Did anyone see Fantastic Four last weekend? If you didn’t it was probably a net positive decision on your part. Even director Josh Trank was bummed out by the thing, taking to Twitter to point out he’d put together a better version of the thing a year ago.
Even then, Fantastic Four managed to make $25 million for its opening weekend. For the benefit of normal humans who aren’t total film obsessives, that’s about half of what the movie studio thought it would make in the first few days. Even so it’s still a lot when you get right down to it. More than some more deserving superhero flicks we’d care to name…
Kick-Ass
While Kick-Ass is more of a send-off of superhero cinema, it’s still based on a comic and the heroes still wear costumes. This is my list so I’m counting it, okay?
The hero of the story, Dave Lizewski, is kind of a sad-sack with delusions of masked vigilantism. He has a coherent story arc and the movie has a consistent, albeit outrageously violent tone. By the end there’s a feeling that our main characters – Dave (Kick-Ass) and Hit Girl – have grown as people and learned some lesson.
There’s also a bit where he uses a jet pack.
Despite being a cult hit Kick-Ass made less than a hundred million dollars at the box office.
The Punisher
Basically, don’t piss off Frank Castle. And definitely don’t kill his entire family. That’s a total non-starter right there.
I know that The Punisher isn’t a great movie (the difficult first hour would be better squeezed into half that time) but it’s got the charm of an old fashioned, understated 70s action flick. This movie is subtle and slow, but trust me when I tell you he’s going to get his revenge in a big way.
While not being wholly successful in what it sets out to do, it has just enough fun moments to make it worth a watch. Who doesn’t want to see the Punisher brawl Kevin Nash to the tune of La Donna È Mobile?
Not everyone apparently. The film only made fifty four million bucks when it came out in 2004.
The Phantom
Yes, it’s ridiculous. Yes, in that costume Billy Zane looks like a giant purple sex toy. I don’t care. The Phantom is the quintessential good bad movie. It succeeds because it knows exactly how ridiculous it all is and it just doesn’t care.
Billy Zane is the Phantom, a costumed hero with a secret cave on the fictional island of Bengalla. With the title handed down father-to-son Zane plays the twenty first holder, Kit Walker, in a 1930s escapade to stop a bunch of nominally evil pirates. There’s mercenaries! There’s a pool of sharks! There’s Catherine Zeta Jones!
Apparently I’m in the minority though, since the film only made seventeen million at the box office – less than it cost to make.
Hellboy
Ron Perlman plays a demon bad ass with a massive gun who fights supernatural Nazis and other paranormal threats? Sign. Me. Up.
If that doesn’t sell you on this movie then I don’t know what will. John Hurt also stars as the boss of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence, and Hellboy’s adoptive father. Let’s face it though, we’re watching this for Hellboy: he’s got a short temper, a thing for cats and hangs around with a merman and a pyrokinetic secret agent.
There’s some bad ass fight scenes and Hellboy has to take on a Cthulhu looking thing near the end. Highly recommended.
As seems to be the case with Guillermo Del Toro flicks Hellboy is an underrated gem, making less than a hundred million bucks.
Chronicle
Is this my way of cutting Fantastic Four director Josh Trank some slack? I guess so, but his debut 2012 movie Chronicle is a legitimately good piece of cinema. In fact it’s probably the most unique exploration of superpowers ever put to film.
Three Seattle teenagers discover something alien in a strange cave and the next thing they know they can move objects with their minds and even fly. Almost the entire film is delivered to us through the recordings of a cheap camcorder, but the found footage thing is really only distracting for the first fifteen minutes or so. With a gripping ending and some viscerally thrilling moments, this movie is probably why we should give Trank a second chance.
With a reasonably small budget Chronicle managed to make a little over a hundred million at the box office.
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