Resolved: Comic Book Movies
by Josh K-sky on Mar.25, 2010, under Comics, Movies
The only great comic book movies are American Splendor and Ghost World.
There are no great superhero movies.
The only great bits of superhero movies are Doc Ock’s arms in Spider-Man 2 and Heath Ledger, mostly when he’s in a nurse’s outfit, in The Dark Knight. The bit with the pencil is pretty advanced, too. The bit with the Prisoner’s Dilemma sucks.
Michael Keaton was the best Batman.
Robert Downey, Jr. is funny to watch in Iron Man but “Robert Downey, Jr talking to the CGI/himself” is no substitute for “good movie.” It would be a good “viral video” though.
X-Men… eh.
Mystery Men was not particularly bad, compared to comic book movies in general. The Specials should have been a little better, but it’s pretty good for a superhero movie with no special effects.
Alan Moore is only wrong to the extent he thinks it’s specific to him.
4 Comments for this entry
9 Trackbacks / Pingbacks for this entry
-
Resolved: Video Game Movies - Joshua Malbin
April 5th, 2010 on 9:06 pm[…] Movies Watching the NCAA finals tonight and seeing endless ads for Prince of Persia, a corollary to Josh K-sky’s original proposition presented itself: there are no good movies made of video games. […]
-
Turf #1 - Joshua Malbin
April 8th, 2010 on 10:16 pm[…] you’d expect of the first comic from Jonathan Ross. Yes, that Jonathan Ross. It may be that comic books make lousy movies, but TV people seem to be able to move into comics […]
-
Football, Charlie Brown? - Joshua Malbin
April 13th, 2010 on 3:41 pm[…] by Josh K-sky on Apr.13, 2010, under Comics, Movies This news cheers even me. […]
-
Kick-Ass: The Movie - Joshua Malbin
April 21st, 2010 on 1:07 am[…] said, pace K-sky, it doesn’t […]
-
You Want Monday Movies to Accept You. But You Can’t Even Accept Yourself. « The Weblog
June 5th, 2011 on 11:00 pm[…] the movie brought me to revisit my general disaffection from comic book superhero movies. In response, a friend commented, “If you didn’t like X-Men 2, I kind of think you just […]
-
Comic Book Movies Revisited - Joshua Malbin
August 16th, 2011 on 10:35 am[…] Joshua Malbin on Aug.16, 2011, under Comics, Movies Back when he crapped all over comic book movies Josh K-Sky and (and I, in the comments) neglected to mention A History of Violence, David […]
-
Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland and Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me - Joshua Malbin
August 2nd, 2012 on 4:52 pm[…] least heard of him, if only through the 2003 biopic/adaptation American Splendor (which Josh K-sky called one of the only two great comic book movies ever made). With artist after artist over the years […]
-
Monday Movies Needs Him. He’s Our Friend. « The Weblog
August 27th, 2012 on 2:32 am[…] grew bored with the sequences in Iron Man that squeezed humor out of Robert Downey riffing with his CGI butler […]
-
Monday Movies Needs Him. He’s Our Friend. « An und für sich
August 27th, 2012 on 2:33 am[…] grew bored with the sequences in Iron Man that squeezed humor out of Robert Downey riffing with his CGI butler […]
March 25th, 2010 on 10:57 pm
People seemed to like Persepolis, though I never saw it. Then there’s Akira and Ghost in the Shell, though I wouldn’t try them strictly sober, and Fritz the Cat.
Of course, all of those are animated and therefore a lot closer to the originals. Oldboy, however, was based on a manga and goes right up there alongside your two. I was just poking around on Wikipedia and found that out.
The only great bits of superhero movies
The Penguin bits of Batman Returns kind of kicked ass, actually, especially the action sequence of all the penguins jumping into the water with bombs strapped to their backs. Also, parts of The Crow were pretty great, especially for its time. Not really fair to judge the X-Men movies on the third one, which everyone agrees sucks. The scene in the second one where Magneto busted out of his plastic prison by ganking the iron right out of his guard’s blood, I don’t see how you can argue with that.
There was a recent British sitcom called No Heroics that was sort of like The Specials. I liked it.
By far the worst comic book movie I have ever seen was 2002 French adaptation of Asterix. I think I got about ten minutes in before I just had to turn it off.
March 25th, 2010 on 11:34 pm
I’ll grant you the penguins and definitely the iron in the blood, though as for X-Men as a whole I’ll only say that 1 and 2 were not terrible like 3, and I might have liked 1 more if I hadn’t seen it from the furthest left edge of the front row. The Crow, you can keep.
For some reason I still haven’t even read the back half of Persepolis, though I loved the first book.
Eric Trueheart was actually the best Batman.
March 28th, 2010 on 6:51 am
Actually, the first X-Men was also crappy.
May 6th, 2010 on 5:23 pm
I read the first book of the Oldboy manga and ’twas awful. I had no desire to read the subsequent dozen or so books necessary to finish up the series. I have no idea how they wrung such a solid movie out of the source material.