Look back on the history of comic book movies and you’ll see a plethora of successes and failures. From the old serials based on comic strips all the way up to the most CGI intensive summer blockbusters comic books have had a strong presence in the world of Hollywood.
I admit I am a film geek more than a comic book geek, but I love my comics and will love them until the day I die!
Now I wasn’t around for the early film serials of course, and i’ve unfortunately only have seen little of them. I recall seeing bootlegged VHS copies of the old Captain Marvel, Batman, Superman, and Dick Tracy serials and enjoyed them for their campyness at the time. However I wish I still had that VHS so I could look back on them with the eyes that I have now for film and film making.
My earliest memories weren’t of Christopher Reeves Superman, they weren’t of Dolph Lundgren’s Punisher, oddly enough my first memory of a comic book based movie was… HOWARD THE DUCK.
I know I can hear the collective groan coming from everyone, but this was a magical movie to me when I was 5 years old. Something about the talking crude smoking duck, seeing Ferris’s principal as a demony thing from another world, and the ever so exciting mini-plane action scene that worked for me. Now when I first saw Howard I was unaware that it was a comic book, and once I found out I searched in vane for Howard the Duck comics… once I did find them and read them– I realized how bastardized the movie was.
Looking back at the movie I see all its flaws, its acting, etc. but the one thing I can credit it for is getting me into understanding that comic books CAN be movies… least I thought so.
Now being this is all about Marvel I won’t touch too much on this but all I am going to say is i was OBSESSED with Batman, and when I saw THIS:
I was out of my mind excited… to sum up my theater experience of Batman… I fell asleep. This would be the first of many Tim Burton let downs. But thats another story.
Marvel would go through a bit of a lack of movies/good movies for a long while. The Punisher came out and changed everything around to near unrecognizable states (Even though its my favorite Punisher film to date…), Captain America had TV movies in the 70’s and another movie in 1991, nothing new was coming out and this had me go back in time and check out other movies based on comics…
Conan and Red Sonja – I knew they were books and comics, I never read them however — but I was excited to finally see a comic movie that looked really REALLY good… plus it had Arnold Schwarzenegger in it — how could it be bad?!
Luckilly it wasn’t, and Conan the Barbarian made huge strides in my outlook on comic movies, they didn’t have to be as goofy as Howard the Duck was… however in the Marvel Universe there would be 7 years worth of time between Captain America and Marvels next major film.
BLADE
Forget the lame 3rd movie, Blade and Blade 2 are amazing. Most peope didn’t know they were comics, and those who DID know they were comics were amazed at the accuracy of the film when it came to NAILING the tone and look of the comics. People sited Batman (1989) as the First film since Superman to really be a comic-to-film adaptation that succeeded. Frankly no. Blade is. Sorry.
2 Years after Blade is when the shit hit the fan… 2000 saw the release of X-Men.
At this point it was a full on nerdgasm – it was the perfect origin story for one of Marvel’s most beloved properties. I ended up seeing X-Men way too many times in the theater, and on DVD even more, problem with X-Men was the flaws that started showing up after repeat viewings. Two years after the rush of X-Men — it was outdone by the debut of Spider-Man!
Tommy’s absolutely 
favorite comic of all time is Spider-Man, so he was hyped for this as was I. The time around when Spider-Man hit theaters was a very hard time for me, in late 2001 I lost my Mom to lung cancer, and 2 months before Spider-Man was released I lost my father to the same fate. Tommy and his family moved up here for a while to help me through the times, and we all ended up seeing Spider-Man together.
It hit me hard.
At the time it was my definition of the perfect comic book film, and an amazing film in general. It resonated with me at a level I never thought it could… and it’s sad that when I look back on it all of the initial magic was lost.
Sadly the same could be said for the next 5 or so years of Marvel Movies…
Check back soon for part 2! Sequels! Flops! Tom Jane! and the rise of Marvel Films.
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