Throwback Thursday: DC Saturdays 1-20 - A Recap

As you can probably guess from the last three DC Saturday entries in this blog, 1997 was not a good year for DC film tie-ins (in fact if you consider that Marvel still weren't really out of the woods in terms of making the transition from B-movies to big budget blockbusters, it wasn't a good year for comic book movies as a whole). There were no less than three DC tie-ins released that year and pretty much all of them sucked - "Justice League of America" was a low-budget joke that looked as though it was made in the mid-'80s rather than the late '90s, "Steel" went about as well as you'd expect an generic action film with Shaquille O'Neal in the title role to and "Batman & Robin" pretty much killed off the Batman film franchise for close to a decade.

In fact, it wasn't just Batman films - after "Steel", DC wouldn't release another film until 2002 and even then "Road To Perdition" certainly wasn't a superhero film - you'd have to wait either another year until "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (which is a bit of an is-it-isn't-it case as we'll see when we come to review it) or 2004's "Catwoman" (shudder) for one of those.

So now seems as good a time as any, especially as we've officially got 20 reviews in the can (plus the one bonus) for this series, to take a look back at DC's film output in the 20th century from 1951's "Superman And The Mole Men" right up to "Steel" which we reviewed last week. From the good to the bad to the out-and-out absurd, let's take a look back at what we've seen so far...

21. STEEL (1997)

Take a snore-inducingly generic '90s action film by numbers which is basically a low-rent cross between "Luke Cage" and "Iron Man", add a hopelessly lost Shaquille O'Neal, a man who really should never have left the basketball court for Hollywood on this evidence, in the title role and cram him into the ugliest looking superhero outfit known to man. Congrats, you've just come up with the worst film on this list and if you look at the competition down here, that's quite some achievement for this utterly boring misfire. Avoid at all costs.

20. SUPERGIRL (1984)

If Superman 3 showed that the wheels on the Man of Steel's franchise were wobbling slightly then Supergirl is where they well and truly came off. Despite a promising cast (Peter Cook, Peter O'Toole, Faye Dunaway), this film is comprehensively sunk by an abysmal script, terrible acting and a plot with more holes than a Swiss cheese. You can only begin to imagine what this all adds up to but suffice to say don't bother watching it, you'll only feel like a terrible fool if you do.

19. JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA (1997)

Twenty years before the DCEU Justice League film stunk up cinemas worldwide came this ultra-low budget straight-to-TV movie which was supposed to kick off a Justice League television series that thankfully got nixed. Looking like it was made in 1987 rather than 1997, poor special FX, clunky dialogue and a plot which blunders over into outright silliness (and not in a good way) make this attempt at a "Friends" style "superheroes as housemates" series starring the Flash, Green Lantern, Fire, Ice and the Atom a total turkey.

18. SUPERMAN 4: THE QUEST FOR PEACE (1987)

By this point the Superman wagon had comprehensively crashed and burned with directors and producers dropping like flies and Warners cutting the budget for the fourth film by two thirds. The net result was a badly edited film which had plot holes galore, a lousy script and despite being the most recent of the four films actually looks the most dated. So bad it put Superman on the cinematic backburner for two decades.

17. THE RETURN OF SWAMP THING (1989)

Did anyone really ask for a Swamp Thing sequel? With original director Wes Craven long since moved on to bigger and better things, Anton Arcane and his green nemesis return for a second outing with Heather Locklear and comic B-movie veteran Sarah Douglas dragged along for the ride. The result is a hideously bad B-movie which plays it for laughs and misses by a mile every time. Avoid like the plague.

16. BATMAN & ROBIN (1997)

Yes, I'm surprised it's not rock bottom of this pile as well but at least the fourth Batman film veers over into "so bad it's actually funny" territory in places. However, it's still an unmitigated disaster with the garish neon visuals only matched by the ultra-dumb cartoony script. Add in to the fact that they have a hopelessly lost George Clooney as the Caped Crusader (and we thought Val Kilmer was bad), an amazingly even more lost-looking Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl (this film pretty much killed her previously promising acting career stone dead) and a monosyllabic Arnie as Mr Freeze ("Let's kick some ice!") and the picture is depressingly complete. Chris O'Donnell as Robin (another whose career was pretty much sunk by this film) and Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy both at least put in a valiant shift but there's little they can do to stop this film crashing and burning horrifically. So awful it essentially put the Batman franchise on ice for almost a decade.

15. WONDER WOMAN (1974)

DC's first attempt to bring Diana Prince to the big screen was unfortunately a total flop - in fact, "Wonder Woman" plays out more like a bad '70s Marvel film with lots of padding, a thin plot full of holes and next to no action. Future long-stay TV actress Cathy Lee Crosby does her best in the circumstances and Ricardo Montalban is reasonable enough as the sleazeball chief bad guy but overall this is massively forgettable.

14. THE FLASH (1990)

Similar to its successors, the first Flash movie (the TV pilot in the States) isn't totally awful but it hasn't aged well with dated special effects, poor acting and a slow plot. After being given supernatural speed by an accident involving a chemical lab and a lightning strike, Barry Allen is on a mission to track down the biker gang who offed his brother. Similar to the '70s and '80s Marvel TV series, it's unfortunately easy to see why this incarnation of the Flash never made it past one series...

13. WONDER WOMAN RETURNS (1978)

Inferior to its predecessor, "Wonder Woman Returns" was the TV film which saw the series rebooted with a new 1970s backdrop and Diana Prince setting off on a new series of adventures with Steve Trevor Jr, son of the original. Unfortunately, as well as not having aged well, this suffers from the exact opposite problem of a lot of '70s Marvel/DC films in that it tries to cram too much into a modest 75 minute time frame leaving a rushed and garbled film with plot holes the size of planets. There's the germ of a good idea here but it just isn't executed very well unfortunately.

12. THE FLASH 3: DEADLY NIGHTSHADE (1991)

The third film in the early '90s Flash trilogy sits in between the other two in terms of quality and is hobbled by pretty much the same problems, namely dated special FX and clunky dialogue. However, after a decidedly forgettable first half the introduction of the violent psychopath Deadly Nightshade as an adversary for the Flash and his partner the original Nightshade helps to perk things up a bit and at least makes this a bit more watchable if you persevere with it.

11. THE FLASH 2: REVENGE OF THE TRICKSTER (1990)

The second Flash film suffers from most of the same pitfalls of its predecessor (wooden acting, a terrible script and some hilariously dated special FX) but is at least partially redeemed by the unexpected presence of Mark "Luke Skywalker" Hamill as the Flash's nemesis the Trickster who puts on an enjoyably OTT (without being too ridiculous) performance hamming it up in the villain's role. Flash 2 is otherwise pretty much standard low budget chod but at least it's not quite as terrible as some of the other films from this era...

10. SUPERMAN AND THE MOLE MEN (1951)

Arguably the first proper superhero movie of the modern era, "Superman and the Mole Men" is a real oddity in that it plays out more like a chilling morality tale on racism set in midwest America that just happens to have Clark Kent and Lois Lane in it. Given the constrictions of the timeframe though it's watchable enough and at least at a mere 58 minutes in length it doesn't outstay its welcome.

9. THE NEW WONDER WOMAN (1975)

Aka "the one that set up the TV series that everyone's actually familiar with". This relaunch of the Wonder Woman series may be hilariously cheesy and naff in places (especially the ridiculously dated special FX) but at least it's a big improvement on its predecessor in that it at least has some sort of plot to actually get your teeth into. Pretty obvious why this is the version that got picked up.

8. SWAMP THING (1982)

In which a pre-"Nightmare on Elm Street" Wes Craven tries his hand at resurrecting the ailing "Swamp Thing" franchise and just about gets away with it. Simple no-brainer B-movie fun which is only let down by the final fight scene which well and truly blunders over the border from "suspend your disbelief" to "okay, this is just silly now".

7. SUPERMAN 3 (1983)

Yes, there's no denying that it's a huge step down from the first two Superman films but even though the inclusion of Richard Pryor added pretty much nothing to the film and the fact that a lot of it veers over into unwelcome slapstick silliness, "Superman 3" actually isn't quite as bad as a lot of people make out (certainly it's way better than "Superman 4" and "Supergirl" for a start). Like "Swamp Thing", it's pretty much simple no-brainer fun which kills a couple of hours on a rainy afternoon nicely.

6. BATMAN FOREVER (1995)

Although a massive step down from the first two Batman films, rather like Superman 3 this isn't quite the disaster it's sometimes painted as although it's a supremely schizophrenic effort. Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones (yes, that Tommy Lee Jones) make for a fantastically OTT '60s Batman villain style pairing as Riddler and Two Face and Chris O'Donnell puts in an honest shift as the much-maligned Robin. However, Val Kilmer and Nicole Kidman both look comprehensively lost as Batman and Chase Meredith respectively (though less so than George Clooney a couple of years later) as if they're the only ones in the film trying to play it straight. Although Batman Forever just about manages to scrape by as above average, the warning signs were very much there as to what would come next...

5. BATMAN (1966)

Quite simply, the '60s Batman film does what it says on the tin and is a riot of technicolour silliness and enjoyably hammy (without going too far OTT) acting which is pretty much the definition of "so bad it's actually awesome". Yes, it very much isn't the Tim Burton or Christopher Nolan version of Batman but if you want something to put a smile on your face and cheer you up after a miserable day then this will definitely do the job.

4. SUPERMAN 2 (1980)

We reviewed the Richard Donner cut of "Superman 2" in this blog which is probably the better version as it's more of a straight continuation from the first film. Like its predecessor, a proper old-school superhero epic with Christopher Reeve again doing a great job in the lead role, Gene Hackman making a worthy adversary as the slimy Lex Luthor and Terrence Stamp backing them up well as the unhinged General Zod. Add to that a great script with genuinely shocking moments such as seeing a suddenly-human Clark Kent getting seven bells beaten out of him by an obnoxious truck driver and you've got a genuine classic here.

3. SUPERMAN (1978)

The first genuine superhero epic of the modern age and it still holds up well now. It says a lot about "Superman" that even at two and a half hours it doesn't outstay its welcome, covering Superman's backstory nicely while still finding time to give the main plot of the film pitting Christopher Reeve's Superman against Gene Hackman's scheming Lex Luthor enough air time. Funny, heartbreaking and breathtaking all at once, there's a good reason why this has rightfully attained the status of being an all-time classic.

2. BATMAN (1989)

After a long run of disappointing DC films in the mid-'80s, Batman well and truly got things back on track. Tim Burton's dark cinematic direction suits the film down to the ground and with Michael Keaton on good form as Batman and Jack Nicholson well and truly stealing the show as the deranged Joker, this film definitely raised the bar for both superhero films and comic book tie-ins.

1. BATMAN RETURNS (1992)

It was always going to be difficult to top the first Batman film but fair play to Tim Burton, he very much managed it. With a more measured story featuring the Penguin (an excellently vitriolic Danny DeVito) emerging from the sewers and running for office while demonising Batman, it seems like an oddly prescient film in this day and age. Add in Michelle Pfeiffer doing an excellent femme fatale turn as Catwoman and you've got a dark masterpiece which still holds up as the best pre-millennial DC movie.

DC Saturdays #20 - Steel (1997)

As you'll be aware if you've been reading this blog over the last couple of weeks, the year 1997 saw some absolutely colossal movie misfires from the DC stable. We've already looked at "Batman & Robin" and "Justice League of America" over the last couple of weeks and now we're coming to the third film in the unholy trinity, "Steel".

Originally conceived as a support character for Superman, Steel aka John Wesley Irons was arguably a bit of a strange choice to bring to the big screen as he'd only really been a supporting DC character at this point. Even stranger was the decision to cast Shaquille O'Neal (yup, the basketball player) in the title role as he had no acting experience. It's possible that Warners were flush off the success of the Michael Jordan-fronted "Space Jam" film from earlier in the year but...well, let's be honest, that movie wasn't really much good either. "Steel" is another film which regularly crops up when people mention the worst superhero movies ever so let's see whether the foreboding is justified...

The story starts with John Wesley Irons as a weapons tech expert in the US army where he's assisted by his two sidekicks Susan Sparks and Nathaniel Burke (Judd Nelson from "The Breakfast Club", "St Elmo's Fire" etc). The team have just developed an anti-tank missile based on sonic power and are showing a visiting Senator how it works. As it hasn't been tested at high velocity, Irons has insisted to his team to keep the power at medium level but Burke disobeys when he gets the chance to fire it himself, setting it to the highest frequency he can. The resulting sonic boom bounces off the building it's aimed at and crushes the one the team are in, killing the Senator and crushing Sparkes' legs, leaving her confined to a wheelchair.

At the subsequent hearing, Irons testifies against Burke who's discharged, much to his anger. Irons also opts to leave the military himself, scarred by the experience and returns to his old neighbourhood in Los Angeles. Unbeknownst to him, Burke is also heading there with the blueprints for the team's weapons with the aim of selling them on the black market. He strikes up a distgribution deal with Big Willie, the owner of a local arcade machine warehouse where, unbeknown to Irons, his younger cousin Martin is working. Burke quickly shows his ruthless streak when one of Willie's associates questions his motives by cutting the lift cables as she's on her way up from the basement sending her plummeting to her death.

Later that evening, Irons is on patrol with Nora, a policewoman ex of his, taking Martin to a youth workshop when they witness a robbery at a local bank with the crims using the same weapons that Irons helped develop in the military. When Nora is shot, Irons takes off after one of the gang who missed the getaway car but after pursuing him across a goods yard in a rather long and tedious sequence, he gets whacked over the head by the gang's leader Slats who'd stopped back to pick his man up. Well that went nowhere fast.

Realising something's up, Irons travels to the Veterans' Hospital in St Louis where Sparks has been moved to due to her dad being dead and her mum being an alcoholic. He busts her out of the place by carrying her wheelchair and takes her back to LA where he's set up shop in a local junkyard with his Uncle Joe who runs it. Their plan is to come up with a new set of weapons to counter the ones the criminals are using by constructing them from recycled parts that have been left for scrap. Although (understandably) initially sceptical, Sparks eventually agrees to join up with the operation.

We see their creation in action as Irons becomes the vigilante Steel, stopping muggers and breaking up gang fights. Okay, let's just take a quick rain check here - is that the ugliest superhero costume you ever saw or what? It basically looks like a poor man's Robocop and makes Steel look more like a bad guy than a hero. Anyway, I digress...

Steel's vigilante antics attract the attention of the local rozzers and he manages to make a getaway on his superbike with Sparks turning all the lights green as he's homeward bound allowing him to give the cops the slip.

After his initial outing as Steel, Irons finds himself playing the waiting game waiting for Burke and Willie's men to strike again but he intercepts them when they target the local federal reserve. However, when he realises the people he's fighting have weapons just as strong as his, Steel is forced to beat a retreat, hooking up with Uncle Joe in their surveillance van.

Burke, however, has recognised his old partner and sent a load of doctored footage to the local authorities which makes it look like it was Steel who committed the bank job. The cops duly turn up at his aunt's place to arrest him but he's busted out by Sparks who uses phone technology to disguise her voice making the prison officers think she's the local DA.

Irons sets off after Burke's gang again but they've also been doing recon into his activities and turn up at the junkyard to abduct Sparks. They've also set up a scheme where they plan to auction off their hi-tech weapons to the highest bidder including a number of terrorist organisations.

Steel turns up at the auction but gets ambushed and captured with Burke using Sparks as a pawn to get him to drop his gun. However, he doesn't count on her having an armoured wheelchair which she uses to scare off the arms dealers. A shootout duly ensues between Steel, Sparks, Joe, Martin and the military (who Joe has tipped off) on the one side and Burke and his associates on the other. Steel eventually comes out on top when he turns Burke's sonic boom gun back against him and causes him to crash into the wreckage of the warehouse as it burns to the ground.

The film ends with the heroes all out for lunch at Aunt Irma's where Sparks reveals she's now built herself a new high-tech wheelchair which allows her to walk again. Everybody celebrates. Fin.

It's taken a while but congratulations, we officially have a new wooden spoon winner for DC Saturdays. It's bad enough that "Steel" is basically an incredibly formulaic and ultra-predictable 12-cert action film by numbers which, regardless of who was in it, would probably send most discerning viewers to sleep at short notice but when you add in to this Shaquille O'Neal, a man of almost supernatural ineptitude when it comes to acting, in the title role, you really have got an almost perfect s**tstorm for a cinematic disaster. There's no nice way of putting it, this film really is the worst thing I've sat through for DC Saturdays over the last five months or so and if you look at some of the competition it's up against for that award, that's certainly no mean feat.

In fact, so bad was this film that we wouldn't be seeing any more cinematic output from DC for half a decade after this (though I've a feeling that "Batman & Robin" which came out a couple of months earlier didn't help matters either). It would take until 2002 for any DC tie-ins to surface on the silver screen and even then, 2002's "Road To Perdition" and 2003's "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" were both from DC subsidiaries rather than the main company itself (though that's still enough for me to merit reviewing them in this blog). In fact the next film from the main DC stable would be another legendary turkey in 2004's "Catwoman". Proof that even after a long amount of time to think things over, some people just never learn...

FINAL RATING: 🤖🤖 (2/10)

CURRENT DC FILM TABLE

1. Batman Returns (1992) (9/10)
2. Batman (1989) (8/10)
3. Superman (1978) (8/10)
4. Superman 2 (1980) (8/10)
5. Batman (1966) (8/10)
6. Batman Forever (1995) (6/10)
7. Superman 3 (1983) (5/10)
8. Swamp Thing (1982) (5/10)
9. The New Wonder Woman (1975) (5/10)
10. Superman and the Mole Men (1951) (5/10)
11. The Flash 2 - Revenge Of The Trickster (1991) (4/10)
12. The Flash 3 - Deadly Nightshade (1991) (4/10)
13. Wonder Woman Returns (1977) (4/10)
14. The Flash (1990) (4/10)
15. Wonder Woman (1974) (3/10)
16. Batman & Robin (1997) (2/10)
17. The Return of Swamp Thing (1989) (2/10)
18. Superman 4 - The Quest For Peace (1987) (2/10)
19. Justice League of America (1997) (2/10)
20. Supergirl (1984) (2/10)
21. Steel (1997) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: Five years later, DC finally decides to give films another go with Road to Perdition...

Marvel Mondays #40 - The Incredible Hulk (2008)

The last time we saw the Hulk in a film was for the Ang Lee effort in 2003 starring Eric Bana. This was an ambitious idea for a film which unfortunately fell flat on its face due to a convoluted storyline and being about half an hour longer than it should have been. With it underperforming at the box office and receiving mixed critical reviews, Universal got cold feet on filming a sequel and in 2006, the character reverted back to Marvel just in time for the launch of the MCU.

"The Incredible Hulk" is a bit of an odd film in that it's technically a sequel to the first one but with a completely different cast and a few noticeable changes meaning it's probably easier to classify as a reboot. It would also prove to be Edward Norton's one and only film as the Hulk with Mark Ruffalo taking over the role in time for Bruce Banner's next appearance in the first Avengers film. However, it received better reviews than its predecessor and performed respectably at the box office so let's see how its held up in the intervening ten years, shall we?

Five years on from the events of the first Hulk film and Bruce Banner is still holed up in South America and is now working as an electrician in a bottling plant. As he has worked out that he transforms into the Hulk when his heartbeat goes over 200bpm, he is doing everything he can to try and prevent that happening including yoga and meditation which has helped him keep things under control for the previous five months. He's also in e-mail contact with a scientist colleague who is trying to develop a serum with the pair using the alter egos "Mr Blue" and "Mr Green".

Banner's cover is blown when he cuts his finger working on the production line one day with a drop of his blood falling into the pop bottle. When a man in Wisconsin (that'd be Stan Lee doing his cameo) drinks the bottle he becomes sick with gamma radiation poisoning which alerts "Thunderbolt" Ross (played in this film by William Hurt) who traces the bottle to its plant and sends a division led by British Royal Marine Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) down to Rio to arrest Banner. Initially Bruce tries to escape from his flat to the bottling plant where he runs into a gang of men from work who have been trying to rough him up for a while and start laying into him. Of course, that causes his heart rate to go to 200bpm and...well, you can probably guess the rest but it begins with "Hulk" and ends in "smash"...

Banner wakes up in Venezuela (wow, that must've been some night) and, realising that he's been forced to go on the run again, Banner flees to Mexico and from there back to the States and his hometown of Culver in Virginia. Crashing at his friend Stan's local pizzeria, his plan is to sneak on to campus (watch out for a cameo here from the original Hulk Lou Ferrigno as a security guard!) and recover his research by logging on to Betty Ross, his one-time girlfriend and research partner's account. Unfortunately but predictably, the research has long since been deleted and Bruce prepares to leave town and continue his search for an answer elsewhere.

However, on his way out of the pizza restaurant, he unexpectedly runs into Betty who's played by Liv Tyler in this film. Luckily for Bruce, she has a spare copy of the research at her house on a USB stick and gives it to him to take with him. Unfortunately I have to say here that Tyler's acting is well and truly dire in this film as she sounds like she's just got off a six month course of EST for most of it - I dunno what's happened because she's normally a good actress.

Ross Sr manages to track down Banner to the university after a tip off from Betty's suspicious boyfriend and Blonsky and his team turn up to ambush Bruce and Betty as they're heading for the bus depot. En route, Blonsky has managed to get hold of a dose of the serum which originally transformed Banner (a variant of the "Super Soldier" serum that created Captain America...but more on that in a few weeks' time) from Ross which has given him enhanced power and speed but he's still no match for the Hulk who throws him full velocity into a tree pretty much breaking every bone in his body.

Bruce and Betty go on the run and eventually hole up in a forest cave outside the city. Bruce decides that his best shot now he has the data he needs is to contact Mr Blue, revealed to be a New York biochemist called Samuel Sterns, the pair head for the Big Apple. Ross gets word of their movements and sends a miraculously healed Blonsky, now dosed up with a second helping of the serum, and his team after them.

Arriving in New York, Bruce and Betty meet up with Sterns who puts him in a room and carries out a Hulk transformation before injecting him with a dose of antidote which turns him back to normal. Afterwards, Sterns explains that he's been keeping Banner's blood samples that he was sending him in his lab and believes that they could have the potential to be a huge benefit to the world of medicine. Bruce, however, isn't so sure and orders him to destroy them as he doesn't want them weaponised. Unfortunately that's the cue for Ross' troops to turn up, shoot Banner with a sedative dart and take him and Betty away.

However, after he's left the lab, Blonsky corners Sterns and has a word with him, asking if he could have a dose of the serum he's been working on. Sterns says no but Blonsky, whose sanity has well and truly gone walkabout since he started taking the serum, threatens him. The dose causes Blonsky to transform into the Abomination, a giant Godzilla-type beast who's just as powerful as the Hulk. He beats the living daylights out of Sterns who also ends up infected with the serum causing him to start mutating (presumably into the Leader as per the comics which makes me wonder if he would have been the main villain had a sequel happende) before going on the rampage through New York. Realising the monster he's unleashed, Ross agrees to let Banner go as the Hulk is the only one who has any hope of taking the Abomination down and thus the stage is set for the final "Rampage" style confrontation. Which I'm not gonna spoiler here.

Although it's not perfect, this is still a big improvement from the 2003 Ang Lee Hulk film with a plot that's much easier to follow and much better action sequences (let's be honest, the previous film hardly had any at all). The things wrong with it - it arguably goes over into being a bit too simplistic at times and the acting is very uneven (Roth is great as Blonsky, Norton is decent as Banner but as we mentioned earlier, Tyler is well below par as Betty - to be honest, they'd have done better to ask Jennifer Connelly who was one of the few decent things about the first film back). Looking back, it's still probably the weakest of the 20 MCU films so far but even so, it's still a more than respectable effort by the standards of what we've seen so far in this blog. There's lots of nice little knowing nods to the '70s Hulk TV series and films as well - watch out for the old Hulk end theme playing while Bruce is in Mexico and the student photographer called Jack McGee who captures the Hulk's fight with Blonsky at the Uni on his cellphone!

However, this is the last Hulk-based film to date - as we mentioned earlier, Norton decided against filming a sequel and, with the new Mark Ruffalo-portrayed Hulk making his debut in the Avengers, the project was put on ice, initially temporarily but now seemingly for good. However, the Hulk will make a few more appearances in this blog, both in the three (and upcoming fourth) Avengers films and "Thor: Ragnarok" so don't worry, this is far from the last we'll see of the big green feller. As for this film, it's not quite up to the standards of the other MCU films but it's still a good effort and probably the strongest of the eight (count 'em!) Hulk films we've reviewed in this blog.

FINAL RATING: ✊✊✊✊✊✊✊ (7/10)

CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE

1. Iron Man (2008) (10/10)
2. Spiderman 2 (2004) (9/10)
3. Spiderman (2002) (9/10)
4. X-Men 2 (2002) (8/10)
5. Men In Black (1997) (8/10)
6. X-Men (2000) (8/10)
7. The Incredible Hulk (2008) (7/10)
8. Blade 2 (2001) (7/10)
9. Blade (1998) (7/10)
10. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
11. Spiderman 3 (2007) (6/10)
12. Fantastic Four - Rise Of The Silver Surfer (6/10)
13. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
14. The Punisher (2004) (6/10)
15. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
16. Elektra (2005) (6/10)
17. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
18. X-Men: Last Stand (2006) (6/10)
19. Blade Trinity (2004) (6/10)
20. Men In Black 2 (2000) (6/10)
21. The Incredible Hulk (1977) (5/10)
22. The Fantastic Four (2005) (5/10)
23. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
24. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
25. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
26. Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD (1998) (4/10)
27. The Fantastic Four (1994) (4/10)
28. Hulk (2003) (4/10)
29. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
30. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
31. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
32. Ghost Rider (2007) (3/10)
33. Bride of the Incredible Hulk (1978) (3/10)
34. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
35. Man-Thing (2005) (3/10)
36. Return of the Incredible Hulk (1978) (3/10)
37. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
38. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
39. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
40. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
41. Generation X (1996) (2/10)
42. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)
43. Daredevil (2003) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: Another Punisher reboot, this time with the violence cranked up to ridiculous levels. And somehow it still doesn't stop it from being boring...