For years, Stan Lee tried to get Marvel’s characters adapted to film. I remember hearing the casting news for the famously never-released Fantastic Four when I was reading comics; the fact that I’d never heard of any of them meant nothing to me because I wasn’t into TV or movies at the time. Finally, in 1998, Blade became Marvel’s first successful film, and with X-Men and Spider-Man following, the Marvel Age of film had finally arrived.
The reason I split the Raimiverse Spider-Man, early Singerverse X-Men, and Daredevil and Elektra into their own post is I wasn’t going to include these movies. Then Wesley Snipes appeared as Blade in Deadpool & Wolverine, and I really wanted to rewatch The Punisher to see if my memory of it held up, and I felt I owed Hulk a second chance. So, nine movies – all released before Iron Man – got added to the list. I’m still not covering the ones released after Iron Man: Punisher War Zone, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, or the 2015 Fantastic Four.
Blade
Blade draws from both superhero stories and vampire stories, and the two are similar enough it’s hard to tell the difference. The hero is a superhuman protecting the innocent from the bad guys, and the movie dwells on his origin story, with a main villain who’s central to that origin story. Meanwhile the vampires exist in the shadows of human society and the villain wants to bring them out of the shadows and take over. It’s a solid action movie with fun performances by Wesley Snipes and Stephen Dorff.
Whistler died in Blade, but we can’t have that stick so he’s brought back in Blade II. Once that’s settled, Blade teams up with a vampire clan that’s fighting a group of deadly mutant vampires, only it turns out the deadly mutant vampires are actually more sympathetic than most of the vampire clan (with the exception of the hot daughter of the evil mastermind, who’s probably the most sympathetic vampire in the series). Despite my snarky tone here, Blade II is an improvement on the first movie with a stronger cast of characters.
Blade: Trinity fell victim to the same problem as Spider-Man 3: trying to cram too many plots into the movie. Whistler’s death and the introduction of the Darkstalkers, vampires using familiars inside the legal system to annoy Blade, Dracula. Not helping is that Wesley Snipes was reportedly difficult to work with during production. On the bright side, I guess, this let Ryan Reynolds steal the scene as Hannibal King, setting him up to play Wade Wilson down the road.
Hulk
The most interesting thing about Hulk is that Ang Lee used the visual language of comic books – memorably, several instances of using split screens similar to panels on a page – but had no interest in telling a story that fans of those comic books would enjoy. The resulting film is a plodding mess with little to care about and a conclusion whose only resolution is killing off the two least likable major characters. And to be clear – I may have been disappointed that movie wasn’t trying to be what I wanted it to be when I saw it in theaters, but I came into it this time knowing full well what it was, willing to try to meet it on its terms, and was still bored.
The Punisher
No matter what Frank says, The Punisher is a paint-by-numbers revenge movie. Bad guys do bad things to good guy, good guy does bad things back. Frank’s revenge against the Saints goes a little too well, with no major setbacks – the worst that happens is he gets the crap beat out of him by the Russian and then, while he’s still healing from that, Quentin comes to the apartment building. However, it’s a really well-done paint-by-numbers revenge movie – enjoyable, if uninspired.
Fantastic Four
The first Fantastic Four movie’s greatest problem is until Doom starts trying to kill them, the problems the Fantastic Four solve are problems they caused. The incident on the bridge that reveals them to the world is the prime example. And, overall, there’s really not enough plot to fill the movie – space accident, Doom loses everything while the Fantastic Four become popular, Doom starts trying to kill the Fantastic Four and loses. It’s slightly elevated by Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis, who did a good job bringing Johnny and Ben to life.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer adds Doug Jones and Laurence Fishburne as the Silver Surfer to the list of strong performances who are wasted on a poor movie. Sue in particular comes off badly, annoyed with the media frenzy that her wedding has turned into but also frustrated with Reed for daring to take his attention off the wedding to investigate the threat posed by the Silver Surfer. And the Surfer’s change of heart comes off a forced because, well, he has to switch sides to stop Galactus and we can’t have that not happening. And Galactus is the pinnacle of comic book films ashamed of their comic book roots.
Man-Thing
Man-Thing is by a very large margin the worst film on this list. It’s a mess of cliches and stereotypes and a thin plot. Now, I’ll admit before watching it my knowledge of the Man-Thing comics pretty much began and ended with childish amusement that Marvel actually published a comic book called Giant-Size Man-Thing. After the movie… well, honestly, I’m not sure I trust the movie beyond the fact that he’s Ted Sallis.
(Note I said worst. I’d probably willingly watch Man-Thing again before Hulk.)
Ghost Rider
Ghost Rider‘s problems can be summarized by its best sequence, in which Carter Slade is revealed to be a Ghost Rider to ride alongside Johnny as he goes to San Verganza. It’s a cool scene, with the horse rider and motorcycle rider going together as “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky” plays, but since Slade disappears upon arrival in San Verganza, it leaves you wondering what exactly he accomplished there. The whole movie’s like that – cool, but empty. (Also, it’s too obviously telegraphed that Blackheart’s going to absorb the San Verganza souls and be Penance Stared into oblivion.)
The movies were – mostly – successful to varying degrees, but aside from the two Fantastic Four movies, none were big hits. The rights to the characters slowly drifted back to Marvel over the years – some after the movies I watched, some after the failed reboots mentioned in the header, and Fantastic Four Fox held onto until Disney bought the whole studio. Most of the characters have found their way to the MCU by now in some form or another – Ghost Rider was the Robbie Reyes version on Agents of SHIELD, which is now in limbo canon-wise, and the MCU Blade movie has fallen into development hell.
Next: “You’ve become part of a bigger universe. You just don’t know it yet.”