10 Superheroes Who Still Need Their Own Films

Now that Man of Steel is out in theatres (and apparently tearing it up), it seems like a fitting time to consider what other comic book superheroes are ripe for a big screen rendition of their own. Now, we call this list “10 Superheroes Who Still Need Their Own Films,” but it’s probably closer to 50 because we’ve included a number of teams in the mix. At this point, we've seen a ton of films based on superheroes, and most of them have been pretty well done. You may not think we need anymore offerings from this genre but as a comic book lover and all-around superhero fan, I think that there's still a great number of characters out there who haven't been given their own film yet, even though they deserve it. So, which heroes are ready for their close-up? We present the following characters for you consideration... Continue reading on the next page... Wonder Woman I wonder if on May 5th of last year, in the midst of The Avengers' first record-breaking weekend, some studio guys at Warner Bros. were kicking themselves because Joss Whedon was once on their payroll. His mission: to bring a live-action Wonder Woman movie to the big screen, a mission that eventually failed, but it’s one that a revolving door of other filmmakers haven’t enjoyed much success in accomplishing either. But why? Why is Wonder Woman such a tough nut to crack? The easy answer is that it’s because she’s a female hero, but unlike her contemporaries like Superman and Batman, she doesn’t have a straightforward, consistent origin that’s been more or less unchanged for 70 years. So go with the path of least resistance and keep it simple: an Air Force pilot named Steve Trevor crash lands on the island of Themyscira, home to the mythical Amazon tribe of warrior women who have been hidden from the world for centuries. Princess Diana returns with Trevor to the “world of men” where she uses her super-powers to fight for truth, justice and the rest. Throw in a heavy dose of Greek mythology, and make Ares the God of War the bad guy and you’ve got a helluva movie going. Need a hint to do it right? Check out the animated Wonder Woman movie that Warner Animated released in 2009. It’s not perfect, but it shows that a Wonder Woman movie can be done, and done well. Continue reading on the next page... Doctor Strange Combine a story about an arrogant and selfish man who learns to find the hero within and place it in a grand magical mystical world of adventure, and you have to wonder why Doctor Strange hasn’t yet made it to the big screen. Stephen Strange is a highly talented neurosurgeon whose hands are irreparably injured in an accident, thus ending his career. Searching for a cure, Strange goes to the Himalayas where a sorcerer called The Ancient One fosters a more selfless side of the doctor and trains him to be the Sorcerer Supreme, the guardian of all things magical in this universe. If you think about it, the approach to a Doctor Strange movie would play pretty close to Iron Man but with weird creatures and magical powers instead of guys in mechanical suits. Given the success of fantasy flicks like Harry Potter, not to mention Marvel’s own Iron Man franchise, a Doctor Strange movie should be a no-brainer with the right talent in front of, and behind the camera, which is probably why Marvel's Kevin Feige is always talking about it. Continue reading on the next page... The Great Machine Probably no comic book explores the idea of “With great power comes great responsibility” more (excluding Spider-Man of course) than Ex-Machina. The book tells the story of Mitchell Hundred, a civil engineer who’s exposed to an alien device that gives him the ability to communicate with mechanical devices, as well as the ability to invent complex machines, like jet packs and ray guns, which he uses in crime-fighting. But deeper than that, the series follows Hundred from his crime-fighting days to his election as New York City mayor in 2001 after The Great Machine saved the south tower of the World Trade Center on September 11th. Dealing with threats that are political, personal and super-human, weaving a fictional superhero story with real-life events and characters, Ex-Machina comes across as a combination of Iron Man and The West Wing. A movie based on this work by Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris would probably be completely unlike any superhero movie yet made, combining big action and small character drama, but like the series itself it will be a tricky balance for some filmmaker to get the tone just right. Continue reading on the next page... Thunderbolts After both The Avengers and the Fantastic Four apparently perished in a battle with the super-villain Onslaught, a new team of heroes tried to fill the void. Called The Thunderbolts, their actions quickly earn them the respect and admiration of the general public, but what nobody knows is that Citizen V, Atlas, Songbird, MACH-I, Meteorite, and Techno are really the long-time Avengers enemies, The Masters of Evil. Attempting to ingratiate themselves with S.H.I.E.L.D. and thus learn valuable secrets that they can sell off to the highest bidder, the Thunderbolts’ plan worked too well, and some of the villains started seeing themselves as heroes, leading to an inevitable conflict as leader Citizen V, AKA: Captain America nemesis Baron Zemo, continued to pursue the original agenda. With a clever twist on the standard superhero formula, the comic asked what makes a hero, and can one outrun their past in order to embrace a better future? It was once a famous axiom that in comic book movies, the villain was more interesting than the hero, so by that standard, a Thunderbolts movie would be the best of both of both worlds, right? Continue reading on the next page... Robin The Boy Wonder doesn’t get a lot of respect, which is sad because there have been several times in recent history when Robin has not only deserved, but earned, his place in the spotlight. In the 90s, following the death of the second Robin, Jason Todd, another young man named Tim Drake volunteered to succeed him, deducing the secret identities of Batman and his original protégée Nightwing, and making an appeal to the Dark Knight that he needs a Robin for support and balance. Impressing Dick Grayson and then Alfred with his skill and passion, Tim eventually makes his case to Batman himself and becomes the third Robin. For the purposes of a Robin movie, we can imagine a Gotham City where Batman is MIA, and his teenage sidekick has to balance school, social life and keeping the city’s colourful menagerie of villains of Gotham City occupied. Sound impossible? Check out the first arc of the Robin ongoing series by Chuck Dixon and Tom Grummett and tell me that you can’t believe a Robin can fly solo. Continue reading on the next page... Astro City Nearly all of Marvel’s comic books take place in New York City, the same metropolis that the publisher is based in real-life, but imagine if someone tried to tell stories involving all the Marvel characters in one comic book. That’s kind of the point of Astro City, a creator-owned title launched by Kurt Busiek in 1995. The eponymous city hosts a great number of heroes and villains, and the comic tells stories from the points of view of Astro City’s various citizens. A typical Astro City story involves anything from a day-in-the-life of a superhero, the difficulties of a former super-villain trying to walk the straight and narrow, and what life is like for the so-called normal people who live in a city surrounded by super-human beings and people in costumes. Taking inspiration from the biggest and brightest of both DC and Marvel - like Superman (the time-traveling Samaritan), Batman (the religious-themed vigilante The Confessor), Captain America (the tragic Silver Agent) and the Fantastic Four (the eccentric explorers The First Family) - there is no shortage of directions an Astro City movie can be taken in, but one thing’s for certain, it will be like nothing else made in the genre. Continue reading on the next page... Black Panther Movies featuring black superheroes are about as rare as movies featuring female superheroes, so for obvious reasons, a movie featuring the Marvel superhero The Black Panther is an idea that’s highly appealing. Borrowing from pulp comics like The Phantom, The Black Panther first appeared in Fantastic Four #52 as a potential antagonist, but was later given an almost Shakespearean background of destiny, duty and tragedy. Part of a long line of Black Panthers, a sacred mantle worn by the ruler of the fictional African country Wakanda, King T’Challa balances the internal tribal strife of his kingdom, while protecting its vast wealth of the mineral vibranium (the same stuff Captain America’s shield is made out of) from outsiders looking to exploit it. Black Panther has a rich history in the Marvel Universe having been part of The Avengers, a sub in the Fantastic Four, and once being married to the X-Men’s Storm, he’s also been featured in numerous animated series, video games and was the subject of his own feature length animated movie released direct to DVD. So what’s stopping the Panther from making a big screen bow? Once again, Kevin Feige promises they’re getting to it... Continue reading on the next page... Starman Most superheroes can’t wait to don their flashy outfits and use their abilities to fight crime and protect the general public, but not Jack Knight. One of two sons of the Golden Age (circa: World War II) Starman, Jack wanted nothing less than to take up his father’s mantle and be a new generation of Starman, but when his brother David is killed as the new Starman, Jack feels a family obligation. The 90s version of Starman leaned heavily on themes of the father/son relationship, the struggle to find the hero within, and how the past can sometimes come back to haunt you even if you’re running away from it as fast as you can. More emotionally complex and thematically challenging than a lot of comic books at the time, Starman was a cult success, but it struggled through its 81 issue run to find an audience despite the fact it was launched after the heavily-hyped Zero Hour crossover. But a good comic book idea then is a good comic book movie idea now, and a cynical, struggling hero trying to live up to a larger than life legacy while leaving his own mark in the process might speak to a lot of people in the movie audience. Continue reading on the next page... Alpha Flight If Marvel can greenlight something like Guardians of the Galaxy, an also-ran sci-fi superhero team that’s had its five or six attempts at a long-running comic series, then why don’t they keep stretching by bringing Canada’s super-team to the big screen? No, really. Unlike The Avengers, who came together to battle a specific threat, Alpha Flight is a government sanctioned team recruited to be Canada’s first line of defense against super-human threats. Led by the hero Guardian, who wears stylized Canadian-flag battle armour, the team is frequently made up of the Hulk-like Sasquatch, the Native-Canadian sorcerer Shaman, the diminutive but super-strong Puck, the transforming Snowbird, and the mutant twins Northstar and Aurora. Whether or not producers want to do a big-budget action movie, or something more like Canadian Bacon with superheroes, one thing’s for sure: since a lot of big Hollywood movies shoot in Canada, the filmmakers won’t have to hide it in the case of Alpha Flight. And before you say “No one will ever watch a movie with Canadian superheroes,” remember that the biggest X-Men of all, Wolverine, is himself a Canadian. Continue reading on the next page... MiracleMan In comics, the name Captain Marvel is a popular one. There’s Marvel’s eponymous alien hero from the Kree Empire, there’s DC Comics magic word activated tween Billy Batson (whose since been officially re-named Shazam), and then came Mickey Moran. Created for the U.K.’s Warrior magazine, MarvelMan – later renamed MiracleMan after Marvel Comics got litigious – was more or less like DC’s Captain Marvel except that he was nuclear powered, not magically powered, and he was activated by the word “Kimota” (“atomic” spelled backwards) as opposed to “Shazam!” It took Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Watchmen) in the 1980s to reboot the character to feature an adult Moran, a freelance reporter who had forgotten his heroic youth, to really shake up the series and make it something original. MiracleMan is reawakened in the midst of a disaster, and ultimately saves the day, but just as MiracleMan returns to heroism, he learns that his former sidekick Kid MarvelMan has gone mad in the interim and has become a sociopathic super-villain. With such heady-psychological material, a MiracleMan movie could stand next to Watchmen and Kick-Ass in the club of smart superhero movies that deconstruct the mythology, but given the character’s legal morass it’s more likely we’ll see a Bat-mite movie before MiracleMan.