Superhero movies are a staple of modern cinema, but their road to mainstream popularity wasn't
always smooth. For decades, most attempts to bring comics to life have either flopped
or were met with total indifference. Here are a few superhero movies that you've probably
never seen.
If you're not familiar with the superheroes of Valiant Comics, all you really need to
know is that they mostly create characters by mashing other iconic characters together.
X-O Manowar, for instance, is essentially Conan the Barbarian with a suit of Iron Man
armor. Bloodshot is Arnie from Predator mixed with Arnie from The Terminator. And Ninjak
is pretty much a crossover of Batman and James Bond, which is exactly as awesome as it sounds.
In 2018, Valiant decided to try bringing their characters to the big screen. Originally released
as a web series a few years earlier, Ninjak vs. the Valiant Universe did exactly what
it says on the tin, pitting super-spy ninja Colin King against a live-action version of
his entire comic book universe. Unlike most obscure comic book movies, however, this one's
actually worth watching, if only for the cast. Pro wrestler John Hennigan plays the Eternal
Warrior, while Bloodshot is played by former Power Ranger Jason David Frank.
The debate over which swamp monster is better has been raging ever since DC's Swamp Thing
and Marvel's Man-Thing first debuted, within three months of each other, way back in 1971.
When it comes to their adventures outside of comics, though, there's no question about
who got the better end of the deal. Swamp Thing has starred in a live-action TV series,
a cartoon for kids, two movies, and a streaming series that, while short-lived, was extremely
well-received.
Man-Thing, however, had a movie that made 3 percent of its budget in its international
theatrical release and went straight to cable in America. It's also primarily remembered
for featuring a cast of Australian actors attempting to perform Louisiana accents, to
varying degrees of success.
"What?"
"No offence, but, well I just expected someone more experienced."
The movie does have a few good points, though. Man-Thing himself has a pretty cool design,
especially when your expectations are adjusted for a low-budget SyFy Original from 15 years
ago. Unfortunately, all of the weirdness that makes Man-Thing so interesting in the comics
are ditched in favor of a fairly generic slasher, where Man-Thing is ostensibly portrayed as
the bad guy.
There have actually been two movies based on The Spirit, Will Eisner's groundbreaking
Golden Age comic strip. The first was a 1987 TV movie starring Sam J. Jones, whose previous
comic strip adaptation, Flash Gordon, became a cult classic thanks largely to its lavish
campiness and killer soundtrack by Queen. The Spirit was meant as the pilot of a TV
series, but it failed to get the ratings that were needed to convince anyone that a full
series would be a good idea.
The 2008 Spirit film, on the other hand, failed at literally everything. It was written and
directed by Frank Miller, and starred Gabriel Macht in the title role opposite Samuel L.
Jackson as his arch-nemesis, the Octopus. If Miller's name sounds familiar, that's because
he's the groundbreaking creator responsible for The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year
One, two of the most highly regarded Batman comics of all time.
Miller approached The Spirit the same way that he and Robert Rodriguez had approached
their movie adaptation of Miller's own over-the-top noir comic, Sin City, right down to the high-contrast
visuals, ridiculous dialogue, and goofy comedy violence.
The problem, or one of them, at least, was that the only thing Eisner's style and Miller's
style had in common was that they were both technically comic books. The end result was
a film that is arguably the single worst comic book adaptation of all time, yes, even worse
than whichever one you're currently thinking of. It makes Corman's Fantastic Four look
like Captain America: Civil War, and makes Batman & Robin look like Batman. Unsurprisingly,
The Spirit tanked at the box office. It's probably not a coincidence that Macht hasn't
done much movie work since.
No comics franchise embodies the '90s quite as much as the X-Men. At the height of the
decade, there were about 17 X-Related comics hitting the shelves every month, and the one
that best captured the spirit of the era was probably Generation X. As the name implies,
it was focused on a group of younger mutants, led by established fan favorite Jubilee, who
formed the new class of disaffected teenagers at Xavier's school. Based on that description,
it probably seems like the perfect franchise to adapt into a movie. In fact, the producers
hoped it would serve as a pilot for an eventual TV show.
It probably would have been, too, if the Gen X movie had happened under literally any other
circumstances. Sadly, pretty much everything was stacked against it. For one thing, its
release coincided with the collapse of the comics industry, and while the Generation
X comics were genuinely good and had hordes of dedicated fans, it just wasn't the time
to be launching a TV series. Even if it had lured in the comics audience, though, there
were choices made that seemed designed to alienate fans, such as casting a white actress
to play Jubilee, one of Marvel's most prominent Asian-American characters. Also, instead of
using an established supervillain, former Max Headroom actor Matt Frewer played a generic
weirdo mad scientist.
Of course, it didn't help that it was also just generally awful. In addition to looking
like it was filmed entirely in a laser tag arena, the effects were terrible even by the
standards of a 1996 TV movie. And as for the performances...
"But everything I've said I can do, I've done. And now you're a - cha-ching! - millionaire."
Here's hoping that Gen X's predecessor, New Mutants, has better luck when its movie adaptation
comes out...assuming it ever does.
Hey, wait a second. Justice League isn't an obscure movie at all! It was a worldwide hit
that made over $650 million at the box office, led by a cast of household names, sitting
at the heart of a massive shared universe. Except, of course, this isn't that one. No,
this is Justice League of America, the unaired-in-America 1997 TV pilot that nobody saw and even fewer
people liked. It's hard to understand why, though. After all, it's the Justice League!
It even features everyone's favorite DC characters, such as Guy Gardner, Ice, and the Martian
Manhunter!
Yeah. So rather than using the classic lineup of characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder
Woman, this Justice League was based on the late '80s Justice League International comics,
where the team was reimagined as something more like a sitcom, fronted by a roster of
third-stringers. And honestly, that's not a bad idea. JLI was the source of some of
the best DC comics of its era, and the lower-stakes adventures of characters like Blue Beetle
and Booster Gold were undoubtedly far easier to produce on a TV budget. Even the setup
for the show seems like it's ahead of its time, intercutting the same kind of first-person
"interview" segments with the comedy, the same way that The Office and Parks & Rec would
years later. Of course, that setup only really works if the writing is any good. The writing
in Justice League of America was…not.
Believe it or not, the Marvel Cinematic Universe wasn't the first time that two of Marvel's
most famous heroes got together for a live-action adventure. Instead, that honor goes to The
Incredible Hulk Returns, a 1988 TV movie in which the Incredible Hulk...returns. Okay,
not the best title in the world, but hey, you can't win 'em all.
Released in 1988 as a continuation of the Incredible Hulk TV show, this TV movie was
supposed to be just like a classic comic book team-up between the Hulk and the god of thunder.
But Thor: Ragnarok this ain't. If nothing else, it has exactly the level of special
effects that you'd expect from a show where the main technical achievement was finding
a large man, giving him a pair of jorts, and painting him green.
Like the comics, Thor has been cast out of Asgard and mystically bonded with Don Blake,
but in this version, Blake doesn't turn back into Thor. Here, he just sort of stands around
providing play-by-play commentary while Thor hits things, presumably because someone wanted
Thor and Blake to interact with each other and forge a buddy comedy dynamic they could
use to sell a Thor TV show. It never happened.
If The Incredible Hulk Returns had a title that was a little too literal, its sequel
had one that was an outright lie. Not only did Trial of the Incredible Hulk not feature
the Hulk being put on trial, it didn't feature any trial at all. There is a single courtroom
scene when Bruce Banner flips out and turns into his alter ego, a scene featuring Stan
Lee in his first Marvel cameo, no less. But even that happens in a dream sequence.
What it does have, in keeping with its legal themes, is a team-up with blind lawyer and
part-time super-ninja vigilante Matt Murdock that was meant to be a backdoor pilot for
a Daredevil series. While that never happened, there actually is some fun Daredevil stuff
in here, including the casting of John Rhys -Davies as the Kingpin. And yes, like the
2015 Daredevil series, this one features a hallway fight. It's not quite as brutal, though.
If you ever find yourself wondering how hot comics were in the early '90s, consider this:
back then, live-action superhero movies were produced in order to promote comics, rather
than the other way around. Well, one was, anyway: 1993's Firearm, released exclusively
on a VHS tape that came with the #0 issue of the comic of the same name.
Okay, so "movie" might be pushing it. This thing clocks in at just over half an hour
if you count the supplementary two-minute promo for the rest of the Ultraverse comics.
While the movie is of the quality you expect from a low-budget VHS short film, the comic
itself wasn't bad, for its abbreviated run. Both the film and the comic were written by
James Robinson, who would go on to write the comic Starman, which is fondly remembered
as a true classic of its era, and the movie adaptation of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,
which definitely isn't.
Take a moment and imagine the Nick Fury of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He's the cool,
no-nonsense super-spy who stepped out of the shadows in 2008 to reveal that there was more
to Iron Man's world than just Tony Stark. He's the stern commander who brought the team
together in The Avengers. He's the tough-as-nails badass who made a shocking return from the
dead in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Now imagine that instead of Samuel L. Jackson,
that same character was played by David Hasselhoff.
"Oh, no. Mother-"
But it happened, believe it or not, in 1998, as part of another ill-fated attempt to make
a TV movie based on a Marvel character, who admittedly originally kind of looked like
Hasselhoff anyway, in the hopes of eventually launching a series. Shockingly, it didn't
work, although the movie is at least a little watchable for its sheer absurdity.
MCU fans will undoubtedly know Stan Lee as the friendly face of the Marvel Universe,
he's the guy who co-created Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Avengers, and left behind a
towering legacy in pop culture. And no doubt, all of that is true. Stan the Man's later
career, however, was a little rockier. In the 2000s, he tended to attach his name to
basically any project he could, regardless of how involved he had been with them.
Case in point: 2006's Lightspeed, which features a character who can be generously filed under
the heading of "Stan's lesser creations." The premise is an architectural marvel constructed
entirely from clichés: a guy named Daniel Light gets speed powers, becomes a costumed
hero, and fights a big python-man named Python. It's not even interesting in its terribleness,
except for the hilarity of the difference in how Lightspeed looks on his straight-to-video
box art and the way he looks in the actual movie. Talk about taking liberties.
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