Superheroes Whose Movies Will Never Be Great (That Hollywood Will Never Give Up On)

Some superheroes just don’t have what it takes to make it as a movie star. They may work great on the printed page, but something about them keeps their movies from being as satisfying.

Of course, that’s not going to keep Hollywood from trying…and trying…and trying…

The Hulk

People like the Hulk because he’s a big green guy that smashes stuff. That’s really all there is to it. Unfortunately, smashing stuff is very expensive — even with a huge budget a Hulk movie can only afford a few minutes of Hulk being Hulk. As a result, a lot of time has to be spent on boring stuff like Bruce Banner’s childhood or Edward Norton looking angsty.

HULK, UH…meditate?

The Punisher

A good movie generally requires some sort of story arc — we want to see the characters grow, or at the very least achieve something meaningful by the end of the movie. There is no arc for the Punisher though. He’s just a guy who witnessed his family’s murder, went crazy and became a serial killer. There’s no growing, or happy ending for Frank Castle — killing the bad guys he’s currently after doesn’t really achieve anything aside from allowing him to move onto his next victims.

The Punisher works fine in a serial format like comic books. I could see a Punisher TV series on HBO or AMC being decent, but his movies always just feel underwhelming and pointless.

Team Movies

Team-based superhero movies are screwed two ways. First, all the characters on the team have to be played by stars that require a certain amount of screen time to justify their paychecks, usually resulting in an unfocused movie full of pointless dangling subplots. Second, as with all superhero movies, there’s only so much money for actual superheroics, except now that budget has to be split between an entire team.

The usual result is a rambling film where most of the characters don’t get to do all that much. Trust me — Hulk is going to punch like, one thing in The Avengers. Iron Man is just going to sit around in the lab the whole movie and maybe shoot a missile or two. It’s going to be all Captain America and Black Widow because they don’t require as many expensive special effects.

Not that there aren’t good things to be said about lots of Black Widow.

Wolverine

Wolverine’s a badass — he slices dudes into ribbons without hesitation and can be crushed into ground chuck and still survive. He’s never going to get to do any of that in his movies. Comics can artfully dance around the violence Wolverine inflicts and absorbs, but Wolverine being Wolverine in a live action film would be a very fast track to an R-rating. Marvel may let some of their minor characters appear in R-rated films, but it’s never happening with a major character like Wolverine.

Wolverine will always be neutered in his movies and unfortunately when you don’t allow Wolverine to truly be the best there is at what he does, all you’re really left with is a grumpy Canadian with silly hair (hey, maybe I should try out for the next movie).

 

Superman

Okay, the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie was good. Unfortunately that movie has cast a shadow over the entire franchise ever since.

There’s basically only one way to do a Superman movie right — it has to be a tribute to the Golden and Silver Age comics and serials, and tell the story of Superman’s origin and early romance with Lois Lane. Once you stray from that at all, things start to go sour. Modernize the style and suddenly Superman starts to look silly. Add any shades of grey to Superman’s character, or advance his relationship with Lois and things get creepy. Superman is an all-powerful God-like alien — he’s only appealing if he’s a being of pure good. The more nuance you add, the more unsettling the character gets.

In other words, the 1978 movie is pretty much the only Superman movie that needs to exist. You either have to remake it, which nobody really wants, or you have to try something different with the character, which is doomed to failure. It’s a rare case of a great movie ultimately dooming a franchise.

More Superman dong isn’t the answer guys.

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