By James Nelson
With Fantastic Four being an absolute dud and with a new spin-off for a well established comic book brand (The Walking Dead in case you didn’t know), I figured now would be as good a time as any to talk about the WORST offenders.
Batman and Robin
1. Arnold Schwarzeneggar was paid $1 million dollars per minute of screen time. Though I don’t know if that was verbatim in the contract, it certainly was what came out in the final product. It’s also almost a million dollars per ice pun.
2. This movie almost starred David Duchovny as Bruce Wayne when Val Kilmer had to bow out to film The Saint.
3. There was going to be a Batman Triumphant and Nightwing movie to succeed Batman & Robin. This is probably why we’ll never see Robin again on the big screen (except to be brutally murdered).
4. This movie was likely also the reason Superman Lives was canceled.
Elektra
5. Up until recently, this was the worst rated superhero adaptation (10% on RT and B with CinemaScore). Batman and Robin have 11% on RT but a C+ on CinemaScore.
6. Even though the character is from Daredevil, all the promotional material emphasized a connection to the X-Men movies. Cause you know, facts.
7. There is only a two letter difference between Elektra’s last name Natchios and “nachos.” This may not be interesting, but it explains why I have such a hard time pronouncing her name (and I took Greek).
Catwoman
8. This is the only comic book movie ever made that has NOTHING to do with it’s source material. She’s not even in Gotham City! It’s New York.
9. Halle Berry’s stunt and body double is a dude.
10. One of the biggest box office disasters of all time. It had a budget of $100 million and didn’t break $50 million in it’s lifetime gross.
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
11. The movie almost saw the return of Richard Donner to the director’s chair, but he declined and Wes Craven was picked, although he left after creative differences with Christopher Reeves. Richard Lester was also offered the job, but also declined.
12. The movie had it’s budget slashed in half just before filming started, leaving only $17 million to make the movie. They made up for this by reusing the same shot of Christopher Reeves flying OVER AND OVER again.
13. The movie was originally cut at 136 minutes runtime, but was cut down to 90 for two reasons, 1) There were originally two Nuclear men, the first of which looked so bad on screen due to poor FX that he was cut entirely. 2) The production company, Cannon Group, had it cut to 90 minutes so that they could have more showings.
14. This isn’t surprising to anyone who knows this, but Christopher Reeves co-wrote this stinker, and he credited it for nearly ending his career.
(To see what we think of the original Superman movie, check out our review here.)
Howard the Duck
15. This film was produced by George Lucas after Return of the Jedi, and had just finished building Skywalker Ranch. Reportedly he was in debt from the construction and after this movie bombed he began selling off parts of his movie making empire. One piece of this was a division of ILM that would become Pixar. So without Howard the Duck, we probably wouldn’t have Toy Story.
16. The Howard the Duck suit the actors wore during production cost $2 million by itself. Yeah. Just think about that for a minute.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
17. Aside from having one of the longest titles in superhero movie history (soon to be surpassed by Superman vs. Batman: Dawn of Justice), it was co-written by David Benioff, one of the show runners and writers for the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones.
18. The movie was also plagued by rewrites and by studio interference. Reportedly one time when the director, Gavin Hood, left the set a studio executive came in and repainted the set making it a lighter color.
19. Also the only X-Men movie in which Magneto doesn’t appear (Magneto was in the post credits of The Wolverine).
(To wash out your mouth with something awesome, check out the Deadpool trailer here.)
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