Comic Book Movies
From LoveToKnow Movies
Marvel-ous Movies
American youth has had a love affair with comic books for nearly a hundred years, and this obsession has carried forward to comic book movies. The popularity of classic comic characters such as Superman, Spider-man, Wonder Woman, and others made a leap from the printed page to the big screen seem to be a natural transition. With a few exceptions, however, movies based on comic book characters have been shunned by Hollywood as box office poison until fairly recently. Part of the reason for this is that Hollywood lacked the technology to realistically portray many of the characters' unique abilities until recent years. It was also widely considered that comics were "for kids" and many of the comic-based films released were made on shoestring budgets with C-list stars and sub-par writing. The big budget, Richard Donner directed Superman featured the likes of Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford in supporting roles, but Superman was the exception to the rule at the time and films like the horrendous Captain America are far better examples of the type of films that were being made from comic sources in the seventies and eighties.
Enter Batman
In the summer of 1989 Warner Brothers Pictures released the long-awaited film version of Batman directed by Tim Burton and suddenly comics were cool again. "You couldn't go anywhere without seeing the bat signal," quips director Kevin Smith in his DVD An Evening with Kevin Smith, and he's right. Burton's dark and moody art school student's vision of Batman set box office records and sparked debates amongst filmgoers and comic book fanboys as to whether the movie was a cinematic milestone or a piece of mindless dreck. However individuals felt about Batman, there is no denying the signal it sent to Hollywood. Films based on comic books could be lucrative and they could draw big-name actors. The Burton version of Batman spawned three sequels (Batman Returns, Batman and Robin, and Batman Forever) and attracted the likes of Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfifer, George Clooney, Val Kilmer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Carey, and Tommy Lee Jones, among others, to take on starring and supporting roles.
Batman wasn't the saving grace of comic book movies; Hollywood still released a number of comic-based stinkers like The Punisher (the version with Dolph Lundgren, not Thomas Jane) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which, to be fair, was more based on the dumbed-down television cartoon and line of children's toys than it was on Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's gritty independent graphic novels) in the coming years. It would be over ten years after the release of Batman that Hollywood would finally release a film that would make the potential presented by comic book movies into a reality.
X-Men
In 2000 X-Men was released and comic fans went wild. While the film, directed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil) and penned by David Hayter (AKA the voice of Solid Snake to video game fans) received mixed reviews from critics, it did amazing box office and paved the way for the modern glut of big budget comic based movies. One could easily argue that, were it not for X-Men, projects such as Spider-Man, The Hulk, and The Punisher may have never seen the light of day. While the likes of Ang Lee's The Hulk and the Thomas Jane/John Travolta starring The Punisher may have been greeted with dubious critical receptions, the fact that Hollywood is now more willing to put real dollars into comic book movies has revitalized the genre and made it possible for both good comic movies (Sin City) and bad ones (Aeon Flux) to be made and seen.
The comic book floodgates have been opened wide and the reservoir is far from drying up. In fact, enough time has passed for new versions of older comic-based movies to emerge. 2005 saw a re-imagining of the Dark Knight as Christian Bale donned the cape and cowl for Batman Begins and the summer of 2006 will see the release of the Bryan Singer project Superman Returns which will star Kevin Spacey as villain Lex Luthor and the relatively unknown Brandon Routh as the Man of Steel.
Related Movies
This page has been accessed 518 times. This page was last modified 17:57, 24 April 2006.
© 2006-2008 LoveToKnow Corp.
