Great Captain America movies. A blockbuster Batman trilogy. An Avengers film that’s almost universally loved. It’s clear that today’s comics fans live in happier times. An era where they can expect basic levels of quality in the superhero movies we get. In 1994, things were not always so great. Exhibit A: the Fantastic Four movie produced by Roger Corman.
Long before Marvel Comics started producing their own movies, they’d licensed the rights to many of their most famous characters to outside parties. Lots of these deals didn’t actually result in any films being made. The ones that did — a Dolph Lundgren Punisher, a super-cheesy Captain America — just didn’t have enough money or vision to tap into what made these concepts compelling. But, of all these pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe productions, the Fantastic Four film was the most painful.
A new documentary by director Marty Langford called Doomed catches up with the actors and filmmakers involved, showing how their hopes and dreams went terribly wrong. As someone who sat through that movie in my 20s, I’m eager to find out just how this trainwreck of a movie got made. As much as folks may not like, say, the latest Spider-Man movies, they can rest assured that things like special effects or camerawork aren’t going to be done on the cheap. The dark times are over. For now.
[via The Beat]
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23 responses to “How One Of The Worst Superhero Movies Ever Got Made”
That’s 1994? wtf.
The studio needed to make a film, or their rights to the property would lapse. Roger Corman was good at producing low budget films, so he was brought on to direct. Apparently Marvel bought up the distribution rights to the film in order to stop it being shown due to fears it would damage the brand.
It did let the studio keep the rights though, since the same person produced the 2004 film of the same name.
It may not have resulted in a good movie, but that’s some mighty fine and authentic-looking cosplay right there. Thing looks pretty cool in the top image.
I would have watched a feature length “Italian Spiderman” over this garbage.
Wasn’t Tobias Bluth’s GF in latest series of Arrested Development supposedly the lady that played Susan Storm in this delightful cinematic masterpiece? This film ruined her career, or so AD said!!
This ‘mystery’ gets solved at least once a month. It got made the same way most of the almost universally shoddy marvel superhero movies not made directly by Marvel got off the ground. Rush jobs to keep the rights. This one, at least, was honest about it and never meant to see release.
This I must see.
You should also see the David Hasstlehof Nick Fury movie.
You probably shouldn’t watch that one, actually 🙂
BS! If he’s going to sit through the Dolph Punisher movie, he might as well go the whole bad marvel movie hog
It was made here in Aus. and features the wild-haired guy from The Ferals as a little kid 🙂
I actually quite liked Dolph’s Punisher when I saw it in high school. More than I liked Thomas Jane’s version, for what it’s worth (probably not much… I thought the 2004 Punisher was terrible…)
I think Thomas Jane redeemed himself with his portrayal of the character in this short though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWpK0wsnitc
A Dolph Lungren Punisher movie filmed in Sydney no less! I loved the huge Valiants mascarading as cop cars.
it’s good. provided you like dodgy action films from the 80s.
best Punisher movie yet. Seriously.
Out of curiosity, how did you sit through this movie? It was never released… Officially anyway, some bootleg copies found their way around different conventions… i saw it about 3months ago and to be fair, aside from some shoddy SFX it wasnt too bad… the thing looked HORRIBLE…
Max Payne the movie… absolutely shattered after watching it…
And let’s not forget Street Fighter came out in 1994 as well…
…and that Mortal Kombat sequel. I got through about 20 minutes of that steamer before my eyes and ears began bleeding and the left side of my face went numb
I don’t have time to watch this and judge atm, but one important thing is costumes and staying true to the source material. A great example is Dr Doom. Dr Doom is one of Marvel’s best supervillains. A regal, power-obsessed, ego-centric “evil” Iron Man with amazing genius and robotic prowess(like Darth Vader) who also wants to save his mother’s soul from Hell, and a badass costume. This simply has not been done properly. The same goes for other characters like the Green Goblin.
I feel like Hollywood needs to embrace costumes fully; no huge changes. They kind of do it for some and it works fine(Hulk, Iron Man, most of Spider-Man)… and then they drop the ball with others(retard helmet on Captain America, no costume for Hawkeye, smurf Electro, transformer Rhino, Power Ranger/Hobo goblin, etc). I kind of like those FF costumes except they don’t NEED to be spandex(unstable molecules) and the Thing looks more like rubber than brick, with the non iconic face too… needs to be tweaked to look less campy but they’re fine otherwise. Also the script and acting is more important to whether it’s a good movie or not… like the Daredevil costume was pretty good, but the movie was bad, and the Days of Future Past costumes were pretty bad but the movie was great.
Most of the costume designs were taken from the Marvel “Ultimate” series
Say what you will, but the cast was much, much better picked for that movie than for the modern one. Even that shoddy The Thing costume looks more like its comic counterpart than the CGI one.
yes this movie was bad, but still no worse than the pile of crap that came out after