Superhero Movies - Part Two: The Stinkness

Just as there are good superhero movies, there are also the stinkburgers.

1. Batman and Robin - Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl, and George Clooney in a batsuit with nipples. Uma Thurman was a sexy enough Poison Ivy but underused. The dynamic duo presiding over a grand opening (Holy Shades of the 1960s Batman TV show) before launching skate blades out of their boots to take on Freeze's minions in a fight was also a no-no. The whole point of Batman is both good and bad people think he's a dangerous psychopath. Making him cut a ribbon with his giant bat-ceremonial scissors is too Adam West.

2. Captain America - just about all live incarnations. I've never seen the serials from the 1940s, but I remember the TV movies from the 1970s (where technically Cap was the original Captain's surfer-dude son who was genetically close enough to dad to get the super-soldier serum), and being the nerd I am, I subjected myself to the pain of a 1991 direct-to-video of Captain America. There were talks of a Captain America Broadway musical at one point in the late 80s/early 90s. Thank God that was scrapped. Hopefully, the upcoming movie will help ease the pain.

3. Superman III - Richard Pryor discovers a natural talent for computer programming and is used by a poor man's Lex Luthor to hack a satellite to discover how to make Kryptonite. Pryor's analysis shows an unknown substance makes up part of Superman's greatest weakness so he substitutes in tar. The tar Kryptonite, once given to Supes, turns him into a boozy, sex-hound of a bum. Then there's a fight against a super-computer, yada yada yada...

4. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace - Supes decides to rid the world of nuclear weapons; Lex Luthor returns and using a strand of Superman's hair creates Nuclear Man who... They fight; Nuclear Man wins; Superman wins, but then he doesn't, and they fight again, and Superman wins. Jon Cryer is Lex's nephew, taking over for Ned Beatty as Luthor's bumbling assistant.

5. Supergirl - As bad as Superman III and IV were, they couldn't compare to the black hole level of suck delivered by Supergirl. Just avoid it... in fact, forget I even mentioned it.

6. Spawn - My hatred of Todd McFarlane's artistic style (as well as just McFarlane himself) made it impossible for me to get through all of Spawn so this may not be the fairest entry.

7. The Fantastic Four - Not the 2005 release (although that one wasn't that hot) but the unreleased 1994 version produced by crap movie maker, Roger Corman, which no one who hasn't bought a bootleg from a sci-fi convention has seen. So bad it's fun to watch. My favorite part is when the character of Alicia Masters (the Thing's girlfriend) is subdued by chloroform and kidnapped. As she's passing out, the camera switches to Alicia's point of view to show everything going fuzzy and then black. The only problem with that is the character of Alicia Masters is blind. Wizard Magazine actually ranked this film higher than Batman and Robin, Steel, and Red Sonja.

8. The Hulk - Ang Lee's horrible rendition. The computer graphics for the Hulk made his face look flat if not enraged, had his height change from 8 to 15 feet depending on how mad he got, and used Nick Nolte as Bruce Banner's hateful dad who, when exposed to gamma radiation, essentially becomes the Absorbing Man and then minor (and stupid) Hulk foe, Zzaxx the Living Dynamo, when dear old dad decides to absorb electricity.

9. Steel - Just offhand, I can't think of any good movie that stars a real life sports hero as a lead. Shaquille O'Neil should have stuck to breaking backboards instead of this adaptation of what is an actually interesting comic book character that's part of the "Superman Family."

10. The Legend of the Lone Ranger - The superhero of the Old West. The actor playing the masked man was dubbed over which never lends itself well to creating a good movie. Give me Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels any day. Clayton Moore had legal action brought against him to keep him from appearing as the Lone Ranger at public events (he changed his costume slightly and took to wearing wraparound sunglasses instead of a mask) before the movie started filming. Moore counter-sued and regained the rights to appear as the Lone Ranger after the movie bombed.