All Time Top Five Worst Mainstream Comic Book Movies

With Spider-Man 3 opening tomorrow, we're sure to be reminded of all the fun and excitement of comic books. Over the past few years, many, many, many films have been torn from the pages of comic books and graphic novels; some have been very, very good (See: Batman Begins, Spider-Man 1 & 2); others have been, well...not so good. And those are the ones we'll be embracing today. Tomorrow we'll take a look at the crappy movies made from comic books that you probably didn't even realize were actually made from comic books. Today, though, we're looking at the abominations of film that were made from your childhood memories. Without further ado, the All Time Top Five Worst Mainstream Comic Book Movies.

5) Superman Returns - This is more a result of failed expectations than anything else. Directed by Bryan Singer (of Usual Suspects and X-Men 2 fame) and starring the always interesting Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, this movie had high hopes. It was the rebooting of a franchise after decades of false starts, and, by all accounts, it should have been great. But...it wasn't. It wasn't so much awful as just, really, not that great, which is almost a greater travesty. Part of the blame lies with the Superman archetype itself--by definition, there's really just nothing the guy can't do. Fly? Check. Run really fast? Check. Jump really high? Check. Stop bullets with his eye? Check. Turn back time if he needs to? Check. I mean, where's the conflict? Shouldn't this be a 15 minute film? Bad guys do stuff, Superman flies after them and fixes it. End of movie. Maybe it's just my personal bias, but Superman is boring as hell, and this movie didn't do him any favors.

4) X-Men 3: The Last Stand - The worst tragedy of that suck Superman film? Bryan Singer gave up the opportunity to continue his steady hand of the X-Men franchise to direct it, which led to this piece of crap by Brett "Rush Hour" Ratner. Ratner is a well-known hack, and I guess his directing a movie that sucked this much was really an inevitability. X-Men 3 ended up being your basic rudderless piece of crap action flick with no heart and less sense. It is basically a stand in on this list for all the other pointless comic book films that preceded and followed it (Daredevil, Punisher, Ghost Rider, etc.).

3) Elektra - An inside look at a movie studio creative meeting: Executive 1: Hey, you know that suck ass Ben Affleck movie...where he was a blind lawyer?
Executive 2: Yeah, vaguely. What a piece of crap.
Executive 1: Yeah, that's the one. Well, how about this. How about a supporting character from that crap movie...is turned into the hero of another new movie. And he has like, those weapons that one of the ninja turtles used. Not the nunchucks, but those mini-daggers that only seem to work if you're really close to your opponent, thereby making them pretty useless.
Executive 2: I like it, but...it's missing something.
Executive 1: Not anymore...he is a she. And she's named...
Executive 2: Wonder Woman!
Executive 1: Um, no...Elektra, actually.
Executive 2: Oh. Well, whatever. We'll make it work.

2) The Fantastic Four - This movie was such a ridiculous piece of crap I'm not even sure where to begin. The action is cheesy and obviously computer generated, the acting is wooden and the dialogue stilted, the main characters are cardboard cutouts with no depth, and none of their motivations seem to make any damn sense. Ben Grimm comes back from space a monster and his fiancee leaves him without saying a word (and really, these two scenes are just...they're so bad. I couldn't possibly do them justice in print). Jessica Alba runs around in her underwear for no real reason other than to show Jessica Alba in her underwear, Dr. Doom is played by the guy from Nip/Tuck...I could go on and on. It's just awful. Awful, awful, awful, awful, awful. I can't believe they made a sequel. Hopefully someone will kick the crap out of the annoying dude who plays the Human Torch in this one.

1) Batman and Robin - The godfather of shitty comic book film adaptations. Joel Schumaker--at times a competent director-- just plain got this one wrong. He started with the campy 'Batman Forever' which should have warned us. The bright colors, Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones hamming it up--the signs were there. We chose to ignore them however, and this emboldened Schumaker--and that's when he decided to really go overboard.

Where to start? Nipples on the batsuit? A chubby Alicia Silverstone lisping her way through as Batgirl? The ever-annoying Chris O'Donnell aptly playing the ever-annoying Robin? George Clooney--and I like George Clooney, I really do--but George Clooney as Batman? The scene where he steps out of the shadows and delivers the line, "Alred's not sick...he's dying." just oozes smarm. That scene sums up his awful performance in a nutshell. Just the wrong man for the job. Throw in an ultra-campy Governator as "Mistuh Freeez" and a cartoonish Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, and you've got a recipe for disaster. There is nothing redeemable about this film, unless you are watching it Mystery Science Theater style. It not only is the worst comic book film of all time, it could stake a claim for the worst movie ever. And that's really saying something.

Awful Mainstream Comic Book Movies that just missed the cut: Hulk (not incredible this time around, which was apt); Spawn (crappy, sure, but is it really that mainstream?); Batman Forever (haven't we picked on Schumaker enough?); and Transformers (not released yet, and not technically a comic book, but c'mon--Shia Lebeouf? You know it's gonna suck).

But there's a whole plethora of films you didn't even know where comic books first--and man do they suck! Stop by tomorrow for the worst of them.