Let us be honest.
FANTASTIC FOUR (2015) is being dumped on an awful lot, apparently with cause, this week. Many are calling it “the worst comic book adaptation of all time.”
I haven’t seen it. Nor will I.
But in real-world terms it cannot be the worst comic book adaptation “of all time,” because the overall reaction people are having to it is that the movie sucks and that they hope that somebody will make a better Fantastic Four movie someday.
Brought back from the dead to watch it, Jack Kirby would no doubt shudder with irritation and say, “Well, they got that all wrong, how irritating.”
By contrast, imagine Wil Eisner’s reaction were he brought back from the dead to watch the version of THE SPIRIT written and directed by his good friend and self-declared protégé, Frank Miller. Were that gentle man capable of getting angry over matters of make-believe, something I harbor doubts about, he would say, “That little twerp just turned my signature creation into revolting sewage.”
Others have cited CATWOMAN as an iteration as foul, but did it destroy CATWOMAN as a popular character? No, Catwoman remains popular, and was indeed the one great element of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. The movie didn’t destroy anything. Nor did this one. The FANTASTIC FOUR still have a following in pop culture, sizable even among many who never picked up so much as a single issue of the comic book, and though this is a crazy-making admission to make, there will likely be another in less than five years. (Which is itself a statement about everything that’s gone wrong with the movie biz, but a testament to the hunger for a FANTASTIC FOUR movie that gets it right.)
By contrast, more, in terms of the character’s shadow, was riding on THE SPIRIT, and the movie failed it that much more egregiously. THE SPIRIT didn’t just fail the comics. It didn’t just trample them. It told the world that the trail-blazing character was an offensive piece of crap, and the world, bereft of is context, listened.
Other movies have done this. Comic book fans are well used to telling people who only know their favorite characters from the movies that Jonah Hex is really a brilliant character, that John Constantine is really a brilliant character, that The Punisher can be brilliant crime fiction, that Howard the Duck is a wonderful satiric creation, that League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is really a brilliant comic. It happens all the time. Some of these films destroyed any chance the comic book properties had of ever escaping their four-color roots, and entering the zeitgeist. Certainly, few films did as much to stamp down a then-cult character as HOWARD THE DUCK, but even that movie had isolated moments, lines, scenes, images, that captured what the morose mallard was all about, and there has been idle talk of bringing him back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in some fashion. He’s one good screenplay, one good miniseries, away from rehabilitation.
But THE SPIRIT?
THE SPIRIT is now known, to many people, as the rancid creation that Frank Miller made, and a punch-line — and if I happen to judge it more harshly than any of the other cited failures, it is because the depth of the violation is that much more offensive. To the world the Spirit is now the guy whose fight scenes involve the use of toilet bowls as clubs, and a black villain in a gestapo uniform. It is not just awful, it is actively revolting.
Really, the Fantastic Four movie can’t compete.
Comment By: Jerome Conner
August 11th, 2015 at 10:18 am
The 1970s version of Doctor Strange was pretty bad.
Comment By: Gerald Blackwell
August 11th, 2015 at 10:18 am
I’m one of the half-dozen people on Earth who genuinely enjoyed the TV movie with Sam J. Jones in the title role. I thought it really captured the rollicking, silly fun, the *spirit*, if you will, of the old comics. 🙂
Comment By: Frank Schildiner
August 11th, 2015 at 11:17 am
The Spirit was by far the most disrespectful comic film ever made. You were totally correct, nothing comes close to the
Monstrosity created by Miller.
Comment By: Rory Ford
August 11th, 2015 at 11:17 am
I loved Eisner’s The Spirit, am still a big fan of Miller’s early stuff, enjoyed the first Sin City movie quite a bit and have an almost pathological compulsion to watch all of a movie once I’ve started to watch it. I gave up on THE SPIRIT after 25 minutes. What I saw was horrendous.
Comment By: Michael Heisler
August 11th, 2015 at 11:17 am
Let’s not forget SUPERMAN IV. Not as horrifying as THE SPIRIT, but completely, utterly inept.
Comment By: Chuck Rothman
August 11th, 2015 at 11:17 am
I didn’t bother to see the movie, since I love the Spirit and it sounded like Miller hadn’t a clue about why it was such a great comic.
Comment By: David Vineyard
August 11th, 2015 at 11:17 am
No disagreement from me. THE SPIRIT was unmitigated crap, with no saving grace, an actual assault on Eisner and his creation.
Not only did it disrespect the character, it seemed designed to actually destroy any future use of it.
This is the prime example of a film that was not only wrongheaded, but mean spirited and unredeemed by any element in it. It was a franchise killer.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
August 11th, 2015 at 12:18 pm
“Not only did it disrespect the character, it seemed designed to actually destroy any future use of it.”
And he did that because he LOVED THE MAN.
Comment By: Brian Williamson
August 11th, 2015 at 12:18 pm
The SPIRIT movie seemed like an attempt to trash everything Eisner had achieved with the characte, but I’d prefer to give Millar the benefit of the doubt and just think of it as woefully inept.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
August 11th, 2015 at 12:18 pm
As was explained to me by someone who may not want to be named, “Yes, he loved Wil Eisner like a father and considered THE SPIRIT his formative influence, but he loved Wil Eisner like a father and considered THE SPIRIT his formative influence while being out of his mind on coke.”
Comment By: Barth Anderson
August 11th, 2015 at 12:10 pm
Hasselhoff playing double-roles as Nick Fury and a robot:
https://youtu.be/JNBRum247m0
Comment By: Paul Anderson
August 11th, 2015 at 1:19 pm
No mention of Howard the Duck?
Comment By: Samuel J Tomaino
August 12th, 2015 at 1:23 am
How about the 1990 theatrical and 1979 TV movies of Captain America. I never saw the former but the latter was much worse than the FF movie. In it, the new CA is told that the name Captain America was used in derisions. The young CA also says “Far Out”…in 1979!
Comment By: Edward Foy
August 12th, 2015 at 3:19 am
Albert Pyun’s Captain America is pretty good if you only watch the first thirty or so minutes. Once he goes into suspended animation and wakes up in the 90s with a soundtrack from the 80s, it all goes to hell. But those early moments set in World War II look great.