The *Actual* Worst Comic Book Movie Adaptation Of All Time
Posted on August 11th, 2015 by Adam-Troy CastroLet us be honest.
FANTASTIC FOUR (2015) is being dumped on an awful lot, apparently with cause, this week. Many are calling it “the worst comic book adaptation of all time.”
I haven’t seen it. Nor will I.
But in real-world terms it cannot be the worst comic book adaptation “of all time,” because the overall reaction people are having to it is that the movie sucks and that they hope that somebody will make a better Fantastic Four movie someday.
Brought back from the dead to watch it, Jack Kirby would no doubt shudder with irritation and say, “Well, they got that all wrong, how irritating.”
By contrast, imagine Wil Eisner’s reaction were he brought back from the dead to watch the version of THE SPIRIT written and directed by his good friend and self-declared protégé, Frank Miller. Were that gentle man capable of getting angry over matters of make-believe, something I harbor doubts about, he would say, “That little twerp just turned my signature creation into revolting sewage.”
Others have cited CATWOMAN as an iteration as foul, but did it destroy CATWOMAN as a popular character? No, Catwoman remains popular, and was indeed the one great element of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. The movie didn’t destroy anything. Nor did this one. The FANTASTIC FOUR still have a following in pop culture, sizable even among many who never picked up so much as a single issue of the comic book, and though this is a crazy-making admission to make, there will likely be another in less than five years. (Which is itself a statement about everything that’s gone wrong with the movie biz, but a testament to the hunger for a FANTASTIC FOUR movie that gets it right.)
By contrast, more, in terms of the character’s shadow, was riding on THE SPIRIT, and the movie failed it that much more egregiously. THE SPIRIT didn’t just fail the comics. It didn’t just trample them. It told the world that the trail-blazing character was an offensive piece of crap, and the world, bereft of is context, listened.
Other movies have done this. Comic book fans are well used to telling people who only know their favorite characters from the movies that Jonah Hex is really a brilliant character, that John Constantine is really a brilliant character, that The Punisher can be brilliant crime fiction, that Howard the Duck is a wonderful satiric creation, that League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is really a brilliant comic. It happens all the time. Some of these films destroyed any chance the comic book properties had of ever escaping their four-color roots, and entering the zeitgeist. Certainly, few films did as much to stamp down a then-cult character as HOWARD THE DUCK, but even that movie had isolated moments, lines, scenes, images, that captured what the morose mallard was all about, and there has been idle talk of bringing him back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in some fashion. He’s one good screenplay, one good miniseries, away from rehabilitation.
But THE SPIRIT?
THE SPIRIT is now known, to many people, as the rancid creation that Frank Miller made, and a punch-line — and if I happen to judge it more harshly than any of the other cited failures, it is because the depth of the violation is that much more offensive. To the world the Spirit is now the guy whose fight scenes involve the use of toilet bowls as clubs, and a black villain in a gestapo uniform. It is not just awful, it is actively revolting.
Really, the Fantastic Four movie can’t compete.