole, very bright. CG? Doesn't look as good in the glaring sun. The Incredible Hulk set all of its set pieces in the dark, which is just a smarter move, period, and the entire color palette was never raised to so sharp or bright a hue that they couldn't do that. (Even in the fight that took place in daylight, it was notably overcast.)

But the CG isn't only on the Hulk. The Abomination looked a damn sight better than...than whatever we were supposed to believe Nick Nolte was. And it helps that the characters were more interactive with the Hulk in The Incredible Hulk. Hulk of 2003 mostly beat up other CGI'd things. The Incredible Hulk featured more one-on-ones, with Betty pulling and sitting on him, his kicking Blonksy around, etc. The people doing a better job of meeting the eyes of the thing that doesn't--while they're doing it--exist was just generally abysmal in The Hulk. That can really make the already problematic assertion that there is a giant green dude in the shot even harder to pull off.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd criticize the non-Hulk CG in the film, like, as mentioned, the dogs and water-Nolte as much as anyone else. As for the brightness, I didn't mind it. I think Hulk himself looks good, and he looks just as good leaping around the Grand Canyon in broad daylight to me as he does bursting out of that tank in darkness.

The 60's Batman TV show is awesome. Batman & Robin is just bad. Also Schumacher has never claimed he was intentionally making a goofy movie, in his director's commentary he apologized for the film's excesses and claimed it was the studio wanting more toys to sell. So I don't buy that explanation.

I thought Uma Thurman was good in it though.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Unlike trinityvixen I thought the visual style was cool, and the cast was good. Once again, just the everything-that-wasn't-the-Hulk CG and the finale were awful in my eyes.

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

Aliens vs Predator looked awesome? Are you high?!

Apparently, the arctic looks like my apartment with a fine layer of fake snow, and the Predator was a WWE fan.

And "for TV" doesn't excuse everything....

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

The first Hulk might have been just fine with the gamma-dogs and the last twenty minutes removed.

Oh yeah, and half of the "Eric Bana sits in his room staring at the wall" time.

That is a brilliant description of Spawn, cbreakr. :)

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

Is the comments page broken? I just left a reply for cbreakr, but it stuck me at the bottom.

I thought I had probably hit the wrong link, but when I edit it, it shows it as having replied to cbreakr.

Confuzzled cat is confuzzled.

Or maybe it's just fucking IE7. Nevermind.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

With a budget roughly one or two orders of magnitude higher (your average difference of money spent on 1-2 hours of TV versus 1-2 hours of movie), that picture would not have happened. Therefore, TV movies cannot be counted.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Directorial intent is not the be-all, end-all. Interpretations of film can exist outside of authorial dictum. Viewing determines the narrative as much as script does. This is how Rocky Horror is a classic instead of a triffling, mostly awful film--the viewers took ownership of the narrative. Batman and Robin aped the TV show whether the director admits it or not, so that's a fair read on the eventual product. The fact that they cast a fourth-wall-crossing smirker like Clooney as Batman supports this theory of winking nostalgia.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

As I am now contemplating a terrible-comic-book-movie marathon of some sorts in my next set of rentals from Netflix, I am debating whether or not to subject myself to The Hulk a second time for accuracy of comparison.

I mean, for measurement's sake, I am going to have to Catwoman again, and as time has dulled (but not dimmed) the horror of The Hulk, I'm currently dreading that more than any of the worst of the worst I've not seen. I'm guaranteeing that my opinion of The Hulk does not change, but perhaps it will be ameliorated by such other hits as Spawn, Barbed Wire, or Batman and Robin.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Viewer's interpretation of the film is one thing. But what I meant is, even if it apes the TV show, if it does so unintentionally that still makes it a very, very, very bad movie. When it comes to actually analyzing a movie I don't really think "unintentionally funny" actually qualifies as a success.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Ah, but, per my rules: unintentionally funny falls under the category of "so bad it's funny," which means it can't be the worst film ever made from a comic book.