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.
In the aftermath of Star Wars, the comic-book/serial hero was revived in this heavily Star Wars influenced remake that was released theatrically and then served as the pilot of a tv series
Akira director/creator Katsuhiro Otomo returns with this live-action manga adaptation about a wandering exorcist. Very different to any of Otomo’s anime, this is much quieter and rooted in Japanese folklore but has some undeniably way out scenes
Painfully derivative US-made attempt to jump aboard the popularity of Wu Xia following The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. There are talented people involved who should have known better
Cheap and fairly terrible adaptation of the Marvel Comics superhero from low-budget director Albert Pyun. The superheroics look impoverished and Matt Salinger makes a dopey-looking Steve Rogers
Another of the mostly disastrous Marvel tv adaptations of the 1970s. Captain America is sidelined for much of the show. This does conduct the coup of casting Christopher Lee as the villain but criminally gives him nothing to do
Captain America’s first screen appearance was this 15 chapter serial, although about the only common element with the comic is the costume. On the plus side, the action and cliffhangers are good, while Lionel Atwill chews scenery in grand style as the villain
Laughably cheap and dull tv pilot version of comic-book superhero, which emerges less the Captain America of Marvel Comics fame than Captain America imagined as Evel Knievel superhero
The fourth Captain America film, where Anthony Mackie now takes over the shield and costume. And you really need to have been following MCU continuity to make sense of much of what is going on
Less Captain America 3 than The Avengers 3 – the entire film has been conceived as a massive superheroic punch-up. The results move with an exhilarating pace, but the Russo Brothers haven’t yet mastered Joss Whedon’s hand with character humour
One of the more disappointing of the Marvel Comics adaptations. Despite all the elements assembled, this never comes to life in director Joe Johnston’s hands and takes forever to get into action
Captain America’s second solo outing feels more like a Mission: Impossible film or an episode of 24 than a superhero film. Lots of Marvel continuity and fanservice and you are taken aback at how political it is prepared to be
The MCU offers up their first superheroine with very unexceptional results. A competent enough effort but DC’s Wonder Woman easily blows everything this tries to do out of the water
Film adaptation of the popular Casper the Friendly Ghost comic book ends up being like its title character – cute but insubstantial. Mostly this feels driven by slapstick scenes.
The first of the video-released sequels to the Casper the Friendly Ghost film, this is played down to children and comes with much in the way of slapstick
The second of the video-released sequels to Casper where this time he crosses over to meet Wendy the Good Little Witch as played by Hilary Duff
Studio Ghibli anime in which a girl saves the life of a cat only to be drawn into a world of cats where a cat prince decides she will be his bride
The long-planned Halle Berry-starring Catwoman movie proved a widely ridiculed bomb. The film throws out the comic-book Catwoman and instead opts for an approach the frequently collapses into the risible
Animated adventure given over to Catwoman that comes with an appealing sense of humour that easily erases all memory of the Halle Berry film
A rather hilarious live-action manga adaptation that depicts the inner workings of the human body in terms of a series of talking blood cells. Not dissimilar to the US-made Osmosis Jones
Adaptation of DC’s Hellblazer comic-book that gets the Hollywood treatment where all of the character’s background and look has been thrown out and the part badly miscast with Keanu Reeves
The Dc Comics character John Constantine was made into an animated web series that was compiled as this film. One is quite taken aback at how much more edgy and adult this is than most of DC’s animated offerings
Another of the last films made by Bruce Willis before his retirement. This one has a watchable central idea and is set around the idea of a prison for super-villains even if Bruce is not up to much
High-concept Jon Favreau directed film that has a winning title concept, overflows with star power and is made on a big budget. But the script feels like it had no idea what to do after setting up its title conceptual mash-up
The third of the Crow films has a more substantial story than the second but is killed by a director who has no feel for the atmosphere created by the other films
The third of The Crow sequels, starring a miscast Edward Furlong as a resurrected trailer park kid. This has a bad movie ridiculousness that killed the series off
Overshadowed by the tragedy of star Brandon Lee’s death on set, this is a beautifully dark and glistening Gothic tale of a murdered youth revived from the dead to attain vengeance against his killers. Several lesser sequels followed
The original The Crow is a cult classic. This long-planned remake from the perpetually terrible Rupert Sanders was an ill-advised move from every angle that gets just about everything from the mood to the conception of its character wrong
The first sequel to The Crow extends the look of the original into an amazingly lit Goth designer world. However, the plot (an early work from David S. Goyer) is no more than a rehash of the first film
The first feature film from Christophe Gans is a live-action adaptation of a manga about an assassin. Gans turns out a film that dazzles with the flamboyance of his action sequences
A comic-book adaptation about vampire wars in a modern East European war zone. A slick Underworld-styled vampire action film that has some interesting ideas going on inside it
Mario Bava directs a sublimely stylish and tongue-in-cheek adaptation of an Italian comic-book about a masked super-thief who delights in outwitting and taunting the bumbling authorities
One of the early efforts among the surge of Marvel Comics adaptations on the big screen in the early 2000s. A disappointing adaptation that feels more like a series of posed comic-book panels than it ever does a movie
Christopher Nolan brought the cinematic Batman franchise back to life with Batman Begins and here expands it into something amazing. The show is capped off by Heath Leder’s towering Academy Award winning performance as The Joker
The Dark Knight is a hard act to follow and Christopher Nolan almost does but not quite. The story keeps Batman off-screen for half the film. Tom Hardy’s Bane dominates the show, while Catwoman is surprisingly subdued
Superheroes have overrun screens. It is starting to seem a little too much when we now get an animated film about animal superheroes who form their own Justice League
Maybe the smartest and wittiest of the modern Marvel Comics adaptations, this takes every opportunity to deflate its own seriousness, not to mention frequently breaks the fourth wall with side-splitting results
Deadpool was an hilarious breath of fresh air amid the Marvel Comics adaptations. This sequel is even better, with the self-deflating, fourth-wall breaking humour even funnier and more slickly polished action
In his third cinematic outing, Deadpool gets into the multiverse game, creating a hilarious team-up with Wolverine and a crossover with an assortment of other cancelled Marvel franchises
Uniquely original Japanese horror film adapted from a manga concerning a book that kills anyone whose name is written in it. This has spawned several sequels and an American remake. The show is stolen by the supremely weird Kenichi Matsuyama
The English-language remake of the popular Japanese franchise from Adam Wingard. This essentially remakes the first film and is adequate in its own right but no patch on either of the original Japanese films
The second of the Japanese Death Note films, released almost back-to-back with the first. This is an even better film than its predecessor, delighting in the twists and turns in the games as Light and his nemesis L outwit each other
The Death of Superman is still is the top-selling comic-book title of all-time after 25 years. This was the first half of a two-part animated adaptation of the storyline, which brings it to life with a fair and reasonable telling
A remake of the great and underrated film and Italian comic-book about a masked super-thief who constantly outwits the authorities, this comes with style and wit to spare and strikes the note perfectly
The third of the new series of films based on the cult Italian comic-book about a masked super-thief. This entry goes back to offer us a Diabolik origin story
The 2021 Diabolik was a witty and stylish revival of the cult Italian comic-book about a masked super-thief. This was the first of the sequels, albeit with a different actor playing the title role
This is a standout serial based on the famous comic-book detective, featuring some of the best of all serial cliffhangers and action set-pieces, not to mention wonderfully creative super-science inventions
Feature film version of the popular comic-book detective that led to three sequels. Here the stylised look of the comic-book comes out resembling a regular crime drama but the film is not uninteresting
The Warren Beatty directed and starring adaptation of the popular newspaper comic-strip detective proved a flop. Beatty creates a highly stylised world and peoples it with an all-star cast but fails to invest the world with any depth
The third of the films based on the famous comic-book detective Dick Tracy, this is far more successful at obtaining the larger-than-life feel of the comic-book than earlier entries
Forgotten, unsold tv pilot based on the Marvel Comics sorceror superhero. Unlike other Marvel tv properties of this era, this has an imaginativeness in its reach for esoteric spaces that favourably compares to the comic-book original
Scott Derrickson acquits himself well taking on one of Marvel’s magician superhero. He replicates well the psychedelic esoterica that gained the comic book a cult following and Benedict Cumberbatch anchors the show perfectly
One among a handful of animated films based on Marvel Comics properties, this conducts a passable telling of the origin story of the Sorcerer Supreme
Doctor Strange was one of the better MCU films. Here Sam Raimi takes over in the director’s chair. This readily delves into multiverse themes but requires a major crash course in a plethora of Marvel tv series to follow
A model maker is hired to build a miniature of a famous actress’s house but then finds the model is capable of influencing reality. An ingenious premise that plays out with near-perfection
Not an adaptation of Bram Stoker but an anime based on the Marvel comic-book Tomb of Dracula (the same title that gave birth to Blade)
Disastrous and miscalculated live-action Hollywood version of the anime series. which turns the characters into just regular teenagers. Nobody involved seems to be making any effort.
A second film version of the Judge Dredd comic-book. More faithful than the Sylvester Stallone version, this comes with a satisfyingly visceral kick, yet a low-budget means that we see little of Dredd’s satiric future
US film adaptation of a cult Italian comic-book about a private eye who investigates the supernatural, this comes out like a weak episode of tv’s Angel where a potential worthwhile idea descends to lame humour
A spinoff from the film version of Daredevil, this gives the comic-book character of the super-assassin Elektra her own film. This does not have a very good rap but comes with some solid action scenes
Most classic monsters have undergone an adult movie interpretation at some point – here it is the turn of The Invisible Man
A Marvel Comics offering that is an adaptation of a team created by the greatest comic-book writer/artist of all time. On screen however, this emerges with strangely flat and moribund results
Luc Besson adapts a French comic-book – sort of a female version of Tintin – with uneven but generally amiable regard. The result is somewhere between an Indiana Jones adventure and the quirkness of an Amelie
After several other film incarnations that went nowhere, The Fantastic Four make their first appearance in The MCU. The film creates a wonderful retro world of 1960s futurism based on their original comic-books for them to inhabit
The film version of the comic-book that was made by Roger Corman intended to never be released. This has a reputation as a bad movie and is extremely impoverished adaptation but is more authentic to the comic-book than other big-budget films
One of the big hits among the spate of Marvel Comics adaptations in the 2000s. This has a very mixed reputation but brings the comic-book team to life in a reasonable effort
Despite all the hate this received, I am maybe the only person out there that liked it. It is three-quarters of a good film that strips the Four of costumes and tells a character-driven story about people dealing with powers
The 2005 Fantastic Four was an amiable entry among the Marvel Comics adaptations of the 2000s. This sequel substitutes lowbrow comedy and renders the great character of the Silver Surfer as a CGI cartoon
Brian Yuzna’s adaptation of the cult comic-book is a disappointment that has tamed down any of the censorship-pushing controversy the original had and emerges as no more than a standard dark avenging superhero film
A cultish Japanese Women in Prison film made with a wild ferocity as a female prisoner makes an escape and leads a team of women as they take revenge against men who seeks to abuse them
The live-action English-language adaptation of the Japanese manga/anime that comes off as a muddled post-holocaust action film that doesn’t know what it wants to be
Despite a poor box-office performance and a troubled production behind the scenes, it is a surprise what a good film this is, easily outstripping the last half-dozen MCU films put together
The original and greatest of all SF serial adventures and a huge influence on George Lucas. Despite the primitive effects, this still has a marvellously rousing imagination that stands up today. Two serial sequels followed
Dino de Laurentiis climbed aboard the Star Wars fad with this remake of the classic serial. Against expectation, the film’s campy tone and eye-popping sets and costumes work and it has become an audience favourite
The third of the Flash Gordon serials, not quite at the heights of the previous two but with a colour and exoticism that was head and shoulders above the other serials of the era
The second of the Flash Gordon serials, which relocates action to Mars following the popularity of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast. The film has a wonderful imagination that far outshines the tattiness of usual serial production values
The first X-rated animated film. Ralph Bakshi’s first film, taken from Robert Crumb’s cartoons, this is hilariously raunchy as the titular talking cat takes a strung-out but often sharply politicised journey through 1960s counter-culture
Disappointing attempt, based on a Alan Moore graphic novel, to depict the Jack the Ripper killings. The film feels over-produced and slides off the cliff by throwing its weight behind one of the more ludicrous and implausible Ripper theories
Live-action adaptation of the popular manga and anime series. Despite having a reasonable budget thrown at it and treating the source material with fathfulness, this looks awkward on the screen
The concluding chapter of the trilogy of live-action Fullmetal Alchemist films, this follows the manga’s storyline closely and brings the series to an epic conclusion
The first of two sequels to the live-action Fullmetal Alchemist. The first felt uninspired but this and the third film expand the saga and its storyline out with considerable depth
Film spinoff from the popular anime tv series that seems caught between a film and a tv episode. While the film reaches for epic scale, the usual run of power blasts, there is nothing that we haven’t seen before
Where the first live-action Garfield film approximated the original comic-strip and its focus on a cat delivering sarcastic lines, this sequel pitches everything down to the level of an inane children’s film
Big screen version of the massively popular Garfield comic-strips in live-action with a CGI talking Garfield. Here Garfield has been tacked onto a plot that feels assembled from every other talking animals film
Animated film spun off from the Garfield comic-strips in which Garfield emerges out into the real world. A cute premise that the film fails to develop
Modest Cyberpunk film set in a future where gene editing and hacking has become a norm. Bai Ling owns the show as the kick-ass fetish-gear clad heroine
This US-made live-action adaptation of the cult anime is a disaster on every level. The original’s haunting meditation on the dividing line between machine and human is diluted to being no more than a Cyberpunk action film
Mamoru Oshii’s follow-up to Ghost in the Shell where he makes a work that pushes both an artistic envelope at the same time as taking his philosophical fascination with the Cyberpunk world to a stunning level
Classic anime from Mamoru Oshii, a Cyberpunk work with a heroine who is a cyborg special forces officer, a work that delves deeply into the philosophical questions of what is human and what is machine
Film adaptation of Marvel Comics’ demon superhero emerges as better than it had the right to be. The risibility of the image of a motorcycle-riding demon hero is made to work through some vivid and way-out effects
Ridiculous sequel to the Marvel Comics adaptation with an indifferently written script assembled from cliches, forgettable action scenes and Nicolas Cage giving one of his silliest performances in ages
The live-action adaptation of a popular anime and manga, this takes place in an alternate history version of Japan where samurai fight following an alien invasion
An ‘illustrated film’ – essentially comic-book panels with voiceover narration. The story about gods inhabiting a burned-out future is far more ambitious than can be crammed into the film
This received a lot of bad flak, including from star Ryan Reynolds, but I’m not one of the haters. There is the terrible CGI suit and a miscast Reynolds but it does get a good deal of the comic-book mythos right
Animated film that tells different stories of various members of the Green Lantern Corps (including two stories from Alan Moore). Another of the worthwhile animated DC adaptations
The DC Universe Original Animated Movies conduct a solid and worthwhile animated retelling of the Green Lantern origin story, which delves into all the aspects of the mythos
A triumphal Marvel Comics adaptations that manages to mainline the spirit of the original Star Wars, while in in its wryly, self-deflating culture savvy suggesting a Star Wars rewritten by a 14 year-old Quentin Tarantino
Guardians of the Galaxy was an audience winner with its eccentric humour and effortless charm; this sequel feels buried under bloated production overkill where the charms of the original remain thinly drawn
Third of the Guardians of the Galaxy films, this successfully recaptures the nature of the goofy ensemble comedy caper that made the first film such a winner but seemed to be missing in the second
US-made live-action adaptation of a popular manga/anime about a power-suit superhero. Directed by two makeup effects artists mostly as a vehicle for their creature creations
Sequel to the live-action US-made adaptation of the manga about a power-suit superhero. As with the first film, there are lots of rubbery aliens and martial arts fights