Super-sized superhero disappointments – – Gamereactor

There have been many good superhero movies released over the years, many incredibly bad ones. Then there is a whole pile of movies that may not be as rotten as they are described, or maybe even clearly approved, but whose expectations were sky-high. As a longtime comic book collector and former fan of the genre, I have naturally seen many films characterized by their spandex-clad heroes that have disappointed me, and this is my personal top list of the best of them.

(10) Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2

The first one really came out of nowhere, and although I had read a few comics beforehand on which Gunn based his pulp-scented romps of colorful anti-heroes, I really wasn’t prepared for how great Guardians of the Galaxy would be. This meant, of course, that my expectations for the sequel were high. More 80s music, more Drax, more Star-Lord and Ego the Living Planet at the center of it all. I had high expectations. Towering ones. Which I should have skipped, because this sequel was so tired, so boring. Minus a single successful scene between Mantis and Drax, Gunn really derailed and the disappointment was a reality.

(9) Suicide Squadron

It felt a bit like a perfect combination. End of Watch/Training Day-Ayer, a group of dark, cranky, violent, child-abusing villains who would now act as heroes to avoid execution in prison. With the always underrated comic book character Deadshot and Harley at the front of the line. It could have been very good, of course. Heavy. Dark. Bloody. Violent and, in the middle of it all, Batfleck would show up, ready to take a beating. However, the movie we got was nothing more than a big, expensive super failure, and the disappointment was, of course, great. But no matter how I turn it, it’s better than Gunn’s Suicide reboot, which stands firm as the world’s most drawn-out, concentrated penis joke.

(8) Kick-Ass 2

I love Mark Millar and I really love Kick-Ass in comic book form. I also really, really love Matthew Vaughn’s now 15-year-old adaptation, which captures the essence of the comic perfectly. The sequel, however, does not. We’re talking watered-down, limp sludge that should never have been released. I remember the disappointment being enormous.

(7) Spider-Man 3

Spider-Man 2, in my opinion, is not only by far the best Spider-Man movie, it is also the third best comic book movie ever made. An ultra-colorful masterpiece that perfectly captures Doc Op and Parker in a way that no other film about Stan Lee’s spider-boy dressed in red has come close. Sandman, Venom, the dance scene where Parker goes emo – everything was bad here.

(6) Sin City: a lady to kill for

If you wake me up in the middle of the night and demand at gunpoint my personal list of the best comic book movies of all time, I answer Watchmen (Director’s Cut of course) as number one and Sin City as number two. Forever and ever. For an absolute eternity. That’s how much I love Robert Rodriguez’s absolutely perfect adaptation of my favorite teen comic books, Frankie Miller’s fantastic Sin City. As good as the movie is, how terrible I think the second one is where instead nothing works the way it should. If there is one film here that really should never have been made, it is A Dame to Kill For.

(5) Deadpool and Wolverine

The first Deadpool movie really emerged from that proverbial smoke after Ryan Reynolds’ unknown “leak” of proof-of-concept material that Fox rejected, which then became an online hysteria thing that the studio eventually just had to fund. In many ways, Deadpool was one of those movie productions that never should have existed, but once it was released, it proved to be a stroke of genius, tonally perfect, horribly entertaining, twisted and downright fantastic. The second, with a toothy cable in the middle of it all, was also good, though never as good, while the third was a minor disaster. When Reynolds finally got permission from Disney to have comic book friends (who always hated to love each other) Pool and Logan work together, it looked like the world’s best comic book movie Deadpool & Wolverine could be spelled Deadpool & Wolverine. But it wasn’t to be. Far from it. Miles away. Deadpool & Wolverine really wasn’t about anything, and the whole thing with how they jumped between random scenes with no real common thread or common denominator other than cursing and muttering made me bury my old man head in my hands more often than one.

(4) The Batman

It is true that I was extremely skeptical beforehand that he would be able to work in the role, the old Twilight prince Emo-Robert. But the fact that the extremely talented Planet of the Apes director Matt Reeves was behind the helm and wanted to dip into Fincher’s Se7en and make it a dark, gothic, heavy detective story with as little colorful heroism as possible sounded super appealing. Farrell’s top invented gangster Penguin also felt super promising beforehand, as did DP Greig Fraser. The end result was beautiful as hell. One of the best-looking films I’ve ever seen, thanks largely to Fraser and to the use of Epic Games’ effects suite. As a movie, it was a thin, hollow, echoing, half-baked Se7en knock-off where the surface in every scene was more important than the content, and as a Batman movie, it was almost as bad as the Clooney movie.

(3) Man of steel

I’ve never been a fan of Superman as a hero, and so have never read many comic books featuring the high-flying exploits of the underpants-clad alien, but I still thought Watchmen’s Snyder, with the help of Chris Nolan (screenplay), could make something of it. The casting of Crowe as father Jor-El, Costner as adoptive father Kent and Cavill as Superman seemed brilliant beforehand, and I was looking forward to a darker and more serious tone, like the one Nolan brought to his three Batman films. However, despite a decent start, apologies for the Superman suit and a solid portrayal of the character by Henry, Man of Steel was and is one of the biggest movie disappointments of my adult life. The focus was always on wickedness and spectacle rather than the characters, and it quickly became jumpy, messy and generally bad.

(2) Superman (2025)

It sounded pretty funny beforehand when Gunn started talking about wanting to make ultra-colored pulp with a 1960s tinge of his “new” Superman. I imagined equal parts Pixar’s Incredibles and Gunn’s underrated Super (2010), but ended up getting none of that. Superman (2025) felt to me as if we, the viewers, had been thrown into an ongoing Warner/CW series after nine episodes, and as if it was Gunn’s ambition to parody the entire genre, but changed his mind halfway through and instead jettisoned his own concepts and threw in all those parallel universes, black holes and total annihilation of the entire supporting cast that he himself has said he hates. For me, Superman (2025) is one of the worst films of the year and a huge, huge disappointment.

(1) Avengers: Endgame

For eleven years and across 22 films, Feige & Co had built, built, built and built the most ambitious and above all lush shared universe in movie history and when there would finally be a multi-billion dollar crescendo in the form of Endgame, it seemed obvious to me that we would see hours of battles between Thanos and his army versus Avengers, which I assumed would gather in large groups and take revenge for the purple big man’s ” snap.” I assumed Hulk would come out of his annoying impotence period and finally get revenge on both Loki and Widow, and I assumed Fat Thor was just a bad PR trick to confuse us fans ahead of time. It turned out that the Russo brothers and Kevin Feige had put so many dodgy ideas in motion that the end result of the grand finale of an eleven-year superhero journey would end up as the most expensive anticlimax in movie history.