March Madness: Comic Book Movie Edition.
In the spirit of March Madness and the comic book movies which feature our favorite heroes facing off soon to be released I decided to change it up a bit and have a tournament for comic book movies themselves. I started off by typing up the 16 best comic book movies I could think of excluding prequels and sequels that focus on the same characters. In order to keep it a mix of personal bias and objective public perception I averaged their Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, and Flixster scores together to seed them in a bracket.
Round 1 upset alert:
"Superman" vs. "Hellboy."
Richard Donner’s "Superman" is a classic for sure but it doesn’t measure up to Guillermo Del Toro’s cult classic "Hellboy." It doesn’t get enough praise and is already aging better than Superman ever did.
Results:
Moving on to Round 2…
Upset alert:
"Guardians of the Galaxy" vs. "Avengers."
This is an underdog story if there ever was one. No one expected "Guardians of the Galaxy" to be as awesome as it was whereas "Avengers" built the hype through several franchise movies which focused on several of the Avengers individually. For this reason I’m going to give the edge to "GOTG."
Results:
On to the Final Four!
Round 3:
"The Dark Knight" vs. "Days of Future Past."
While I think "Days of Future Past" is a great Bryan Singer movie, it isn’t the best X-Men movie. Singer got rid of the yellow suits we loved in "First Class" and, once again, made Wolverine the main character unnecessarily. Meanwhile Christopher Nolan’s "Dark Knight" redefined the genre and how the general populace saw Batman.
"Iron Man." vs. "Guardians of the Galaxy."
"Guardians'" unexpected success falls short against the movie that kick-started the entire Marvel universe. "Iron Man" took a superhero no one knew or cared about and made him the leading man of an entire franchise. "Guardians'" success was only possible through that of "Iron Man"
Results:
On to the ‘Ship!
"The Dark Knight." vs "Iron Man."
The two movies that began the golden age of comic book movies. If in 2008 these two didn’t have the success they did, we would not have Batman and Superman on the big screen with Justice League around the corner, and my grandmother would not be asking me when the next "Avengers" comes out. Thankfully, they did. Ultimately, this comes down to what did the most for the genre and movies overall. I have to give it to "Dark Knight" here and I think its seed speaks for itself. It was a 90 while "Iron Man" was an 85.75 with "GOTG" close on its heels with an 85.5. "Dark Knight" showed us directors could put their personal visions into comic book movies and "Iron Man" showed us there’s a formula you can follow to get box office success time and again. Is the formula great? Yes. Does it hold a candle to this scene from the "Dark Knight?" No. No it does not.
Final Results:
Also, since it’s March Madness, let's go Big Blue Nation!
