5: Superman Returns- Imagine this: Christopher Nolan gets the Batman Begins job, casts the perfect Dark Knight in Christian Bale, and gets the perfect villains in Liam Neeson’s Ras Al Ghul and Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow. Sounds like a great Batman movie, right? But there’s a twist: Nolan decides make his film canon with Tim Burton’s two Batman movies, and attempts to imitate the look and tone of those films, instead of doing his own thing. That’s exactly what went wrong with Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. It was all perfect; the director of X-Men, Brandon Routh as Superman, and John Doe from Se7en as Lex Luthor. But it’s biggest downfall was attempting to imitate a perfect film, which is also a snapshot of the late 70’s/early 80’s. This movie had no idea what it wanted to be; sequel, reboot, or remake. If Bryan Singer had just done his own thing, instead of trying to revive a series that had been dead since 1987, we could have had a kick-ass Superman reboot, which arguably could have lead to a much earlier start to the DC Cinematic Universe.
4: X-Men: The Last Stand- I can honestly say; I’m not sure what went wrong with this one. And before you scream “Brett Ratner,” go watch Red Dragon, it’s awesome. Brett Ratner should have been able to handle this movie (That being said, his decision to kill off many of the most important X-Men was one of the worst ever made in a CBM). All I can say is, I wish Bryan Singer had stayed on (as does every other comic book fan on the planet). His idea was perfect; split it into two parts, so they can properly tell the story of the Dark Phoenix. To be honest, I don’t think the Dark Phoenix should have even shown up in this movie. It could have been hinted at, or teased in a post-credits scene, but X3 should have focused on adapting Joss Whedon’s stellar “Gifted” story arc (something that was also butchered in this movie), and saved the Dark Phoenix Saga for a fourth film.
3: Green Lantern- You had the director of Casino Royale, you had Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan, you had Mark Strong as Sinestro, and you had Peter Sarsgaard as Hector Hammond. Oh, and this was also supposed to start the DC Cinematic Universe. HOW COULD YOU GO WRONG?! There has been plenty of talk about why this failed (lazy script, bad casting, boring story), so I’ll just say this: they tried to do too much, too fast. Green Lantern suffers from what I call the “Iron Man 2 syndrome.” This is where a comic book movie tries to introduce way too much story and characters in an effort to either, a) set up sequels, or b) set up a cinematic universe (Other sufferers of this include the Amazing Spider-Man 2 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine). It had Hector Hammond, the entire Green Lantern Corps, the introduction of the yellow ring, Sinestro, AND Parallax. What we basically got was a whole trilogy stuffed into one movie. If they had focused on just Hector Hammond, and, you know, NOT made him look ridiculous, they could have had a fairly solid movie that probably would have spawned a sequel.
2: Batman Forever- I’m going to preface this by saying; Joel Schumacher was initially a great choice to direct a Batman movie.
Ok, if your eyeballs haven’t melted from reading that seemingly insane statement, allow me to explain. Joel Schumacher directed the Lost Boys. That movie had a terrific gothic tone, but also had this sense of fun throughout it. It’s basically what would happen if you combined a Richard Donner movie and a Tim Burton movie. If Joel Schumacher had channeled the tone of the Lost Boys into this Batman movie, we would have had a film that felt like a natural continuation of the Tim Burton films, that also would have fit in with Warner Brothers’ demand for a more kid-friendly Batman. Michael Keaton probably could have been convinced to stay on (he left because he hated the tone that the series was heading for), and the film could have kept the villains’ performances more grounded and real.
1: Spider-Man 3- Sam Raimi knew what he was doing. I’m not talking about the mistakes in Spider-Man 3, I’m talking about the first two films. This guy GOT Spider-Man. He knew how to make a great Spider-Man movie, and what the made the character work. Then, along comes Sony, and Avi Arad, and they basically stick a broomstick in Raimi’s creative spokes. They messed up the whole movie because they wanted Venom. If Raimi had been allowed to do what he wanted, which was focus on Sandman and the New Goblin, we would have had a solid movie that could have possibly topped Spider-Man 2, and the series would probably still be going today. Instead, what we got was a mishmash of Raimi’s good ideas and Sony’s crap ideas, which resulted in a movie that really had no idea what it was even about.
Well, at least this movie set Sony on a path from which they could not recover from. Without Spider-Man 3, you don’t get the Amazing Spider-Man movies, and without those, you don’t get Spider-Man in the MCU. So at least some good came from this.