With a plot that defies any attempt toward description, it’s the height of camp, featuring incredible performances by Cesar Romero, Frank Gorshin and especially the great Burgess Meredith, as the Joker, Riddler and Penguin respectively, in a team-up to take down the caped crusader and his dopey ward (Burt Ward, that is). The Adam West Batman film offers the sort of gleeful insanity you need to inflict upon modern comics fans who are unaware of its existence, because once you’ve seen it, you’ll never forget it.
TIME MAGAZINE SIDENOTES MOVIE
It may have been Craven’s first bid for big, blown-out studio success, but Swamp Thing makes it clear the director’s ambition demanded something meatier than a movie starring a stuntman in a crappy piss-green rubber suit. A Frankenstein story with guns and good one-liners, the film touches on notions of environmental influence and human nature and the amorality of science in between karate chops (of which there are many), explosions and grotesque body horror. That he also cast Adrienne Barbeau in the part of Cable, a relentlessly badass government agent with a relentlessly badass name, means that for Craven to only craft an homage to campy creature features wouldn’t be enough. Swamp Thing draws a straight line from Universal Monster movies to ’70s superhero comics, giving Wes Craven-two years before Nightmare on Elm Street-a surprisingly bright and colorful marshland to create something violent and goofy within. That’s not because some are not worthy-especially given the movie quality issue mentioned at the top-it’s just an area we’d rather get better versed in before pouring into this list.
Also absent from this list is any consideration of foreign superhero films. (Zane’s costume combined with the Skulls of Touganda do the trick.) Admittedly, the lines gets blurry. And it’s also why some films with pulpy characters like Zorro, Tarzan and Conan are not, while others like The Phantom are. These criteria are why meta-commentary films like Kick-Ass and Super are not on this list. To be considered for this list, a film must possess at least two of the following three qualities: 1) It must involve costumed shenanigans, 2) It must involve a superpowered protagonist and/or 3) the protagonist must exist in a world where the supernatural/extraordinary is demonstrably present. (2018 was a very good year for the genre.)īefore we dive in to the updated list, some criteria. Meanwhile, this latest list, updated after just a year of new films, boasts two new entries in the top 3 and two more in the top 20. Cinematic recency bias can only do so much, and the competition is stiff. It would be an unusual, near unprecedented event for our Best westerns, noirs or even science fiction movies to suddenly have a new movie appear in the top 10. It turns out it’s much easier to argue for or against a top 10 film’s exact placement (and frankly, compelling arguments could be made for almost any of our top 5 as deserving the #1 position), than weighing the relative “merits” of Masters of the Universe, Swamp Thing and Elektra.īut that Golden Age mentioned above? That also means this list is rapidly evolving due to the flood of new films. In fact, the real challenge was choosing amongst the dreck (some of it beloved dreck!) that would fill out the bottom half. When we first compiled this list a few years ago, the pickings got slim after 40.
As a result, while curating a 100 Best Westerns of All Time or 100 Best Documentaries of All Time list requires the exclusion of arguably good films to select the best 100.
Though superhero comic books may have started to make a dint in popular culture 75 years ago (give or take), technology only crossed over from hindrance to enabling force in the last 20 years or so. The niche just lacks the pedigree of its fellow movie genres. There’s no real contradiction at play here. Second, it’s still fair to say there are plenty of superhero films are not that good. First, this is the Golden Age for such films, a decade where technology, long-unrequited fandom and surging popular awareness have all combined to thrill moviegoers and make Hollywood billions of dollars. Two things quickly become evident when putting together a list of the 100 Best Superhero Movies of All Time.
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