5 Terrible Comic Book Movies That We’d Like To Forget

When a comic book movie is adapted in the right way - drawing on its source material with respect and using cinema as a medium in the best possible way to bring sketches to life - it can really be a phenomenal viewing experience. Many of the best films suspend viewers in a completely different state of mind for two hours, and comic book worlds offer some of the most fantastical new experiences for audiences to spend their time in. Yet, for all the lurid, imaginative joy that comic book movies have brought us over the years, there have also been some head-smackingly woeful adaptations right alongside them. The colorful comic book universes are ripe for regenerating on screen with state-of-the-art special-effects, and in certain adaptations over the years these sound and light shows have been number one on the agenda, with the plot and character development limply traipsing behind. On that note, we've picked out five of the worst comic book movie adaptations of all-time, with some of them being so bad that it's scary. Don't believe us? Read on.... 5) Howard the Duck Howard the Duck landed on cinema screens in 1986 all the way from outer space, and really ought to have stayed way up there in the galaxy where he belongs. Widely considered to be one of the worst films ever made, this George Lucas picture used the Marvel comic book character of the same name as inspiration, and went on to create a truly weird, creepy and unfunny live version of the surly bird that had previously tickled Marvel readers with his cynicism in print and pictures. There's a probably a funny film to be made about a cigar-chomping duck from a different world, but Howard the Duck gets it all wrong before the opening frame - senselessly utilizing live-action puppets when animation might have worked wonders. A severely underwhelming special effects show from start to finish, the film alienates every potential audience by being too boring for adults, too raunchy for children, and too dumb for anyone in between. A catastrophic miscalculation of epic proportions, Howard the Duck goes down in history as easily one of the worst comic book adaptations of all-time. 4) Son of the Mask Jim Carrey might be a little too much for some audiences, but his gonzo-like attitude towards his acting roles comes up trumps more often than not. That was certainly the case with The Mask, a comic book inspired movie that required a lunatic for the lead role and got one - leaving us with a memorable, wacky experience. Son of the Mask required an utter miracle to work and got nothing - leaving us with a final product that fell way below even the dismal caliber of typical slop-standard sequels. The plot consists of a dog who finds an ancient mask washed up aside a riverbed and drags it home with him, eventually poking his head in the wrong way and becoming bewitched by the mask's wacky trance. Mayhem ensues, and before long the owner of the household, Tim, is succumbing to its wild green power. Son of the Mask doesn't even make it into so-bad-it's-good territory, instead leaving the viewer mind-boggled by a barrage of trigger-happy special-effects that dominate the entire picture. It's supposed to be amusing, but when a dog and a baby bounce off the walls with manic, wild eyes, the result is quite simply freakish and unsettling. The movie crashed at the box office as well and was torn to shreds by the critics in the same sort of crazed manner that the picture is shot in. Incoherent and messy from start to finish, watching Son of the Mask is like banging your head against the wall in a nightclub filled with circus freaks. There's so much light, sound and weird stuff going on, and every single bit of it is awful. 3) Ghost Rider A guilty pleasure for some, it's still hard to get around the fact that Ghost Rider is for the most part just noisy, flaming cinematic garbage. It's easy to see why Nicolas Cage picked the role, as the screenplay gives him license to crank up the insanity factor to 11 for one of those over-the-top maniacal performances he appears to absolutely love. As an actor you can't fault his energy, and for all his flops, going nuts on screen actually works for Cage perhaps every five or six films on average. Ghost Rider, unfortunately, is not one of those films. Based on the Marvel comics antihero Johnny Blaze, who made a deal with the devil for his father's well-being, Ghost Rider depicts Cage's protagonist's descent into the world of evil supernatural power. Filled with frenetic frames of flaming skulls and roaring souls, the movie gets tiring very quickly; never being as funny, cool or sporadically scary as it thinks it is. Perhaps if it'd been handled either as thoughtful drama or visceral horror it might have worked, but instead the movie tries to be a little bit of everything, ultimately falling flat on its flaming face way before the rev counter has even hit the halfway mark. 2) Jonah Hex Based on the DC comic book character of the same name, Jonah Hex throws audiences into the roaring, violent world of the Old West and seemingly can't decide where to go with the idea afterwards. Josh Brolin stars as the eponymous lead character - a gruff, prickly bounty hunter who can turn a phrase, fire a gun, and talk to the dead. The character of Hex has all kinds of potential, but the movie is unable to make the most of any of it, instead rumbling incoherently around the backdrop of 1800's America like an old town drunk with a pair of pistols at closing time. Jimmy Hayward's adaptation makes it extremely clear to us that Hex is out for revenge, but appears to provide little explanation for anything else. Brolin does what he can with half a face, but even the rest of the star-studded cast are left to rue the day they chose to appear in this chaotic screenplay, with John Malkovich, Michael Fassbender and Will Arnett all left to flounder in the dirty, angry Old West. The movie's truncated running time of just over 80 minutes seems to suggest that the filmmakers either completely ran out of ways to pursue the film further and admitted defeat, or lazily left the production thinking what they'd already captured would be enough. Neither is exactly admirable, and Jonah Hex remains one of the more disappointing takes on a comic book character in recent years. 1) Catwoman When it came to reviewing Catwoman on Roger Ebert's famous film criticism show, the esteemed writer claimed that there were three good things about the movie: 1. Halle Berry's face 2. Halle Berry's body 3. Halle Berry's costume. Perhaps a little dirty-minded but right on the money regardless, Ebert at least found something to like about the pitiful adaptation of the DC comic book character, which is more than can be said for the vast majority of critics and audiences, who came out of Catwoman nonplussed after what they'd just witnessed. Watching the movie is about as fun as coughing up a hairball, and - putting her cringe-worthy sketch in Movie 43 aside for one merciful moment - remains one of Berry's biggest role selection mistakes in her career. In the film, she stars as Patience Philips - a demure cosmetics company employee who stumbles across an industry secret she really didn't need to know, and is promptly killed for it. After a magical cat proceeds to lick her awake, Patience develops cat-like reflexes and before long is cracking a whip and bad puns all over the CGI-riddled city. Painfully unfunny, laughably nonsensical, and lacking any kind of insight into a character that could so easily have been an intriguing, purring antihero, Catwoman simply shrieks and hisses for a hundred stupid minutes. This isn't the movie that the complex character of Catwoman needs nor deserves, and remains one of the very worst comic book movies to have emerged this side of the new Millennium.

5 Terrible Comic Book Movies That We’d Like To Forget

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