The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
A comic-book refers to anything where a story is told in visual panels with accompanying text (usually dialogue balloons). This is taken to refer to film adaptations of comic-books, newspapers strips, graphic novels or manga (Japanese comic-books).
The comic-book has been with us since the 19th Century. Its popularity became widespread in the US in the 1930s, sold as individual weekly or monthly issues or appearing in newspapers as daily/weekly strips of 3-4 panels. Since 1938 and Action Comics #1, which introduced Superman to the world, the comic-book has become synonymous with the Superhero, although by no means are all comic-books about superheroes.
The first comic-book adapted film was the silent short The Katzenjammer Kids (1898). The first genre work was the serial Flash Gordon (1936) based on the popular space opera newspaper strip. The 1940s saw a spate of adventurer hero and superhero Serials adapted from comic-books. The first comic-book adapted superhero was the serial Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941).
The 1960s brought a renewed interest in comic-books with the eye-poppingly colourful exploits of tv’s Batman (1966-8), which was followed by a number of works that took a similar campy vein. The 1970s began to treat the superhero and comic-book seriously beginning with the Christopher Reeve Superman (1978), while the Tim Burton Batman (1989) introduced the superhero to the dark, brooding graphic novel superhero. Both of these saw several adaptations in a similar vein.
The 2000s/10s brought the ascendancy of Marvel Comics and its shared interwoven continuity to the point it has eclipsed everything else at the box-office. The success has seen a number of other superheroic properties adapted to the screen in particular from DC Comics.
The other major source of comic-book adaptations have been in Japanese manga, which have been adapted both inAnime and live-action, which have been prolific producing superheroic, Cyberpunk, giant robots, tentacle creatures and Young Adult fantasies.
Although the superhero dominates comic-book adapted properties, it would be a mistake to assume that it is the only type of comic-book adaptation out there. There are plentiful other works from the stories of the boy adventurer Tintin; the gonzo historical exploits of Asterix and Obelix; the space opera adventures of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon; from comic-book detective Dick Tracy to the film noir homage of Sin City (2005); the mock gothic of The Addams Family and the dark Gothic of The Crow (1994); the fantastical historical retelling of 300 (2007); to adaptations of comics made for children like the adventures of Richie Rich and Casper the Friendly Ghost; talking animal comics like Garfield and Howard the Duck; to works made for adults like Barbarella and the stories from Heavy Metal magazine; and spy adventures like Modesty Blaise and the Kingsman films.
Darren Lynn Bousman is the director most associated with the Saw sequels and its Torture Porn excesses. His other films have been lacking. This comes with one of the most off the wall premises one has seen
One of a spate of films featuring flyer heroes that were popular in the era. Adapted from a comic-book created by an actual World War I flying ace, this is a thirteen chapter serial but proves rather crudely made today
The animated revival of the Addams Family was a mixed affair. All of the same creative personnel and voice talents return here for a sequel, which takes the Addams Family on a road trip
The big screen version of the 1960s tv series and Charles Addams’ cartoons is a highly enjoyable Hollywood Halloween Party, a chance for name actors to put on costume and ape life with a ghoulish, mildly perverse, moderately subversive spin
An animated film revival of The Addams Family. You feel that a PG-rated film sold to family audiences is a bit tame for the Addams’ dark humour, nevertheless this gets much of the kooky silliness.
The big screen Addams Family films ended with the death of Raul Julia. Subsequently the rights were sold to Saban Entertainment who made this cheap, terrible direct-to-video film with a new cast
Sequel to the live-action Addams Family film that reunites the same cast who fine-tune their roles, while the black comedy has an even more barbed bite second time around
A twelve-chapter serial based on the comic-book superhero who these days is known as Shazam. Often regarded as one of the best of all serials, this has some decent action scenes and cliffhangers
Steven Spielberg makes a solid effort to bring Hergé’s much loved comic-book character to life in this motion-capture animated effort. This plays free and easy with the original stories but generally gets the spirit of the comics right
Action film with Dave Bautista as a treasure hunter retrieving items in a post-apocalyptic world. Directed by a former stuntman, this plays much to the action element with little else of substance
The film that created the cult of anime in the West. Essentially a Cyberpunk version of The Fury, this has been construed as a series of climaxes that get progressively larger in scale until they almost reach a point of sensory overload
What was once a planned James Cameron adaptation of a manga about a cyborg girl is now brought to the screen by Robert Rodriguez but it is hard to say what an underwhelming disappointment the result is
Another of the DC animated films, based on a work that reinterpreted Superman. This is somewhat bitsy in condensing a 12-issue series to a 73-minute film but holds some moments of great writing
A French variant on The Quiet Earth adapted from a comic-book about a group of young people who wake up to find themselves alone in a deserted city
Sequel to the hit Korean film Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds about a journey of redemption through the afterlife. This is a much better polished effort than its predecessor
A massive hit in South Korea about a firefighter’s journey through the afterlife and the trials he must undergo. On the other hand, the director seems to be trying to turn a moral redemption story into a superhero film
The reasoning behind rebooting the Spider-Man franchise after ten years and only three films is a puzzle. That said, this offers an edgier origin story than Sam Raimi’s take and Andrew Garfield makes for a fine Spider-Man
One of the best among the modern Marvel Comics screen adaptations. All involved are at the absolute peak of their game and the balance of superheroic action, humour and tragedy makes you cheer at how well they get it right
While there is little doubt that Edgar Wright would have made a much better film, this emerges with an engaging likeability. Less epic superheroics, this plays out more as a caper comedy where a good ensemble and comedic playing carry the show
Ant-Man was a lightweight but perfectly enjoyable entry in the horde of Marvel Comics adaptations. This sequel has amplified the comedy element, seemingly with the intent of being the joker among the MCU pack
The third of the films devoted to Marvel’s miniature superhero. This ventures into multiverse themes works well when it comes to introducing the MCU’s big new super-villain who ended up never happening
The first anime film to be based on the manga, this is set in a future where the heroine is the head of a heavily armoured SWAT team fighting terrorists. Several different incarnations followed.
A dazzling reboot of the earlier manga/anime made with stunning photorealistic animation design and breathtaking action scenes that made this a benchmark for modern anime. Sequels followed.
A few years ago Aquaman was regarded as a joke among superheroes. James Wan dispels any notion of Aquaman’s wimpiness in a series of jaw-dropping effects sequences that propel this ahead of anything the MCU is doing at the moment
The sequel to the DCEU’s Aquaman reaches for epic effects spectacle, although the character of Aquaman undergoes a substantial shift and is now given more of a comedy playing
Fourth of the live-action films adapted from the Asterix comic-books with Gerard Depardieu as Obelix. This replicates the absurdist historical wit of the originals while poking fun at the foibles of the British
The second of the live-action Asterix films starring Gerard Depardieu, this is a visual delight that gets the comic-book’s nonsensical visuals down perfectly
The first of the live-action films based on the famous comic-books set during the Roman period, starring Gerard Depardieu who seems born to play the part of Obelix
The third of the live-action Asterix films starring Gerard Depardieu as Obelix. This faithfully replicates the look and visuals of the original comic-books as the two head off to the Olympics
One of several animated films based on the popular comic-book characters Asterix and Obelix made by Dargaud Films
The best among the films made from the Asterix comics. This delivers the characters and the visual humour the way they should be, plus leaves the sly satiric wit of the originals intact with side-splitting results
A CGI animated film based on the popular comic-book character Asterix. After numerous other adaptations, this was the first of the Asterix films to be written directly for the screen
One of the sillier among the animated Asterix films maintained at a high-level of slapstick and with badly dubbed voices that do not suit the characters
This fifteen chapter serial was the second ever Superman film. It is a vigorously entertaining run through the comic’s basics and features the first screen appearance of Lex Luthor
The live-action adaptation of a popular manga series, this comes with a completely WTF premise about humanity defending itself from an invasion by a horde of misshapen giants that like to bite people’s heads off
Sequel the demented Attack of Titan with its wild images of humanity under attack from mindless giants that bite their heads off, which was shot back-to-back and released a few months later
The culmination of one of the most ambitious cinematic exercises ever conducted, with Marvel weaving storylines through several films to finally merge here with flawless regard. The characters get far more depth than in all of their previous films
The first Avengers film came with a massive anticipation in seeing the characters come together and the snappiness of their interplay; here this seems more flat, while the rest is overrun by wall-to-wall action
Marvel conclude the cliffhanger they left Avengers: Infinity War on and offer up a bigger-than-big line-up, overspilling with just about every MCU character to ever appear on screen up to that point
Marvel’s third Avengers film, uniting almost every superhero under their roof, resulting in some thirty characters on screen and a plot that becomes a blur of changing locations and superheroic punch-ups
A real oddity among the Batman animated films – one where the basics of the Batman mythos are translated into Aztec culture at the time of the arrival of the Conquistadors
Sequel to the sarcastically amusing Bad Kids Go to Hell, which is set at the same school a few years later as someone starts eliminating people in detention
This promises the amusing idea of a sarcastic 00s take on The Breakfast Club but emerges as no more than a glorified episode of Scooby-Doo, in a plot about punishing the children of privilege
Enjoyably silly comic-book adaptation with a pneumatically-inflated Pamela Anderson playing the titular bounty hunter in an anarchic future. You cannot complain that this is a film that delivers exactly what it promises
Charmingly capricious and silly adaptation of the comic-strip with a wide-eyed Jane Fonda as the spacegoing heroine. Filled with some wonderfully naughty gags and a production and costume design scheme that goes to a gorgeously deranged excess
Batman’s first screen appearance in a fifteen-chapter serial. This is a dull, impoverished adaptation, which sees Batman and Robin rewritten in the service of the US government fighting a Japanese invasion force
A film spinoff from the popular 1960s Batman tv show starring Adam West. At half-an-hour twice a week, the series was an enjoyable piece of surrealistic zaniness but its appeals seem stretched at feature-length
Tim Burton borrows from the dark brooding graphic novels of the era and gives us a beautiful, stunningly designed film that digs deep into the psychological recesses of the masks and funny faces
The reboot of the Batman franchise post Zack Snyder returns to the Christopher Nolan conception with Robert Pattinson as an emo Batman who resembles The Cure’s Robert Smith. Not completely successful on all fronts but a promising start
The second of the animated Batman films, a Mr Freeze story timed to come out at the same time as Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin atrocity. This treats the Mr Freeze story with far more respect than that film
Not to be confused with the Joel Schumacher atrocity, this was the second Batman film ever made, a 15-chapter serial. This is mostly worth watching as a novelty in its laughable attempts to approximate the superheroics of the comic-book in comparison to modern counterparts
Possibly the worst film ever made on a big studio budget, Joel Schumacher’s follow-up to Tim Buton’s standout Batman films where he turns everything into an absurd Day Glo realm with a script for two year-olds, campy puns and badly overacting super-villains
Animated film featuring a team-up between the sons of Batman and Superman, which ends up being far more fun than you expect
This is more of a Suicide Squad than a Batman film. Based on the popular Arkham videogames, this a Justice League-type adventure but with super-villains where the emphasis is on dark humor and gleeful mayhem
Another of the DC Universe Original Animated Films. This is less a Batman film than a Batman Family film, a mixed effort that sidelines Batman for much of the show
After Joel Schumacher killed off the cinematic Batman franchise, Christopher Nolan successfully revives it, bringing back the dark, psychologically brooding superhero and telling a Batman origin story
Film spinoff of Batman Beyond, an animated tv series set in the future as a youngster inherits a hi-tech Batsuit from an aging Bruce Wayne. The film resurrects The Joker but fails to do anything interesting with the character
Tim Burton’s superlative duo of Batman films were wrecked after Joel Schumacher took up the director’s chair and turned the films into giant camp fests. Here he allows a madly overacting Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones loose as the villains
Adaptation of a classic graphic novel that imagines Batman back in the late 19th Century as he fights Jack the Ripper. This works rather well – in fact, better than the graphic novel it is based on
Taking a leaf from The Wachowskis with The Animatrix, DC went to Japan and hired a bunch of anime directors to deliver an anthology of six different animated Batman stories
Animated adaptation of the classic Batman comic-book story, this places the Batman/Cat Woman relationship centre stage to give her the most substantial workout of any film
Theatrically released film based on the 1990s animated Batman tv series. This allows the series to stretch its wings and do things it never could on tv, although the creation of a new super-villain never quite comes off
One of the better films spun off from the 1990s animated Batman tv series, introducing the character of Batwoman (although a different one to the comic-book incarnation).
This gets full marks for a WTF set-up, an anime that imagines Batman and most of the villains transplanted back to feudal Japan. There is fun to seeing the familiar characters reinterpreted in terms of Japanese imagery
A sequel to Batman Ninja, which offered an anime treatment of Batman. This gives us a bizarre alternate Yakuza-ruled Japan with versions of the Justice League working for them
Someone figured out Adam West and Burt Ward, Batman and Robin from the 1960s Batman tv series, were still around and put them in this animated film that replicates the look of the show and pays homage to its willful silliness
The second of Tim Burton’s Batman films is even more beautifully dark and glistering than the first, introducing Michelle Pfeiffer as a sizzling Cat Woman and Danny De Vito as a venomous Penguin who respectively own the show
An oddity among the animated Batman films. This seems less another Batman film – Bruce Wayne gets more screen time than Batman, for instance – than it does a homage to the 1970s martial arts film
Film crossover between the 1990s Batman and Superman animated tv series from Bruce Timm. The script does an interesting job in playing the characters, their secret identities and principal villains off against each other
The first of a two-part animated adaptation of the classic graphic novel ever written. The film lacks the same impact because, firstly, it is an incomplete story, and secondly, Frank Miller’s ideas have now become so much part of the modern Batman
The second of the two-part animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s classic graphic novel. The film is staged as a series of epic confrontations between iconic DC characters and written with a dark bite to emerge much more satisfying than the first part
DC Universe Animated film that is adapted from an Elseworlds story that offers up an alternate 1920s version of Batman who is fighting up against H.P. Lovecraft entities
Adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel, one of the most famous comic-book titles of all time. The notoriously cranky Moore need have no reason to shun this film version, which recreates his work right down to preserving his dialogue and replicating the set-up of individual panels
The first in a two-part adaptation of a classic Batman story, this shows great promise that lifts the DC Universe Original Animated Movies out of the comfortable middle ground they have been drifting through the last few years
The Long Halloween Part One was one of the best DC animated films in some time, now comes the concluding chapter, which alas fails to fulfill the promise that the first film showed
One of the best of the animated Batman films, telling the story of the overlooked Robin Jason Todd and his resurrection as the villain Red Hood, a film that has an adult tone and comes with immensely exciting action scenes
An animated Batman film that is essentially an extended commercial based on a line of toys wherein Batman fights super-villains that have an animal motif
It took DC Comics the better part of a decade to catch up with the massive success Marvel Comics are having on screen in crossing their characters over. Zack Snyder comes to the party offering up THE biggest headline double-bill in superherodom
A film spinoff from the animated The Batman tv series, this offers a great title match but proves a disappointment. Moreover, it has to twist comic-book canon to make the plot work
Second in the trilogy of animated films dealing with Bruce Wayne’s son Damian who becomes the new Robin – this also adapts the massive Court of Owls crossover event, which provides a fascinating new nemesis for Batman
Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, an animated homage to the 1960s Batman tv series reuniting Adam West and Burt Ward, was a quirky delight. This is a sequel in the same vein, although more a case of a joke that tires in the retelling
Animated adaptation of the classic Frank Miller graphic novel, this is dark, psychologically brooding, far more adult than the children’s niche it is sold to, and with producer Bruce Timm and his team at the top of their game
Japanese film clearly inspired by Battle Royale that has a wonderfully appealing premise where a high school baseball game that has been turned into a deathsport
Disney animation and Marvel Comics come together; Marvel loses and most of the comic-book is tossed out the window and this becomes a simple story about a boy and his robot story before settling into familiar sueprheroics
The DC comic-book Birds of Prey is hijacked to become a vehicle for Harley Quinn, the breakout character from Suicide Squad. Margot Robbie gives the impression she has zero interest in making a film for comic-book fans
An entry from the abortive attempt to create a DC Comics shared universe. Dwayne Johnson takes on the role of the DC’s anti-hero in a film that is far more fun than the recent Marvel offerings
The most successful Marvel Comics adaptation of all-time up to that point. Enjoyable if I fall short of calling it the best Marvel film ever and its receiving a nomination for a Best Picture Academy Award
The MCU’s sequel to Black Panther. This offers the peculiarity of a work in which the superhero of the title never actually appears and is instead set around his absence following the death of Chadwick Boseman
The first MCU film to emerge since the Great Pause of the pandemic, the question is whether one of the least interesting characters in The Avengers can carry a film all by herself
Nobody knew it at the time but this was the beginning of the huge surge of Marvel Comics adaptations on screen in the 00s/10s. This distills the basics of the vampire hunter comic-book down into a smart, kinetic action film
Blade was a solid vampire/action film but the sequel is a quantum leap over that, a visually kinetic and immensely exciting comic-book of a movie thanks to the employment of Guillermo Del Toro in the director’s chair
Takashi Miike’s 100th film, the adaptation of a manga about an immortal samurai. Miike bookends the film with awesome sequences with his hero battling hundreds of opponents but the film in between drags
Third of the Blade films with Wesley Snipes. As director, series screenwriter David S. Goyer emulates the same exhilarating, kinetic moves that Guillermo Del Toro infused the second film with, while the script zings with his wryly cynical dialogue
The live-action adaptation of a manga about a teenager who inherits the powers of Soul Reaper and is thrust into a battle against monstrous supernatural entities
That starts out seeming a standard mindless action film in which Vin Diesel is resurrected as an augmented super-soldier only for everything we assume to get turned on its head in interesting ways
Another of the gonzo Japanese splatter films about a schoolgirl who tries to go about her schoolday while fighting off mutant cyborgs with the chainsaw she carries
The DC Comics superhero Blue Beetle, one of the Teen Titans, is given his own film. One of the more quickly forgettable entries among DC Comics’ attempts to compete with the MCU
A smart, intelligent tv mini-series that conducts a murder mystery that ranges between the 1890s and 2050s, before arriving at an ingenious and clever SF explanation
A film about post-apocalyptic bounty hunters pursuing bankers, this was an Occupy Movement era film and hits a deliriously unserious comic-book tone
Disastrous Brooke Shields starring film adaptation of the famous comic-strip about a girl reporter. Nobody involved is taking the show seriously and everything is blown into camp farce.