My Top 10 - Atypical Comic Book Movies

I see a lot of "Best Comic Book Movies" lists on places like Cracked.com or Zergnet.com, but the popular Marvel and DC franchises are always so dominant that it becomes a pretty boring read. "Oh hey, Batman and X-Men again. Woo..."

While I haven't seen every superhero movie out there, I've at least seen enough to make a list out of "the rest" that I enjoyed!


10. Blade (series)
A perfect example of why more of something can be a bad, bad thing. Blade showed how cool and modern vampires could be, how smooth Wesley Snipes is when not given the role of an antagonistic psychopath, and why having sidekicks never works out well for heroes.

Blade was also my introduction in to comic book movies that weren't based on the big names. Although his latter movies really fell flat (with his second movie inexplicably using wrestling moves...), I still love the series for those days when I just need some mindless monster slaying.

9. Wanted
"Curve the bullet!" It's still one of those in-jokes I like to throw out, although the pool of people who get the joke is slowly diminishing. This movie had so much promise, especially since the graphic novel it was based on had received a lot of praise. There were great camera angles, unique gunplay, a mystical society in the modern world, a fair amount of humor, plus the vocal gravitas of Morgan Freeman and David O' Hara.

Yet somehow the movie managed to stumble from start to finish, had a lame conspiracy, and ended with a scene that required more suspension of belief than even I was willing to give it. Still, I would watch Wanted if it came to Netflix. It wouldn't keep me in my chair, but the interesting parts would definitely distract me from whatever I was trying to accomplish!

8. Men in Black (that's right, it's based on a comic book!)
Ah Willy Smith, how we love you. His role in Independence Day sold many of us on MIB, and his performance kept us coming back for two lackluster-but-enjoyable sequels. The movies have always struck that good balance of tongue-in-cheek aliens and the threat they actually represent. While I would have been perfectly happy with them stopping after one movie, they so far haven't been so terrible that I've sworn off the series.

Plus, who can forget the music video? Question #2, who wishes they could forget the music video? My money is on the numbers being the same for both questions.


7. Hellboy
I know nothing of Hellboy outside his movie. There's Nazis, a red monkey-devil with a super-fist, a genuis fish-boy, and a pyrokenetic woman with issues. The movie goes for a serious tone, but it's just so over-the-top cheesy that it's easy to forget that Nazis are serious business.

The universe that Hellboy takes place in has always seemed really intersting. I'm a fan of alternate history stories that use magical/supernatural elements in our own world. The only thing that's stopped me from reading a comic or watching the animated films is the art style. It's very minimalistic, and it's an art style I haven't yet come around to. Is it a worthwhile series to get in to? I'm curious to know.

6. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Again, I love me some alternate history. This film took me awhile to warm up to, and it was only at the insistence of a friend that I even watched it. Taking a bunch of non-amazing guys from classic literature and making them, well, extraordinary seemed like an impossibility. Some guys were still pretty awful because you just can't make Captain Nemo very interesting. But for the most part I was very impressed by how they managed to find a way to get all these random people together, and give them a reason to cooperate.

5. Kick Ass
The gap between 6 and 5 is pretty enormous. If I didn't already have theme going by making Top 10 lists, I'd have just made this a top 5.

That being said, It took me 3 years to watch this because I was so positive the movie was a Will Ferrell movie without Will Ferrell. It was basically because of this list that I finally watched it, just to see if there was other chaff I could cut from the list and make this #9 or 10. Wow was I blown away with what I watched!

The movie was still a bit goofy, but it was to the movie's benefit. A dorky teen who dreams of being a superhero is something we can all relate to. Buying a costume and getting stabbed during your first 2 minutes on the job is (hopefully) less relatable. By sheer happenstance he loses much of his ability to feel pain, and even he admits that it's a pretty weak superpower. But a combination of sheer determination to be a hero, and his desperate need to impress a girl, created one of my new favorite movies.

And I don't care what you say, I freaking love Nicholas Cage as a supporting role!

4. 300
HOOM! People always ask why I yell that when I go on the defensive during a game, and I have to explain that it's my improved version of the Spartan's haroo, which is just silly.

There's not much to say about 300. There's a lot of muscular dudes making blood come out of a lot of other dudes. There's a story juxtaposed between scenes of beautiful carnage, but no one really talks about those. At its core, 300 is just a movie about courage and bravery against all odds, and praises the idea of "death before dishonor," a slogan many people have gotten tattooed without thinking about its implications. If I ever feel the need to enjoy a pure action movie, 300 is where it's at.

3. V for Vendetta
Like Kick Ass, this one caught me by surprise. I'm a sucker for a good vengeance story, and V for Vendetta delivers. Rather than some blind "kill 'em all" story like Law Abiding Citizen, V for Vendetta is almost poetic in how it handles overthrowing an oppressive government while simultaneously settling a personal beef with that same government.

Donning the mask of Guy Fawkes, V spends a year preparing to turn the entire country against a corrupt theocracy, winning over the country and eventually sending everyone their own Guy Fawkes mask to signify an anonymous, unified collective. This point is of course driven home in Natalie Portman's usual, forced dialogue. While the story itself is interesting, it's Hugo Weaving's voice that really makes the movie. V feels like a man living in the wrong time and is portrayed as a phantom incarnation of justice, refusing to die even when a squad of soldiers unloads on him.

Fun fact for the day - the historical figure of Guy Fawkes wasn't an anti-Fascist hero. He was trying to tear down a Protestant theocracy and replace it with a Catholic theocracy led by his daughter. He was eventually caught, and hero that he was Fawkes gave up the names of his conspirators after what must have been excruciating torture. While I'm not trying to say he's not a hero for giving in to torture, I do find it odd that teens and hackers around the world have chosen this man's likeness to represent their anarchist beliefs.

2. Sin City
This one ranks so high simply because of it's quotability. The lines are so ridiculous that they couldn't exist outside a movie. And for that reason, I love the dialogue in the movie.

• I love hitmen. No matter what you do to them, you don't feel bad.
• She smells like angels ought to smell.
• I take away his weapon (shoots a rapist's hand). Both of 'em (shoots his crotch)
• (watching a ninja-hooker kill a man) She doesn't quite take his head off. She makes a Pez dispenser out of him.

And of course, this gem.

Sin City is a mashup of several connected stories all taking place in the most corrupt city I've seen that could actually exist. The characters are rather two-dimensional, with the heroes being hard-as-nails antiheroes and the females... basically being the same. No damsels in distress here, which is an absolute breath of fresh air.

I'm not sure what about Sin City is so great. It's gritty, it's a bit cheesy, and it doesn't really leave you with something to think about after you watch it except that "people suck." It's just a story that exists with the bad guys usually getting theirs, but the good guys don't always come out as winners. I usually like film noir, but Sin City takes it to a place that doesn't require you to like the genre.

1. Watchmen
Who watches the Watchmen? Watchmen makes everyone ask what would happen if superheroes were people who sucked as bad as the rest of us. No lofty morals, no personal code, nothing. Superheroes are often put in a class all their own, as though getting superpowers removes the piece of humanity that makes them selfish, depressed, angry, bored, or scared. Sure, heroes have these things, but it's always as a near-mockery of the real human experience.

In Watchmen, the heroes are what you'd expect them to be. One is a drunk who abuses his power and position. Another is a nutjob who can't let go of being a hero because it's all he has. The villain is the only real "comic" character out of them, using his brilliance to outsmart a man who is practically a god.

Like Sin City, I love the grim world of Watchmen. It presents a world where superheroes exist, but nothing else changes. Citizens don't just flip a switch and bounce between mindless adoration and abject hatred. The heroes don't exist outside of the world's problems, and governments certainly don't sit and let them save a city when they have the ability to sway an entire war.

They have the problems of real people, and those problems are compounded with the burden of being retired heroes in a world that turned against them. As it happens, if you use your powers to totally screw up the lives of average citizens, they will turn against you. Whether they deserved it or not (I haven't read the comics so I'm not sure on the full story), I find it interesting how people expressed the same "anti-costume" mentality that people showed for the Vietnam War - that's something that an emotionally beleaguered people would do, and I've yet to see that kind of real-world story happen, although the Civil War comics came close.

And honestly, does anyone play better intelligent vigilante than Rorschach?



So those are my favorite comic-based movies. What are yours?


See you tomorrow!

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