8 Comic Book Movies Made For Adults Only

Though comic book movies have become almost a strictly family or teen-friendly pastime, garnering PG or PG-13 ratings for their soft approach to sex, profanity and violence, not all of them arrive tailor-made for the broader market. Coming up this month, for instance, is Deadpool, an R-rated, curse-happy and hyper-violent superhero movie from the Marvel Comics stable. Starring Ryan Reynolds and Gina Carano, Deadpool promises to be this year's refreshingly non-PC hit (if you don't believe us, just check out the red band trailer above). That's a big part of why Reynolds has been trying to get it made for so long: for over a decade, the actor has stayed attached to and been talking up the prospect of Deadpool film that was made with adult audiences in mind. Deadpool is certainly a rarity, but it's not the only comic book movie to disregard younger filmgoers and appeal solely to adults. Here are eight others that defied convention and went straight for the grown-ups market. While not all of the following films found a ton of success, you still have to applaud them for not watering down their source material and sticking to their guns. 8) Watchmen Zack Snyder's 2007 comic book film 300 may have been R-rated, but it was juvenile and cartoonish enough to seem like it was more directly aimed at gore-hungry teenage boys. Snyder's follow-up, however, was different: in finally bringing Alan Moore's Watchmen to the screen, Snyder went for a mature approach. This was to be an adaptation of the most revered graphic novel of all-time, after all, not to mention the one most embraced by regular literary types. Though Snyder's Watchmen isn't entirely successful, it is faithful, down to the bloody ultra-violence, dour tone and politically-charged alternate reality setting (it's 1980s America, and Nixon is back in the White House, having won the Vietnam War). There's also a sex scene set to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," something you'd clearly never find in a Marvel or DC/Warner Bros movie. 7) A History Of Violence If this is the first time you're learning that A History of Violence even was based on a comic book, don't worry, you're not alone. Director David Cronenberg himself didn't realize Josh Olson's screenplay for the movie was an adaptation of a John Wagner/Vince Locke comic until after he'd signed on to direct. Cronenberg may not have initially known what he was actually working on, but A History of Violence is one of the finer comic book adaptations. It's also one of the more adult and difficult to watch ones: not only is Cronenberg's film sickeningly violent (a nose hangs off a face here, a man's throat gets crushed there), but it actively encourages you to root for a ruthless killer, then question why you've agreed to do so. Not just a great comic book movie, A History of Violence challenges your perception of movies in general. 6) Road To Perdition This is another movie like A History of Violence where most people aren't even aware that it originated as a comic book. Sam Mendes' Road to Perdition features no caped crusaders, no mutants with superpowers and no dastardly villains threatening a hero's damsel. Instead, it has the American-as-apple-pie Tom Hanks playing a Prohibition-era Irish-American gangster who slaughters all those who get in his way. Sounds pretty good, right? Tougher and thematically richer than the typical comic book movie, Road to Perdition takes a revenge narrative (Hanks' mobster Michael Sullivan and his surviving son go on the road to rob banks and kill those responsible for the murder of Michael's wife and youngest child) and adds Catholic guilt and troubling familial legacy. That being said, the film's most comic book-y moment - Michael Tommy guns his enemies down in the middle of a rain-soaked street - still happens to be one of its most beautiful. 5) Dredd Unlike most other comic characters popular in the mainstream, Judge Dredd isn't averse to getting bloody. He's not a moral figure like Superman or Spider-Man - Dredd is a full-on fascist, punching holes through skulls and shooting criminals into mulch. So it's amazing that he got his own faithful adaptation (after 1995's abortive Stallone-starring effort) that actually took the violence from comic book to movie screen. If anything, Pete Travis' Dredd goes further than the comics, turning shootouts into stylized slow motion bloodbaths. The movie finds Karl Urban's Judge Dredd holed up in a tower block versus dozens of assailants, led by Lena Headey's psychopathic Ma-Ma, peddler of a drug called Slo-Mo. All in all, the film is simple and uncluttered, giving Travis and writer Alex Garland a template through which to unleash the true savage nature of the comics' Dredd. 4) Sin City Back when Robert Rodriguez's Sin City was first released, the PG-rated comic book movie was gaining a foothold as one of the dominant forms of cinematic entertainment. Sin City almost seems like a knee-jerk reaction, full to the brim as it is with sex, nudity and violence - so much so that it looks like a direct, R-rated riposte by a filmmaker tired of watching comic book movies become more sanitized on-screen. Styled like a film noir, Sin City is lensed in an audience-unfriendly black and white (with the odd splash of color) and harks back to hard-boiled movies from the 40s and 50s. Then it adds in buckets of blood and storylines involving domestic abuse, pedophilia, cannibalism and scores of prostitutes massacring anyone who gets in their way. Unexpectedly, this was a hit. 3) Kick-Ass Much like Sin City, Kick-Ass appeared to be a direct response to the state of the average comic book movie upon its release in 2010. This was the year of Jonah Hex, an Iron Man sequel, and The Losers, all films which eschewed the darker elements of their origin properties and went strictly PG-13. Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass, on the other hand, gleefully embraced its R-rated status. Though its stars include McLovin, teen heartthrob Aaron Taylor-Johnson and a pre-pubescent supergirl, Kick-Ass isn't meant for tween viewers: it's a dose of darkly comic quasi-realism for older comic book audiences. This is a movie in which the aforementioned child 'superhero,' Chloe Grace-Moretz's Hit-Girl, dices up a room full of bad guys with a sword whilst dropping C-bombs, and Nic Cage gets burned alive in a home-made superhero outfit. 2) American Splendor An anomaly on this list, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's American Splendor doesn't even fit the mold of R-rated comic book movies, never mind comic book movies in general. It wasn't rated R for its sex and violence (of which there is none), and while there is some swearing, it's infrequent. This somewhat meta biopic of comic book writer Harvey Pekar isn't likely to corrupt anyone. It is, however, intended strictly for adults. American Splendor is a rare comic book film that simply wasn't made to attract younger audiences. You could argue that even Kick-Ass and Dredd, as violent as they are, are made within an audience-friendly blockbuster framework. American Splendor, meanwhile, resembles a 70s New Hollywood drama more than any comic book movie, and concerns itself with topics (illness, marriage, ageing) that resonate more with older viewers than they ever would with younger audiences seeking their comic book movie fix. 1) Oldboy Embraced as a messed-up classic of South Korean cinema, few realize that Oldboy actually started life as animated panels, in a comic created by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi. Then, director Park Chan-wook got hold of the adaptation rights, and made himself one of the more intense, troubling comic book movies out there. Oldboy's story concerns a man imprisoned without explanation for 15 years, at the end of which he emerges from his prison older, crazed and lustful for vengeance. He eats a live squid, takes a hammer to a hallway full of goons (seen in the video above), and, ultimately, cuts his tongue off after he discovers he unwittingly committed incest with his own daughter. This, apparently, is how the big boys make comic book movies.