After spending a couple months going through my own choices as well as the polls for some of the outliers I finally have a full list of 100 movies that I think are essential for a true fan of superhero movies. There are many good ones, and some bad ones, but there is something noteworthy among every single one of them either due to the character, the circumstances around the movie, or simply the merits of the movie itself. I’d like to thank everyone for their contributions and support throughout making this list, I really appreciate it. Now without further ado, let’s get on to the list itself.

Jump to the full list

The Polls

These are the results of all the polls I’ve held through the You Decide posts these past couple months. I added the movies with the most votes for “yes” minus the votes for “no” to come up with this list of 16 movies to finish out this list of 100. There are a few surprises in my eyes, and a few unsurprising omissions.

Robocop (14 Yes 1 No)

This might be a little bit of a stretch for some people, but I think it’s a perfect fit. It’s set in the near future, similar to X-Men, it’s a great origin story of someone given essentially super powers in order to fight crime. He’s got a secret identity more or less, and there have even been comic books made after the movie. Not only that, but it’s a great film with action, violence, and just a bit of social satire to top things off.

Superman Animated Short Films (13 Yes 2 No)

This one I was hesitant to add initially for a completely different reason, and that’s because it’s not a feature length movie, but instead it’s the combined contributions of the classic Superman cartoons done by the Fleischer studios back in the 40’s. These shorts are very influential to how we look at Superman today and they are a great accomplishment considering how small of a studio this was when compared to something like Disney, and I’m glad that it made itself on this list.

Swamp Thing (9 Yes)

This is a movie that I only just recently watched for the first time. I had seen the old television series, but never caught the original movie. It’s surprising to think that it was directed by Wes Craven who is now known as the master of horror even though this only had hints of a horror movie in it while still keeping to a lot of the origin story tropes. It also had some great creature make-up for Swamp Thing himself though it does fall into the cheesy category here and there, but always a fun cheesy.

Flash Gordon (10 Yes 1 No)

One of my favorite movies in the cheesy category, and also another movie that skirts the line of it being a superhero movie and not just a sci-fi comic book movie. But Flash Gordon ends up saving the day in every possible way, and not just for the Earth but for the entire whatever it was of Mongo. He even has his own theme song, and there are very few names more heroic than Flash Gordon. He will save every one of us.

Iron Giant (6 Yes)

This was a bit of a surprise in my big poll at the end, it’s one of my favorite animated movies and often thought of as an overlooked gem from director Brad Bird before he went on to do the Incredibles. The Iron Giant himself is a superhero unlike almost anything else, he’s a giant alien robot death machine who is accidentally reprogrammed by a young child and inspired by Superman to ultimately save the Earth. It also features Vin Diesel’s voice many years before he comes to life again in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Iron Man 2 (6 Yes)

I wasn’t as surprised that this film made it to the top of this poll, I’m one of what often feels like a few people who enjoyed this movie, and one of the only reasons why I left it off the list was because I felt like I needed to exclude at least one movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and this was the low man on the totem pole. In the years since the first Iron Man movie, Marvel studios has really set the bar when it comes to superhero movies, both in box office and in quality. While this has more flaws than other Marvel movies, it’s still head and shoulders above most of the superhero movies from the 90’s and earlier.

Meteor Man (11 Yes 5 No)

This movie was the most divided in the polls, but it did get strong enough support to make it on the list. One of the most notable things about it is the fact that it is one of only a handful of superhero movies with a black lead. It’s a cheesy 90’s comedy, though I’m a much bigger fan of this movie when compared to Blankman, and besides that it has the great Bill Cosby as a homeless man that doesn’t have any lines and a criminal gang with a pet tiger!

Defendor (6 Yes 1 No)

This is another lesser known movie but one that I really enjoyed when I watched it and I’m glad that it made it to the final list. It’s Woody Harrelson playing something along the lines of Forrest Gump meets Batman with a bit more violence and less running or catchphrases.

Constantine (4 Yes)

Another one of my guilty pleasures, it’s not one of the best movies out there, but it has some amazing performances from Tilda Swinton and Peter Stormare and it is visually beautiful in many different places. It’s a large departure from the original comic, but as someone who never read any of the Hellblazer comics in the first place, this is an interesting take on the character on its own.

Punisher (9 Yes 6 No)

I wasn’t entirely fond of this movie as a Punisher movie, but it does have a certain charm as a late 70’s violent cop movie starring Dolph Lundgren. The actual Punisher angle isn’t played up very much in the movie, but it does have Louis Gosset Jr. as his ex-partner and a villain who wears Geisha makeup for some reason. The biggest thing missing here is the iconic skull on the front of his shirt.

Orgazmo (7 Yes 4 No)

There are many superhero comedies on this list, and this one takes a wildly different take by having it set within the porn industry. There aren’t really any super powers or crime fighting, it’s much more of a movie within a movie with plenty of costumes and a lot less nudity than you would expect for a movie filled with porn stars.

Return of Swamp Thing (3 Yes)

As far as sequels go, this one takes the original concept and plays up the campiness, plays down the horror, and brings in Heather Locklear as the damsel in distress who falls in love with the Swamp Thing. They also managed to bring back the villain who was supposedly dead, but one of the things that it does do better are the many different creature effects on display.

Tank Girl (3 Yes)

One of the best things about this movie is the mood it creates, there’s a sense of anarchy and punk throughout this movie led by the highly charismatic and frenetic Lori Petty who makes you believe there’s something super about this Tank Girl who doesn’t have any powers, but is able to make her way through any situation no matter how dire it seems. Not to mention Malcolm McDowell as the villain.

Green Lantern (3 Yes)

This movie gets a lot of flak, but I still don’t think Ryan Reynolds was a bad choice to play Hal Jordan in this movie. It had a lot of potential with the setup of Mark Strong’s Sinestro, but it was hampered by a couple weak villains and a poor plot. Still, it’s the first live action appearance of the Green Lantern who is one of the biggest DC superheroes so that’s got to account for something.

Daredevil (6 Yes 4 No)

Another guilty pleasure for myself, but there is still a lot to like in this movie, especially the darker director’s cut of the movie. Ben Affleck did a decent job playing the blind supehero, Colin Farrel was having an absolute blast hamming it up as Bullseye, and I will have a hard time seeing anyone else other than Michael Clark Duncan as the Kingpin, sorry Vincent D’Onofrio.

Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2 Yes 1 No)

One of the few TV movies that made this list, starring the “great” David Hasselhoff before the Ultimates Universe designed Nick Fury after Samuel L. Jackson who was so honored that he agreed to play the role in the movies, or something along those lines. It has 90’s TV movie written all over it with limited special effects, limited action, but plenty of dialogue talking about all the action that they are going to be doing. Very much something that needs to be seen to be believed.

Superman Movies # 1 – 8

Marvel Cinematic Universe # 9 – 15

Comedies # 16 – 24

Batman Movies # 25 – 38

Early Marvel # 39 – 46

Animation #47 – 56

Original Heroes #57 – 65

Borrowed Marvel #66 – 72

Indie Comics #73 – 84

100 Essential Superhero Movies by Release Date

1. The Superman Animated Shorts 1941-1943
2. Superman and the Mole Men 1951
3. Batman: The Movie 1966
4. The Wild World of Batwoman 1966
5. Mr. Freedom 1969
6. Super Infra-Man 1975
7. Superman: The Movie 1978
8. Superman II (The Richard Donner Cut) 1980
9. Flash Gordon 1980
10. Swamp Thing 1982
11. Return of Captain Invincible 1983
12. Superman III 1983
13. Supergirl 1984
14. The Toxic Avenger 1984
15. Howard the Duck 1986
16. Robocop 1987
17. The Punisher 1989
18. Batman 1989
19. Return of the Swamp Thing 1989
20. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990
21. Darkman 1990
22. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze 1991
23. The Rocketeer 1991
24. Batman Returns 1992
25. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm 1993
26. The Meteor Man 1993
27. Fantastic Four 1994
28. The Shadow 1994
29. The Mask 1994
30. Batman Forever 1994
31. Tank Girl 1995
32. Batman Forever 1995
33. Men in Black 1997
34. Batman & Robin 1997
35. Orgazmo 1997
36. Spawn 1997
37. Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 1998
38. Blade 1998
39. The Iron Giant 1999
40. Mystery Men 1999
41. X-Men 2000
42. Unbreakable 2000
43. Blade 2 2002
44. Spider-man 2002
45. X2: X-Men United 2003
46. Hulk 2003
47. Daredevil 2003
48. Catwoman 2004
49. Hellboy 2004
50. The Incredibles 2004
51. Spider-man 2 2004
52. The Punisher 2004
53. Constantine 2005
54. Sky High 2005
55. Batman Begins 2005
56. Fantastic Four 2005
57. Superman Returns 2006
58. TMNT 2006
59. Ultimate Avengers 2006
60. Hellboy: Blood + Iron 2007
61. Doctor Strange 2007
62. Ghost Rider 2007
63. Superman: Doomsday 2007
64. The Incredible Hulk 2008
65. The Dark Knight 2008
66. Iron Man 2008
67. Hellboy II: The Golden Army 2008
68. Hancock 2008
69. Batman: Gotham Knight 2008
70. Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog 2008
71. Green Lantern: First Flight 2009
72. Watchmen 2009
73. Wonder Woman 2009
74. Defendor 2009
75. Batman: Under the Red Hood 2010
76. Megamind 2010
77. Super 2010
78. Iron Man 2 2010
79. Kick-Ass 2010
80. Planet Hulk 2010
81. Gantz 2010
82. Green Lantern 2011
83. X-Men: First Class 2011
84. Captain America: The First Avenger 2011
85. Thor 2011
86. All Superheroes Must Die 2011
87. Chronicle 2012
88. The Avengers 2012
89. The Amazing Spider-Man 2012
90. The Dark Knight Rises 2012
91. Dredd 2012
92. Justice League: Doom 2012
93. The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 & Part 2 2013
94. Thor: The Dark World 2013
95. Legends of the Knight 2013
96. Iron Man 3 2013
97. Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox 2013
98. The Wolverine 2013
99. Lego Batman: DC Heroes Unite 2013
100. Man of Steel 2013

I’ve always been a fan of blogathons and there’s one type of blogathon that has really captured my imagination as far as ways to make it a bit more interesting for me. Some may say that I like to overcomplicate things, but when it comes to these relays there is the idea that it becomes this ever-changing list, but there are some items that stick around for a long time, and others that come in a go out a bit more often. I wanted to take this concept of a blog relay and twist it in such a way that it has a definitive ending. That when all is said and done, there is a single top 10 list that is agreed upon by the most members. But before I get into the rules and what not, I will start out with my own list that’s not specifically just my favorites, but what I think are the best superhero movies of all time.

The Avengers

Still my favorite superhero movie, it’s just so much fun and a movie that really changed the way that studios look at superhero movies. Without the Avengers, we wouldn’t have the current slate of DC movies, X-Men movies, or Spider-Man movies, which some may say isn’t a good thing, but I’m enjoying it for now and I think most people are as well.

Batman Returns

Already one of a possibly controversial choice, but I still think that Batman Returns is the better of the two Tim Burton Batman movies. It’s darker, it has more of a Tim Burton feel to it, and I really liked the way he handled Catwoman and the Penguin.

The Dark Knight

I think it’s really no question that this is one of the best, if not the best superhero movie ever made. Nolan crafted a fantastic piece of cinema along with the greatest performance of the Joker ever committed to film. The action is great, the story is great, the characters are great. I wouldn’t be surprised if this movie is the first to get locked into this list.

Hellboy 2

I am a big fan of Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy movies and the second one is quite a bit better than the first one, as is often the case once you get the world building out of the way and just get the chance to have fun. The creatures in here look amazing and in a time when everything is CG, it’s nice to see that there’s still some room for practical effects right alongside the computer effects.

The Incredibles

Brad Bird might not have set out to create the best superhero movie ever made, but that’s pretty close to what he did. This is what a Fantastic Four movie should really be about, it gets the heart of the family dynamics down while not ever forgetting that these are four superpowered individuals (and a baby). Great storytelling from start to finish.

Iron Man

There aren’t too many origin movies on this list, and that’s because often the origin movies are the most stereotypical and boring parts of a superhero franchise, but Iron Man is one of the best origin stories out there and it’s helped by the extremely charismatic Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. This movie made Marvel Studios what it is today.

Spider-Man 2

In years to come, the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy may be overshadowed by the Sony Spider-Man franchise, but at least right now, it’s still hard to top the second movie from that series. It has one of the best villains with Doc Ock played by Alfred Molina, and I think it had the best part of the romance between Mary Jane and Peter Parker.

Superman

When it comes to superhero movies, it’s been over 30 years and it’s still hard to top the original Christopher Reeves’s Superman: The Movie. It was the first superhero film for many people and even today it still holds up. It has the right sense of wonder, humor, and action that isn’t always present, especially in the DC movies of late.

X-Men

This is another franchise where I might not have picked correctly in some people’s eyes, but when I think about the X-Men as a whole, what I really enjoy about what the movies do is the way they create these character dynamics, and give real personality to all the different mutants. And that is done the best here in the first movie.

Unbreakable

Superheroes are often about fantastic people doing fantastic things with intense action, big budget special effects, and crazy sci-fi explanations, but Unbreakable is a movie that pares the concept of a superhero down to the barest of essentials. This is a man that has abilities that are not out of the realm of possibility in the real world, and it puts the superhero in a very mundane setting and for that I applaud it.

Batman: Under the Red Hood

I am a big fan of DC Animation and I had to find one movie out there to represent it. While I considered going with the more recent Dark Knight Returns, this is the first one that really caught my interest and took DC down a darker and more adult path with their animation to tell a complete and mature story that’s just as good as any live action movie out there.

Blade 2

Guillermo del Toro takes another spot on my list with the vampire hunter that came out a couple years before the X-Men franchise really blew the lid off the superhero movie. The action and mythology of the Blade series really meshed together in the best way possible here in this second movie, and it does the enemy-of-my-enemy is my friend angle as well as it could possibly be done.

The Current List

Now the first thing you might be asking is “why are there 12 movies in this top 10 list?” Well there are a couple changes that I’m making to the typical blog relay. Here are the rules for my relay.

1. The list of movies will be passed to another blogger who will post their list within a week.
2. The blogger will take their list, remove 3 movies – with explanations, and replace with 3 new movies – with explanations.
3. If a movie lasts five rounds without being removed, it is locked into place.
4. If a movie is removed three different times, it is locked out and can no longer be chosen by someone else.
5. Once four movies are locked into place, bloggers will replace 2 movies.
6. Once eight movies are locked into place, bloggers will replace 1 movie.
7. Once all ten movies are locked into place, the relay will be complete.

I will keep the current status of the relay here and you can also follow the steps of the relay as it goes along. I am passing the baton next to A Fistful of Films and am curious to see how this blogathon ends up.

I have made graphics to represent the locking in and locking out of movies, feel free to use them, ignore them, or make your own, and the clean images that I used in this post are available upon request.
The Lock in film reel, blank
The Lock in film reel, plus FTMN
Locked out, stage 1
Locked out, stage 2
Locked out, stage 3

It feels like I’ve been running or planning my own blogathons quite a bit around here, I thought it was only fair to finally take part in some other blogathons. One I ran across just today was a fun little blogathon called Guilty Pleasure Movies over at Flick Chicks. And even though I did recently take part in a Guilty Pleasures Lambcast, I didn’t mention too many superhero movies and I knew I could easily come up with a whole top 10 list of Guilty Pleasure Superhero movies. These aren’t some of the best movies out there, and I’m sure I might catch some flak from true superhero fans for liking these, but there’s just something about them that I happen to like.

Howard the Duck

This is the much maligned first theatrical Marvel movie ever, produced by Lucasfilm, and yet when most people think about this film the term “duck boobs” is one of the first things that come to mind. And while there is a lot of odd choices in this movie, and special effects that aren’t quite up to snuff, there’s still a fun sense of humor here, and a very 80’s hot Lea Thompson. I imagine there will be a bit more interest in this movie now that there is a prominent reference to the property, and I will say that it’s hard to get that theme song out of your head.

The Meteor Man

There aren’t a whole lot of superhero movie parodies that I’ve taken to, but I think that this one comes the closest to my sense of humor. It stars Robert Townsend as an extremely mild mannered teacher who gains super powers from a meteor and has to defend his neighborhood from the Golden Lords including a young Don Cheadle. It’s goofy, but it has Bill Cosby, James Earl Jones, and Cyprus Hill in it.

Judge Dredd

While it’s all too easy to jump on the bandwagon of the more recent Dredd movie starring Karl Urban, it’s a much different prospect to root for this 90’s version of Judge Dredd starring Sylvester Stallone as someone who is much more like sci-fi Sylvester Stallone instead of the actual comic book Judge Dredd. But at the same time, coming from someone who knows next to nothing about the actual comic, this is still a fun 90’s sci-fi cop movie starring Sylvester Stallone.

The Phantom

This is a recent find for me as I watched it for the first time just earlier this year. I must say that I’ve enjoyed most of Billy Zane’s work that I’ve seen from the 90’s, and many of them I have actually revisited this year such as Titanic, Tales From the Crypt, and this movie. It’s a costume that’s pulled almost directly from the comic aside from the striped pants, but it’s one of the worst looking costumes from the era. It has a very campy Indiana Jones vibe to it, but Zane is charming throughout and if it wasn’t for the over the top villain and the climactic ending that makes no sense it could have actually been a good movie.

The Fantastic Four

I’m not talking about either the 1994 version that was never released, or the 2015 version that just wrapped, but instead the 2005 version starring the girl from Sin City, the guy who became Captain America, the guy from the Shield, and a British guy whose name no one can pronounce (though I’ve heard it’s supposedly just pronounced “Ian Griffith”). I still enjoyed the dysfunctional family comedy beats, I thought Chiklis was fantastic (pun intended) as the Thing, I’m just worried that when I re-watch it all the internet hate will have soaked into me.

Daredevil

This is an interesting case because it gets a little bit of redemption from the haters due to the fact that there is a director’s cut of the movie which eases some of the biggest complaints towards the movie, but not all of them. I am a fan of the dc vs. the theatrical version, but even then I enjoyed this movie for what it was trying to do at the time, I think that Affleck is great in it, as well as Farrell, Duncan, and Favreau.

Ghost Rider

Out of all the movies on this list, I might catch the most flak for this one. It’s got Nicolas Cage as a stuntman who turns into a superhero with a flaming skull riding a motorcycle. Not only that, but it has Sam Elliott who brings with him a requisite amount of awesome, too bad some of that is taken up by the rather flat romantic subplot.

Return of Captain Invincible

This is one of those guilty pleasures that I don’t really feel all that guilty about, but I will use almost any excuse I have to put this movie on a list so I can talk about it again. It’s a relatively obscure movie from the 80’s that features Alan Arkin as Captain Invincible who was disgraced during the McCarthy era and fled the country where he ends up in Australia as an alcoholic. It also has Christopher Lee as Doctor Midnight who is trying to take over the world, and did I mention that it’s a musical?

Zoom: Academy for Superheroes

There were two movies that came out nearly the same time, this one and Sky High, and while I easily admit that Sky High is the better movie, I can’t deny that this one made me laugh quite a bit more. It’s got Tim Allen as a surly, old ex-superhero who is brought back into the fold to train a group of new meta-humans with the help of Courtney Cox as a clumsy, fangirl scientist, Rip Torn as the surly government agent, and Chevy Chase as… basically Chevy Chase.

Hentai Kamen

I also mentioned this one on the Lambcast I was on, and it’s yet another comedy that I found absolutely hysterical. But it’s hard to explain this movie as a comedy when the hero of the picture gains his powers by placing a pair of used women’s underwear over his face where the crotch ends up right in front of his nose and it also happens to somewhat resemble a superhero mask. On top of that, he wears only a pair of underwear which he stretches up over his shoulders and a pair of fishnet stockings. It’s bizarre, it’s hard to explain, and yet it’s freaking hysterical.

So there you have my list of guilty pleasure superhero movies, but I’d like to know what yours is. Be sure to share your shame down in the comments and I promise not to make fun of you. Much. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

There’s a couple movie releases that have been making the rounds on the festival circuit and have been slowly rolled out into wider releases that sound like they should be full-fledged superhero movies. So, I thought I would take a look back at a few more movies that should be superhero movies solely based on their titles. I don’t do a lot of parody posts here, but I do like playing around with photoshop so I thought I’d share with you what I think these movies should really be. Enjoy!

Nightcrawler

This is not an origin story, but it does center around the one-time X-Men mutant Nightcrawler with the blue skin, demon tail, and ability to teleport in a bamf of smoke. This would follow the timeline started with First Class where his father was Azazel and his mother is Mystique. He’s still relatively young, but he has come into his own powers and has spent time in the circus already when we meet him. The movie follows an anonymous tip that sends him on a quest to find his real mother when he runs across a small contingent of the X-Men consisting of Cyclops, Beast, and Storm. Ultimately, we find out that the ‘anonymous’ note was part of a plan masterminded by Mister Sinister. Fights, intrigue, and drama ensues.

Actual IMDB Synopsis: When Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), a driven man desperate for work, muscles into the world of L.A. crime journalism, he blurs the line between observer and participant to become the star of his own story. Aiding him in his effort is Nina (Rene Russo), a TV-news veteran.

Superdad

The father of a young boy around 6 or 7 years old seems to be a typical businessman absentee father who works long hours and is always getting calls to go into work while his son has to stay home and play by himself while his mother is usually passed out drunk. He spends most of his time watching reruns of Superman on TV while secretly collecting clippings of a mysterious vigilante who has been rescuing people off the streets. He crafts these flights of fancy within his imagination of how his father is secretly a superhero, fighting crime in the city with superpowers and a costume. One day he stows away in the back of the car and goes to work with his dad only to find out that his father is actually a high ranking member of a megalomaniacal criminal mastermind and there is a real superhero who has been cutting into their business.

Actual IMDB synopsis: Charlie McCready (Bob Crane) is a worried father. His daughter, Wendy (Kathleen Cody) will be attending college in the fall, and he feels the crowd she’s hanging out with has no ambition, especially her boyfriend, Bart (Kurt Russell). He knows that Wendy’s friends will all be attending the same college, so, he concocts a plan where Wendy will recieve a scholarship to a different college. This college being the same one where his wife attended. All goes as planned. Wendy attends Huttington and sees less of her old crowd. Soon Charlie’s plan backfires, Wendy discovers her fathers scholarship plan and becomes rebellious. When she starts dating a hippie artist, Charlie realizes he has made a big mistake and must do something before Wendy goes too far.

Nighthawks

It’s the late 70’s, New York. A group of ex-military friends have been having a hard time finding work but still manage to hang out together each week at the local bar. One night a couple guys come in wearing ski masks and holding guns come in to rob the place. The friends work together to take the criminals out. It was such a high that they start looking for trouble and finding it in spades. They get the idea to start wearing masks and calling themselves the Nighthawks, but get caught up in the middle of a mob war. They try to decide to call it quits, but they’re in too deep once one of their own gets killed and they have to see it through to the bitter end.

Actual IMDB synopsis: Conservative street cop DaSilva (Sylvester Stallone) reluctantly agrees to terminate an international terrorist who has demanded media attention. But DaSilva’s “at-home” tactics are very much put to the challenge.

Super 8

There is an incoming threat from a distant alien planet, but luckily there exists an ancient technology buried deep underground that carries the secret of the Super 8. A talisman that has been split into eight pieces and spread across the globe, but when found by the chosen ones will grant them the powers to defeat this evil prophesied long ago. When found, they are embued with the powers of the 8 elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Light, Dark, Mind, and Heart. When they combine their powers, they summon a giant spaceship hidden deep within the earth that will allow them to battle their alien foes.

Actual IMDB synopsis: During the summer of 1979, a group of friends witness a train crash and investigate subsequent unexplained events in their small town.

The Iceman

Surprisingly not about the X-Men mutant Iceman whose picture I used in the poster, but instead about a completely different superhuman that has the ability to control and manipulate ice. He is, ironically enough, a mob hitman who uses a gun and bullets of his own design made out of ice that he creates himself so they are untraceable regardless of what the Mythbusters have to say about how practical ice bullets actually are. Before one of his hits, he begins to think that something isn’t quite right and he starts investigating who his target actually is. The deeper he gets into his investigation, the more doubts he begins having until he reaches a turning point and decides to use his talents against his own employer, working his way up the chain of command before ultimately going out in a blaze of glory.

Actual IMDB synopsis: The true story of Richard Kuklinski (Michael Shannon), the notorious contract killer and family man. When finally arrested in 1986, neither his wife nor daughters have any clue about his real profession.

No fake synopsis for this one, but I thought I’d share my (badly done) photoshop to see what Birdman would look like if they went with the traditional Hanna Barbera look instead of their more original take on it. Which synopsis did you enjoy the most? Do you think any should become an actual movie? Would you like to see more parody posts like this one? Leave a comment to let me know what you think. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a guest post here but I got a request a while back from someone who wanted to do an article on the best kid’s heroes. At the time, I was in the middle of my 100 Essential Superhero movies project so I declined back then. But with Big Hero 6 coming out this weekend, I thought it was a great time to take a look at some of the best heroes for kids that have come out this year, and so let me introduce you to Catherine Ross. She is a full-time stay-at-home-mum who believes learning should be enjoyable for young minds. An erstwhile elementary school teacher, Catherine loves coming up with creative ways through which kids can grasp the seemingly difficult concepts of learning easily. She believes that a ‘fun factor’ can go a long way in enhancing kids’ understanding and blogs at kidslearninggames.weebly.com/.

They came, they saw, and they conquered our hearts. Meet 2014’s coolest animation heroes who swept the kids and the rest of the folks off their feet! These characters continue to entertain off the big screen too. Owing to their popularity, some of these movies are available as video games, like Big Hero 6 in Disney Infinity: 2.0 Edition, Rio 2’s Samba Party and How to Train Your Dragon’s School of Dragons, in which kids can learn to train their own dragons like their hero, Hiccup. Talk about hero worship!

Some of these heroes came with super powers, while there were others with powers that are not so super but nothing short of fabulous. Such is the charm of the average Joe overcoming his hurdles.

Take Emmet from The LEGO Movie as he morphs from an ordinary LEGO mini-figure slash construction worker into l’homme extraordinaire to stop the autocratic Lord Business and fight Business’ anti-creative stance. In the process, he catches the eye of one Ms Wyldstyle.

We jumped back into the world of extraordinary with the supremely talented Mr Peabody in Mr Peabody & Sherman. He took us back in time and on a whirlwind of adventure with the ingenious WABAC time machine and his adopted human Sherman.

What is it about the non-human variety that ignites our imagination? They continue to figure prominently in the league of superheroes with the blue-winged Blu – from Rio 2- whom we met as he toppled out of his nest and never quite discovered the courage to fly. We soared alongside him past the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio in the first movie. He returned in 2014 with Jewel and their brood of blue macaws in Rio 2 for an adventure in the Amazon.

As the year continued to churn out heroes, another superhero we got to say hello to yet again was the uber-adorable and shy Viking Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon 2. Now older and braver, Hiccup returned with Toothless the Night Fury dragon, for a face-off with the evil Drago.

As 2014 draws to a close it brings with it a new animation hero, Hiro Hamada in Big Hero 6, a comic book movie. Based on the character Hiro Takachiho from Marvel comics’ Big Hero 6, the movie will bring to the screen, robots and good old action, straight out of comic book pages. Whether we will have a new superhero to join the league of the animated greats will soon be revealed!

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Thank you again Catherine, I haven’t had a chance to catch up with all of these animated movies yet, though I will definitely be taking my daughter to see Big Hero 6 this weekend for her 8th birthday on Saturday. If you want to see more from Catherine, make sure to follow her on Google+, until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

When I started this relay I wasn’t entirely sure how it would end up. I’ve seen these Relay blogathons come and go and I thought it was an interesting idea, but it felt too much like just a rotating top 10. Some names would stick around for a while, others would quickly get replaced with little rhyme or reason outside of the individual blogger’s taste. So when I came up with the idea to do my own relay, I wanted to create some additional rules that would give a definite end to the relay. Some found the rules to be a little bit too confusing, while others understood it a bit more clearly. I think it ended up somewhere in the middle. If I did this again, I would make things a little bit more simple, but I would still keep enough of it so that it did have a definite finish line. But it has reached that finish line and so I’d like to share the final top 10 Best Superhero Movies of All Time as decided by a group of 18 different bloggers who have taken their own turn in the relay.

Before I get to the final list, I’d like to share a bit more of my thoughts about the relay process overall. To boil the rules down a little bit: essentially if five people in a row decided to keep a movie, it became part of the final list. If I were to do this again, I would toss out the rules involving films that get taken out of the list too often. I initially thought that there would be certain films that kept getting put in and taken out again, but that actually didn’t happen very often. Instead there was a large number of films that people chose from, in fact there were 30 different films that were in consideration for the top 10 Superhero Movies of All Time, including 2 that came out just this year. There were a wide variety of films, going from the original Richard Donner Superman, to less likely superhero films like the Crow and Oldboy. But surprisingly the oldest movie only goes back to 1991, and 9 out of 10 of the films came from 2000 or later, the same year that X-Men came out. It’s entirely possible that the age of those participating played a large part in the list, if there were more older bloggers then it would be much more likely to see one of the original Superman movies or Tim Burton’s Batman films. But overall, I think it turned out to be a pretty great list. So, without further ado, here are the 10 films that made it through to the finish line in this relay.

The Rocketeer

Originally chosen by: A Fistful of Films

This is the oldest film on this list and the only one to predate X-Men. It’s also the only film on this list I don’t completely agree with. It has a nice cult status to it, even moreso as the director went on to direct Captain America. The greatest thing about this film which does still hold up to this day is the look of it. It’s very steampunk mixed with art deco and it’s filled with a lot of great character actors in supporting roles. While it is over the top in some places, it holds a lot of charm and deserves its cult status.

Unbreakable

Originally chosen by: Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights

I don’t think it’s a huge surprise to me that a large number of my original choices made it to the final list. When you’ve been writing about superhero films for a few years and have asked almost 100 different people what their favorite superhero film is, you kind of know what some of the best are. While not everyone enjoys M. Night Shyamalan, he is still a talented filmmaker that was able to use the slow pace of this film to build tension. He also used great visuals to help simulate the look of comic book panels alongside bright colors in strategic places. It also has some great performances by both Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson.

Blade 2

Originally chosen by: Dell on Movies

This is the first of a couple films that I will still take credit for to a lesser extent as I chose them for my original 12, but were removed and replaced later on. It’s often a toss up between which is the better film, Blade or Blade 2, but most people know that the superhero sequel is often the better film. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro before getting the chance to go wild in the Hellboy franchise, he was still able to toss in some of his imaginative designs with the ubervampires in this film. It also has one of the best instances of the enemy of my enemy is my friend which will show up again on this list very shortly.

X-2: X-Men United

Originally chosen by: Rambling Film

Another sequel and the only entry in the currently longest-running superhero franchise out there, at least longest-running within the same continuity. Similar to Blade 2 there are often arguments over which one is the best, though First Class and even Days of Future Past are included in the discussion. And also similar to Blade 2 it’s a great example of the enemy of my enemy is my friend story where the X-Men and the Brotherhood have to work together towards a common goal against Striker. It also has a great setup for the Phoenix saga even though it was ultimately botched by the Last Stand thanks in small part to the departure of director Bryan Singer.

The Incredibles

Originally chosen by: Life vs. Film

This film just recently passed its 10th anniversary and I think it’s just as strong as ever. I also have to note that this was another one that was on my original list but taken off right before getting 5 in a row only to be put back on shortly thereafter. This is also the only animated film on this list and it’s just as good, if not better than any of the other live action films on here. It was written and directed by Brad Bird who cut his comedy teeth on the Simpsons and got a taste of superhero with his earlier The Iron Giant. It’s got all the great action beats of a superhero film, it’s not really an origin story, as it gets the origin out of the way within the first ten minutes or so, and it actually smartly uses the super powers to parallel a story about real life issues that everyone could face. It even calls out some of the worst superhero tropes in some great moments such as the capes speech or the monologueing.

Spider-Man 2

Originally chosen by: Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights

This list is starting to feel like it’s heavily dominated by superhero sequels, as they make up almost half of the full list of 10. Spider-Man was one of the biggest superhero movies of all time when it came out and there was a lot of hype over the sequel. Especially since it brought in fan-favorite villain Doc Ock as the main antagonist. But instead of making him the typical comic book villain, it smartly made him much more sympathetic as someone who respected and was respected by Peter Parker. And it still kept the comic book-style plotline as it included something as incredulous as having the tentacles themselves be the brains behind the villain, so to speak. This also felt like the height of the Peter and Mary Jane relationship between the three movies, and it had one of the greatest cinematic moments of the heroic sacrifice during the subway scene. It’s just great filmmaking and storytelling all around from director Sam Raimi.

Batman Begins

Originally chosen by: And So It Begins…

Christopher Nolan is a name to be reckoned with at this point in time, but when he was tapped to direct Batman he was really only known for his impressive work on Memento. Batman as a film character had gone off the rails a bit too far into the camp territory with Batman & Robin and Nolan was the perfect choice to reboot him back into reality with his first true motion picture origin story. While Tim Burton touched on his origin with the death of his parents, Nolan explored it much more deeply here along with his training in the League of Shadows. This was one of the first big superhero movies that felt much more grounded in reality, taking what was introduced in the X-Men and started to perfect it. He also managed to be the only director or character to snag a second spot on this list…

The Dark Knight

Originally chosen by: Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights

…with his follow up the Dark Knight. There is no question in my mind that this is the greatest superhero movie ever made, to date. It was one of the biggest box office successes until the Avengers, but it also gained an incredible amount of critical praise. Heath Ledger’s performance is still one of the most talked about aspects of this film and rightly so. His performance changed the way that people in general think about the Joker. It’s true that comic book fans who had read some of the darker Frank Miller arcs might think of the Joker as something closer to this portrayal, but the general public still had memories of Jack Nicholson, Cesar Romero, and Mark Hamill in their heads. A character that was still off their rocker and dangerous, but also goofy and silly when you get deep down into it. There’s also plenty of social commentary that can be read between the lines of the film, from the invasion of privacy and spying over the cell phones, and the deep down goodness of human nature in general.

Iron Man

Originally chosen by: Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights

Another one of my own first five picks that made it through to the end almost immediately. It’s not just the first step in what has become the juggernaut of superhero cinema in Marvel Studios, but it’s a solid movie in its own right. This is the film that kicked off the franchise that has made literally billions of dollars in the box office. It’s one of the most solid origin stories, and not just one of the best casting decisions, but one of the boldest directing decisions. Jon Favreau had really been known at that point for his indie comedy Swingers, but he brought a great comedic sensibility to the superhero story that helped give it some much needed lightness to contrast with the ultra serious nature of Christopher Nolan’s Batman. Iron Man isn’t a superhero just to make the world a better place, he’s a superhero just as much for the rock star aspect of it and that feeling came through in the movie. And it’s that same feeling that has continued with Marvel’s later projects that help tie them together just as much as the end credit sequences.

The Avengers

Originally chosen by: Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights

And the most recent film on this list is also one of the first chosen. I also think it’s one of the few films that have really changed the face of superhero cinema forever. Before the Avengers came out, there wasn’t really any inter-connectivity between superhero films. There was continuity between films following the same character, but the Avengers was really the first film to bring together several different characters into one big movie. And it worked big time, making it the highest grossing film of all time next to the James Cameron duo. And now every major studio is trying to create its own Avengers-like universe, whether it’s Spider-Man, the DC Universe, the mutants, or amazingly even the Universal Horror monsters. But on its own it still holds up as a great piece of cinema. Even though there’s no real subtext to it, it’s a masterwork of blockbuster cinema with smart dialogue, great action beats, and a fantastic balancing act between all of the characters. All held together by director Joss Whedon in, honestly, his first big commercial success.

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And there you have it! Again, I’d like to thank all of the people who joined in and made this blogathon relay a great success. I couldn’t have done it without you all! I’d love to hear feedback from the people who participated, what do you think worked, what could have been done differently, what didn’t work? If I were to do this again, what topic do you think I should cover? Best-worst superhero movies? Best cinematic villains? As for what I would probably do differently, I would likely not keep the three strikes and you’re out rule, and instead allow movies to be re-included as many times as needed. I also wish there was some way to keep the tail end of the relay more interesting for those participating, rather than having nine films they have to include while only being able to choose one film from the remaining three. But overall, it was a fun ride, and I’m glad to everyone who followed along with me!

Thanks to the Participants

A Fistful of Films
Flixchatter
The Focused Filmographer
Life vs. Film
Simplistic Reviews
InSession Film
GeekCastRadio
Dell on Movies
Jeffrey K. Lyles’ Movie Files
Rambling Film
Two Dollar Cinema
Cinematic Corner
And So It Begins…
Surrender to the Void
Public Transportation Snob
Your Face!
The Cinematic Katzenjammer

It’s the beginning of a new year and time to look back on the year that was, and in most movie communities that also means awards season. I tend to be a bit of a completest when it comes to lists so I’m really glad that this year I was able to accomplish my goal to watch all 29 superhero and comic book films that came out in 2014. There are a few in here that have questionable release dates where some people got to see them early in festivals and small screenings, there are also a couple questionable inclusions and a couple questionable exclusions. But it is my list and I do have my reasons for not including some of them, like Transformers which has been a comic book, but it was a toy line and cartoon before then, and Noah which was adapted into both a comic and feature film simultaneously. And on the other side of things Birdman has a questionable connection to superheroes, but it does capture superhero culture within Hollywood, Edge of Tomorrow was originally a novel but was adapted into a Manga before the film adaptation came about, and the Lego Movie isn’t exactly a superhero movie though it does have superheroes in it. But whatever, I just want to celebrate the films that I enjoyed this year and forget about the ones that I excluded for now. In fact, I had such a great year in general, that I couldn’t narrow down my list of favorites to 10 so I have a couple lists for you so I can feature just over half of the films that I saw this year, excluding the brilliant documentary Legends of the Knight because it made my list last year.

Top 10 Superhero Movies of 2014

10. Real Heroes

This was a film that I hadn’t heard of until late in the year when I caught an interview with the director on the podcast Superhero Speak. I initially wasn’t sure about it because the trailer made it sound like it was the Real World with superheroes which would have felt very dated. But next to another movie on this list, this made me laugh the most. It has a lot of really funny moments throughout the film. Almost by its nature it’s not one of the most well made films on this list, but just by virtue of its humor I wanted to recognize it for that.

9. Sparks

Another indie film, but of the three I believe this one is the most well made of the bunch and had the greatest reach as it did get some DVD distribution. It’s pretty unique in its setting as it’s a period noir superhero film set in the 40’s. Sparks starts out as a wannabe superhero with a tragic backstory befitting of a typical superhero but he ends up getting caught up in a murder mystery combined with a heist and a revenge scheme. There’s several different twists and turns but I really enjoyed it for how different it was compared to most superhero movies.

8. Squid Man

I’m glad I waited until watching this before making my list. Of these three independent, low budget, superhero movies this was the one I ultimately liked the best. And what I loved about all three of them and why I wanted to include them all in this list is that they are not only so much different from the Hollywood superhero movies, but they are also very different from each other. This is another comedy, but it’s got a lot more mystery and drama than Real Heroes does. It treats the main character much more like a real person than a caricature or cartoon. He may be someone with powers in a world where superheroes exist, but he feels much more like a real person than most of the other.

7. Big Hero 6

The first Oscar nominated feature to appear on this list and it won’t be the last. I saw this in its opening weekend on my daughter’s 8th birthday and it did not disappoint. I currently have Baymax’s fist bump sound as my e-mail notification sound on my phone. It’s no exaggeration to say that I really loved this movie and Baymax is around 90% of that love. Not to mention the fact that while there’s been controversy over how white the Oscars are, this film is very much not-white centric with an overwhelming Asian presence in the design and a nice mix of ethnicity in the main characters. It also didn’t shy away from some real world problems that people actually face in the day to day world like the death of a family member. It just has a great mix of comedy, action, and heart that made me leave the theater with a huge smile on my face for a long while to come.

6. X-Men Days of Future Past

This film is to the X-Men franchise as The Avengers is to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sometimes the sum is greater than the whole of its parts. After waxing and waning, with a little too much waning, X-Men finally got a breath of fresh air by combining the herald of the modern superhero movie Bryan Singer with Matthew Vaughn who had success in bringing the younger X-Men to life in First Class. The two of them crafted an excellent movie with some of the best action scenes in a superhero movie ever during the fight scenes with the future sentinels. It also combines some of the best elements of time travel and one of the best scenes of the year with Quicksilver’s Time in a Bottle scene.

5. Batman: Assault on Arkham

I wasn’t sure what to make of this when it was announced, it was the first DC Animated film to take place within the world of the Arkham games which I had never played. I also had only vaguely heard of the Suicide Squad so when I pushed play it was a complete surprise to have a film essentially headlined by one of my favorite Batman characters, Harley Quinn. It has a great heist vibe to it with an almost 70’s cop style opening. It continues to stretch the lines of a PG-13 in the animated realm with the exploding heads and sexual innuendo, I will never think of the term “Yahtzee” in the same way again, but I just loved this film and I just hope that the live action movie comes close to the same tone that this one had.

4. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Marvel really had a stellar year in 2014 and it came out running with an early lead when Captain America became not-exactly-a-surprise-hit in April, almost a full month before the typical start of summer. I was relatively lukewarm on the first Captain America, but this second one hit all the right notes. There was some amazing action, from Nick Fury’s car chase scene to the battle with the Winter Soldier on the roads and everything inbetween. The character interactions between Cap, Black Widow, and Falcon were also pretty stellar. There may have been a few plot holes here and there, but for the most part, I was just along for the ride and it was a great ride at that.

3. Guardians of the Galaxy

The top three spots on this list were some of the hardest to put in a certain order because I absolutely loved them all equally for almost different reasons, though two of them did have the same star in the lead role and two of them featured someone who had played Batman. Guardians was absolute fun and I was one of the ones who knew this would be a great film from the announcement of the writer/director James Gunn. He’s had just a completely interesting career and has a quirky sense of humor that really meshed well with Marvel’s style. It’s very much a standard tale of the reluctant heroes coming together to fight against a common foe and end up saving the day and becoming a surrogate family, but it’s just so fantastic to watch. It’s hilarious, the soundtrack is wonderful, and it’s just fun in every single way.

2. The Lego Movie

I’m not going to use the quote that everyone does when they describe this movie, but it’s still appropriate. I grew up with Legos and I had that blue spaceman though I took better care of mine and I don’t believe his helmet ever cracked like that at the bottom. Like Guardians of the Galaxy before it on the list, this is another standard plot where Emmett takes the hero’s journey, but it’s just done so well and has so many great gags that it is hilarious from beginning to end. I also really loved the real world moments at the end of the movie that give it the right amount of heart so that the humor isn’t completely hollow. And besides everything else, the tech behind the animation in this film to simulate Lego stop-motion with CGI is completely stunning. Love love love this film.

1. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

It’s rare that I agree with the Oscars, I’ve only seen around a dozen or so Best Picture winners and rarely see even one nominee unless it’s the token pop culture nod. This is the only film that I saw that was nominated for anything aside from Big Hero 6’s Best Animated Feature and a few technical nods. I’m glad that I live near a major metropolitan area because I did get the chance to see this film in theaters and I was really blown away by it. The cinematography and camerawork was gorgeous. It may have been a gimmick to have the film look like it was nearly one continuous shot, but it worked so well for the flow of the film where the camera would seamlessly flow between one room to another in the same way that the actors would seamlessly flow between their “real life” personas right into the characters they were rehearsing for the play. Keaton gives a brilliant performance during the acting moments, the crazed Birdman hallucinations, and the moments where the walls break down and we get to see insight into the real Riggan Thomson. This was my favorite superhero film of the year even if some may call it a bit of a cheat as the Birdman element is supposedly all in his head. Brilliant film and I would be above the moon if it won Best Picture this year at the Oscars.

Top 5 Comic Book Movies of 2014

5. Hercules

I caught up with this one fairly recently based on Andrew Robinson’s recommendation. It’s based on the comic Hercules the Thracian Wars by Steve Moore and Cris Bolson. When I was young, I was a huge mythology geek. I watched the entire Kevin Sorbo series, but it’s been long enough that I don’t remember all of the details. I’m also not a stickler when it comes to staying true to the source material, and this is not staying true to the source material as in the original myths. But what it does do is take an interesting look at myths and legends and the difference between a story and reality, though there is still enough action to satiate fans of Dwayne Johnson.

4. The Scribbler

I heard about this movie fairly late in the year and it had a very limited run in theaters before going straight to home video and VOD. It’s based on the comic by Daniel Schaffer and shares several great visual elements from the book. It’s a great example of an untrustworthy narrator as it quickly sets up the fact that Suki played by Katie Cassidy has Disassociative Identity Disorder and has been undergoing treatment for it. I like to compare it to a combination of Fight Club, Girl Interrupted, and The Cell. It has the dinginess and narrative similarity to Fight Club, the cast of crazies like Girl Interrupted, and some striking visual elements like the Cell. I really enjoyed the movie and it was one of the few that I watched twice this year.

3. We Are the Best

This was one of only two foreign movies that I watched this year and I’m quite glad I got the chance to see it. It’s the least comic book-y film from this year though it was based on the comic Never Goodnight by Coco Mooysson. It’s an 80’s punk rock coming of age film about a young girl in Stockholm, Sweden. The best thing about this film is the realism present. I haven’t seen Boyhood, but based on what I’ve heard of it, this could go right alongside it. The three young girls were pitch perfect even though two of them had absolutely no pitch whatever in their music. Luckily that almost completely embodies the spirit of punk rock in the 80’s. It has a great timelessness to it, but also had to be set back in the 80’s. Really beautiful and quite funny at times as well.

2. Edge of Tomorrow

Next to superheroes, I am a big fan of sci-fi and time travel, especially time loops. And this movie combined them in the best ways possible. It’s based on an illustrated novel All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka and Yoshitoshi Abe which was also adapted into a Japanese Manga a few months before the movie was released. I never really fell off the Tom Cruise bandwagon like many other people have, and it’s one of his better performances where he doesn’t start out as the typical hero and in fact is the complete opposite. The aliens in this film are some of the most visually interesting, seriously they look and move absolutely amazingly. Even the entire supporting cast was great, especially Emily Blunt, and while some people had issues with the happy ending, I thought it was earned and had an acceptable explanation within the context of the film.

1. Snowpiercer

If I were to have combined these lists, this would be yet another film vying for its place with the other top 3 superhero movies. I’ve seen a bit of hate for this film here and there, but I completely fell in love with it. It’s based on the French comic Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette. The premise may seem a little ridiculous where the last people on Earth after a second ice age are in a single train running on a track across the world with a perpetual engine designed by Ed Harris. It is another visually stunning film during many moments of it, from one of the most talked about scenes with the men in masks with hatchets in the dark, the schoolcar scene, some of the fantastically designed railroad cars, to Chris Evans’ performance as Curtis, and Tilda Swinton’s performance. There is some great social commentary and a group of interesting characters that we follow through this straight line to the front of the train which becomes brilliant in its simplicity. The only issue I have with this film is one I didn’t have with Edge of Tomorrow was the ending which stretched the point of believability just a little too far for me even if it was meant to be more of a thematic ending than a literal one.

This post is for the Great Villain Blogathon hosted by Silver Screenings, Speakeasy, and Shadows and Satin. For my part, there are plenty of great villains out there that I could have picked from, but in the superhero universe I don’t think there is any greater rogues’ gallery than the ones that live in and around Gotham city, so I decided to make a top 10 list of Batman’s greatest foes that have graced the silver screen or the home video screen. Yes, I am including the DC Animation direct-to-video films but I’m not including any of the television series, animated or otherwise. So here… we… go!

Talon

Film: Batman vs. Robin – This is a very recent entry as the movie he appeared in just came out on DVD yesterday. He’s the head of the soldier branch of the Court of Owls: a secretive organization made up of Gotham’s rich and powerful who seek to control the city. He was the son of an abusive cat burglar who turned on his father at a young age only to be raised by the Court of Owls as an assassin. Through the course of the film, he ends up being a pseudo-father figure to Batman’s actual son Damian Wayne. It makes sense to have a villain of Batman resemble an owl which is one of the few predators that hunt bats, which will come into play again later. He even follows through with his own twisted ideals to the very end.

Darkseid

Films: Superman/Batman Apocalypse, Justice League: War – While Darkseid is typically more of a Superman and/or a Justice League villain, Batman does manage to play a major part in defeating him. He is one of the most powerful villains in the DC Universe, though his major power are these relatively ridiculous Omega beams which are basically homing laser beams that only move in right angles. While he is one of the most powerful villains, he’s also one of the least interesting as he generally just floats around and acts like nothing can defeat him, and then is surprised when he is.

Harley Quinn

Films: Assault on Arkham – I’m not ashamed to admit that Harley Quinn is my favorite Batman villain. She’s crazy, she’s sexy, and she dresses like a playing card, what’s not to like? The main reason why she isn’t higher on the list is because she’s not really a big threat to Batman, she’s much more of a nuisance. This movie really showcases a bit of her deviousness when she plays off being a jilted lover to the Joker, and yet she’s actually creating the means for his escape. Brilliant.

Superman

Film: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2 – This might be a little bit of a stretch to call him a villain, but in the timeline of the Dark Knight Returns he is definitely an opponent of the Dark Knight. And of course he will be again, likely briefly, in the upcoming Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. And while it really is a bit of a stretch to think that Batman in a mech suit could really prove to be any sort of match for the Man of Steel, even if his heart might not entirely be in it, this film really milks this fight for all its worth, and for that spectacle alone, I had to include him in this list.

Catwoman

Films: Batman Returns, The Dark Knight Rises, Batman: Year One, Batman: The Movie – And we finally get to our first live action villain! As far as Catwoman goes, I must say that I like Anne Hathaway’s overall performance and character better, but I like the look of Pfeiffer and her chemistry with Keaton better. I also have to give a quick shout out to Lee Meriweather who also makes tight leather look pretty good. Anyway, Hathaway never gets a line like “Mistletoe is deadly if you eat it, but a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it.” And those high tech cat ear goggles don’t hold a candle to the stitched together leather/vinyl/rubber/whatever catsuit in Batman Returns. It helps that she is more than a little bit crazy rather than just a very well trained con artist.

The Red Hood

Film: Batman: Under the Red Hood – This was one of the first animated films where I really started to think that DC Animation was telling stories for adults rather than just for kids. They’ve gotten a lot darker over the years, but this was one of the first that really dealt with blood and death with one of the darker moments of Batman’s history with the death of Jason Todd. The Red Hood was one of the several vigilantes in Gotham that took things too far, he killed some of the criminals, and worked with the others. And to top things off, he ended up being Jason Todd himself, resurrected by Ra’s Al Ghul in the Lazarus Pit only to come out wrong. It’s a great story, and he’s a great sympathetic villain when all is said and done.

Ra’s Al Ghul

Films: Batman Begins, Batman: Under the Red Hood, Son of Batman – While he appeared in a couple of the animated films, he wasn’t much of a villain in either of them so I will be focusing on his appearance in Batman Begins. He is the interesting case of the villain who initially started out as Batman’s friend and mentor, teaching him the ways of the League of Shadows under the guise of being Ducard. And while Nolan’s universe did away from the Lazarus Pit, he did find a way to have Liam Neeson briefly return for the Dark Knight Rises as a memory. But he is one of the most powerful villains as the leader of the League of Shadows, one of the few who knew Batman’s secret identity and one of the first villains that he let die in a move not entirely fitting with his character.

Owlman

Film: Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths – One of the only parallel dimension villains on this list, Owlman comes from an alternate Earth where he is the analogue of Batman in his world, only he and the rest of the Justice League analogues are villains and part of the Crime Syndicate. And while he isn’t the leader, he is the one who masterminds the overall plan that would destroy the entire multiverse. Certainly a step up from robbing a bank. It helps that he is voiced by the incomparable James Woods. While the film itself does lack a little something to make it spectacular, it’s a fun film and Owlman is one of the more memorable parts of it.

Bane

Films: Dark Knight Rises, Batman & Robin – Getting close to the end there just has to be a mention of Bane. The way he played off of Poison Ivy was just incredible. Of course, I’m joking and the actual Bane that makes this list is the one played by Tom Hardy in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. While I do think that the Dark Knight Rises is the weakest of the three films, there is still quite a lot there to impress, and one of those things is Hardy’s Bane performance. He is intelligent, strong, and determined. Not to mention memorable, while it may have seemed like an odd choice for him to have that mask and accent, it’s not something that is easily forgotten. Bane makes an impression, and it is a strong one. He also happens to have the entire city of Gotham under his thumb for months on end. Impressive doesn’t even begin to describe it.

The Joker

Films: Batman, The Dark Knight, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Under the Red Hood, Assault on Arkham, etc – When I started this list, I imagine that there was little doubt as to what villain would make the number 1 spot. Out of his entire rogues’ gallery there is one villain used more often than any other, and that is the Joker. And while there are many different incarnations, the ones that I want to focus on for this list are Mark Hamill’s portrayal in Mask of the Phantasm, Jack Nicholson in 1989’s Batman, and Heath Ledger in the Dark Knight. They all have their place on this pedestal and they are all worthy of it. The Joker is such an interesting character, above all else he just wants to see the chaos unfold around him and have a little fun while he’s at it. He can be a bit more on the psychotic side of things like in the Dark Knight, and he can be a bit more on the silly side of things like in Tim Burton’s Batman. But there’s always a sense of chaos while at the same time there’s this incredible intelligence behind the chaos that makes it that much more terrifying.

I hope you enjoyed this list as much as I enjoyed making it. There were a few villains that I am disappointed that I had to leave out for one reason or another, I’m a big fan of Clayface and the Riddler, but Clayface has yet to make a notable appearance in a movie, and the less said about Jim Carrey’s Riddler the better. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

As I was wandering around the blogosphere today I stumbled upon an ongoing blogathon that I just had to jump in on for this week. Over at Wondering Through the Shelves they do a Thursday Movie Picks where there’s a topic each week and everyone who participates chooses 3 films that fit with the week’s theme. This week is superhero movies so obviously I had to jump in on it. Make sure you check out their choices and the other participants as well.

As I have already done a few of my top superhero movie lists, I thought I would narrow it down a bit and since I have been watching a lot of animation this month which is usually kiddie fare it’s the perfect excuse to go to the other end of the spectrum and list three of my favorite R-rated superhero movies.

The Crow

This is still one of my favorite films. I love the look of it, the feel of it, and it’s entirely quotable. “Victims, aren’t we all?” “He went and got himself perished.” “It can’t rain all the time.” The soundtrack was also a standard in my CD player when I discovered this probably just after high school, mainly because I was a Nine Inch Nails fan with a collector’s mentality and the soundtrack was the only place to find their song Dead Souls. It just has a style all its own that’s been attempted to be copied several times over, but nothing has quite captured the same magic that this film has.

Blade II

Before he made Hellboy his own, director Giullermo del Toro brought his touch to this vampire hunter with a touch of superhero. It even had Ron Perlman in it as one of the enemy of my enemy vampires. There have been many different variations on the vampire design, but this is one of the most imaginative and grotesque, with the mouth that splits all the way down the middle. There’s plenty of action and a lot of fun to be had here with the double crosses and begrudging teamwork.

Watchmen

Love it or hate it, Zack Snyder turned one of the most revered comic books in recent history into an feature film that was impressive for how closely it hewed to the source material. Even though critics of the film begrudge the fact that he missed a lot of the subtle underlying message in exchange for mindless action and violence, it’s still incredibly ambitious, stylish, and holds a large part of what makes the original comic so great. It’s one of the most mature looks at superheroes, and not just because of the blood and nudity. And whether or not you think it holds up to the source material, it helped bring the original back into the spotlight and introduced it to a new generation.

And there you have it! If I were to toss in some honorable mentions I would also include Dredd, the Toxic Avenger, Super, and of course Kick-Ass. So what are your favorites? Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Once again I saw a very appropriate topic from Wandering Through the Shelves Thursday Movie Picks theme for this week. The last time I joined in the topic was superhero movies, and this time it’s the other end of the spectrum that I cover for this site: non-superhero comic book movies. Check out his picks as well as the other choices over there.

Rather than picking three of my favorite, or what I think of are the best films based on graphic novels or comic books, I’m going to showcase a few lesser known titles from the past few years that you might not have heard of for various reasons. Click the posters to check out my full review of the films.

Bounty Killer came out just a couple years ago and I think it’s a timely choice considering that the latest Mad Max film just came out and this film is heavily inspired by Mad Max. It’s ultra violent, has a gorgeous woman in essentially the lead role even though the guy is the namesake of the movie. It has some great comic book inspired visuals for transitions and brief cameos from Beverly D’Angelo, Gary Busey, and a couple others. It’s not serious by any means and I imagine it would pale in comparison to Mad Max, but it was also done on a fraction of the budget. It’s worth checking out for a little bit of the ol’ ultraviolence.

We Are the Best came out just last year and it’s a Swedish coming of age film about three young girls growing up in the early punk scene in Sweden who want to start a punk band despite two of them having absolutely zero musical experience. It’s much more grounded and realistic than most coming of age films, there’s no big climactic scene involving a pirate ship in a cave filled with treasure, there’s just a whole lot of little moments that help shape the main character Bobo along her way into puberty.

The Scribbler is a bit of a psychological thriller with touches of Fight Club, Girl, Interrupted, and the Cell. Suki has disassociative identity disorder aka multiple personalities and is undergoing a new treatment that will help get rid of those personalities one by one. The question that really defines the movie is the question of whether or not Suki is actually the dominant personality or if she was created by one of the crazy personalities to try and fit in with the other normal people. On top of that there’s a bit of a murder mystery and some superhero elements without ever really being a superhero movie.

And those are my three, I do want to mention Road to Perdition as it’s a film that I watched just a few months back for the first time and really fell in love with it. It’s such a gorgeous film in more ways than one and I would consider it one of the best if not the best graphic novel adaptation out there.

It’s been over a year since I posted my list of 100 Essential Superhero Movies, and I do want to keep this list updated every year, adding in new movies from the previous year, and taking out movies that only just barely made the cut. Another thing that I decided to do a little bit differently is to rank the films by their quality, so that it’s more obvious which films are the failures that are still important in the grand scheme of superhero movie history, but aren’t very high quality films. And while my personal preference will obviously come into play, I did make a decided effort to combine my opinion along with the general opinion. Also, I will be sharing my rankings every day for the next 100 days over on Facebook and Twitter and will be collecting them here afterwards. Enjoy!

#100 – The Wild World of Batwoman

It fits into this list as one of the first fan films, or more appropriately a mockbuster as it took the barest of concepts from Adam West’s Batman and tried to make it a success. But a lack of budget, lack of talent, and lack of writing made this film fade away until Mystery Science Theater got a hold of it and brought it back into view as a so-bad-it’s-good cult film.

#99 – Supergirl

This was the first major superhero movie with a woman in the lead role, unfortunately it came after the increasingly low budget and low quality Superman films and is not a good film by any means. The two bright spots are the introduction of Helen Slater in the lead role, and Jerry Goldsmith’s score even though it’s pales in comparison to the original Superman score.

#98 – Batman & Robin

This was the end of the Batman universe started by Tim Burton and ended by Joel Schumacher. It brought in an older Batman with George Clooney, gave Arnold Schwarzenegger top billing as a pun spewing Dr. Freeze, turned Gotham into a neon filled amusement park, and turned fans of the character away in droves grossing just over $100 million and the lowest of any modern live action Batman film. It has basically turned into a big joke that even those involved in the film have turned against it. It is a

#97 – The Return of Swamp Thing

The sequel to Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing which was a cross between a creature feature and a superhero film. The sequel ditched a lot of the horror elements outside of the creature effects and played up the comedy quite a bit more. It also brought in Heather Locklear off of Dynasty as a love interest for Swamp Thing. It seemed to try too hard to recreate what made the first film good, but they did bring in superhero movie alum Sarah Douglas in the best role of the film, even though it was somewhat similar to Ursa in Superman 2 without the super powers.

#96 – Superman III

The beginning of the end of the Salkind/Christopher Reeve Superman films that originally brought superhero films into the mainstream. This film sidelined Superman in favor of hot comedian at the time Richard Pryor who was allowed to pretty much let loose as an accidental computer genius and accidental supervillain. It also got rid of Margot Kidder in favor of Annette O’Toole who plays Lana Lang and would eventually go on to play Martha Kent for many seasons on Smallville. The comedy was not the right direction for this franchise, though it does stand the test of time for introducing the evil side of Superman, also known as “drunk dad” Superman.

#95 – The Death of the Incredible Hulk

This film was the last TV movie from the iconic 70’s and 80’s Incredible Hulk series with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. In some ways it was the end of an era even though it came out so many years after the end of the TV series it still felt like a fitting end to that show with the literal death of the Incredible Hulk. Even though with comic books it was always possible to come back, and there’s even rumors that if the ratings were better they would have made another one, but this is the swan song to one of the most popular live action Marvel shows, if not the most popular, even though it does not nearly hold up on its own today.

I will immediately preface this post by saying that my familiarity to this franchise extends only to the four films as well as the mid 90’s cartoon which I haven’t watched since then. Though I have heard other descriptions of how the team works in the comics, at least before it was cancelled by Marvel earlier this year. This team of heroes has gone through three different iterations, none of them have been critical successes, one of them wasn’t even released, and only one was much of a financial success. It doesn’t seem like it should be that hard to adapt this family of four heroes with unique powers that act together as a family, I mean the Incredibles was able to do it, so why can’t the Fantastic Four? Here are a few reasons why I think it’s been so difficult.

#1 – The Fantastic Four is a Family That’s Not a Family

Just like real brothers… five year old brothers.

One of the biggest issues that the films have is that the Fantastic Four is a family that’s not really a family. Johnny and Sue are the only two who are actually related, though Reed and Sue get married at some point in the comics and in the second Tim Story film. But in the Tim Story version, the family side of things feels very forced, especially as they are essentially forced to live together in the first film, and they end up devolving into bickering. There is some merit to the sibling-like rivalry between Johnny and Ben which are some of the most enjoyable moments in the films from my perspective, though it is taken a bit too far into a caricature of sibling rivalry rather than real brothers. In the Trank version, there’s a nice relationship between Reed and Ben at the beginning, but it doesn’t really follow through to the rest of the film. There’s even the added aspect of the father figure Franklin Storm, but it still never really feels like they come together as a family in the end. Johnny and Sue barely feel like they’re supposed to be brother and sister, and it has nothing to do with their different skin colors. There should be some minor squabbling, but with underlying love and respect for each other. Even in an origin story, the seeds of those relationships should be building. But instead, the Tim Story version favors an hour of bickering with ten minutes of coming together and the Trank version has them all working on their own independent issues separately and again has ten minutes of coming together.

#2 – The Fantastic Four’s Powers are Silly

If there’s an easy reason to point to as to why the Incredibles works as a pseudo Fantastic Four movie while the actual Fantastic Four movies fail is that the Incredibles makes the smart move to switch around some of the powers. They drop the guy who can burst into flames in favor of super speed which is much more non-lethal and doesn’t obscure anyone’s important facial features, and they drop the guy made of rocks which also has those same issues. Taken individually, and in the still image comics form, these powers work ok. There’s pathos that can be given over the long term with Ben Grimm not being able to live out a normal life. But truncated into a single movie, that’s an issue that has to take a backseat to dozens of other things that need to be accomplished in such a short time frame. Also, while the Trank version has the best looking version of stretching to date, it is still a very difficult concept for an audience to wrap their head around without being an additional logic step removed with an entirely animated character. Stretching is just not something that happens to real bodies using real physics. There’s also little use for a guy who can set himself on fire when it comes to being grounded in the real world. For a Fantastic Four movie to work, it needs that extra disconnect from reality. It could possibly work as a superhero movie satire or parody, but it’s hard to take these powers seriously at face value.

#3 – They Don’t Have Anyone To Fight

What is it with Fantastic Four and giant clouds?

For some reason, every Fantastic Four movie boils down to the four of them teaming up together in one way or another to beat back a singularly powerful villain that none of them would be able to defeat by themselves. The Corman version avoids the fighting by necessity as they had a practically nonexistent special effects budget. During an early fight scene, it cuts away and when it cuts back the minions are lying on the floor and there’s a Thing shaped hole in the wall. Also, the finale boils down to a badly animated Torch racing to intercept the slowest laser beam ever. The first Tim Story movie ends with a fire tornado, the second has a giant space cloud, and this ends with basically a different type of space cloud. Dr. Doom may be a great villain in the comics, but the movies have failed him time and time again. Instead, they need something that will actually give them something to fight, something with minions. Maybe not an entire Skrull army, but at least a group of powered villains that will put up a fight, but ones that they can defeat individually. Or even something that has them working together like the great opening sequence in X-Men Days of Future Past.

#4 – They Aren’t Made on Their Own Terms

What I mean by this is that every one of these films have been made in order to keep the rights to these characters rather than making a film that has a story that can only be told with these characters. They are all products of a studio and executives that have what they think is a property that will make them money and they just need to figure out how to squeeze the money out of it. The first and last films are prime examples of this. I still don’t fully understand why property rights are designed that film rights are given so that as long as they are being utilized, they can be kept seemingly in perpetuity. But the first film is probably the most well known story of a movie that was made with the sole purpose to keep the rights to the characters for a few more years, even though it didn’t end up helping that studio any. But Fox decided that this property was still worth keeping and greenlit the most recent reboot. It was given to young director Josh Trank after his success with Chronicle, but when the executives didn’t like how test screenings went, they ordered very late reshoots and seemingly took the editing away from Trank to create a slap dash film that feels like much is missing.

#5 – Their Origin Just Doesn’t Work

This also calls back to mistake #2. Their origin is just as silly as their powers. Whether it’s a solar flare or energy from an alternate dimension, it doesn’t make much sense that these four, often five as two out of three versions give Doom his powers through the same event, people gain these extraordinary abilities that are wildly different from each other but still extremely powerful. Two of the three explain the powers via their personality – Sue is shy to the point of invisibility, Reed stretches himself too thin, Johnny is a hothead, etc. In the new film, there are touches of explantions for a couple of them, like Reed is stretching his arm to try and save Victor, and Ben has all the space rocks fly into his compartment, but the other two lack explanations. One of the things that I did like about the new film is that it jumps a year into the future so there is very little time on screen spent learning to use their abilities. I think more than any other property, the Fantastic Four just need to show up as an existing entity. Skip the origin entirely.

I think that a good Fantastic Four movie can be made, it’s just a shame that it has yet to be done after four attempts. I’m still a bit of a fan of the first Tim Story film, but it’s admittedly a guilty pleasure. I also liked large parts of the new film, but I think that studio meddling caused it to turn out badly. I doubt that it will ever be released, but I do think that Josh Trank’s version would be a much better film overall and I would love to see his original vision. If this is the end for this franchise, I doubt that Marvel will end up bringing it into their cinematic universe outside of a possible cameo in someone else’s film, and maybe that’s for the better. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

There’s been a couple times in the past where I joined in this weekly discussion topic started by Wandering Through the Shelves where there’s a new topic for each participating site to choose three movies and the occasional honorable mentions that fit within the theme of the week. This week’s theme is Train Movies, but as I can only think of a single train movie that fits in this site’s focus, I decided to narrow it just a bit and go for train scenes. It seems like every other superhero has at least one moment where they need to stop a train for one reason or another, but here’s my top three, unranked.

Hellboy

The scene: When Hellboy chases Samael the Destroyer, they end up in the subway tunnels and of course, there’s an oncoming subway car coming straight for them. Instead of running away, Samael runs towards the train leaving Hellboy to follow. But instead of a warm welcome, the train engineer knocks Hellboy off the back with the fire extinguisher and the train runs over Hellboy leaving his horn stubs red hot.
What makes it great: It’s a lot of fun and the fight continues on into the subway station, ending with Hellboy saving a box full of kitten. Because of course he does. I love this because it does everything so well, there’s the mix of humor, some amazing stuntwork both from Ron Perlman as well as the stuntman in the Samael suit. Not to mention that it’s great to see the combination of practical and digital effects to pull of the Samael creature. Really great stuff.

The Incredibles

The scene: In the heyday of the superheroes, Mr. Incredible has to stop a train after Incrediboy knocked a bomb onto the tracks that blew a gap in the bridge. At first glance, it’s a very stereotypical superhero stopping a train, but there’s this one extra moment that stands out to me, especially once it was pointed out in the DVD audio commentary.
What makes it great: Just before the train gets to him, Mr. Incredible takes just a quick moment to brace himself for the impact. He knows that he’s going to survive it, but he also knows that it’s gonna hurt. It’s that little extra moment of realism that gives it that edge of greatness.

Spider-Man 2

The scene: Doc Ock and Spidey are fighting on top of an elevated train, Doc rips the controls out of the train and Spider-Man has to figure out some way to stop it. He has a mask malfunction and has to remove it. Then, after going through a couple of the typical methods and getting some flack for it from one of the passengers, he finally uses his own body to stop the train and passes out from the exertion. The passengers grab him before he falls off the platform and bring him into the train so he can recover. Obviously none of them recognize who he is, but some of them are surprised at how young he is.
What makes it great: Spider-Man is one of the heroes who really feels like he’s a part of his city. Many of the movies have a similar scene where he’s helped by the citizens of New York, but this was always my favorite as it ends on such a quiet note, even though it does have a slightly overstrong Christ overtone to it with his arms outstretched and his resurrection as it were. Even just the moment where he comes to and feels his face to realize that he’s still not wearing his mask in front of all these people. I just love it.

Honorable Mentions

Snowpiercer: I mean, it’s pretty much the only comic book adaptation that takes place entirely on a train. There’s no way I couldn’t at least mention this film. Plus, it’s awesome.
The Lone Ranger: I honestly almost forgot about this and had to add it in later, it’s unfortunately a very forgettable film, but the action scene in the third act with the trains is nothing short of spectacular.

It’s the New Year and that means that it’s time to look back at the previous year that has passed. And along with most movie sites I’ll be taking a look back at the films that came out this year and sharing my top 8 films. That may sound like an odd number, but there have been only eighteen films by my count released here in the US this year that I would classify as a superhero film or was based on a comic book. In the recent boom of superhero and comic book films, this is actually the smallest number of films released since 2009 as the number has been steadily growing since shortly after 2000. And because of that, I was actually able to watch them all before the end of the year! There were some good films this year, some surprises, and several disappointments. But there are eight films that I wanted to share once again with you as my personal favorites.

#8 28 Minute Epic

This is an extremely indie film made for a mere $4,100 as mentioned in the opening credits. It’s a little bit Kevin Smith’s Clerks, a little bit James Gunn’s Super, and a little bit of Meet the Parents thrown in as two guys working at a porn shop have the worst day in their lives and the best day in their lives all rolled up into one. The humor wasn’t always a hit with
me, but it went places that I never would have expected it to go and I had a good time with it. Not only that, but it’s currently free to watch at their site 28MinuteEpic.com, it’s worth a shot.

#7 Batkid Begins

This is a documentary about a simple wish that ended up going viral and becoming an extraordinary event in San Francisco that was seen all over the world. The actual filmmaking behind the documentary isn’t anything all that special, but the story itself is just so captivating and touching that it makes it worth watching in and of itself. Miles is a young boy battling cancer whose wish was to be the real Batman. And the Make-A-Wish foundation just happened to get all the right people involved to make a child’s wish into something that we can all get behind in one way or another.

#6 Justice League: Gods and Monsters

This was one of three Warner Premier DC Animated movies that were released this year along side several other more kid-oriented DC Animated movies, it also marked the return of Bruce Timm as writer for this alternate universe Justice League. It had several interesting ideas and alternate histories of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, but much of it was lost on me as someone with only a passing knowledge of the expansive DC Universe. But it was still a quality animated release as the Warner Premier movies usually are.

#5 Avengers: Age of Ultron

This was ultimately a disappointment for a lot of people, and one reason why I didn’t give it a full written review on release was because I needed some time to let it sit and give it another watch before giving it a fair shake. That still hasn’t happened yet but even as a “disappointment” compared to the original Avengers which I consider the best superhero movie ever made, it’s still a pretty great movie. I don’t think I have to go too much into it right now, but since I haven’t done a written review, the link above goes to my appearance on the Lambcast where the film was discussed.

#4 Batman vs. Robin

I already mentioned Warner Premier and their DC Animated movies just a couple spots earlier, and this is one of their first real ongoing storylines aside from the loosely connected Justice League movies War and Throne of Atlantis. This focuses on the father/son relationship between Batman and his biological son Damian Wayne alongside the reappearance of the Court of Owls who may have had a hand in the death of Bruce’s parents. It has some interesting themes, great performances, and well done action sequences.

#3 Ant-Man

This movie had a pretty sordid history before it ever hit theaters. There was talk about this being Marvel’s first failure as it lost its writer director, fan favorite Edgar Wright in exchange for Peyton Reed who was probably best known for the movie Bring it On. But Reed and star Paul Rudd was able to bring together a great action/heist/comedy with some of the most amazing shrinking effects ever seen on film. One of the few downsides was the major underplaying of Evangeline Lilly’s Hope Pym in favor of a romantic sidekick.

#2 The Subjects

This movie was a complete surprise to me, it was another indie film made by writer/director Robert Mond that takes a very different look at super powers and superheroes. Here, eight strangers take part in a drug test that ends up giving them each different super powers. But they soon find out that learning to control these abilities is a lot more dangerous than the movies make it out to be and the movie takes on the tone of a thriller. It’s just such a different take that I completely fell in love with it. The low budget gets in the way in places, but I easily looked past it for the story and the concepts involved.

#1 Kingsman: The Secret Service

This movie was an early release this year and one of the first big success stories. I was already a fan of many of the adapted works of Mark Millar as well as the films of Matthew Vaughn and this just came together in all the right ways. The action was intense, the humor was spot on, and Taron Egerton as the lead was brilliant. Everything in this film came together as the right kind of jab at a James Bond movie for someone who has seen almost no James Bond movies.

So there’s my list, was there anything that I left out that you think I should have included? Leave a comment and let me know. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Wrapping up another Black History Month I’ve decided that after watching and reviewing all of them (which sadly want all that hard aside from discovering them all) I’ve decided to rank them all in this list in case you haven’t been paying attention and might not know how many are really out there, even if there’s only a couple surprises on this list and they’re probably closer to the bottom. And as for my criteria for what counts as a “Black Superhero Movie” or a “Black Comic Book Movie”, the biggest one is that a Black actor or actress gets top billing at the bare minimum. That means that Men in Black and Men in Black II don’t make the cut, but Men in Black 3 does. I’m also going with what I consider to be the standard definition of Black as best as I can figure based on my limited knowledge and am excluding other People of Color such as Asians, Latinos, and West Asians since there are several Asian superhero movies and Bollywood superhero movies I have yet to watch. Enough small talk, on with the list!

17: Abar: the First Black Superman

This is the first, but not the last Blacksploitation film on this list and it’s barely a superhero movie. It spends a lot of its runtime pushing its social message while adding some really cheap special effects and an absolutely bonkers third act where Abar finally becomes the titular Superman with some bizarre abilities completely unrelated to the Siegel and Shuster creation.

16: Blade: House of Chthion

This is the TV pilot movie for the Blade TV series where Wesley Snipes was replaced with rapper slash actor Sticky Fingaz and the vampire house that’s unpronouncably spelled “Chthion”. It feels very much like a TV pilot, and for a series that only lasted one season at that. Fingaz just doesn’t have the same chemistry or charisma as Snipes and the writers aren’t able to work around it at all.

15: Steel

This is the first, and probably not the last vanity project on this list that was supposedly a vehicle for Shaq to branch out from his basketball superstardom into acting territory. And while they chose a somewhat notable Black superhero that was created during the well known Death of Superman comics arc, they didn’t really keep much of anything that was related to comics character aside from the suit of armor and the hammer. The budget was incredibly low, and instead of making it into a full blown comedy, they decided to cover up some of the budget with humor. But instead, they ended up with a movie that couldn’t take itself seriously, but wasn’t very funny either. No one wants the climactic ending to be solved by whether or not Shaq can throw the equivalent of a free throw.

14: Catwoman

This was filmed shortly after Halle Berry became the first Black woman to win an Oscar for Best Leading Actress, and unfortunately this was a huge drop in quality from Monster’s Ball. I’ve gone on about this film many times and it’s just awful how they took a popular character from the Batman mythos, tossed out everything about her, added in a bunch of ridiculous mythological cat powers and behaviors, and ended up with this giant mess of a movie.

13: Blankman

This is the superhero comedy from In Living Color alums David Allen Greer and Marlon Wayans that take a guy with the social graces of the show’s Handi-Man only with the inventing ability of a pseudo genius and the resources of a junk yard. Some people might find his washing machine robot and an adult not understanding what’s happening during his “first” erection, but I wasn’t feeling any of it.

12: Moonwalker

The first of a couple films to stretch the concept of a “superhero movie” this video project is mostly a compilation of several Michael Jackson music videos strung together with a weird little plot involving some kids and Joe Pesci as a bad guy that is kind of a short film that makes up about twenty minutes in the middle. The best part about this film really are the music videos, especially the amazing Smooth Criminal smack dab in the middle. But aside from that, it’s Michael Jackson self-aggrandizing in the worst way possible.

11: Up, Up, and Away

This was a Disney Channel Original movie directed by Robert Townsend which won’t be the first time that he appears on this list. It’s a sweet little family film that has nice message to go along with it. It also takes the very rare look at a superhero family where the middle child doesn’t have any super powers. The rest of the plot may be rather silly and inconsequential, but it does enough things differently from the normal superhero movie that it’s worth looking into. Especially if you have kids or grew up in the late 90’s.

10: Friday Foster

This is the second Blacksploitation film on this list and it surprisingly stars a very young Pam Grier. It follows a lot of the exploitation cinema formulas, but it softens them enough that they end up falling flat on a lot of levels. If you haven’t watched much exploitation cinema, it’s not a bad place to start, especially if you’re a Pam Grier fan as she really is the best part of this film. And like several other films on this list, it has a pretty significant cast of actors in it.

9: Blade: Trinity

The last and worst of the Blade films, this one came along when the brand was really starting to die out even though it hadn’t hit rock bottom with the TV series to come a couple years later. This tried to bring in some fresh blood with Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel, which for some reason they thought that what a Black, half vampire badass needed was a couple young, white sidekicks. But jokey and boring didn’t help liven things up even when they brought in future Heat Wave to play the king of all vampires Dracula. But it wasn’t enough to have Dracula, they also had to bring him down a peg with a Count Chocula joke of all things as well as a pair of vampire Pomeranians.

8: Meteor Man

This is a bit of a guilty pleasure for myself, it’s another superhero comedy by Robert Townsend, only instead of having it be for the Disney Channel, it was actually shown in theaters. It has an amazing cast including people like the now vilified Bill Cosby, James Earl Jones, Eddie Griffin, Don Cheadle, and music from Cyprus Hill, Naughty by Nature, and Biz Markie. It’s very much on the cheesy side of things, but I still enjoy it.

7: Spawn

This is another slight guilty pleasure as I really love a lot of the people involved in this film from Michael Jai White in his first real starring role and John Leguizamo in an honest, if grotesque role as the Clown. It was the first serious superhero movie even though even then it suffered getting dropped down to PG-13 from a possible R, but it suffered coming out a little bit too soon and had the WORST CGI DEVIL EVER! The plot was a little convoluted and the special effects often left something to be desired, but there are hints of a good movie in there.

6: Pootie Tang

This is another film that I just didn’t fully connect with the humor. It seemed to have been billed as a Chris Rock film even though he’s not the lead, nor the writer or director. He does play multiple roles and it was essentially a film that spun off from a series of sketches on his talk show. It suffered by having it chopped up in the editing room, but like Spawn, there are hints of a good movie in here. But the jokes had to be spelled out to the audience, and there are so many plot lines going on that it’s hard to keep track of them all. And it’s just bizarre to have a main character that speaks his own language that everyone just understands at face value as the basis for an entire feature length movie.

5: Hancock

This is the first film on this list that I genuinely enjoy. Or at least I absolutely love the first half of this film while I can tolerate the second half. It stars Will Smith as the only Black person in LA who also happens to be a superhero who is an asshole and has amnesia. Will Smith is incredibly likable and sympathetic the more you learn about Hancock, but the film gets bogged down by its own hard to explain mythology where Charlize Theron plays his immortal mate that is also the key to ending his own immortality. And their fighting creates this giant electrical storm for some reason.

4: 2 Guns

It’s honestly a little bit tough for me to remember much about this charming, but forgettable cop crime caper film where Denzel Washington gets top billing. The plot is as convoluted as they come with at least a half dozen double crosses if not more and loyalties shifting at every turn. But the saving grace for this film is the amazing chemistry between Washington and Mark Wahlberg. Their friendly rivalry and begrudging partnership make this film worth sitting through and even enjoyable to boot.

3: Men in Black 3

Surprisingly this is the only movie out of the Men in Black trilogy where Will Smith finally gets top billing over Tommy Lee Jones, likely because Jones is replaced with Josh Brolin for most of the run time. It has a lot of great time travel jokes, a villain almost as great if not greater than D’Onofrio’s Edgar from the first film in Jermaine Clement’s Boris the Animal. Brolin does a spot on Agent Kay impression and the film makes the past alien tech feel sleek, but also less advanced.

2: Blade

I’m sure there wasn’t much doubt what films would make the top of this list. It’s a shame that throughout the years, nothing has really come along to replace what helped start the entire superhero movie phase. Wesley Snipes shines in what is arguably his best film role as the Marvel vampire hunter from the pages of the Tomb of Dracula series. Even though it barely acknowledges that it’s a Marvel movie, it instead revels in the action horror genre of vampire and vampire hunter films and does it well. It also doesn’t worry about making itself into an origin movie, it gives just a quick expositional origin before jumping into Blade at the height of his career.

1: Blade II

And while there is some debate over which Blade film is better, and I will often come out in favor of the first Blade film, there is just something about the sequel where Guillermo del Toro brings in his spectacular vision of these uber vampires and combines it with the enjoyable enemy of my enemy team up with the villains. It also has such an enjoyable cast, from the antagonistic Ron Perlman, a young Norman Reedus, and Danny John-Jules for us Red Dwarf fans. It has some amazing special effects, and a few surprises at the end, plus plenty of gore and action along the way.

So, those are my picks. I’d love to know if there’s any films that you think I left out because if there are, I’d love to find them and check them out myself. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t forget about any that I’ve already seen. What would be your number one from this list? And are there any that you might go seek out? Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Wrapping up another Black History Month I’ve decided that after watching and reviewing all of them (which sadly want all that hard aside from discovering them all) I’ve decided to rank them all in this list in case you haven’t been paying attention and might not know how many are really out there, even if there’s only a couple surprises on this list and they’re probably closer to the bottom. And as for my criteria for what counts as a “Black Superhero Movie” or a “Black Comic Book Movie”, the biggest one is that a Black actor or actress gets top billing at the bare minimum. That means that Men in Black and Men in Black II don’t make the cut, but Men in Black 3 does. I’m also going with what I consider to be the standard definition of Black as best as I can figure based on my limited knowledge and am excluding other People of Color such as Asians, Latinos, and West Asians since there are several Asian superhero movies and Bollywood superhero movies I have yet to watch. Enough small talk, on with the list!

17: Abar: the First Black Superman

This is the first, but not the last Blacksploitation film on this list and it’s barely a superhero movie. It spends a lot of its runtime pushing its social message while adding some really cheap special effects and an absolutely bonkers third act where Abar finally becomes the titular Superman with some bizarre abilities completely unrelated to the Siegel and Shuster creation.

16: Blade: House of Chthion

This is the TV pilot movie for the Blade TV series where Wesley Snipes was replaced with rapper slash actor Sticky Fingaz and the vampire house that’s unpronouncably spelled “Chthion”. It feels very much like a TV pilot, and for a series that only lasted one season at that. Fingaz just doesn’t have the same chemistry or charisma as Snipes and the writers aren’t able to work around it at all.

15: Steel

This is the first, and probably not the last vanity project on this list that was supposedly a vehicle for Shaq to branch out from his basketball superstardom into acting territory. And while they chose a somewhat notable Black superhero that was created during the well known Death of Superman comics arc, they didn’t really keep much of anything that was related to comics character aside from the suit of armor and the hammer. The budget was incredibly low, and instead of making it into a full blown comedy, they decided to cover up some of the budget with humor. But instead, they ended up with a movie that couldn’t take itself seriously, but wasn’t very funny either. No one wants the climactic ending to be solved by whether or not Shaq can throw the equivalent of a free throw.

14: Catwoman

This was filmed shortly after Halle Berry became the first Black woman to win an Oscar for Best Leading Actress, and unfortunately this was a huge drop in quality from Monster’s Ball. I’ve gone on about this film many times and it’s just awful how they took a popular character from the Batman mythos, tossed out everything about her, added in a bunch of ridiculous mythological cat powers and behaviors, and ended up with this giant mess of a movie.

13: Blankman

This is the superhero comedy from In Living Color alums David Allen Greer and Marlon Wayans that take a guy with the social graces of the show’s Handi-Man only with the inventing ability of a pseudo genius and the resources of a junk yard. Some people might find his washing machine robot and an adult not understanding what’s happening during his “first” erection, but I wasn’t feeling any of it.

12: Moonwalker

The first of a couple films to stretch the concept of a “superhero movie” this video project is mostly a compilation of several Michael Jackson music videos strung together with a weird little plot involving some kids and Joe Pesci as a bad guy that is kind of a short film that makes up about twenty minutes in the middle. The best part about this film really are the music videos, especially the amazing Smooth Criminal smack dab in the middle. But aside from that, it’s Michael Jackson self-aggrandizing in the worst way possible.

11: Up, Up, and Away

This was a Disney Channel Original movie directed by Robert Townsend which won’t be the first time that he appears on this list. It’s a sweet little family film that has nice message to go along with it. It also takes the very rare look at a superhero family where the middle child doesn’t have any super powers. The rest of the plot may be rather silly and inconsequential, but it does enough things differently from the normal superhero movie that it’s worth looking into. Especially if you have kids or grew up in the late 90’s.

10: Friday Foster

This is the second Blacksploitation film on this list and it surprisingly stars a very young Pam Grier. It follows a lot of the exploitation cinema formulas, but it softens them enough that they end up falling flat on a lot of levels. If you haven’t watched much exploitation cinema, it’s not a bad place to start, especially if you’re a Pam Grier fan as she really is the best part of this film. And like several other films on this list, it has a pretty significant cast of actors in it.

9: Blade: Trinity

The last and worst of the Blade films, this one came along when the brand was really starting to die out even though it hadn’t hit rock bottom with the TV series to come a couple years later. This tried to bring in some fresh blood with Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel, which for some reason they thought that what a Black, half vampire badass needed was a couple young, white sidekicks. But jokey and boring didn’t help liven things up even when they brought in future Heat Wave to play the king of all vampires Dracula. But it wasn’t enough to have Dracula, they also had to bring him down a peg with a Count Chocula joke of all things as well as a pair of vampire Pomeranians.

8: Meteor Man

This is a bit of a guilty pleasure for myself, it’s another superhero comedy by Robert Townsend, only instead of having it be for the Disney Channel, it was actually shown in theaters. It has an amazing cast including people like the now vilified Bill Cosby, James Earl Jones, Eddie Griffin, Don Cheadle, and music from Cyprus Hill, Naughty by Nature, and Biz Markie. It’s very much on the cheesy side of things, but I still enjoy it.

7: Spawn

This is another slight guilty pleasure as I really love a lot of the people involved in this film from Michael Jai White in his first real starring role and John Leguizamo in an honest, if grotesque role as the Clown. It was the first serious superhero movie even though even then it suffered getting dropped down to PG-13 from a possible R, but it suffered coming out a little bit too soon and had the WORST CGI DEVIL EVER! The plot was a little convoluted and the special effects often left something to be desired, but there are hints of a good movie in there.

6: Pootie Tang

This is another film that I just didn’t fully connect with the humor. It seemed to have been billed as a Chris Rock film even though he’s not the lead, nor the writer or director. He does play multiple roles and it was essentially a film that spun off from a series of sketches on his talk show. It suffered by having it chopped up in the editing room, but like Spawn, there are hints of a good movie in here. But the jokes had to be spelled out to the audience, and there are so many plot lines going on that it’s hard to keep track of them all. And it’s just bizarre to have a main character that speaks his own language that everyone just understands at face value as the basis for an entire feature length movie.

5: Hancock

This is the first film on this list that I genuinely enjoy. Or at least I absolutely love the first half of this film while I can tolerate the second half. It stars Will Smith as the only Black person in LA who also happens to be a superhero who is an asshole and has amnesia. Will Smith is incredibly likable and sympathetic the more you learn about Hancock, but the film gets bogged down by its own hard to explain mythology where Charlize Theron plays his immortal mate that is also the key to ending his own immortality. And their fighting creates this giant electrical storm for some reason.

4: 2 Guns

It’s honestly a little bit tough for me to remember much about this charming, but forgettable cop crime caper film where Denzel Washington gets top billing. The plot is as convoluted as they come with at least a half dozen double crosses if not more and loyalties shifting at every turn. But the saving grace for this film is the amazing chemistry between Washington and Mark Wahlberg. Their friendly rivalry and begrudging partnership make this film worth sitting through and even enjoyable to boot.

3: Men in Black 3

Surprisingly this is the only movie out of the Men in Black trilogy where Will Smith finally gets top billing over Tommy Lee Jones, likely because Jones is replaced with Josh Brolin for most of the run time. It has a lot of great time travel jokes, a villain almost as great if not greater than D’Onofrio’s Edgar from the first film in Jermaine Clement’s Boris the Animal. Brolin does a spot on Agent Kay impression and the film makes the past alien tech feel sleek, but also less advanced.

2: Blade

I’m sure there wasn’t much doubt what films would make the top of this list. It’s a shame that throughout the years, nothing has really come along to replace what helped start the entire superhero movie phase. Wesley Snipes shines in what is arguably his best film role as the Marvel vampire hunter from the pages of the Tomb of Dracula series. Even though it barely acknowledges that it’s a Marvel movie, it instead revels in the action horror genre of vampire and vampire hunter films and does it well. It also doesn’t worry about making itself into an origin movie, it gives just a quick expositional origin before jumping into Blade at the height of his career.

1: Blade II

And while there is some debate over which Blade film is better, and I will often come out in favor of the first Blade film, there is just something about the sequel where Guillermo del Toro brings in his spectacular vision of these uber vampires and combines it with the enjoyable enemy of my enemy team up with the villains. It also has such an enjoyable cast, from the antagonistic Ron Perlman, a young Norman Reedus, and Danny John-Jules for us Red Dwarf fans. It has some amazing special effects, and a few surprises at the end, plus plenty of gore and action along the way.

So, those are my picks. I’d love to know if there’s any films that you think I left out because if there are, I’d love to find them and check them out myself. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t forget about any that I’ve already seen. What would be your number one from this list? And are there any that you might go seek out? Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

After finishing up a full month of animated movies, I managed to complete one of my mini-goals. I have finished watching every animated movie that’s currently on my list, as well as a couple that weren’t. So with that in mind, I thought it was time to share my top 10 list of animated comic book movies. There are a couple conditions here – one is that I decided to exclude DC Animated films just because their output is so massive that they literally make up half the total list of films that I’m choosing from, and also because I’ve already done a top 10 list of just DC Animated films so I’m not looking to repeat myself. I considered also excluding Marvel in fairness, but their animated output is still quite small, and much of it is quite lacking. I also decided to exclude superhero movies that weren’t based on a comic i.e. no Incredibles. Spoiler alert, it would be at the top of the list. But with those conditions out of the way, let’s get to the list! And FYI, you can click any of the titles to check out my original full reviews on the movies.

10. Firebreather

I’ve been a fan of Peter Chung ever since seeing the Aeon Flux shorts on MTV during Liquid Television. This was a TV movie that aired on Cartoon Network that focuses on a kid who’s half Kaiju and half human who goes to a new school when his past comes back to haunt him. The animation is great, but the one downside is that it falls into the cliched high school tropes. But still, it has some good humor and great creature designs.

9. Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow

Before I actually saw this, I expected it to just be the kid Avengers. And while it is that to a certain extent, it’s not just a kid version of the Avengers, there’s actually a good story being told within this almost cliched concept. When most of the original heroes are taken out of the equation, and the villain they’re facing is an Ultron who has succeeded in controlling most of the Earth, it’s a little bit darker that you might first expect. One of Marvel’s better animated stories.

8. Turtles Forever

This is the most recent of these films that I have seen. As in, I watched it recently not that it came out recently. It’s another TV movie that was from the second series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that started in 2003. This film brought those Turtles together with the Turtles from the 80’s series and even a little bit with the original comic book version of the Turtles. It’s very light and breezy, but if you’re a fan of either of the first two Turtles TV series, this is worth checking out.

7. When the Wind Blows

This is another film that I just watched this month though I had heard of it a while back. It tended to be a little dryer than most of the other films and reminded me a bit of a lighter version of Grave of the Fireflies. It’s still essentially a movie where we watch two people try to support and care for each other under extreme circumstances as they are slowly dying. But this one somehow keeps things more upbeat due to the overwhelming optimism of the two characters in the face of such a dire situation.

6. Doctor Strange

Not the first nor the last Marvel movie on this list. Watching this more than anything else has me excited for the upcoming live action version of Doctor Strange. It has a compelling origin story, a great cast, good action, and it’s just overall well done. It’s also one of the early efforts from director Jay Oliva who has gone on to do some of my favorite DC Animated movies. Not too much else to say about this one, but it’s fun.

5. Hellboy Blood & Iron

This is one of two animated Hellboy movies that they made around the time of the Golden Army and also used the original cast for the voice over work. This was obviously my favorite of the two, though Sword of Storms could easily have made it to this top 10 if I had written it another day. Blood and Iron is Hellboy’s take on the vampire mythology and it also has some great flashbacks to shed some light on Professor Broom’s early days with the BPRD before he started palling around with a big, red, friendly demon. It also has a great take on the Elizabeth Bathory style of vampire rather than the typical Dracula version.

4. The Adventures of Tintin

This is the one English movie of a character that actually has a few films to his name, though they’re mostly French and not widely available in the States. This was really his first big introduction to an American audience from a largely European fanbase, and it’s still possible that a sequel to the film will happen now that Peter Jackson has finished with his Hobbit films and is apparently working on a secret Amblin project. I thought this was a great introduction to this character, and best of all, it wasn’t an origin story. It gave us everything we needed to know about Tintin even though he’s already well established as a character. There are some great action sequences and plenty of comic relief. It’s just an all around great little film.

3. Persepolis

This is one that I actually haven’t seen in quite a while, in fact it was one of my very first non-superhero comic book films covered for this site, but it still left a pretty big impression on me. It’s one of the few foreign comic book movies that I’ve seen here as it was originally a French language film, though I did watch the English dub. It’s more or less about the life story of Marjan Satrapi who was an Iranian woman who escaped the Iranian revolution to spend her days as a young adult living in France. It deals with a little bit of history, but mostly her struggles and her joys as she makes her way through life. It’s mostly black and white which is unusual for a modern animated feature, but that just made it all the more visually striking. It’s really a fantastic watch.

2. Wrinkles

This is a Spanish language film, though like Persepolis, I’m more familiar with the English language version with Martin Sheen even though it’s a little bit odd when everyone has very Spanish names. It’s a very touching and funny look at someone dealing with Alzheimer’s, both the person who has the disease himself as well as his roommate at the home for the elderly where he now lives. But more than that, it’s a story about friendship between two people and how that develops over time to an unconditional, platonic love. It’s funny, it’s heartwarming, it’s touching, it truly is a great film to watch.

1. Big Hero 6

But number one on this list has to the be the relative surprise hit from two years ago that took the barest of concepts from a Marvel comic and turned it into one of the best animated characters ever with Baymax. It’s an animated superhero movie that takes a more grown up look at how children deal with a death in the family and what it’s like to emotionally heal from that wound. But it also has great moments of action and enough humor spliced throughout the film to keep it entertaining from start to finish. Not only that, but it’s one of the most diverse casts of characters in any superhero film ever. Truly a great and entertaining film.

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So there’s my list, is there any that you think I left out? I’d love to hear what your favorites are, just let me know in the comments. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

It’s the beginning of a new year and for most movie blogs that means the year-end wrap-up list. And even though it took me a couple extra days, I once again managed to watch every superhero and comic book movie released in the US (that I’m aware of). The only other film that I haven’t watched was the bollywood superhero film A Flying Jatt which I don’t believe ever got a US release where I could watch a subtitled version. And instead of merely going through some number of my favorites, I decided to do something just a little bit different and go ahead and rank every single comic book film of this year from worst to best. And one quick disclaimer, while the title reads “Comic Book Film”, as I always do for this site I include superhero films that were never based on comics as well as comic book adaptations that aren’t about superheroes.

Skip to #10 thru #1

#26 The Curse of Sleeping Beauty

There’s a small handful of gorgeous visuals, but it doesn’t help the uninteresting story about a guy stuck with an old house, a family secret, and a bunch of creepy mannequins that come to life.

#25 Max Steel

An incredibly standard teen superhero origin story. It had a passable comedic alien robot sidekick, but every character was underdeveloped and it spent way too much time in tired high school tropes without any actual action.

#24 Hulk: Where Monsters Dwell

The latest holiday-themed animated Marvel fare where Hulk and a bunch of supernatural comic book heroes enter the dream realm and save some kids from Nightmare with the help of Doctor Strange. It’s very kid-focused with a hint of a message but the Halloween themed heroes don’t get much development especially since it’s unlikely that you’ve ever heard of them before.

#23 Batman Unlimited: Mechs vs Mutants

This is the latest in the Batman-cartoon-tied-into-a-toy-line and it really comes off as such. There aren’t any female characters, all the vehicles and mechs look like they were pre-packaged to be sold to the 4 to 11 year old boy demographic, and it’s all action and comedy. At least the comedy does hit once in a while, especially towards the end.

#22 Spaghettiman

This is a bizarre, ultra-low budget superhero film about a guy who gains the power to expel cooked spaghetti from nearly any orifice of his body. The humor worked for me more often than it didn’t, but it can be a difficult concept to wrap your head around.

#21 Batman: The Killing Joke

This is one of the most popular Batman comics and often credited for contributing towards making comics as a whole darker and more adult. And while the overall story and concept is stylish and compelling, there’s just something that doesn’t quite resonate any more, and the added Batgirl prologue doesn’t mesh well or accomplish its intended goal of giving her character more agency in a story where she was simply a victim.

#20 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

While the first film was a disappointment to most fans of the franchise, I thought it was ok. And while I do think that the sequel improved in many places, especially with plenty of 80’s style fanservice, it didn’t go far enough. Casey Jones was a big disappointment where he often felt more like a petulant child rather than a disturbed vigilante. The turtles were great as a whole, but they once again gave Shredder the shaft, this time in favor of comic relief villains by way of Bebop, Rocksteady, and Krang.

#19 All Superheroes Must Die 2: The Last Superhero

I was pleasantly surprised when I watched the original All Superheroes Must Die, and it was one of the first ultra-low-budget superhero films I watched for this site. The sequel trades the horror movie vibe for a documentary style mystery with a nice little action scene at the end. It has some compelling characters and it hides the low budget quite well. Plus, it’s freely available to watch on YouTube.

#18 They Call Me Superseven

Another ultra-low-budget superhero film, I did enjoy this one slightly more due to the comedy. It’s a combination of James Bond parody with the feel of the Adam West Batman. Much of the footage is pulled together from their webseries, but aside from a few redundant montage scenes, it comes together as an actual movie quite well.

#17 Electra Woman and Dynagirl

And another movie pulled together from a webseries (only I believe this webseries never actually aired as such). This is essentially a superhero parody that often forgets that it’s supposed to be a parody so it takes itself seriously until the end of the scene. That said, it still works more than it doesn’t and can be fun to watch. Plus, it’s a superhero film with two female leads and never oversells that point.

#16 Zoom

This is one of two films where I fudge the release year a little bit. It’s considered a 2015 release due to a festival run last year, but its home video release was this year so I’m putting it on this year’s list. Also, this is the only film on this list that I consider a comic book movie because a large portion of the film is about a comic book, rather than being based on one. It’s a fascinating concept that ties together three different stories, and while it’s often hilarious, it can get a little muddled on a first time viewing. Plus the ending feels like a bit of a cop out.

#15 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

We finally get to one of the biggest movies of the year and one of the biggest disappointments. I have watched both versions and while I do think that the extended version solves some of the problems, it doesn’t solve all of them. Despite how low this is on the list, I did quite enjoy it. Though some could say that I’m too easy on movies. There are some great action sequences in this. The mystery aspect generally works, but the tone is too dour and the set up for future movies is more annoying than exciting. Fingers crossed for Wonder Woman.

#14 X-Men Apocalypse

The latest in the X-Men prequel franchise was a bit of an odd mix. While there were plenty of great moments and characters, whenever a superhero film brings in a villain with god-like powers it’s never easy to come up with a plausible solution on how to defeat him. Plus, this prequel series is going on thirty years, three movies, and it only now feels like Xavier has finally gotten his starting line up of X-Men? But aside from the problems, there was still fun to be had, especially the Sweet Dreams sequence that copies the Time in a Bottle sequence but doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

#13 Lego DC Super Heroes: Justice League: Cosmic Clash

We’re halfway through this list and while next year brings Lego Batman to the big screen, there have been plenty of Lego DC heroes on the small screen and they are always a lot of fun. This one brings in Brainiac as an obsessed collector who needs Earth to replace a broken planet-in-a-jar. The biggest downside is how they turn Supergirl into an insipid cheerleader, but at least there’s a random Voltron moment at the end that’s extremely satisfying.

#12 The Chair

And this is the movie where I cheat on release dates in the exact opposite way than I did earlier. This film ran the festival circuit this year, and I believe was released on home video to backers of the original kickstarter, but won’t be released to everyone else until later this year. Regardless, I did get a chance to watch it and I quite enjoyed it. It’s a very dark, pared down psychological horror/thriller that makes you feel uncomfortable during nearly every moment. And Roddy Piper gives an amazing performance as one of the guards.

#11 Batman: Bad Blood

This was the first superhero movie released last year and while I generally liked it, it hasn’t really stuck in my memory very well. This was one of the latest in the ongoing Batman and Damian Wayne storyline that started with Son of Batman. It greatly expanded the bat-family with a couple lesser-known bat-members: Batwoman and Batwing, and it teased Batgirl at the end. The biggest drawback was that I felt like I was missing quite a bit since I wasn’t familiar with the characters beforehand. But it still came together with a sense of mystery and plenty of action.

#10 thru #1

Top 10 Graphic Horror Films

Once completing my mini-goals watching movies for this site, I often like to end with a nice list featuring some of the best in that category. Now that we’re at the end of October, almost to Halloween I’ve completed watching every horror movie that I can find based on a comic book. If you haven’t been following along, graphic horror is my term for these movies based on horror comics. Graphic violence, graphic novel, it works for me. And for this list, I’m excluding thrillers and sticking with movies that have a notable horror aspect to them. They can be action horror, horror comedy, or straight up horror just so long as there’s plenty of horror in it. Enough chit chat, let’s get on with the list!

#10 The Chair

This is a brand new independent release from Alterna Comics based on the comic of the same name by founder Peter Simeti. It follows the story of an inmate trying to survive life in a prison with sadistic guards and a crazed warden. It’s dark and disturbing, guaranteed to make you feel uncomfortable and showcases some modern practical gore effects. It’s worth it especially for the performance by the late Roddy Piper as one of the guards.

#9 Tales From the Crypt

I’m going all the way back to 1972’s Amicus Productions release of Tales From the Crypt for the next item on this list. This is actually the only one that’s a true adaptation of the comics, as the later HBO movies were all original stories with a similar feel to the series. This is also an anthology movie with several different shorts. They vary in quality, but at least three are quite good and feature the likes of Peter Cushing and Joan Collins. This is also overall quite a bit better than the follow up film Vault of Horror which was released a year later.

#8 Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight

This is the first HBO produced Tales From the Crypt film and one that I recently re-watched for an episode of Filmwhys. It’s interesting as my tastes have varied on different viewings of this film, the last time I watched it just a couple years ago I wasn’t very thrilled with it, but on this recent watch I really enjoyed what it brought to the table. Like many films on this list, it’s rather on the cheesy side of things, but it has a brilliant performance by Billy Zane as a seducing demon after a key with the blood of Jesus in it.

#7 Constantine

While I was never familiar with the comic book version of Constantine, it’s apparently quite a bit of a stretch to call this film based on the comic series of the same name. Instead, it’s more apt to call it inspired by the comic. But since I don’t have any real knowledge of the source material, I quite enjoyed this demon hunting Keanu Reeves movie as a supernatural action flick with some impressive visuals and great performances from Peter Stormare and Tilda Swinton.

#6 13 Sins

This is another recent watch for me that I really quite enjoyed. It’s a horror comedy that’s a mix of a reality show and a suspense thriller with quite a bit of gore and situational comedy thrown in the mix. Elliot gets sucked into this secret, high stakes game show where he must complete 13 tasks which range from swatting and swallowing a fly, to playing Weekend at Bernies with a corpse in a coffee shop next to a group of cops, to amputating the arm of an old school bully with zero anesthesia. It’s funny, it’s tense, and there’s a bit of family dynamic at play too.

#5 13: Game of Death

Also known as 13: Beloved, this is the original Thai version of 13 Sins. There are quite a few differences between the two films so they feel like very different creatures, though they are still quite similar which is why they are so close together on this list. While the English version does several things better in terms of the game itself, this has a much tighter focus on the main character without getting into any other distractions until it comes to the end. There’s slightly less gore, but that doesn’t diminish the emotional impact on some of the challenges that he has to accomplish.

#4 Blade II

I’m a big fan of the Blade franchise, at least the first two films, and I constantly go back and forth between which of the two films is better. This time around the sequel loses out a tad but is still a fantastic watch with some amazing creature effects on the super vampire Reapers. It also feels a bit more along the lines of an action thriller, though there are still plenty of gore moments with some of the kills.

#3 Hellboy

I had almost forgotten about Hellboy which feels much more like a superhero movie than most of the other films on this list. But there’s enough Lovecraftian horror elements for me to include it alongside the likes of Blade and Constantine. And while I’m a bigger fan of the second film, that one feels much more like a dark fantasy than horror, while this hits more of the grotesque notes like a talking corpse and a giant tentacled creature from another dimension. Plus, it has a great performance from Ron Perlman who embodies the role of the blue collar demon just trying to do his job.

#2 30 Days of Night

I think this one gets a lot of bonus points for style. This is one of the most stylish vampire movies out there. It also goes for a unique twist on the vampire lore when it comes to the more alien-esque vampires with their own language and culture. These are vampires in a situation where they don’t have to hide and so they relish in their bloody freedom. The concept as a whole is also an intriguing one even if it’s not entirely accurate, but when it’s always night there’s no respite from vampires.

#1 Blade

Once again, if I made this list on a different day, much of the top five might be in a different order. I like many of these movies for many different reasons and it’s difficult for me to decide which one is better and which one is worse. I think the original Blade movie works very well by setting up the world of the daywalker. There’s a lot of mythology that they have to cover and they do it in a lot of smart ways. There is the common audience surrogate, but she is handled in a much better way than, say Hellboy. Also it’s the first movie in this series, but it doesn’t feel like an origin story. There’s a brief origin flashback, but Blade is 100% Blade and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

What do you think? Are there any that I missed, or do I have them in the wrong order? What’s your favorite horror movie based on a comic? I think unless you’re a fan of Dr. Giggles, there’s honestly not much out there that I didn’t cover on this list, but I’d love to hear from you anyway. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Recently a movie meme was hitting the rounds on Facebook and Twitter, I’ve seen it as both My Life in Film or #ThisIsMyFilm. The basics is that you choose your favorite movie from each year starting with the year you were born. Some years are harder than others, and doing the list myself it made me realize how few movies I had seen that were released in certain years in the early 80’s. And since I haven’t been posting much here recently, I thought I would expand my list and also include my favorite superhero or comic book movie from each year, aside from those few years where my favorite was a superhero movie. And FYI, the release dates are according to Letterboxd as that’s what I’m using to browse what films I’ve listed as having seen in each year. Thanks to Le0pard13 for the inspiration to turn this into a blog post. And despite not being as old as him, I’ve still decided to split this up into two blog posts. This one starts off with the year I was born and goes through the year I graduated high school.

1980

Films watched from this year: 14
It’s pretty easy for me to go with what’s most likely the popular choice. I’m not a mega Star Wars fan, but I love the franchise as a whole and Empire is my favorite movie. It’s a little tough not choosing some of my favorite comedies Airplane! or Blues Brothers. On the superhero front, there’s a lot of camp with Flash Gordon and Hero at Large but then there’s Superman II 

1982

Films watched from this year: 11
Pretty light year of movie watching for me, and while the big one for most people would be Indiana Jones, I’ve got to go with my childhood and love of fantasy, especially Terry Gilliam’s fantasy and pick Time Bandits. Though I have relatively recently watched and enjoyed American Werewolf in London and Elephant Man, nothing tops the quirky historical-ish fantasy. On the superhero front, this was a pretty light year with nothing much to choose from, but if I had to pick, I’d go with the comic book adaptation of Heavy Metal.

1982

Films watched from this year: 21
A couple of my favorite children’s films were released this year The Last Unicorn and Secret of N.I.H.M. but I happen to be one of those people who are both a Star Wars fan and a Star Trek fan so I’ve got to give this  year to my second favorite Trek movie Wrath of Khan. On the superhero front it’s pretty much just a coin flip between Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All and Swamp Thing, so the call goes to Swamp Thing.

1983

Films watched from this year: 10
This is my lightest film year since I was born aside from 2017 considering I haven’t seen (or don’t remember having seen) such movies as The Right Stuff, Scarface, Wargames, or Trading Places. And while some would scoff at me placing this film above Vacation, there are very few Christmas movies that I enjoy and Christmas Story is far and away my favorite. And once again, the superhero pickings are slim and I would give the odd musical comedy Return of Captain Invincible over the other kind of comedy Superman III.

1984

Movies watched from this year: 21
This is one of the hardest years to decide as there are plenty of childhood and adult favorites that were released this year. From Neverending Story and Gremlins, to Terminator and Nightmare on Elm Street. But I’m going with the perfect mix of fantasy, horror, and comedy: Ghostbusters. For superhero movies, I’ve got to give this year to the king of superhero B-movies, The Toxic Avenger.

1985

Movies watched from this year: 20
This was another tough year with plenty of favorites from fantasy movies like Return to Oz, Goonies, and Legend, to Back to the Future and one of my all time favorite animes Vampire Hunter D. But I just have to give it to the murder mystery comedy based on a board game: Clue. And based on my list, there’s only one comic book movie released in this year which was Weird Science, but if I included manga, it would definitely go to Vampire Hunter D.

1986

Movies watched from this year: 26
This is another year that has a handful of childhood favorites and one childhood favorite of many that I discovered and enjoyed a bit later in life, Labyrinth. And while there’s a lot of fun to be had with films like Big Trouble in Little China, Three Amigos, Short Circuit and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I’ve got to give this year to James Cameron’s Aliens. And the superhero movies are still pretty slim pickings so I’ll go with the lesser known comic book adaptation When the Wind Blows.

1987

Movies watched from this year: 30
This was one of the easiest years for me to pick as The Princess Bride ranks as one of my all time favorite movies. I even re-watched it recently with the commentary from Rob Reiner. There are several other great films, but nothing comes close in my eyes to this one. And while many people consider it a stretch to call this film a superhero movie, I think it falls right in between the Punisher and Cyborg. Of course, I’m talking about Robocop.

1988

Movies watched from this year: 31
This was another incredibly tough year with plenty of favorites from Big, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Die Hard, Rain Man, Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and some great anime from the heartwarming My Neighbor Totoro to the devastating Grave of the Fireflies. But I’m giving this year to the anime that turned me and many others into real fans of Japanese animation, Akira. Which would also be my pick for comic book movie if I included manga, as the only other movie from this year was the TV movie The Incredible Hulk Returns aka the Thor one.

1989

Movies watched from this year: 35
This was another pretty easy year as I immediately gravitated towards the goofy camp of Weird Al’s UHF above some other classics like the romantic comedy that I was recently introduced to, When Harry Met Sally or the start of the Disney renaissance The Little Mermaid or even the action stand by Roadhouse. I also could have almost picked the superhero choice for many, Tim Burton’s Batman.

1990

Movies watched from this year: 26
This is the first year where my choice of favorite film isn’t one that was chosen from my childhood or early adulthood as I was introduced to Goodfellas via my podcast Filmwhys within the past couple years. Other favorites of mine that I had seen much earlier in life would be Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead, Gremlins 2, and Total Recall. The superhero pick would also be a childhood favorite with the original film version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

1991

Movies watched from this year: 35
This year brought quite a few action films into my movie list (though very few of them were actually watched in 1991 by me). There’s also another Disney classic that was just recently remade into live action this year Beauty and the Beast. But as I said before, I’m a Star Trek fan and The Undiscovered Country is my all time favorite Trek film so there’s no way I couldn’t include it for my top of this year. The superhero film for this year is a tough choice between two mediocre films, but I’d give the edge to the Rocketeer.

1992

Movies watched from this year: 29
This is a year where I discovered great films when they were released, like Aladdin and Wayne’s World, several years afterward like Dracula and Of Mice and Men, and much more recently like Unforgiven and A Few Good Men. But the one film that I’ve loved from the start, and still love every time I re-watch it is A League of Their Own. On the superhero front, it doesn’t get much better than Batman Returns.

1993

Movies watched from this year: 37
Even though I find myself quoting Cool Runnings more often than I should admit to (“You dead man?”) and I wouldn’t hesitate to call the best movie of this year Schindler’s List, I would have a hard time arguing against this blockbuster juggernaut. Jurassic Park was a movie that I probably saw in theaters and even though I’m sure it scared the hell out of me, I loved it all the same and still love it to this day, beating out other favorites from this year like Robin Hood: Men in Tights, The Sandlot, Groundhog Day, and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. The superhero side of things is yet another Batman movie, this time coming from the animated series with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.

1994

Movies watched from this year: 43
This is apparently the first year where my movie watching really expanded, but that also means that I’m looking at a list of films full of dreck plus a few gems here and there, including some that I didn’t discover until later in life like Pulp Fiction, or Leon. And while I could share my Kevin Smith love here with his first film Clerks, or pick one of my favorite Disney movies The Lion King, or even one of my first experiences with the Coen Brothers and The Hudsucker Proxy. But instead, I’ll go with a film that stuck with me from the moment I watched it, and the first comic book movie that gets top billing, The Crow.

1995

Movies watched from this year: 35
This was right around the age where I started enjoying the darker side of film, and I’m pretty sure that Seven was the first R-rated film that I saw in theaters and I certainly picked a great one to start. I also remember that it was about the time where I started to discover filmmakers, though I started with writers and followed Andrew Kevin Walker’s career backwards rather than David Fincher, though it still led me back to the Game, just not Alien 3 which was probably for the better. Other honorable mentions from this year were Desperado, Mallrats, Clueless, and Before Sunrise. On the comic book side of things, I’ll go the surprising route and pick Judge Dredd which I thought was a fun action movie despite being nothing like what I’ve heard Judge Dredd comics actually are.

1996

Movies watched from this year: 38
This is kind of an odd year for me, as there are plenty of movies that most people consider great, but just don’t click with me for some reason like Fargo and movies that I saw and loved back in the day, but barely remember much anymore like Happy Gilmore, The Craft, and Trainspotting. And even though I don’t really have much horror on this list, Scream was probably one of the first, if not the first horror movie that I saw and absolutely loved from the beginning. The superhero side of things don’t have much to go off of, but I am a sucker for how charming Billy Zane is in The Phantom despite it not being that great of a film.

1997

Movies watched from this year: 36
This seems to be a year that has a lot of dark movies that I love. Despite not remembering much of anything past the soundtrack Lost Highway stuck with me, as did Event Horizon though I haven’t revisited either in years. It’s also a great year for anime as Princess Mononoke and Perfect Blue are two of my favorites. But considering how big a Kevin Smith fan I am, I thought I should have one of his films on here somewhere and of those Chasing Amy is near the top for me. The comic book side of things is pretty easy as Men in Black is still a pretty fantastic film all around and blows the rest out of the water.

1998

Movies watched from this year: 36
This was the year that I graduated high school, turned 18, and visited Alaska where I spent my 18th birthday. As for film, it wasn’t that great of a year for me as my tops at the time would have likely been American History X, Dark City, or What Dreams May Come. It wasn’t until recently that I would have been able to include The Big Lebowski, Saving Private Ryan, or Run Lola Run. But for whatever reason, The Truman Show is the one that sticks with me the most. Blade is pretty much undisputed on the superhero side of things.

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And that covers about half of my life in movies, stay tuned for the second half… soon. At least whenever I get around to writing all this out which proved to be a much bigger task than I expected, despite having chosen all the movies beforehand. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.