Top 5 Worst Comic Book Movies

It's almost here! The most wonderful time of the year for movie lovers...The summer movie blockbuster season! And you know what makes good movies even better? Reflecting on the WORST movies before you see them!

This year, like the past few before, will be packed full of huge comic book adventures, including Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Guardians of the Galaxy. But before we feast our eyes, let's take a look at some of the dregs of the comic book movie universe.

5. Fantastic Four (1994, unreleased)
I'd love to put this one higher on my list, but just mentioning it feels kind of unfair. It wasn't released in theaters, and there's very good reason for that. This movie has had such a sordid, on-and-off production history that it has become somewhat of a joking myth to some comic fans, and even has a documentary being made about it's production life, and eventual death. I can talk about how bad it is until judgement day, but why not click this link and check out the original trailer for yourself? As we all know, the series was eventually rebooted about ten years after this train wreck, and is even seeing another reboot in 2017. This "movie" is a great example of mismanagement, and cash-whoring of franchises that deserve so much better.

Yeeeah...that's not conspicuous at all.

4. Daredevil (2003) / Elektra (2005)
Before he was "Batfleck", pretty boy Ben Affleck donned the cowl of the blind superhero Daredevil. The movie also featured Daredevil's anti-heroic love interest, Elektra, played by Jennifer Garner. The movie featured supervillain Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. The Kingpin, who honestly wasn't terrible, and even had Colin Farrell portraying Daredevil's arch rival Bullseye, who sported a big fleshy bullseye stuck to his forehead...*sigh*

For whatever reason, after the non-existent success of Daredevil, the movie execs thought it would be a good idea to give Elektra a movie of her own.An uninteresting spin-off of a failed movie's worst acted character? How could that NOT be fantastic, right? Well, at it's time the movie performed lower than any previously released Marvel movie to date. It did perform above it's budget, but not exactly with any impressive numbers. Reviews were extremely lack luster as well, and on a personal note, this movie SUCKED. The acting is crap, the action is crap, heck the whole thing could have been made into a half hour extra on the Daredevil DVD, that I still wouldn't have watched. Daredevil will actually see a Netflix-exclusive reboot of its own starting next year. Thank the stars they're not bringing him back to theaters again!

3. Steel (1997)
Aaah yes. One of Shaq's several 90's forays into the film industry. What I was not aware of when I first saw this as a kid is that this movie was actually based on a DC comics character, though the movie is absolutely nothing like the comics, with the exception of character names. So, the guy was a great basketball player, and Space Jam became a cult classic, so how could this not fail, right? ....Right?

Well,  the movie's entire box office gross totaled less than 1/10 of the movie's overall budget. But how?! How could a co-star like Judd Nelson (The Breakfast Club) not redeem this? Because the movie is CRAP. They somehow skipped any potential A-list comic characters, hell even the B-listers like Catwoman, and went straight to one of the newest, most publicly unaware heroes. And then they cast a non-actor to play him. And THEN they took away any comic book elements, and basically made this a black Robocop! I mean just check out that costume. It looks like Shaq really wanted to go to Comic Con, bought a Captain America mask from Target, and painted over it...and yet, I saw this movie...a few times.

What we wanted...

2. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)
The Silver Surfer. Fan-favorite herald of the great and mighty Galactus, the towering planet eater that every single comic book fan wanted to see portrayed on the big screen. Can't you just picture it? A 400-foot tall powerhouse who steps on anything in his path and eats entire planets?! How could this not be totally...awesome.....he's a cloud. He's a f$%&ing CLOUD?!?! No, seriously. Ya got us. He's probably just hiding inside the cloud or something, right? Oh...he's not?

What we got.

The original plan was that after this movie, Fox was going to make a Silver Surfer spin-off movie, and they were saving the "real" Galactus for that. The problem is, this movie bombed so hard (and rightly so, it was TERRIBLE!) that the movie never happened. I remember seeing this movie for the first time at an employee showing at the movie theater I used to work at. The manager that night was the biggest Fantastic Four fan I've ever seen, and he was speechless when the credits started to roll. And I don't blame him. The movie surpassed its budget by the skin of it's teeth, and no sequel or spin-offs were made. And nobody cared.

1. Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1998)
Nowadays everybody knows Nick Fury as being portrayed by Samuel L Jackson, but what most moviegoers don't realize is that the version portrayed in the newest Iron Man, Avengers, and Captain America movies is actually the "Ultimates" version of Nick Fury, whose comic book appearance was actually modeled after Samuel L Jackson, with the agreement that if a movie was ever made, Jackson was going to play him. (true story)

In actuality, Nick Fury is white, and in this movie he was portrayed by David Hasselhoff. No, really! This movie was made for TV, and was intended to be a pilot for a Nick Fury / S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show in the late 90's. Personally, I love this movie because of how fricking horrid it is. To me, the best part is that when they cast Jackson to play Nick Fury in the Avengers movie, David Hasselhoff actually spoke out and was very angry that he was not approached to star in the role. To be honest, he really does look the part. They did the costume design great for this movie, but the acting was...oh man it was so bad I really can't describe it here. You've got to see it for yourself here, in the movie's trailer. If you can find a copy, grab it, buy a six-pack, and enjoy!