Pre-2000 Superhero Films

This is my brief recollection of superhero related movies as I grew up. The first one I can actually name is the old, original Adam West Batman movie where the Joker, Riddler, Penguin, and Cat Woman all team up. Obviously this movie is more campy and played for laughs. I also would catch re-runs of the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman series here and there. 

The next major release was Superman, a movie that was able to take itself seriously, but not too seriously. It perfectly blended humor, good acting, style, new special effects, music, and plot. My only minor gripes are that Superman is a little skinny (especially after seeing Hemsworth and Evans as Thor and Captain America) and the whole world reversing thing. But Christopher Reeve was Superman. He looked the part, sounded the part, and could act the part. He also played Clark differently rather than relying on glasses to do the acting for him. 

Superman II was not as good, but it did have some cool things in it. There was a little more camp and cheesiness, and some of the effects weren’t as good, but the fight near the end in metropolis was pretty epic. Later I would learn that there was originally a superior version, but it was scrapped for this one because of a director change. The short version is that Richard Donner completed most of the film, got fired, and was replaced by Richard Lester. In order to put Lester as the director, he had to have the film at least 51% with stuff he shot. So he reshot some things, reverted some other things to a previous (and inferior) version of the script, and injected a lot of unnecessary levity.

Superman III was bad. Like, really bad. It was entirely directed by Lester, who decided to make it into a Richard Pryor comedy that happened to be guest starring Superman. Its level of camp was only outmatched by the Adam West Batman series. Though, it did have one major thing going for it – seeing Clark Kent fighting an evil Superman was a highlight.

Superman IV was kinda a “greatest hits” of past movies surrounding an environmental activism message, with some added stuff they just made up (like his “brick-building” vision powers). But it was a little better than 3. There was also a Supergirl movie starring Helen Slater. Like a lot of the entries on here, I liked it because of the superhero aspect of it, but even back then I could realize that it wasn't as good as the first Superman movie. 

At some point during all these Superman movies, Marvel made a Fantastic Four movie and three (count 'em, THREE) Captain America movies. These movies were the very bottom of the barrel in terms of quality and budget. They made Superman III look like The Godfather. They were so bad that the Fantastic Four movie was never released and the Captain America movies were shown on TV and only released direct--to-video. Speaking of TV, there were a couple of shows I liked to watch but only caught them occasionally because I never knew when they were on – The Greatest American Hero and The Incredible Hulk. The former was a humorous take on 

the superhero concept, but watchable. Hulk actually frightened me a little, but I loved it. It was decent, and Marvel’s only live-action product that could claim to be so. Apparently there was also a Doctor Strange TV movie what was widely panned, as well as a Nick Fury TV movie starring David Hasselhoff, but I never saw them, never heard about them, and only learned about them years later. 

One other superhero movie of note was Condorman, Disney’s take on the concept. Like a lot of these entries, it had a couple of high notes and a lot of low ones. There was also a terrible Masters of the Universe (aka He-Man)movie, starring Dolph Lundgren. This one was so bad I don’t even know where to begin, other than Lundgren had the physique for the role. Everything else was terrible, from the plot to the dialogue to the acting to the sets.

At the end of the 80’s, Tim Burton’s version of Batman made its way into theaters, and it was darn near perfect for its time. Also, the version of the Batmobile used was the best one to this day. As a kid I thought there should have been a fight between Batman and the Joker, but now I realize that wouldn’t happen, as Joker is more of a psychological villain. It was dark, plausible, and really well made. It provided a new standard for comic book/superhero movies to aspire to. Unfortunately, it was short lived.

Batman Returns was good in some ways, but got a little campy in others. It retained the darkness, and continued the formula of having established actors playing the main roles, but ended up being a little too silly visually and didn’t have as tight of a plot.

Batman Forever lost the darkness (replaced by neon) and favored style over substance. Not only did we get a new director, but a new Batman. Tommy Lee Jones was horribly underused, and it seemed like the director was going for a happy medium between Tim Burton’s version and Adam West’s version. And there were nipples on the bat suit. Nipples.

Batman and Robin was so bad it was funny. Seriously, it was really bad. This was the worst of the four Batman movies to date. Unlike the Superman movies where the fourth one was a little better, each one just kept getting worse. At first I thought it must have been a parody – nothing made sense. They had started these movies on such a high note, and I couldn’t believe this is where they ended up. To this day, George Clooney has said he’d personally refund anyone’s money for seeing it. The only really good things to come out of the Schumacher movies were the soundtracks. No, not the orchestral music in the background – but the collection of pop songs by Seal, U2, and Smashing Pumpkins.

There were 3 live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies made in the 90’s. The first one was actually pretty good. It had a decent plot, good action, good humor, and was made for a teenage audience. It had a lot of the markings of something that was low-budget, like poor lighting in some scenes, probably because they had to spend the money on animatronics and extra actors. The second one reverted to a much simpler, cartoonish plot and reined in the violence to make it more palatable for 1st graders, and the third one got worse. I had hoped for a more mature, young-adult take on them like the first movie, but instead they got closer to the original Saturday morning cartoon. Along the same line, a show I only somewhat paid attention to (mostly because my brother watched it) was Power Rangers. I was old enough to recognize the repetitive nature and level of camp, but if I’m being honest, the concept of the robots forming a giant robot was something I loved, stemming from both Transformers and Voltron.

Then there was the Super Mario Bros movie. God, this one was terrible. Like a lot of others in this list, it suffered from a poor script, inept direction, and a small budget. This one was unique in that it was the product of a video game, rather than a comic book or animated series, so there was basically no source material to draw from in order to create a story. It shoehorned in references and was just bad. It’s best we forget it and move on.

Marvel's animation department scored two hits with the X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons.

These were well made, looked great, and had decent voice acting and special effects. It was a substantial step up in terms of quality content, and made advances into getting some decent comic book related properties some exposure. Batman also had a resurgence with the animated series by Bruce Timm, which branched into a Superman series and other things. I loved the Batman series, but didn't get into the other stuff because we didn't have the right cable channels or something. 


Another notable entry is the TV film Generation X, loosely based on the comic book of the

same name. It had Banshee and Emma Frost (both also seen on X-Men: First Class) with a small handful of mutant students. For some reason, all mutants had telepathic abilities for the plot to work. It wasn't great, but it wasn't as terrible as it could have been. Now that I think of it, it's sad that this is the comparison I had to make for a lot of these things - it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Like, it's not He-Man bad, or Fantastic Four bad. But it definitely isn't good. Marvel also apparently made a Punisher movie starring Dolph Lundgren that turned out about as well as one might expect - full of bad 80's action movie clichés and dim lighting. 

Shaquille O’neal  starred as Steel, a character connected to the Superman universe. However, the movie was so bad they divorced themselves from anything Superman related because DC probably didn’t want it associated with their best character. 

Though not really a traditional superhero, the next inclusion is one that helped change a lot of the image and culture around this kind of content. Buffy the Vampire Slayer came out on the WB network, a budding cable station at the time. The writing was good, each season had a direction, the characters had definite growth, and the rules of the established world were kept. Its creator, Joss Whedon, had previously made a movie about Buffy but had to change a lot due to the studio’s demands. Seeing such a well made show that could and should have been campy probably helped turn things around. I didn’t start watching it until the show was almost done, and mostly caught it (and its spinoff) on re-runs.

That same year, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn also premiered. I was very much in the Marvel camp and didn’t like Image Comics because of how the company came about, so I didn’t read Spawn, but I loved the HBO animated series. I had hoped that the same level of care would have been given to its silver screen incarnation, but, no. It turned out to be mediocre at best with obvious directorial ineptitude and a lacking budget.

The final entry was Blade (note – I haven’t seen any of them). Like Buffy, it wasn’t as much of a comic book movie as it is a vampire movie, perhaps cashing in on Buffy’s success. (I’m not disparaging the movie – just noting that Joss Whedon had a hit TV show at the time). It was well received, but I wasn’t around for it because I was out of the country.

 So, looking back, we had only a few bright spots among a litany of low-budget and poorly produced films and shows. Everything else was some combination of camp, schlock, cheese, cliché, and drivel that usually was made by the lowest bidder with little experience. These types of movies were often seen as just big versions of a kids show, or almost like a live-action cartoon geared towards 9 to 12-year-olds who didn’t think deeply about content so the producers didn’t want to waste effort on making a quality product. These kinds of source materials (comic books, animated cartoons, video games, etc.) were the things I was interested in, and I accepted that high quality, Hollywood-level movies about these things just couldn’t or wouldn’t happen except for the odd accidental hit like the first Superman or first Batman movie. But I always held out hope that one day a movie would be made that would take the source material seriously and have the necessary budget and experienced director/producer team to make it happen.

I can admit that when I was young, I enjoyed them for the concept of the superhero and seeing them use their powers/abilities and could forgive the clunky plot. But upon watching these as an adult, I can understand why my parents would roll their eyes when I mentioned wanting to watch one of them. But it's not my fault that good, well-made adaptations of my kind of entertainment weren't around. I would have loved to have something as good as what we have now around, but it was out of my hands. In other words, I had to put up with the bad in order to get the good parts. It was worth it to me, but not to others who just wanted to watch a good movie. In this way, you could say that I had some of the same mindset as Kevin Smith, who basically supports, promotes, and likes anything that is comics/geek culture in an effort to get more of it made. His theory is that if we could mobilize the comics/geek subculture to drop a ton of cash on a movie then Hollywood would get the bright idea to make another one, and the more exposure it gets hopefully more people who weren't originally comics fans might give it a shot and discover that it's actually not so bad. 

RIP Star Wars

This is Part 1 of 4 loosely related posts.

I have been a fanboy of a lot of things over the years. He-Man. ThunderCats. Lord of the Rings. Transformers. Spider-Man, X-Men, and Marvel in general. Star Wars. The Legend of Zelda, and other Nintendo related things. Unfortunately, I’ve had to see most of them wither away.

I have loved Star Wars since I can remember. The earliest memory I have of Star Wars is seeing the ending of Episode 4 on TV with my dad and being worried about R2 getting blasted by Vader. I dressed up as Yoda for Halloween, and gave myself an embarrassing nickname that involved Yoda as well. I saw bits and pieces of the movies over the years, but never sat down to watch the entire trilogy until it was on the USA network over a weekend when I was about 13 years old. After that, I was hooked. I played the games on SNES and when the Special Edition re-releases were out in 1997 I took my two youngest brothers to the theater to see them.

I especially loved the music. I loved John Williams from Superman first, but adding Star Wars to his resume just made him all that much better. And before the Lord of the Rings and Marvel/superhero franchises, Star Wars was the definitive pinnacle “geek” culture. I spent money getting a couple of electronic lightsabers, but I didn’t, however, delve into the Extended Universe (EU), like the books and such, other than playing Shadows of the Empire on N64 and the Rogue Squadron games on N64/GC.

In the lead up to the release of Episode 1, a friend and I talked about how we were worried that Lucas wouldn’t be careful with the details and possibly “ruin” the franchise. In one sense, I would have almost rather have not had anything released past Episode 6 and just left it alone in perfect condition than to have its reputation tarnished by low quality subsequent product.

After watching The Phantom Menace, I was a little disappointed. There was some cringe, but also some cool stuff. But it felt like Star Wars. I think Episodes 2 and 3 were each a little better, but still not as good as the originals. John Williams' music was good enough in Episode 2 to almost convince me that Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman had some on-screen chemistry. Almost.

My overall thought was that Lucas was a good, imaginative story-teller and producer, but not a good director or writer of dialogue. If you take his body of work between the 6 Star Wars films and Indiana Jones Trilogy, and compare quality when he was directing, you’ll see what I mean. Ultimately, while they were inferior films, there were enough redeeming qualities that made the shortcomings tolerable. I will also add that watching them in Machete Order makes them better, and gives me a sense of what Lucas was trying to accomplish story-wise, albeit through clunky dialogue and cringe-worthy moments. I think more than anything, the fact that Machete Order improves the films shows that Lucas kinda wrote himself into a corner when he changed the title of the first film to Episode 4: A New Hope. Overall, I think had he gotten someone else to direct and someone to help with the script supervision, the prequel movies would have turned out much better. Part 2 of this series is mainly about this topic.

But now we come to the Disney era of Star Wars. I was excited to see what they had cooked up, as I think how they’d been handling the Marvel Cinematic Universe was top notch. Episode 7 seemed like a well-made fan-fiction version of Episode 4 to me, but with a few new twists – the main thing I didn’t like was that Luke’s role was taken over by a total Mary-Sue. And while I was disappointed that it was just a re-tread of ANH, I gave it some leeway because the movie set up a whole bunch of little plot points and mysteries that would (hopefully) be resolved in the future films. I was willing to suspend judgment because I curious to see the outcome. A good analogy was how Fellowship of the Ring got a few Oscars, and then Two Towers got some nominations, but Return of the King got all the Oscars (because it paid off all the buildup from the past 2 films). I think the academy was waiting to see if Peter Jackson could really pull off such an endeavor, and didn’t want to preemptively give it a lot of praise if the series eventually turned out to be a train wreck.

Then Rogue One debuted. I really liked this one, even more than the prequels, and is easily the best Disney-era Star Wars film. No, it’s not perfect, and, yes, there were a few things that I thought they could have done better, but overall very good. I loved the way it lead right into Episode 4 and used old footage really creatively. It was made to fit in with the older movies instead of trashing them or re-writing history. But the ending was what made the film for me, and that’s what we were missing from Episode 3 – Darth Vader kicking some ass.

So when Episode 8 was going to come out, I was optimistic. Excited, even. And then I was bored. I never thought I’d be so bored during a Star Wars movie, but there I was trying to stave off sleep in the theater. I thought exactly what Kevin Smith thought at Wild Wild West – “Good lord, what a piece of shit.” All the little mysteries and plot threads that were started in 7 were unceremoniously trashed, and most of the “plot” consisted of a “Best Of” reel from Episodes 5 and 6 mingled with something else I can only compare to Twilight (ugh) and an ad from the PETA people. Now I can retroactively state that I don’t really like 7 anymore, because the little bit of faith I had in the movie has been destroyed. I won't rehash all the reasons why it's bad, but Sargon of Akkad's synopsis is pretty good, as well as MauLer's commentary on it (way longer and more in depth).

To top it all off, the producers and director pulled the same stunt as Sony did with the Ghostbusters reboot – use social media to blame the fans. Instead of good writing, snappy dialogue, and coherent plot, they instead opted for gender swaps and social justice dogma (aka, Fan Baiting). When it wasn’t received well, they didn’t take responsibility for alienating long time fans, and instead made accusations that detractors were 40-year-old virgins living in their mothers’ basements who were racist, sexist, and homophobic. Not a good look. I didn’t buy the Blu-ray for The Last Jedi, which is a first for me in this franchise. 

And now we’re at Solo. I saw it because I was in Nebraska visiting friends, and wanted something fun to do together. My biggest thought was that the producers set out to explain the origin of all the stuff we didn’t want to know about, like where Han got his gold dice, or his gun, or Chewie’s bandoleer, or Lando’s skiff outfit. I usually stay away from learning too much “behind the scene” stuff before the premiere because I like to be surprised in the theater. But having now read about all the problems Solo production had, as well as the Lucasfilm division has had itself, I’m not surprised at how these films have turned out. I never thought I would look at the prequels so longingly. Midnight's Edge has a pretty good write-up about the whole debacle (meaning the Disney-era movies). Basically what happened is that just like Atheism in the early 2000's, academia in the past 30 years, and Gamergate in 2013, Social Justice Warriors have infected some of my favorite franchises because they see them as a popular platform on which to spread their message. They don't actually care about the characters, the story, or the history. They just know that a lot of people watch the movies, so they swarm on a fanbase like locusts and leave once it's been sufficiently ruined. The term "Seagull Manager" might even be appropriate, but "Social Gentrification" is probably the best term. Star Wars has just become the latest sacrificial lamb for the purple-haired god of social justice. Part 3 of this series deals with Disney and the SJW mentality. 

[Edit in late 2019] And now that the "Skywalker Saga" has concluded (even though it already did back in 1983) the postmortem's conclusion is that Kathleen Kennedy horribly mismanaged the franchise/studio and even though there was a "Star Wars story group," they did nothing really and each director was given leeway to do whatever he felt like (up to the point that some of them were unceremoniously dumped). There wasn't a plan in place for a trilogy. Say what you will about the prequels, but there was at least a plan and a story arc. All the fears I had expressed about Episode 1 ruining a perfect streak were completely realized in these movies. 

The thing is, if the new movies/characters were written well, nobody would care or probably even notice the diversity. Forced diversity is sort of like special effects - you only notice it when it's done poorly. Nobody batted an eye when Peter Dinklage played Bolivar Trask (who is not a little person in the comics) in Days of Future Past because he is a great actor playing a really well-written part. Same with other "race swaps," like Heimdall [Thor], Domino [Deadpool 2], or Nick Fury [MCU movies]. When kids in the mid-80's finished Metriod and discovered that Samus Aran was in fact female, most people were like, "Huh. Cool," because it was a great game. Nobody thought twice of Billy Dee Williams playing Harvey Dent in the 1989 Batman movie because he was a good actor playing a well written part. 

The Lord of the Rings franchise basically did the same thing to me (although they were ruined out of greed and not because of social justice). They made 3 excellent movies, albeit with some minor flaws and parts I would have done differently. Then they ruined it for me with the Hobbit movies. I loved the first one, couldn’t stand the second one, and didn’t even go to the third one. I don’t even own the 2nd or 3rd one on Blu-ray. They took something I loved and tarnished its reputation beyond repair for me. I did watch a 4-hour fan edit of them, distilling all 3 movies down to only the stuff that was in the original book. I mean, the entirety of the Lord of the Rings is about 1100 pages, and they made about 11 hours of movie out of it (if you count the extended editions), and they they took The Hobbit (300 pages) and made 9 hours of movie out of it. Ridiculous.

To be fair, this kind of disappointment is something I should be used to having been a comic book fan. Every few years, it seems that my favorite books started to decline in quality and then a radical new change in art/story/direction is needed to resurrect it from obscurity. Eventually, they (meaning the writers/publishers) will drop the ball. To us, the fans, they are temporary caretakers of American mythology, but to many of them, it’s a 3 year gig that’s a stepping stone to something bigger and better. I had hoped that movies (being bigger and more expensive) would warrant spending the time and care it takes to make a good product instead of churning out corporate mass-produced schlock. On top of that, they way they let EA handle the video game side of things just adds the rotten cherry on the shit cake. (google "sense of pride and accomplishment" for fun)

So, in closing, thanks, Lucasfilm. Not to be too overdramatic or clichéd, but thanks for ruining part of my childhood. I’m tired of seeing it being eviscerated. I won’t be watching any more. RIP Star Wars.  

[Edit: by “ruined,” what I mean is that it has left a stain on the franchise, making me completely disinterested in furthering my participation with the fandom. Where I used to pop in a Star Wars DVD here and there just for fun, I no longer can without having the recent movies in the back of my mind. In other words, a significant chunk of how I spent my free time has now been taken from me. And to be fair, this isn’t limited to just Star Wars. It happened with how the Matrix series ended, as well as the Hobbit movies dampening my fondness of the Lord of the Rings movies.]

Paramount and Michael Bay have run Transformers into the ground. New Line’s greed ruined Lord of the Rings. He-Man and ThunderCats have, more or less, retreated into obscurity (but let's not forget the terrible Masters of the Universe movie). Despite Sony’s best efforts to ruin him, Marvel has rescued Spider-Man, and have put together a brilliant cinematic universe. Fox has been hit and miss with the X-Men films.

Nintendo in general is at a good place with the Switch but they always have the potential to have a few bad business decisions. Thank Hylia that Zelda is on top right now, thanks to Game of the Year winner Breath of the Wild. 

And please, Marvel Studios, by Odin’s beard, don’t screw up Avengers 4. [Editor's note: they stuck the landing - hopefully they can keep it that way] [Editor's note 2: they didn't]






Part 2: My thoughts on George Lucas

Part 3: Disney-era Star Wars and SJWs

Part 4: Fandoms