Listening to Howard Stern last week, there was a debate over the top ten greatest superhero movies. Howard's stylist Ralph Cirillo decided that Tim Burton's Batman was the greatest superhero movie ever, and that Batman Returns was the second best.
He also put X-Men 3 on the list, and included Rise of the Silver Surfer, thus invalidating any opinion he has about movies.
So, from my view in the cheap seats, here are the 1o Greatest Superhero Movies:
10) Blade - Because he kills vampires in hilarious ways.
9) Superman 2 - It's really campy, but the storyline is great, and Superman doesn't turn back time by simply flying really fast around the earth in the opposite direction that it spins (which would fling us all into space, and kill us all. Plus I hate when Superman controls EVERYTHING). Zod is a great character, and Gene Hackman + Ned Beatty + Christopher Reeves is a strong ensemble.
8) Batman, the Tim Burton version - A classic. I can remember going to see this when I was like 6. Even the soundtrack is great. Still, it's the performances that carry the movie. It's way too campy to be taken too seriously.
7) The Hulk - The Eric Bana version, obviously. It was really underrated, and watching the Hulk just punch stuff and throw tanks into mountains will never get old.
6) X-Men - It's good, but not spectacular. A good way to get things started, and takes itself seriously, which was revolutionary in superhero-dom at the time.
5) Iron Man - Great movie. Not transcendent, but great nonetheless. Robert Downey, Jr. is like the casting call of the century, and the CGI is incredible.
4) Superman Returns - A lot of people hated it, but I thought it brought together all of the elements that make Superman great, and tied it up in a neat little Christ allegory package (a necessity for any good Superman story arc). Brian Singer is an amazing director, and his craft and love for the story shines through. He makes Superman seem like an alien struggling to understand and emulate humanity...which is exactly the point of Superman. Plus Kevin Spacey saves all of his greatest performances for Brian Singer movies (see also: The Usual Suspects). Highly underrated, and really destroyed Singer's street cred with the great unwashed. Still, I'm glad he made this. It helped soften the blow of not getting to see him direct X-Men 3 (which was probably the worst movie I've ever seen in a theater...and I was hammered when I saw it).
3) Spider-Man - The first of the superhero movies to actually elicit raw emotions from me. It's great to see something from a comic come to life so faithfully on the big screen. Plus, when you're a nerdy kid, it gives you a sense of hope, that maybe, just maybe, one day I'll be bitten by something that will make me awesome. Still waiting, by the way...
2) Batman Begins - Christopher Nolan is another great director that took his time with something spectacular. While the microwave cannon of doom made no sense, that didn't matter, because he had already given us an hour and a half of Bruce Wayne first turning himself into an ass-kicking badass, and then turning himself into an ass-kicking badass who wears a suit that makes him look like a giant Bat Man. I think this was probably the first of the superhero movies that actually gave an honest look at the alter ego of the superhero, even when it wasn't pretty.
1) X-Men 2 - This is still my all time favorite superhero movie, simply because it's perfectly paced, it's full of action, adventure, intrigue, and a cliffhanger that had me squealing in my seat like a 12 year old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert (too bad the beautiful cliffhanger baby had to come out as a miscarried pile of goo that somehow gave the world an airborne version of Super AIDS). This was everything a great Marvel story arc had. Plus it gave you glimpses of things that were still to come, like when the government attacked the School for the Gifted, and we got a two minute glimpse of Colossus, it was like Singer was saying: "Hey, look everyone. After I get done kissing this cute guy I picked up, I'm going to direct a movie where you'll get to see a lot more of this cool character!" It made the audience simultaneously excited to see Colossus, and excited about the prospect of future Colossus sightings down the line. That's skill!
I'll also say that the sequence where Wolverine starts flipping out and killing all of the soldiers may have aroused me slightly. It was exactly what the audience wanted to happen, and there it was, in wonderful technicolor splendor right in front of us. It was an X-Men fan's dream come to silver screen life.
So let's hear it: where did I go wrong?
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4 comments:
No Spiderman 2. Your list is folly.
Frankly, I didn't think Spider-Man 2 was AS GOOD as the movies on this list. It was good, no doubt, but the original was a lot better.
Where did you go wrong? Okay, let me start with a deep breath...
1. The Eric Bana Hulk? Really? It's a ponderous navel-gazing monstrosity. IMDB assures me it's only 138 minutes, which is about 300 minutes shorter than I remember. Never has anyone so badly misjudged how to make a superhero movie at least entertaining (although the goddamn Crow is pretty fucking close). Everyone who saw this left the theater thinking, "Wow, this guy's next movie is probably going to be an incredibly boring and sappy movie about faggots."
2. Superman Returns was a mess. A simpering, soggy, airbrushed mess. And, while I think you move into good ground when you discuss Superman trying to understand humanity, it badly misses the mark to think of Superman as a Christ figure. Everyone wants to do this but it's utterly nonsensical. Superman sacrifices NOTHING to save us. You can try and pretend he does, and you can write a story where maybe that happens, but Superman isn't Jesus. Superman is Frankenstein. He is the alien who is better at understanding our values and our selves than we are. He's the shining light to show us the way forward because we are incapable of finding it on our own. That may be a lot like Jehovah, but it's not Jesus. Batman is Jesus. Batman sacrifices himself and dares to walk in darkness because we cannot go there without losing ourselves. Batman's the guy nailed to the cross; Superman's the guy who would pull him down while the rest of us stood around blaming the Jews.
3. Like Zach, I also question the absence of Spider-Man 2. I understand that others didn't like it as much as I did, but I consider it the stronger film. Alfred Molina's performance was my single favorite superhero movie performance until Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man.
4. Excellent list otherwise. I think Batman Begins and X-Men 2 are clearly the class of the genre to this point. I'm unsure how you determined what was elgible and what wasn't, but Hellboy is something I would have considered. (Sin City is also spectacular but definitely not a superhero movie.) I think Batman Returns is also a slightly underrated movie.
I can honestly say that I just plum forgot Hellboy, which is a shame because I did really enjoy it.
Let's say it bumps Blade and fits somewhere in the middle.
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