Fantasy to "Reality": Hits and Misses

When one of your favorite fictional characters from childhood makes the move to a live action feature film, it's a bittersweet moment. Of course, it's exciting to get a chance to see one of these characters realized in the flesh. However, it rarely works out. Many of the movie manifestations of these heroes and villains are highly disappointing. Here's a quick run down of some of the hits and misses.

The Hits

Spider Man

Todd McFarlane had an enormously successful run as the artist of Spider Man in the late 1980s and early 1990s. His version of the character was a more lithe and agile Spidey that had a more "spidery" feel. This look was captured perfectly by the three Spider Man films.


Batman ("Batman Begins" version)

Batman is a dark, tragic figure. A "hero" fueled by the untimely loss of his parents and a desire for revenge. Batman has no powers, and part of the rationale of his costume is to strike fear into the hearts of criminals. Successful artists of the Batman comics over the years used plenty of shadow. Despite the fact that the movie version of Batman lost the blue and gray in favor of an all black batsuit, the Batman Begins version of Batman is spot on.


Iron Man

What is there to even say about this one? From what we've seen in the trailers, the new Robert Downy-inhabited Iron Man suit is a dead ringer for the armor that we've seen in the comics for years. I'm really looking forward to this one.

Honorable Mentions: Superman (both Reeves and Routh), Dr. Octopus (Spider Man 2), Venom (Spider Man 3)


The Misses

The Incredible Hulk

The Incredible Hulk is supposed to be an enormous, larger than life, destructive physical manifestation of rage. However, the unconvincing CGI creation for the 2003 film (sarcastically called "Gumby" by irritated fans) looked less rage filled, and more like the Hulk was grappling with a particularly tricky long division problem.

Snake Eyes

I've written about Snake Eyes in an earlier post, but to summarize: he's the ultimate bad ass. A mute ninja AND commando who also has a wolf as a pet. WHAT? I know. Awesome. Unfortunately, in the new photo released from the set of the upcoming GI Joe movie, Snake Eyes appears to be encased in some sort of vinyl fetishist's evening wear.


Wolverine

The Wolverine of the comic world is a hot-tempered, animalistic maniac. He wears a yellow and blue costume and has very odd hair. For the X-Men films, they wisely scrapped the brightly colored costume...but inexplicably kept the ridiculous hair. Visually, it doesn't work.


Dishonorable Mentions: The Punisher, Batman (of the Joel Schumacher variety - the costumes had nipples, people!), Daredevil, The Thing (from the Fantastic Four movie).