An In-Depth Ranking of Every Marvel/DC Movie Superhero - 68.-35.

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The “Putrid” Tier

68. Catwoman/Patience Phillips (Halle Berry, Catwoman, 2004)

I guess I could have excluded this since Catwoman is considered a
villain in the comics, but she did get her own “superhero film” here
and the character is ambiguous and had her own series in the past
where she acted mostly as a hero, so I’ll include her – and of course,
this portrayal gets dead last.

I had the grand misfortune of watching this movie on a plane flight
after it came out. What I saw was baffling and nonsensical. The
character has almost nothing to do with the Catwoman of the comics,
and doesn’t even have the name Selina Kyle. The origin story of her
being a zombie resurrected by cats was more or less taken from Batman
Returns and had nothing to do with the comic. It was also extremely
baffling that they chose to make a movie about a character closely
related to Batman, but not involve Batman in the movie in any way. The
most interesting thing about Catwoman in the comics is her
relationship with Batman – they tried to create a facsimile by having
her be involved with a cop played by Benjamin Bratt, but it rings
hollow. The supporting characters and plot had nothing to do with any
DC comic, either. But, more importantly, this movie was absolutely
horrendous and nonsensical. The attempts to show off her body are
embarrassing to watch because of how blatant they are about what
they’re trying to do. Berry accepted a Razzy award for worst actress
after it came out, and while I enjoy her self-awareness, it was very
well deserved.

67. Howard the Duck (Voiced by Chip Zein, Howard the Duck, 1986)

I wasn’t sure whether to include this character initially, as its
debatable whether he is considered a superhero. Regardless, he is a
part of the Marvel comics universe, and does fight villains, so I felt
he did fit the category.

Regarding the movie, everyone knows that Howard the Duck is considered
one of the worst films of all time. The movie is basically unwatchable
– a couple years ago, some of my friends and I conducted a “horrible
movie marathon” that included such classics as Troll 2 and the
Asylum’s Titanic 2. We attempted to watch Howard the Duck as the third
movie, but they absolutely could not get through it and 30 minutes
into the movie we had to change it to something else. So, really, it’s
not even watchable in a “watch it for entertainment value because it’s
so bad” sense.

Here’s the real shame, though: whenever people think of Howard the
Duck, they think of this atrocity of a film. But the thing that people
don’t realize, however, is that Howard the Duck was actually a pretty
good comic book character. He originated in Marvel’s Man-Thing series
before getting his own comic, and his own comic was more or less a
precursor to Marvel’s other comedic series like John Bryne’s She-Hulk
or the Deadpool series. Howard served as a great comedy series in the
Marvel line, as he would break the fourth wall and was a great source
for humor. A story where Howard ran for president resulted in the
character getting thousand of write-in votes during the 1976
presidential election.

The movie completely ruined this by playing him straight in an
abominable fashion. The effects used to create the character were
horrendous, he had none of the charm or cleverness of the comic, and
the plot and pacing of the film were awful. The attempts at humor fell
flat completely. Howard the Duck clearly deserves a spot as one of the
worst films of all time, but people who have seen the comic understand
it on a much more tragic level, as a ruination of a truly humorous and
clever comic book character.

66. Batgirl/Barbara Wilson (Alicia Silverstone, Batman and Robin,
1997)

As you well know, Batman and Robin was absolute garbage, and Batgirl
was a completely useless character shoehorned into the movie. For some
reason she was Alfred’s niece instead of Commissioner Gordon’s
daughter and they changed her last name, although I suppose that
decision made some degree of sense since the Burton/Schumacher films
wrongfully turned Jim Gordon into a mostly irrelevant minor side
character who was only in a few scenes so having his daughter play a
major role would have seemed out of place. Still, everything about
this character was bizarre and out of place. It made sense for Robin
to come in with some degree of crime fighting skills, as he was an
acrobat. However, in this movie Barbara was just a college girl, so
her having martial arts, combat, and tactical skills made zero sense
and they didn’t even try to justify it, she just had them and that was
that.

She got her suit and equipment by stumbling into the Batcave and
having an AI programmed by Alfred say that he made all of it for her
since he knew she would discover their secrets and also want to fight
crime. I bet Barbara’s mother was pretty pissed when she found out
that her brother had encouraged her daughter to become a costumed
vigilante fighting dangerous criminals. Silverstone’s acting is also
flat as a board, and the character is pretty much a joke in general
who participates in several absolutely ludicrous scenes.

65. Steel/John Henry Irons (Shaquille O’Neal, Steel, 1997)

Another movie where the reason for making it was absolutely baffling.
Steel is a character directly inspired by Superman who would not be a
superhero without him, so to give him a standalone movie that didn’t
mention Superman at all was simply bizarre. To make matters worse, he
is portrayed by NBA player Shaquille O’Neal, who as you may suspect is
not exactly a master thespian. The plot doesn’t make any sense,
either. John Henry Irons goes home to his grandma’s house and starts
interacting with some young kid who also lives there, and we are never
told what the relationship between the two is. He also mysteriously
obtains a crime lab in the middle of a junk yard, and abducts his
crippled partner from a hospital while people applaud. Yeap. Also, his
“metal” suit is clearly made out of rubber. Also there is an extended
fourth-wall breaking scene where Steel is supposed to throw a grenade
through a hole that not-so-subtly references the fact that Shaq never
makes free throws in the NBA. HARDY HAR HAR. Richard Roundtree is also
an actor in the movie, and there is another fourth wall-breaking joke
where he refers to Steel’s hammer and says he really enjoys the
“shaft.” Enough said.

64. Supergirl/Kara Zor-el/Linda Lee (Helen Slater, Supergirl, 1984)

You may be noticing a pattern in the sense that three of the bottom
five entries are characters who are closely linked with popular
superheroes that are somehow given stand alone movies devoid of said
linking popular superhero. At least the Supergirl movie is allowed to
reference Superman, giving a brief exposition towards the beginning
that he is away in space on a mission and thus can’t impact the events
of the film. Still, this movie is a baffling mess. Kara starts out as
a Krypton explosion survivor who was on some sort of Kryptonian space
station at the time of the explosion (we assume, but it isn’t quite
spelled out.) Kara escapes the space station to reclaim some important
Deus Ex Machine weapon on Earth, and then she suddenly goes from being
on the space station into bursting out of a lake in full Supergirl
costume. What? How did she obtain that costume? Why did she decide to
wear it and become Supergirl?

Then, even though her mission was to re-obtain the powerful Kryptonian
weapon that was lost on Earth, she proceeds to ignore it entirely and
screw around on Earth for nearly an hour, enrolling at a school for no
reason. A lot of the rest of the plot centers on some sort of love
triangle between Supergirl, the female villain, and some gardener guy.
There are also multiple instances where Supergirl is trapped in some
sort of peril where she conveniently forgets the fact that she can
fly. Another example of B-movie schlock nonsense.

63. The Spirit/Denny Colt (Gabriel Macht, The Spirit, 2008)

Although this character originated in a comic strip, he was indeed
given a DC comic and was introduced into the DC comics universe, so
I’ve included him here.

In any case, while a successful comic strip and comic book character,
the character in the movie has literally zero personality. He does his
role in the film without displaying an ounce of anything
distinguishing, and Macht’s portrayal is flat and shows no emotion
whatsoever. Sin City was a quite enjoyable movie, and Frank Miller’s
solo directing effort here attempts to emulate it, but Miller
completely fails and misses out on the fact that Sin City had
enjoyable characters who had personalities. The character is
incredibly bland and forgettable, although some memorable and weird
stuff happens around him he's flat as a board. It is also incredibly
bizarre that the film (despite being written and directed by Miller,
who worked on the comic book series) would include a bizarre character
twist that more or less ruined the core of the character – in the
strip and comics, the Spirit was a powerless average Joe who fought
crime, but in the movie, he is given a Wolverine-esque healing factor
because of his returning from the grave. What? A universally panned
character and movie, and deservedly so. Miller should stick to pen and
paper.

62. Batman/Bruce Wayne (George Clooney, Batman and Robin, 1997)

On paper, George Clooney is a pretty good casting choice for Batman.
Great acting ability, a very fitting presence and jawline, an ability
to seamlessly transition between billionaire playboy and serious hero.

The key words, however, are “on paper.”

This list doesn’t just consider acting ability or screen presence – it
considers how the character was used and directed in the script. And
from that perspective, you can’t really get much worse than the Batman
portrayed in the all-time film disaster “Batman & Robin.”

He spouts off cheesy one liners. He has very little depth or emotion.
He cavorts around in public as Batman for some reason and acts as a
public celebrity, going to charity auctions and doing public speaking,
destroying the mystery of the character. He immediately allows a young
girl with no combat experience to join his crew, risking her life.

In all fairness, the scenes where Wayne interacts with the dying
Alfred are actually somewhat decent scenes that give a hint of the
long relationship the two have had, and Clooney isn’t half bad in
those scenes.

That being said…I think the picture I choose tells you everything you
need to know.

61. Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin, Jonah Hex, 2008)

Jonah Hex in the comics is a pretty cool character, and the idea of a
Batman-like character who operates in the old west was a good concept.
The episode of Batman the Animated series that focuses on him trying
to stop Ra’s Al Ghul is pretty cool. Part of his appeal is that, like
Batman, Hex has no supernatural abilities, relying on his instincts,
quick draw, tracking abilities, and cleverness.

A movie based on him could have been pretty good – his story is
simple, and westerns are easy to pull off and can make for great
movies with good action. And hey, Josh Brolin is a pretty good actor,
and he’s got a strong supporting cast that includes John Malkovich,
Michael Fassbender, Michael Shannon (as well as, uh, Gob Bluth for
some reason.)

Turns out everything could go wrong. To start out with, they
completely change around his origin – he still starts out as a
Confederate soldier who changes his mind, but they made Hex a person
seeking revenge for the death of his wife and son. I guess it’s not
that big of a deal to change his origin, since not too many people are
probably familiar with it, but did they really have to pick something
so cliché and copy/paste the Punisher’s motivations?

More importantly, much like the Spirit, they completely ruin him by
giving him supernatural abilities. He now has the ability to resurrect
the dead for a brief amount of time if he touches their corpse for as
long as he touches them. The resurrected corpse is also forced to only
speak the truth for some reason. I will give them credit that this is
a somewhat unique and creative power – but it has absolutely no place
in a Jonah Hex film. It almost seems like they put it in as an easy
replacement of Hex’s (non-supernatural) elite tracking and crime scene
skills. Oh, and guess who gave him those abilities and what the source
is? You get no points for correctly “magic Indians.” The Native
Americans who Hex was raised by and interacted with in the comics were
certainly not supernatural, so to bring in such a cliché is just
stupid.

Also, the movie is a jumbled mess. Scenes, characters and subplots
appear and reappear seemingly at random. The characters will
frequently show up at various places across the US in very short
periods of time – for example, in the finale, the characters basically
teleport to Washington DC.

Brolin I suppose has some sort of charm and isn’t all that bad, but
the character is quite poorly written. His romance with a prostitute
played by Megan Fox is never explained – they just instantly fall in
love with each other, that’s it.

It’s also one of the shortest movies I’ve ever seen, I honestly think
it’s only an hour and fifteen minutes. The official runtime says 81
minutes, and since that includes pre-title screens and credits I think
an hour fifteen is about accurate. So he beats out the next entry
since I didn’t have to sit through as much.

60. Van Wilder, fighting vampires (Ryan Reynolds, Blade Trinity, 2004)

The Jar Jar Binks of the Blade movies. First of all, Reynolds is just
playing Ryan Reynolds here. His character has absolutely nothing to do
with Hannibal King in the comics in the slightest besides the fact
that he’s a former vampire that fights vampires (King in the comics is
an older stoic man, Ryan Reynolds is Ryan Reynolds). He is supposed to
be the comic relief, but his jokes are absolutely terrible, usually
revolving around genitalia. His brand of humor is only funny to
elementary school children, and I don’t think elementary school
children were allowed to watch this movie, so why include it? He gets
kidnapped by vampires and somehow shoehorns in a joke about the fact
that he has a Hello Kitty tattoo on his ass. What?

The funny thing is, Blade himself seems to have the same opinion of
him that the audience does. You would think in a movie called
“Trinity” that the natural story arc would be for Blade to learn to
work as a team, to understand and come to accept working with the
others. But no, even at the very end he never softens his stance
towards Reynolds and still barely tolerates him. But probably the most
baffling element is that Reynolds is then given the task of being the
ending narrator, the one who says “Blade must continue his journey
blah blah…” Wait, what? Biel’s character was flat but at least she was
taken seriously and had some sort of connection with Blade. Why on
earth wasn’t she the ending narrator? If the guy who just clowns
around making dick jokes the whole movie is the one delivering the
"serious" ending narration, you know your movie has problems.

59. Elektra/Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner, Daredevil, 2003; and
Elektra, 2005)

Elektra is another character given a spinoff theatrically-released
film that absolutely did not deserve it. However, I will give this
entry some degree of credit, as the character did not initially appear
in her own spin-off film. The spin-off film itself is horrendous, but
Garner’s portrayal of the character was at least tolerable in 2003’s
Daredevil, thus giving her a higher spot on the list than others. In
Daredevil, she’s a pretty standard “love interest who can also kick
ass” – it didn’t make sense how she obtained elite combat skills
(she’s a standard businessman’s daughter one moment, then we cut to a
scene of her cutting up some sandbags with her sais and she’s suddenly
in ninja mode) but other than that the portrayal is fine. Not great or
memorable, but fine.

The spinoff film itself, however (Elektra, 2005) was pretty much as
low as you can go on the totem pole of comic book movies The acting
wooden, the plot nonsensical (she fights a bunch of people who have
living tattoos on them…wait, what?)

Elektra, with its horrendous acting and plot, rightfully deserves its
place among the worst comic book superhero movies of all time.
However, this list takes into account all appearances of the character
if they are played by the same actor within the same continuity, so
some points are gained based on her performance in “Daredevil,” which,
while bad, is not entirely objectionable, making her the “best” spot
among the putrid tier.

I have a friend who was a huge Alias fan and considers Jennifer Garner
one of the sexiest women on Earth, and is more or less obsessed with
her. That was part of the reason some of us saw this. After the movie
ended, I asked the friend in love with Garner what he thought of it.

His reponse? “She could have been not wearing any clothes the entire
time and it still would have been one of the worst films I’ve ever
seen.” I think that settles the issue.

Next up: The "Not quite putrid, but still pretty bad" tier. As we get
towards the middle there will be a little bit more in-depth analysis,
I realize that this entry is a bit redundant and largely boiled down
to "One of the worst movies ever, acting was bad, etc."

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The Quite Bad, but not Quite Putrid Tier

58. Van Wilder with a Green Lantern ring (Ryan Reynolds, Green
Lantern, 2011)

Nice to see you again so soon Mr. Reynolds. Besides the previously
mentioned Jonah Hex, Green Lantern was DC’s first attempt to establish
a film franchise around a superhero other than Superman or Batman. And
boy, did it fail.

Reynold’s carefree playboy character had very little in common with
the straightforward Hal Jordan of the comic book series. In and of
itself, this was not a mistake – it made sense that the producers
didn’t consider a straightforward adaptation of Jordan to be
cinematically appealing, so infusing him with a different personality
was not a terrible decision. What they gave him, however, was pretty
unbearable.

Jordan embarks on a pretty eye-rolling and stereotypical superhero
origin story and we never really connect with the character. It
doesn’t help that the suit itself is composed entirely of CGI,
breaking our suspension of disbelief.

In addition, the nature of Green Lantern’s powers is a wonderful venue
to showcase the showrunner’s creativity, as the ring allows the users
to create pretty much anything. This opportunity was completely
squandered, however – the most creative thing he comes up with to use
the ring’s powers for is some kind of Hotwheels track to save a
helicopter. The rest is just a standard “big green fist” or whatnot.

In the initial stages of this movie, there was some controversy as the
movie was initially conceived as comedy vehicle for actor Jack Black
(who would appear as a new character given the Green Lantern ring, not
Hal Jordan). I can understand why hardcore fans of Green Lantern would
be upset by this, but I actually read the entirety of the Jack Black
Green Lantern comedy script, and it elicited three or four genuine
laughs from me. Although Green Lantern fans would consider it a
bastardization, I genuinely believe it would have lent towards a
better overall movie.

57. Gambit/Remy LeBeau (Taylor Kitsch, X:Men Origins: Wolverine, 2009)

“Hey, so you guys want Gambit to be in the movies, huh? Well, here he
is!”

Gambit is a character who was more or less popularized by being a
staple of the 1990’s X-Men cartoon series. The producers of the X-Men
films 1-3 were criticized by not including him. Therefore, when
deciding to create the film “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” the Ragin’
Cajun was included in the movies as more or less a throw-in. His role
in the film could have been fulfilled by pretty much any other
character, but Gambit was included as pure fan-service.

I suppose that Kitsch’s acting was okay given what he was given, but
the character was such an obvious shoe-horned in wink to fans that it
really made no sense for him to be included plot-wise. Kitsch shows
very little of Gambit’s trademark charm, and doesn’t even have a Cajun
accent.

One of the most baffling scenes in the movie occurs halfway through.
After Logan first meets Gambit and confronts him about his identity in
some sort of card club, Logan walks outside and sees Sabretooth. As
Logan and Sabretooth have a longstanding feud, Logan is entirely
fixated on him. Logan prepares to engage in a battle with Sabretooth,
and as this happens, Gambit walks up behind Wolverine to confront him.
Wolverine pays no attention to Gambit, and uses a backhand fist to
knock him out cold.

This is a moment that is actually kind of funny and effective.
However, after a few more moments, we are treated to a montage of
Gambit suddenly appearing a few rooftops behind Wolverine and using
his kinetic powers to hop across rooftops and then confront him. Wait,
wasn’t he just nonchalantly knocked unconscious by Logan a few minutes
ago? How did he appear on these rooftops to confront him during the
battle with Sabretooth? One of several examples of the movie being
extremely poorly edited and bafling.

Gambit plays a minor role throughout the rest of the film, but is
still not given nearly enough justice to the popularity of the comic
book character. As the “X-Men: First Class” creators have rightfully
decided to completely ignore X3 and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” within
t heir own continuity, one would hope that eventually another Gambit
will appear that will do justice to the comic book character.

56. Invisible Woman/Susan Storm (Jessica Alba, Fantastic Four, 2005,
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, 2007)

“Oh no! Somehow, my powers have backfired and left me standing here
NAKED without my clothes! I’m so embarrassed, I can’t believe this
happened AGAIN!”

…and that’s pretty much everything you need to know about this
character. In the comics, Susan Storm is a strong-willed leader who is
often considered the most powerful member of the Fantastic Four. In
the Fantastic Four movies, Susan pretty much just exists to find a
convenient excuse to appear naked in public…Tee hee! Casting Jessica
Alba as Susan more or less made no sense besides the fact that they
wanted to add sex appeal to the movie. She looks ridiculous in a
blonde wig, and the fact that she has been cast as the sister of Chris
Evans (despite the fact that the two of them are obviously different
ethnicities) is also ridiculous. God forbid that strong females
characters exist in comic book movies as anything other than sex
appeal.

55. Robin/Dick Grayson (Chris O’Donnell, Batman Forever, 1995; Batman
& Robin, 1997)

This character was decently tolerable in Batman Forever, giving him a
few notches above Clooney and Silverstone who only appeared in Batman
and Robin.

I strongly dislike Batman Forever as a movie, mostly due to the
villains and their plot. My dislike doesn’t really have much to do
with Robin. Sure, O’Donnell’s acting in the movie isn’t fantastic, and
it’s not entirely clear why or how Bruce plans to adopt a fully grown
24 year old man who is only ten years younger than him, but his
interactions with Bruce have some semblance of emotion and character
in them. He’s a little whiny and entitled, but in a way that made
sense and seemed intentional. If this was the only movie the character
appeared in, I’d probably put him in the neutral tier.

However, it’s not the only movie he’s in. I’ve already talked at
length about the flaws on Batman and Robin in the previous two entries
from it, so I’ll focus this one entirely on what’s wrong with Robin as
a character specifically in this one. Any trace of warmth between him
and Bruce from “Forever” is gone – in this movie, Robin completely
acts like a petulant unappreciative brat in an over the top fashion.
He whines about how he wants X or Y, how come he can’t do this, how
come he can’t have this thing or that thing. Batman might as well have
been partners with Veruca Salt. Dude, freaking BATMAN has invited you
to go out and fight crime with him, why don’t you show some
appreciation once in awhile? Needless to say, Robin also is involved
in all the stupid action scenes and developments on top of that. And
as a final point, how the hell is his small mask anything resembling a
disguise?

54. Storm/Ororo Monroe (X:Men, 2000, X2, 2003, X-Men: The Last Stand,
2006)

Ok, this one is going to be a long one…

This might seem like a bit too low considering that two of the three
films this character appears in are pretty good, with only one
stinker, and the character for the most part doesn’t do anything that
is too outwardly horrendous (Other than “What happens to a Toad when
it gets hit by lightning?”)

Still, I have major, major issues with this character, and I think
Berry is the main reason why X3 falls so flat.

First off, she is acceptable in X1 and X2 as a minor character despite
not having a personality. The hair looks ridiculous, but I suppose
that was inevitable. They also don’t really explain the range of her
powers very well – there are several instances where she could have
helped out their situations with weather control but didn’t do
anything. Berry’s acting isn’t horrendous but it isn’t very good
either, and all in all the character serves her purpose as an
uninteresting supporting character and doesn’t necessarily detract
from the first two movies but also doesn’t really add anything.

In X3, however? A different story entirely. This story was harmed by
her character. Berry was considering leaving the film, but they wanted
her back so they caved in to her demands to give her a more central
role. Thus, Storm was made into the main character other than
Wolverine, but they forgot to give her anything resembling
personality, conflict, character development, or chemistry. She just
sort of exists and does her thing.

The first thing that’s really off about her is how she has literally
no character flaws. We don’t see her ever have fear, doubt, or
development. When the idea of a serum taking away mutant powers is
introduced, she immediately and adamantly is opposed to it without
even giving it a second thought. The scene where Beast tells her to
consider that others may have use for it is the only hint of her not
being basically a perfect person. Especially troubling is the early
scene where Xavier wants to hand over the team to her instead of Scott
because Scott is too overcome with grief regarding Jean (I’ll further
get into my problems with the way the movie treated Cyclops in an
entry coming up quite soon).

Another hugely troubling dynamic is you have a situation where the two
leads of the film (Wolverine and Storm) have literally no chemistry or
definable relationship. Most of the movie has them working together,
but we have NO idea what opinion they have of each other. Wolverine
has a clearly defined relationship with every other character – he is
in love with Jean, a begrudging paternal appreciation for Xavier, a
respectful but contentious rivalry with Cyclops, is protective of
Rogue, makes quips to Beast since their personalities are polar
opposites, and we even see him have an arc with Iceman where he sees
that he’s a good kid and approves of him being romantic with his
daughter figure and learns to trust Bobby in battle despite his youth.
With Storm? We have no idea what he thinks of her. They just kind of
go around together doing plot things. Having the relationship between
your two leads be “co-workers who go around doing what is necessary
together but are completely neutral about each other and don’t express
any emotion towards each other, positive or negative” does not a
compelling movie make.

Berry initially wanted the movie to introduce a romance between
Wolverine and Storm – this would obviously be a terrible idea,
especially since so much of the film is about him wanting to get Jean
back to normal, so it’s good they vetoed that. Still, there are a
million other routes they could have taken. Their personalities are
different – she’s more straight-laced and by the books while he’s more
of a bad boy loose cannon, but they don’t tap into that potential
tension whatsoever. They could have had Storm initially not respect
him since he’s a wild card who came to their organization and then
gain a respect towards him. Even if that would have taken too much
time, they could have hinted at it and just thrown in a few jokes
between the two of them, maybe have Logan joke with her in a friendly
manner about her being too straight laced or something. They could
have had them be friends who have gained a respect and friendship
towards going to war together, and maybe show some sort of friendly
warmth or concern for the other, thrown in a scene where one is
concerned and the other platonically comforts the other. We get none
of that, and almost all the dialogue between the two of them is “Ok,
here’s the situation, here’s what we’re going to do next…”

I’m going to go ahead and put nearly all the blame on this situation
on the character of Storm, since Wolverine has chemistry with
literally every other character. The movie would have been far better
served if they had just let Berry walk away and said Storm was away in
Africa doing something, and the movie would have had time to breathe
and focus on characters who actually have personalities.

53. The Punisher/Frank Castle (Dolph Lundgren, The Punisher, 1989)

He doesn’t have a skull on his chest. Let’s get that out of the way
first.

This movie is pretty much a standard, campy action vehicle for
Lundgren, with very little trace of what comprises the character of
the Punisher in the comics. The movie could have given the character a
different name and never called him the “Punisher” at all and the
movie could still be pretty much exactly the same. Lundgren is flat as
a board in this, never really showing emotion. The character
idiotically refuses to wear body armor for some perplexing reason,
even though the character in the comic has no trouble with that. Not
much of a personal arc from him, not too much time is spent on grief
about his family, he just kinda goes “Gotta get the bad guy,” gets
into some action scenes, and then kills the bad guy. Easily the most
boring of the three Punisher movies, and Lundgren’s portrayal of the
character easily falls below the other two.

52. The Hulk/Bruce Banner (Eric Bana, Hulk, 2003)

The first part of this movie, I didn’t have too much of a problem
with. Bana’s acting seemed okay at first, I didn’t mind the plot or
pacing, and could ignore the “comic book panel” shifts.
About halfway through, however, this movie goes completely bonkers.
The Hulk bounds through the desert with giant leaps – a move taken
from the comics, but it looks completely ridiculous with the poor CGI
they were using, and elicited many laughs in the theater. He fights
giant “Hulk dogs” – not a horrible idea in theory, but the bad CGI of
both the Hulk and the dogs makes it looks ridiculous as well. Some
people like this movie because they think it was trying to achieve
difficult themes, but when they fail so bad I don't give it any credit
for trying.

The Hulk fights lots of fighter planes and military equipment, and
hilariously, each and every time he crashes a plane or tank you see
the people inside get out unharmed (via parachute, crawling out of the
tank, etc) even if the damage Hulk did to the vehicle would clearly be
enough to kill anyone inside.

The most ridiculous scene in the movie, and honestly one of the most
ridiculous scenes I remember seeing, ever, was at the end. Banner is
imprisoned, and the military is fully aware that his condition means
that huge flares of emotion cause his transformation into the Hulk.
But for some bizarre reason, they allow his estranged psychotic father
to come in and speak with him. What? That’s only the beginning,
though. His father has given himself the powers of the Absorbing Man
from the comics by injecting himself with gamma-starfish DNA,
resulting in a wacky blur of a fight scene. His father bites a wire
and turns himself into an electricity monster and juggles the Hulk
through the air with lightning, then they go into a ditch and he turns
into a rock monster, and then something explodes so he turns into a
giant cloud, and then a jet comes by and a single rocket kills him.

The movie also ruined the character by making him be predestined to be
the Hulk – his father was obsessed with power and genetics so he gives
himself mutant DNA, which is passed on to Bruce when he’s born and is
what causes the reaction with the gamma. This is a bad twist, as a lot
of the appeal of Bruce Banner is the fact that he was a regular guy
who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The movie also wastes a
good deal of time in having him try to figure out what happened in his
tragic past instead of focusing on the fact that he now turns into a
giant green monster.

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51. Cyclops/Scott Summers (James Marsden, X:Men, 2000; X2, 2003; X-
Men: The Last Stand, 2006)





The first thing I’ll say is that Marsden is a good actor and he is
good in this role. He shows a good acting and emotional range, has
good presence, and reads his lines well. He’s the first person on this
list to actually have a good acting performance, and some of the
characters ranked lower than him give in bad ones. But these character
rankings aren’t just based on that, they’re also based on the way the
character is portrayed and used in the film.

And regarding that? Boy…I could probably write a 20 page essay on the
way Cyclops was mishandled in these three films.

I understand, to some degree, that these movies were more or less
Wolverine’s movies. He’s a more popular and sellable character. But
still, the ways they used him, even the small lines and details are a
travesty.

Let’s start with Cyclops in the comics. Cyclops is the quintessential
X-Man. He’s been a member of the team the longest, almost always being
the leader. He is the closest to Xavier, and is more or less a son to
him. The most critical component about him, perhaps even more
important than the fact that he can shoot optic force blasts from his
eyes, is the fact that he is a strategic genius in the field of
battle. He can see all angles of the battle, he can figure out what’s
going to happen before it happens and use it to anticipate the enemy’s
moves and shut them down. He knows where his teammates should go and
what they should do, and even unruly characters like Wolverine or
Gambit have learned that when Cyclops tells them to do something in
the field, they had better do it, because he knows exactly what the
hell he’s talking about. That’s why he’s the leader.

Let’s start with the first film. I didn’t have too much of a problem
with his use here, and it’s the only one that sort of does him any
justice. They show his rivalry with Wolverine in a healthy way. The
movie is definitely set up for you to root for Wolverine in this
rivalry and hope that Logan is the one who eventually gets Jean, to be
sure, but at least Cyclops is shown in action, he’s shown being a
competent leader. A more secondary character, but he gets his due, to
some degree, although his strategic abilities aren’t really on display
too much.

In X2, things get a little shaky. Scott is abducted and out of
commission for most of the movie. I can sort of understand the need to
do this to keep some characters out of it since there was so much
going on, but I’m not a fan of picking the quintessential X-Man as the
person you choose to take out of action. Unfortunately, a lot of that
decision was because of casting – Marsden wasn’t really the best known
actor out of the main group, so they took more liberties with
decreasing his role. Really, Storm was the character who should have
been left behind and took a reduced role (as she has no personality
and contributed nothing as a character other than being a person who’s
powers they could use in battle) but she was played by the much more
well known Halle Berry, so you know that wasn’t happening.

Still, even with a reduced role, there are little touches here and
there they could have put in to at least make Cyclops respectable, and
they mess that up to a large degree. X2 shows absolutely none of
Scott’s strategic skills or intelligence, and in fact goes the
opposite way – he makes a lot of dumb suggestions and moves that the
others shut down.

The best example of this is at the end, where they come across the
door to Stryker’s Dark Cerebro. Cyclops walks up to the door and is
about to blast it, but Storm pipes in and tells him that the door is
made of a material that would reflect it back at them and stops him.
What? Cyclops would never make a dumb mistake like that. The scene
should have been someone else suggesting him to blast it and him being
the one to shut that idea down. The crazy thing is? In the
novelization, that’s what happens! Storm is the one who suggests he
blasts it, and Scott is the one to correct her and say that it would
backfire. Why was this changed in the film? I’m willing to bet that
when it came time to film, it was something along the line of Halle
Berry insisted that their roles be switched for this scene because she
couldn’t handle Storm having any flaws, and they caved. Either that,
or the showrunners decided to switch it because they don’t care about
the character of Cyclops and don’t care if they make him the dumb one.

In any case, this obviously pales in comparison to X3. Because…wow. I
understand that his appearance in X3 was probably cut short because
Marsden signed on to Superman Returns. But still, they could have
reduced his role in a way that wasn’t a gigantic slap in the face. The
people making the movie obviously had little respect for Cyclops in
the first place, and having Marsden join Bryan Singer to bail on them
increased it tenfold. First of all, in the beginning of the movie,
they have Scott be so incredibly broken up about Jean’s death that
he’s lost focus and control. I know he was the one in a romantic
relationship with her, but Xavier, Logan, and Storm also had close
relationships with her and aren’t broken up to the point of being out
of commission due to it, because the people making the movie have
respect for those characters. Xavier shows no concern for Scott’s
feelings and instead decides to give up on him and tell Storm that
she’s the leader now.

And then, of course, Cyclops nonchalantly dies towards the beginning.
If that isn’t bad enough, when the other characters learn that he died…
no one cares. At all.

“Oh man, Jean is out of control! She even killed Scott!”

“Oh, weird. Well, let’s go try to stop her.”

He’s barely mentioned again, and none of the characters show any
concern or care whatsoever that he’s dead. Wolverine I can sort of
understand since their relationship was a bit icy, but the others?
Storm has been teammates with him for years – he’s led her in battle
dozens of times, and they were friends. But that pales in comparison
with Xavier’s lack of a reaction. Scott was more or less his son, he
raised him since he was a boy, had been the leader of his team for
ages…and he barely registers any sort of emotion when he learns that
Scott died. What a travesty. I was fuming when this happened in the
theater. And later on, of course, Xavier dies, so that’s used as a
rallying cry and Scott’s death was basically pointless and redundant.
I’m surprised Marsden even agreed to film X3 when the script was so
clearly an “F U” to him and his character.

Cyclops was never my favorite character in the comics or cartoon, but
I respected him, I knew of his importance and his leadership. The
people making the X-Men movies didn’t. Obviously I have very strong
feelings about this, but I can’t put him much lower than this because
Marsden did a good job acting-wise and the first movie did him justice
for the most part.

50. Mr. Fantastic/Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd, Fantastic Four, 2005;
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, 2007)





The Fantastic Four movies were relatively bad, and had some awful
elements in them (especially the portrayal of Doom), but had some okay
and even pretty good elements and characters in them. Reed wasn’t one
of them, although he also wasn’t egregiously bad. Gruffudd’s
performance was mostly just bland and wooden, and Reed just kind of
came off as kind of a wimp and had no screen presence. But I suppose,
in all fairness, they did stick to the comic book character relatively
well, most of the elements of Reed are there, they certainly didn’t
bastardize any core elements of his character. I suppose they could
have shown him being more of a decisive leader. In the first movie, he
just kind of hangs around for awhile and then gets kidnapped. In the
second movie, he does a little bit more stuff – his abandoning
spending time with Sue in order to work on science projects certainly
was a staple of the comics. One strike against him was that it was
kind of weird how in the second movie, he was contemplating leaving
the hero life behind to start a family with Sue – I really don’t think
Reed would ever consider that. How normal of a life can you really
lead when you’re both public superhero celebrities? Wouldn’t the
public be pissed off that you’ve decided not to use your powers to
help the world anymore?

A bigger point against him, however, is that of the five heroes in the
two films, Reed is the only one who never has anything remotely
resembling a moment of glory and never really has much of a hand in
defeating the villains. He gets kidnapped and tortured in the first
film and the other three come to his rescue. Ben heroically agrees to
revert back to his Thing form in order to come in and rescue him from
Doom, Susan fights Doom and then creates a force field to trap Doom
with Johnny while he goes supernova to defeat him, Johnny creates the
aforementioned supernova and then in the second film is the one to
absorb the other powers and defeat Surfer-Doom, and then the Silver
Surfer is the one to sacrifice himself to defeat Galactus. Reed
doesn’t really do much of anything. You would think that as the leader
of the group and as the ostensible “main character” he would at least
get some sort of moment to use his powers or genius to help solve the
problems at bay, but he is granted no such opportunity. I saw the
first movie with a group of friends and the second with my family, and
in both instances they asked me why this character was granted the
status of leader despite his somewhat underwhelming powers and lack of
really doing much of anything. I tried to explain to them that the
comic book Reed was on another stratosphere from the other three in an
intelligence and tactical leadership standpoint so he was the obvious
leader, but this wasn’t really on display in the films. All in all, a
bland and relatively poorly acted “leading man” who doesn’t do much
and stars in two overall films.


49. Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider (Nicolas Cage, Ghost Rider, 2007; Ghost
Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, 2012)





First off: these films are ludicrous and a very bad portrayal of the
Ghost Rider character.

Cage’s character in these films has absolutely nothing to do with
Johnny Blaze in the comics. Cage decides to be an eccentric weirdo who
forgoes other vices in order to have an addiction to jelly beans for
some reason.

The films are rushed and bizarre. I love how, in the first film, they
introduce three elemental demons (who have the powers of earth, water,
and wind) and set them up as badasses, and we kind of get excited to
see Ghost Rider use the power of fire to defeat them. When they
finally do confront him, Ghost Rider dispatches each of them in less
than 90 seconds apiece, through some simple action like waving his
chain around. I also love how Sam Elliot’s character tells Blaze that
he has been saving his own Ghost Rider form for one use in order to
confront evil, and then Elliot transforms into his Ghost Rider form in
order to travel alongside Blaze through the desert and then just
disappears. Wait, what? You were saving the last remnant of your power
just to pointlessly accompany him through the desert for a bit but
then not actually using them to confront Blackheart?

I will admit, however, that I am not the hugest Ghost Rider fan in the
comics. If I were, this character would probably be lower. However, I
am a Nicholas Cage fan (in a mostly ironic way), so I can’t help but
appreciate movies in which Nicolas Cage does Nicholas Cage things. In
the first movie, he’s sort of reserved and bland, and if that was the
only movie he appeared in this character would be much lower. He steps
up the Cage-iness and hamminess in “Spirits of Vengeance,” however,
giving a largely over-the-top performance where he gets to perform
plenty of trademark Cage schlock.

Oh, to be sure, Spirits of Vengeance sucks and the character is a
complete bastardization of the Ghost Rider character. The Ghost Rider
is a hero who doesn’t condemn people for petty sins like telling white
lies – that aspect of the character seems almost like it was taken
from the Spider-Man villain Demogoblin. It also doesn’t seem
consistent – surely every single person he comes in contact, including
Nadya and Danny, with has committed some sort of minor sin like any
other human at some point, right? It’s also pretty ridiculous that
after “redeeming himself” at the end of the movie he’s somehow given
the powers of angels instead of demons, and this is represented by his
red flames turning blue…but he’s still a skeleton. If he’s now fueled
by the power of Heaven instead of Hell, wouldn’t he be given a
completely different appearance besides just the color of the flames?
Why would the powers of Heaven still make him appear as an imposing
skeleton man?

That being said, I don’t know…I know the second movie is horrible, but
I still have somewhat of a soft spot for it. There’s something about
it that makes me think that the ridiculousness is intentional for
comedy purposes. If I was a Ghost Rider fan and purist instead of
someone who was mostly ambivalent about the character, and if I didn’t
have a blast watching this ridiculous Nic Cage film with my friends,
he would probably be lower. He’s still deservedly in the “bad” tier,
but on the basis of the second film is the first character that I
found somewhat enjoyable.

And now for a very short, 3 character tier:

The “More or less neutral, but overall negative” tier.

48. John Constantine (Keanu Reeves, Constantine, 2005)

This is the first character on the list who appears in (when
considered outside the comics it was based on) an overall pretty
decent to good movie.

That being said, this is a character ranking, not a movie ranking, and
very little of what made Constantine enjoyable had to do with Reeves’s
portrayal of John Constantine itself.

The elements of what makes John Constantine a great character in the
comics has little to no presence here. Keanu Reeves is playing Keanu
Reeves – the character in this movie is the same character as Neo,
Johnny Utah, and Jack Traven. The only exception is the role he plays
in the script, and the fact that he’s a cynical chain smoker, but
personality wise, it’s the same character.

In terms of differences from the comic, the first major difference is
that Constantine is set in Los Angeles rather than London – probably
because they didn’t want to have to force Reeves to put on a British
accent after seeing his disastrous portrayal of one in Coppola’s 1992
Dracula. He also doesn’t display much of the comic book character’s
wit and cunning. There isn’t much mentioned of his sorcery, replacing
it with an ability to see half-demons and half-angels on Earth. His
other critical trait of his adrenaline addiction is also forgone, and
his other trait of keeping a wide address book and being well
connected of people from various dimensions isn’t mentioned, either.
So in terms of representing anything regarding the awesome comics
character, this character pretty much fails.

Still, I feel like I may be somewhat biased regarding this movie since
I saw it before learning much about Constantine as a comic character.
I remember it as being a pretty good movie, with Tilda Swinton and
Peter Stormare absolutely killing their roles s Gabriel and Lucifer,
respectively. Still, I realized at the time that Keanu’s performance
and character weren't much of a part of what makes the movie
effective, and eventually realized over time that they left a great
deal on the table regarding a quite fascinating comics character in
favor of a mostly bland standard Keanu protagonist, so here he sits.

47. Silk Spectre II/Laurie Juspeczyk (Malin Ackerman, Watchmen, 2009)

Constantine was a pretty decent-to-good movie, but this is the first
character to appear from a really good film. As you can no doubt
ascertain from this low ranking, Ackerman’s Silk Spectre II is the
weak point of said film. In terms of the script, story development,
and the character’s role in the film, there is nothing wrong with this
character. Silk Spectre fulfills the exact same (pretty good)
character and role that she does in the comics to a T.

My only complaint with this character, however, is entirely based
around the fact that Ackerman’s performance is quite bland and wooden,
and serves as the weak point of the film, acting-wise. The other
actors in this great film act circles around her, and Ackerman is
quite bland and uninspiring. The first entry that has nothing to do
with the script or the character’s role and 100% to do with the actor,
although I will admit that Silk Spectre is not exactly the most
intriguing role in a film full of much more compelling ones. Still,
though, Ackerman could have emoted much more compellingly than she did
in the film.

46. War Machine/James Rhodes (Don Cheadle, Iron Man 2, 2010)

First, a brief note: Terence Howard’s performance as James Rhodes from
the first film is not on this list because he only served as a
supporting character and never actually became a superhero in it, and
this is a list of superheroes.

Overall, Iron Man 2 was not all that bad, but something about this
character and performance left me very cold.

I didn’t mind, upon first hearing it, that Howard was recast with
Cheadle for the second film. Cheadle was a great actor, surely he
could pull off a relatively simple role like this flawlessly.

Once I actually saw the film, however…mehhh. Something about this
character really rubbed me the wrong way. With Howard, you could
really see the chemistry between him and Tony, and could see why they
were friends. With Cheadle, however, it seems a bit perplexing. Maybe
this is partly a reflection on the fact that they switched actors
between the two movies, but we don’t really see much of a buildup of
Rhodey and Tony’s friendship in this movie and so it rings a bit
hollow. And for the most part, they sort of act like they don’t really
even like each other throughout the film. Howard had a certain
friendliness, charm, and exuberance, and we could see why him and Tony
would be friends. With Cheadle, however, he seemingly acts like he can
barely stand Tony throughout most of the film, so their verbal
assurances that they are friends ring a bit hollow.

Overall, I sort of thought that this character was a bit of a jerk. He
acts superior to Tony despite betraying him at one point. Tony does
engage in some less than heroic behavior at several points to make
this justifiable, but the fact that we are so drawn in and sympathetic
with Downey’s great performance makes us immediately side with him and
hold some disdain towards Rhodes for being judgmental and side with
Tony in their physical confrontation despite the fact that Tony has
displayed questionable judgement at that point in time. Rhodes also
learns to pilot the War Machine armor basically immediately despite
the fact that we saw that it took Tony quite some bit of time to
master how to use the armor, in an obvious plot convenience. Overall,
a performance that didn’t exactly endear the audience to the character
and left me cold, but not egregiously bad.

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The decent, mostly positive tier


45. Shadowcat/Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page, X-Men: The Last Stand, 2006)






Obviously the Shadowcats in the first two movies were far too minor to
be included. In X3, though, the Ellen Page version is given a real
character. And it’s…okay, I guess. A minor character that isn’t
offensive, but doesn’t stand out either. Her relationship with Bobby
was a bit weird and hard to figure out, and it was sort of weird how
Rogue was built up throughout the first two movies and then Kitty
comes in and basically takes her role for the most part in the third
one, but I’ll talk about that in their respective sections. Page, I
suppose, does an okay acting job with what she’s given, and the
character’s powers are put on display and used in some creative way.
The most offensive thing about her is her juvenilely calling the
Juggernaut a “********.”


44. (tie) Havok/Alex Summers (Lucas Till, X-Men: First Class, 2011),
Banshee/Sean Cassidy (Caleb Landry Jones, X-Men: First Class, 2011)





There isn’t too much wrong with these characters when taken in the
context of the film itself. Still, this is a list of “greatest
superheroes,” and at some point minor and supporting characters who
don’t stand out much are going to be pushed down below more prominent
ones even if the minor characters don’t really have many flaws within
the context of the film and the major ones have some spots.


They work well within the context of the film – they’re not just
thrown in. They have flaws and fears, and they learn to overcome them
and how to control their powers so they can help out in the end battle
in a satisfying way. Banshee and Havok serve the plot well, are
decently well developed and they have their moments, although they’re
obviously overshadowed by Xavier, Magneto, Mystique, and Beast and
aren’t terribly memorable after watching the movie.

I do have to take into consideration, however, the fact that these
characters basically have very little in common with their comic book
counterparts besides the names and powers. Which I was totally okay
with for the purposes of the film telling a story, but this is a
character ranking where the characters are taken on their own, so a
factor like that detracts from them.

For Banshee, I’m not entirely sure why they didn’t make him Irish.
That’s a pretty defining trait of the character, and there’s really no
reason for them to change it. Maybe they thought it would be better if
Charles and Erik kept their search local to the U.S., but Sean could
have been someone from Ireland who moved to America. Really no reason
to change it and could have helped give the team somewhat of an
international flavor. That being said, I thought it was a good idea in
general to include Banshee in general since he was a relatively well
known X-Men member who was usually portrayed as slightly older than
most of the others.

For Havok, I have no idea why he was included in a film set in the
1960’s. I didn’t mind it upon seeing the film, but it still somewhat
baffles me. They must have really liked his powers and the visual
potential of using them, because Havok in the comics is mostly known
for being Cyclops’s brother and his relationship with Scott is
probably his most defining one. They still gave him the last name
Summers and Bryan Singer mentioned that he was still related to Scott
in some way, so it seems like they’re probably going to make him his
father instead, which is kind of weird. Till isn’t signed on to Days
of Future Past yet, so I wonder if the character will re-appear and
we’ll find out the answer.

42. Kestrel/John Wraith (will.i.am, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, 2009)





A comic book character so minor and obscure that no one cares about
him or knows about him, portrayed by a musician (of a mostly disliked
musical group), playing a character in a universally reviled movie.
One would think will.i.am’s portrayal of John Wraith would place much
lower on the list, and not in the “overall positive” category.

And yet, this character and performance was far from a blight on the
terrible “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” film. To the contrary, this
performance and character was a bright spot of it.

Wraith doesn’t do anything terribly special, but he is portrayed as a
cool and competent character who knows what he’s doing. It’s fairly
clear that this obscure comic book character largely portrayed a role
in the film since the movie-makers saw the visual success of
Nightcrawler’s teleport abilities in X2 and wanted to include another
teleporter (the same reason Azazel was included in X-Men: First
Class), although Wraith does play a part in Wolverine’s origins so it
wasn’t a stretch or anything.

The teleporting effects are, despite their blatant use, pretty cool,
and will.i.am does a pretty decent job, and we do kind of feel bad
when he dies. They also were pretty faithful to Wraith's appearance
and history in the comics, which was nice of them, considering no one
cares about him in the comics. Still, however, he’s a minor character
in a horrible movie, so he can’t rise up too far

41. The Human Torch/ Johnny Storm (Chris Evans, Fantastic Four, 2005;
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, 2007)





Chris Evans is a good actor, as evidenced by the fact he has another
role that’s much higher on the list. And while the Fantastic Four
movies were bad, he wasn’t the reason why. I actually sort of enjoyed
him in these movies, and thought some of the intentional humor was
pretty good. The interplay and banter between him and the Thing was
genuinely funny at times and probably the best part of the first film.
I liked some of the pranks he played, like when Ben first woke up in
the hospital after the spaceship gets back.

The second film, while overall stronger, doesn’t quite have as many
humorous moments from this character that worked. I still didn’t find
the character to be a weak point, however. I can see why some would
think he got annoying at times but I didn’t mind it much, I thought he
was sort of a welcome break from the mind-numbingly dull Reed, Sue and
Doom, and his personality was pretty consistent with the comics. The
effects of him becoming the Human Torch aren’t terrible. Not super
impressive, but not terrible and they don’t take you out of the movie.

Still, you do have to consider that he plays a part in two pretty
wacky and not entirely well-written movies, so some of the plot
shenanigans he gets into have to be considered. I thought the entire
thing about them switching powers around because of the Surfer got a
bit wacky, and Johnny was on the forefront of most of that.

Let’s also give Evans a little bit of acting props for what must have
been a tough job – whenever the movies blatantly made Jessica Alba get
naked for some reason, he had to pretend to be grossed out by it.

40. Superman/Clark Kent (George Reeves, Superman and the Mole Men,
1951)





This movie was indeed a film, not a serial. It was intended to help
create a TV show, but it was indeed a theatrically released film with
its own storyline, thus making it not only the first Superman film,
but in fact the first comic book superhero film ever released.


So, clearly this movie has a vast historical significance. As for its
quality while watching it? Uh, that’s a bit of a different story.
Obviously it has to be judged somewhat as a product of its time, and
the fact that it had the budget of a 50’s TV show and not a 50’s movie
has to be taken into consideration as well.

The plot is that an oil well digging to near the center of the earth
causes subterranean creatures called “moleman” to rise to the surface.
They’re short, wear bald caps, have bushy eyebrows, and are
radioactive.

You’re probably thinking to yourself that in a Superman movie,
naturally these creatures come out and Superman has to fight them and
protect the humans from them.

Surprisingly, it’s the opposite. Superman has to protect the molemen
from prejudiced mobs of humans, and spends most of the time talking
about prejudice and acceptance.

In a lot of ways, that’s actually kind of cool. A clichéd message now,
but taking a stand against racial discrimination actually sort of
meant something in 1951.

That being said, it’s not a very good movie on its own. The movie is
pretty sluggish – there is a very long scene involving a mob chasing
the molemen around that goes way too long.

It’s also not very Supermanly – he displays his powers enough times,
but he never gets into any fights. He gets in the way of a bullet, he
bends a rifle, but never throws a punch or anything, and barely flies.
A lot of what he does is stand around lecturing people. There’s no
adventure here, and Superman isn’t even in costume for all that long.
To be sure, acting as a peace-maker and preaching tolerance is
definitely part of Superman’s character as well, but it seems an odd
choice to showcase that side of his character in his first theatrical
film.

The movie obviously contains tons of 50’s B-movie schlock. For
example, there is a scene where Lois and Clark are told that the oil
well is digging 6 miles under the earth, and Lois says “Why, 6 miles,
that’s practically to the center of the Earth!” She isn’t saying that
as an exaggeration – she actually is trying to tell the viewer that
the center of the earth is only slightly more than 6 miles down in
this universe. (and she’s right – the molemen are said to come out of
the center of the earth, and come up through that very hole). I find
it hard to believe that even in 1950 they could be so radically wrong
about something like that. Clearly using a fraction of common sense
would let you know that 6 miles is barely a fraction of the distance
to the center of the earth.

As for Reeve himself, he does a fine job with what he’s given. He
certainly looks the part of Superman, and is stoic and imposing
enough. His job as Clark Kent is a little shakier, he doesn’t change
his personality one iota from that of his Superman personality. Other
portrayals (including his predecessor from the serials, Kirk Alyn, who
Reeve replaced for this film when Alyn demanded too much money)
incorporated a difference of personality and gave Clark a bumbling
everyman charm to help sell the difference between the two. Still, you
have to give some respect to this movie and portrayal for its historic
value, and the take on Superman itself works quite well onscreen.

This movie is viewable on YouTube in its entirety – check it out if
you’re a huge Superman fan or for its historical value. It’s an
alright movie for its time, but don’t expect to be thoroughly
entertained.


39. Batman/Bruce Wayne (Val Kilmer, Batman Forever, 1995)





As I said with Robin’s entry, I have a strong overall dislike for this
film, but that’s mostly because of the villains, the incredibly
idiotic plot (brain waves being sucked out from the TV…sure, buddy),
the ridiculous sets, lame attempts at comedy, and so on. Kilmer’s
portrayal of Batman itself for the most part wasn’t really the
problem, and for the most part I’m trying to look at the characters on
their own accord individually. I think Kilmer did a okay job, acting
wise, even if it’s a bit wooden at times.


In any case, here’s my reasoning for why this character is overall in
the “positive” category despite being in a movie I otherwise hate. One
of the biggest problems with Batman films is that it’s hard to think
of ways to make the story about Batman, or give him character
development.


Really, there’s only three storylines that are really on tap that are
used as ways to grow Batman as a character. The first is obviously his
origin story, as Bruce Wayne grows and learns to become Batman (which
was interestingly enough actually Schumacher’s original pitch, a movie
based on Year One). The second is the storyline where he meets Dick
Grayson and brings him into the fold, learning to work as a team after
working alone previously. The third storyline on tap is giving him a
struggle where he contemplates if it’s all worth it and considers
hanging up the cape.

As the movie had Robin in it, the movie obviously incorporated the
second storyline. However, it wasn’t quite as fleshed out as one might
think, and doesn’t drive too much of the conflict – he doesn’t really
put up too much resistance to Dick wanting to become Robin and join
him, and doesn’t ruminate all that much on the differences between
working alone and now working as part of a team. Their chemistry was
alright and I thought the story worked okay, but it wasn’t the central
internal struggle of Batman in the film.

Interestingly enough, despite the inclusion of Robin, it’s actually
the third storyline I mentioned that drives Batman’s character
development in this film. Partially inspired by the fact that he sees
Dick as being in the same position he was, Batman contemplates his
reason for being a superhero. He wonders about why he’s really doing
this, and if it’s just out of some sort of sense of achieving revenge
on crime in general because of his parent’s death, or if he’s doing it
more altruistically because he has the ability to save people and
fight crime and uses them for the
common good.

In the end, he comes to realization that he’s mostly come to peace
with his parent’s death and he’s doing it mostly because of the
latter. This results in him saying “I’m both Bruce Wayne, and Batman.
Not because I have to be, but because I choose to be.”

I appreciate that they did that, I really do. It wasn’t pulled off
incredibly well or anything, there’s a subplot about a red book that
is introduced and then dropped without further mention (as the scene
resolving that issue was cut from the film since it involved him
interacting with a giant bat in a scene with horrible special effects)
but I appreciate the fact that in theory they actually tried to give
Batman some character development and a storyline, something the
previous films didn’t really do. So, I’ll give the character a deal of
credit for that.

That being said, this is still a terrible movie. I can’t give a
character too much credit if the end of the movie involves that
character stopping Ace Ventura’s plot to suck people’s brainwaves
through TVs. Even though I admire that they gave Batman a personal
plot and conflict during the times he’s on screen, he’s obviously not
onscreen as much as he should be thanks to giving way too much time to
the idiotic villains.

Batman himself as a character is brought down by having a ton of
cheesy lines (his first line in the movie, as you may remember from
every McDonalds commercial in 1995, was “I’ll get drive through.”) A
lot of his interaction with Nicole Kidman is ridiculous and mostly
based around cringe-worthy sexual innuendo. (Her being a therapist is
a lot of what causes him to open up about his feelings to some degree
so I’ll give the relationship credit for that, but when it also
consists of lines like “It’s the car, right? Chicks dig the car.”)

Despite all that, I did like that they actually tried to do give him a
plot and conflict and it worked okay, so when considering the
character in and of himself I can put him in the overall positive
category.

The decent, mostly positive tier (continued)

38. The Punisher/Frank Castle (Ray Stevenson, Punisher: War Zone,
2008)

In order to talk about this character, I’m going to have to describe
what the movie is. This movie is literally nothing but non-stop, over
the top, ridiculous violence to an insane degree. It really never
stops with the constant gore and death. The Punisher’s confirmed kill
count in the movie (not counting people who have even a slight chance
of surviving and only being maimed) is 81. 81 for the character alone,
not the movie itself which is also filled with other characters
killing people constantly.

It’s not even an origin story – even though it doesn’t keep continuity
with either of the previous two Punisher films, Stevenson starts out
as already being the Punisher, and the killing starts right from the
get go. There is a brutal decapitation in the first few minutes of the
film. People are dismembered by grenade launchers. Kidneys are yanked
from people’s bodies. Faces are blown off in graphic detail. Elderly,
innocent old women get their heads blown off. It is a bloodfest, and
more or less violence porn. It is, by far, the most brutal, violent
and gruesome movie included in this entire list. The last line of the
film is “Oh god, I’ve got brains splattered all over me.”

A lot of people absolutely hate this film. Thomas Jane left the
franchise when he read the script. However, it has become a bit of a
cult movie, who appreciate the fact that it knows exactly what it
wants to be, takes it to extremes, and causes you to stop and say “I
can’t believe what I’m seeing right now.”

A little back story: when Lexi Alexander was signed on to direct this
film, she had little knowledge of the Punisher and sought out to
obtain as much information as possible. She ordered box loads of
Punisher
comic books to read, and the first comic she picked up depicted a
character having his testicles ripped off and fed to him in graphic
detail. Thus, she decided to go with that for the tone for the movie.

Personally, I was never a huge fan of the Punisher in the comics. I
understood the appeal, but considered him a bit of a one-note
character. I knew that at a few points that he was given titles that
were able to work around the Comics Code and get away with more
violence, but when I saw this movie I had absolutely no idea that
there was a period of time where the Punisher comic was allowed to get
away with such incredibly gruesome detail like showing a person
getting their testicles fed to them, so I was pretty shocked by this
film.

Another note of backstory: When Alexander first met with the studio
executives to discuss the potential of her directing the film, it was
only a few days after the Virginia Tech shooting spree that claimed
the lives of 32 people. To all of their horror, it was discovered that
the Virginia Tech killer, Seung-Hui Cho, had a poster of the Punisher
in his dorm room and was inspired by the character.

Largely due to that fact, Alexander decided that all of the violence
in this movie would be absolutely off-the wall absurd and ridiculous.
She set out to make the violence so ridiculous, implausible, and
absurd that psychos like Cho couldn’t even come close to recreating it
in real life in their wildest dreams.
In that sense, she succeeded.

Like I said, this movie is absolutely off the wall and ridiculously
violent in the most absurd of ways. When I first saw this movie in
theaters, I wasn’t entirely aware of all of the Punisher’s history so
I had a mostly negative opinion of it as I thought that it was mostly
ridiculous violence porn that went way beyond the parameters of the
Punisher character itself. I knew it was trying to be ridiculous over-
the-top schlock, but I didn’t think much of it.

A lot of that, however, was largely because I was completely unaware
at the time that at a few points the Punisher comics were given the
liberty of being just as ridiculously violent and brutal. I knew about
the character and his history in the comics and various cartoons, but
didn’t realize that at a few points, despite being a part of the
Marvel superhero universe, he was given the liberty of appearing in
comics that were so absurdly graphic that it was allowed to show a man
having his testicles ripped out and fed to him in graphic detail.

With that said, here’s another important thing to know about the film:
according to Alexander, every single action, gore and violence
sequence except for one is lifted directly (shot for shot in many
cases) from the comics. I can’t verify this, but Alexander states that
the scene where Punisher shoots the parkour guy with a heat seeking
missile is the only original concept she came up with, and all the
others are taken directly from the comics. Over the top gore and
violence isn’t my cup of tea, but I absolutely have to respect that
meticulous effort.

So, while I did find this movie a bit over the top and a little
ridiculous and it wasn’t my cup of tea, I can respect what it was
going for, and I understand why the film deserves to have picked up a
cult following.

That being said, this is a ranking of characters, not movies. And as a
character, The Punisher in this movie mostly exists as a mindless
killing machine. We do get some back story as to his wife and children
being killed and his motivation, but it’s mostly glossed over. For the
most part, he goes into rooms, kills lots of people in gruesome ways,
and then moves on to the next room to kill other people in gruesome
ways. He has very little emotion or character development besides a
half-hearted "contemplating hanging it up" story…and hell, I don’t
even think he even has that much dialogue in general. Jigsaw probably
has more dialogue than him. The Punisher just goes in and does his
thing, and doesn’t even open his mouth for long periods of time.
Which, for the purposes of an all out gorefest, I understand is what
they were going for and they wouldn’t change anything. But from the
purposes of a character, even if I understand the reasoning, I can’t
rank the character when taken on his own any higher.

On a final note, knowing about the movie and its history, it is
absolutely hilarious that Stevenson later went on to reprise the role
of the Punisher one other time….as the voice in a G-rated Marvel
superhero Saturday Morning cartoon show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XoRGgpF2qc

37. Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansen, Iron Man 2, 2010;
The Avengers, 2012)

In case you couldn’t tell from my Invisible Woman entry, I’m not
exactly a huge fan of female characters who exist solely to be sex
appeal.

Black Widow, for the most part clearly fits that role – in every bit
of Avengers promotional material, the other five heroes are in some
sort of heroic or epic pose, while Widow is, invariably, posed in some
sort of position that shows off her ass.

If this character only appeared in Iron Man 2, she would be much lower
on the list. In that movie, she had no character or development
whatsoever, and was pretty much just blatant sex appeal with a Mary
Sue complex. She comes in, does her job effortlessly, and shows all
the other characters how awesome she is at everything. Ho-hum.

In the Avengers, however, the character is given more depth. Likewise,
if she only appeared in the Avengers and not Iron Man 2, she would be
higher on the list. She displays some self-doubt and complexity, and
is certainly given justice in the movie. To be sure, Johansen’s sex
appeal is put on display in a very blatant manner, both in the film
and in all promotional material, but at least she has a character that
works quite well in the movie. Despite not having powers she more than
holds her own in the battles. I liked that they gave her a bit of wit,
tricking the mob guy in the beginning into revealing his plan and
information and then pulled a similar trick with Loki later to get him
to reveal his plan. So for that, she works well and is a good
character in a great film. Still, the blatant sex appeal and the
appearance in Iron Man 2 bring her down a bit.

36. Phoenix/Jean Grey (Famke Janssen, X:Men, 2000; X2, 2003; X-Men:
The Last Stand, 2006)

Man did I have a difficult time choosing where to place this
character.
On one hand, her portrayal in the first two films is spot on. Jean is
obviously not the flashiest character and doesn’t exactly have the
juiciest stuff to work with, but Janssen does a very good job. Jean is
a calming presence, she is obviously intelligent, and Janssen has a
good performance. With a lesser actress, Jean could have been
forgettable and bland like Storm, but Janssen gives her enough
personality to make her likable. Her chemistry with Wolverine is also
pretty good.

I especially like that she isn’t used as sex appeal – I don’t remember
any gratuitous shots of her ass anywhere. I also like that she is a
solver, that she is smart, and never gets kidnapped, instead being the
one to do the rescuing in the first two movies. Also, it’s not too
often you see a female character be the one to pull off the big heroic
sacrifice to save the day at the end of a movie.

Overall, if she was only in the first two movies, she would be much
higher. But, unfortunately, X3 exists.

There are some entries on this list where the character appears in
both good and bad movies, and I cut them some slack for appearing the
bad ones, especially if the good movies come to the forefront when
thinking about that character.

That’s pretty hard to do with Jean, however, considering that the
third film retroactively changes everything you thought you knew about
the character from the previous movies.

Now, I understand the need for a change in the Dark Phoenix storyline.
No doubt introducing the cosmic entity element would have been a very
poor choice that would have baffled readers. And, in all fairness, I
can’t think of a very good alternative way to do the Dark Phoenix
storyline myself (in retrospect it probably would have been better not
to touch it at all, although most fans including myself didn’t realize
this at the time of X2, excited by the hints towards it like her
glowing red eyes and the Phoenix symbol at the end).

Still, what they chose did not work at all. As you know, it turns out
that Jean had a buried split personality the whole time, which is
dubbed as “The Phoenix” for some reason even though it has little to
do with Phoenix’s. Oh, and by the way, it turns out Phoenix is the
most powerful being on Earth. By far, not even close. The super duper
ultra god level mutant.

The split personality wasn’t with her since birth, but actually
created by Xavier when he put blocks into her mind as a child in order
to limit her powers since he didn’t trust her. This pushed her elite-
level powers into her subconscious mind, which Jean’s conscious mind
didn’t have control of , and thus created an alternate personality.
Good old timey comic book nonsensical pseudo-science babble for ya.

There are two major problems with this concept. First off, is the fact
that Jean’s growth as a character is slightly hindered from the first
movie in retrospect. Oh, to be sure, X2 had tons of hints that
something like this was going on as her powers rapidly increased. X1,
however, had a nice little arc for her where she doesn’t fully trust
herself or her powers and doesn’t want to use Cerebro, but she bravely
agrees to stretch her powers to the limit and use it in a time of
crisis to help save the day. In retrospect, now we know that there was
this unlimited source of power in there that was simply being blocked,
and using Cerebro helped break through a barrier made by Xavier.
Second problem is that it requires a series of bafflingly stupid
decisions by Xavier, but I'll get into that in his section.

Now, that being said, this concept in and of itself COULD have been
good if it was used well, in the right hands. Hands that didn’t belong
to Bret Ratner. Check out this quote from X2 screenplay writer Mike
Daugherty (who left X3 with Bryan Singer for Superman Returns) on how
he and singer were planning on handling it:

“The idea – you open up with Alkali Lake but it’s completely barren
and dried up and there are these odd reports of strange phenomena
going on around the world accompanied by bright lights in the sky.”

“The idea would be that both the X-Men and the Brotherhood realize
that essentially a very god-like force had entered their reality and
that it was causing disruptions around the world – mutant prisons
being decimated. I had pitched an idea about a fleet of cargo ships
getting torn apart in the Atlantic and you found out that they were
shuttling mutants as slave labor.”

“So basically you found out was that Phoenix was going round the world
taking things into her own hands and that she had basically returned
as a god, which they did touch upon in X3. She had viewed herself as
above the conflict, that she was here to end things on her terms, she
was basically sick of the fighting and she was going to take things
into her own hands and she didn’t give a **** what the X-Men or the
Brotherhood had to say about it.”
You can see storyboards for this here:
http://io9.com/5400510/x2-screenwriter-explains-how-he-would-have-written-x3/gallery/1

We would to have to see how they pulled it off in practice, but that
could have been pretty cool, right?

Instead, we got a bizarre plot element that really seemed rushed and
stupid. What we got was a Phoenix who...stands around. Stands around
and stares, and occasionally has moments where she destroys things
around her when the plot needs her too.

The character has no real clear motivation or purpose, which I guess
could be attributed to the fact that it’s a manifestation of a
subconscious, but in reality it just seems like a cheap device to have
Phoenix factor into the plot when needed, and stand around and do
nothing when needed. The film should have either focused on the
Phoenix storyline OR the mutant cure storyline, not both. Or at least,
incorporated them together better. This results in a baffling ending
where Phoenix stands around doing nothing while the mutant cure
storyline resolves itself on Alcatraz – Magneto doesn’t use her to
break in or do his bidding or tie into that at all, she just stands
around waiting for that storyline to finish, and then once it’s done
she decides it’s time to start doing her psychic rage stuff. Baffling,
lazy, and stupid.

Like I said, I had a hard time placing this character, especially
because it’s a superhero ranking and the film she’s being penalized
for is one in which she mostly functions as a villain. Still, as a
character ranking, I have to penalize the character for her most
defining arc in the comics being an absolute disaster onscreen. Still,
she does end up in the “Good” category, as the first two films gave us
a rare example of a female superhero who is smart, competent, likable,
and isn’t used as a sex symbol.

35. Daredevil/Matt Murdock (Ben Affleck, Daredevil, 2003)

The movie that was released in theaters was okay. I enjoyed a lot of
it, but I wouldn’t call it a “good” movie at all. It had lots of
issues, especially with pacing, editing, and tone. It had a lot of bad
looking and unnecessary CGI, the fight scenes were a little out of
whack and filmed weirdly.

Most of the movie is decently enjoyable, but there are two scenes that
bring it down. The fight between Matt and Elektra on the playground,
in broad daylight, was unbelievably stupid and hard to watch. The
ending is a bit of a mess – despite recently being wounded by Elektra,
he defeats Bullseye, and then IMMEDIATELY goes on to fight the Kingpin
in hand to hand combat. (which he is able to do as the Kingpin sends
away all of his security because he wants to face Daredevil one on
one.) That’s idiotic, the Kingpin’s reasoning is really dumb and is
only there to pretty blatantly tell the audience “eh, we’re just about
ready to end this now.” It really makes the audience scratch their
heads. Wouldn’t it have been much better to have a scene where
Daredevil takes down a bunch of Fisk’s bodyguards and cronies in order
to get to him? That would have been much more satisfying, and we
wouldn’t have had the redundancy of the fact that there are two one on
one battles with the main antagonists back to back.

As I’m sure most of you know, there was a director’s cut of this film
released that was a HUGE improvement. 30 minutes were added, but it
also deleted and replaced scenes from the theatrical release. However,
the director’s cut was never released in theaters, so I’m not taking
it into account here. This ranking is based only on what we saw in
theaters.

Still, even though I wouldn’t quite call the theatrically released
movie good, I’m able to put the character himself in the overall
“positive” category. Affleck’s acting performance is pretty good, not
fantastic or anything but he is effective. A lot of the character
building scenes are pretty decent. There are a bunch of moments where
he gets morose and introspective and I thought those were alright, but
is also able to show a decent amount of likable humor when he’s in his
everyday life as a lawyer. In costume, he gets to do a few cool
things, and I liked him overall. The costume I also thought was pretty
good. Overall, I wasn’t blown away by him and the movie has a bunch of
flaws, but I still liked the character overall.