Superhero movies are all the rage in the early 21st century, but it’s hardly a new phenomenon. In the earliest days of superhero comics, they were quickly adapted into serialized formats: live action movie serials, radio dramas, and animated shorts. Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel—they all appeared in one or more of those forms in the late 1930s and 1940s.
It wasn’t until 1951 that the first feature-length film was released: Superman and the Mole Men, starring George Reeves, who would go on to star in The Adventures of Superman, the first hit TV series based on a superhero. In 1966, as a tie-in to the hugely successful Batman TV show starring Adam West, a feature film was released, bringing the Dynamic Duo’s colorful criminals to the big screen to face off against.
Then in the 1970s, things got crazy…..
4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch is a new weekly feature here on Tor.com that will take an in-depth look at all the live-action superhero films (both theatrical releases and TV movies) that have been made over the decades.
We’ll start with the aforementioned Superman and the Mole Men and the 1966 Batman next Tuesday, and then each week we’ll be back with another movie or group of movies. Assuming the current Hollywood release schedule holds, there will be 120 films to cover between 1951 and the end of 2018, so we’ve got lots and lots of heroing to look back on—and look forward to.
We’ll examine Marvel’s TV movies of the 1970s featuring Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, and Captain America. We’ll look at the Christopher Reeve Superman films and the Keaton/Kilmer/Clooney Batman films. We’ll wade through the B-listers who got their own films in the 1980s and 1990s, including Supergirl, Swamp Thing, Howard the Duck, Steel, Spawn, and Nick Fury. We’ll dig up the unreleased 1990s disasters featuring the Justice League, the Fantastic Four, and Captain America. We’ll look back at Marvel’s first attempt at a cinematic universe in their three Hulk movies of the late 1980s, as well as other movie series featuring the Crow, Blade, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, not to mention the three separate attempts at a film starring the Punisher. We’ll take a gander at the spate of independent comics turned into movies in the 1990s and 2000s starring the Mask, Tank Girl, Barb Wire, Mystery Men, Witchblade, and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, as well as pulp heroes the Shadow, the Rocketeer, the Phantom, and Judge Dredd.
And once we hit the 21st century, we’ll really kick it into high gear: the two sets of Spider-Man films; the tortuous history of the X-Men films; poorly received versions of Daredevil, Elektra, Catwoman, the Hulk, Constantine, Man-Thing, Green Lantern, Ghost Rider, Jonah Hex, and the Fantastic Four; better-received adaptations of V for Vendetta, Kick-Ass, and Hellboy; Christopher Nolan taking on Batman, Zack Snyder taking on Watchmen, Bryan Singer taking on Superman, and Frank Miller taking on the Spirit; return engagements for Judge Dredd and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; plus, of course, the Marvel and DC Cinematic Universes that have come to dominate the hero-in-cinema landscape, the former since 2008, the latter since 2013.
It ought to be a fun ride. Looking forward to rewatching these 120 films with you all….
Keith R.A. DeCandido is the author of more than 50 novels, more than 70 short stories, a mess of comic books, and lots more, including two novels and two short stories starring Spider-Man, a Thor trilogy, short stories featuring the Hulk, the X-Men, and the Silver Surfer, and the Super City Cops series of novels, novellas, and short stories about police in a city filled with costumed heroes and villains. You can read his blog, follow him on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, or read the various things he’s written for this site, including rewatches of the original Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Stargate, and Batman ’66, as well as pieces on Doctor Who, Wonder Woman, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist.
Keith, Pretty freaking excited over this series! This should prove a worthy replacement for my weekly Star Trek rewatch fix. Glad to see they gave you something else to do :)
Thanks, Jason!
BTW, I will not be covering the movie serials. I had to do something to keep the number manageable, and to that end, I’m only doing feature-length films. It might be worth tackling the serials at some point, but not in this rewatch………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Outstanding. Keep up the great work, Keith.
Awesome! I’m excited to hear about stuff I’ve never seen, and get your take on what I already have seen.
Cool, glad you’ll keep on giving us interesting reading and discussion material.
This is going to be great, Keith! I work at DC Comics, so I’m really looking forward to your coverage of all these movies and shows.
So excited for this!! The Star Trek rewatch was – of course – amazing, but with this re-watch, I’ll be exposed to many movies I’ve never seen. I was all set to be depressed that my weekly dose of your reviews was coming to an end…and then I see this. Thanks for committing to this! (Particularly interested in reading your reviews of the Reeve Superman movies – SI & II remain two of my very favourite superhero movies to this day).
I’m excited for this – I’ve probably only seen a fraction of these movies but it will be fun to tag along when I can :)
Clay: I’m just doing movies, not shows. And thanks!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Looks like I finally have an excuse to schedule myself to watch some of these films that I’ve never seen. I’ve never watched the George Reeves Superman, or Howard the Duck, to say nothing of the 1970’s Marvel adaptations. 120 is a tall order. Fortunately, I’ve seen many of the films beforehand (especially over the past 30 years). This ought to be fun.
I’m curious to see just how many TV movies you cover. You mentioned doing the movie-length Spidey, Cap, and Doctor Strange pilots from the ’70s, as well as the Witchblade TV-movie pilot, but there are a number of other movie-length pilots. The Incredible Hulk began with two TV movies before becoming a weekly series; will you include those, or the three revival/backdoor-pilot Hulk movies (the second of which includes Stan Lee’s first live-action cameo)? For that matter, there are the two Wonder Woman pilot movies from the ’70s, the Cathy Lee Crosby one that didn’t spawn a series and the Lynda Carter one that did.
What about the 1993 TV movie Model by Day, with Famke Janssen playing an indie comics superheroine character (who was black in the comics)? What about the Generation X TV movie, or the first Painkiller Jane pilot movie on the Sci-Fi Channel? Or the direct-to-video Vampirella movie?
When you get to Batman & Robin whatever you do save your sanity.
Looking forward to this!
Does the Shadow count as a superhero? There were some feature movies (The Shadow Strikes, International Crime, possibly Invisible Avenger) about him. Does the Scarlet Pimpernel count. He had some movies starting in the silent film era? I’m not trying to find more work for KRAD, really, but it would be kind of fun to see some delving into the earliest of those caped and masked crusaders
to reach the silver screen….
@14/swampyankee: I’d put characters like the Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro, the Lone Ranger, and the Shadow in the “superhero antecedent” category. Also add Doc Savage and maybe Tarzan, John Carter, and Flash Gordon. These were the characters that inspired the creators of the first superheroes. Superman was largely based on Doc Savage and was also an inversion of John Carter (an Earthman who effectively had superpowers in the lower gravity of Mars). Batman started out as a knockoff of the Shadow — in fact, his debut story in the comics was pretty blatantly plagiarized from a Shadow prose tale. I guess maybe that’s why Keith is including The Shadow?
Anyway, it seems like the brief of this review series will be films based on comic-book superheroes specifically, or comic-strip in the case of the Phantom. So characters originating on prose or radio wouldn’t count. (I assume that would exclude the Green Hornet feature film, although there have been a fair number of GH comics over the decades.) Which would also exclude superheroes originating on television, like the Power Rangers.
Hopefully, you will address the execrable Hulk TV Movies that featured Catburglar Daredevil and the Nordic Avenger whose TV portrayal left my eyes feeling “Thor”…
@15, Christopher, I missed the Shadow, possibly because remember hearing, lo, these many eons ago, someone intoning “What evil lurks in the hearts of men….” well before Alec Baldwin played Lamont Cranston. The first Shadow movie was in 1938.
I know you have limited time and will not be doing movie serials, but can you squeeze in the WWII Fleischer Superman films? Not only some of the best portrayals until (Chris) Reeves but interesting from a social standpoint (their use as “patriotic war” films). Lois as a brave and intrepid reporter, not a foil for Clark! And most importantly no criminals throwing empty guns at Superman’s chest!
Keith, when it comes to Superman II, will you be reviewing the theatrical version, the Donner Cut, or both to compare and contrast?
@@@@@15. ChristopherLBennett, Now I want him to include John Carter :)
@15 CLB
Yeah, those guys are great adventures to read and to watch, but they are definitely in what Tvtropes calls the “Proto Superhero” Genre. They are almost there, definitely a step up from the folk heros of oral tradition, but not quite the superhero-classic we know and love.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProtoSuperhero
Personally, I’m just upset that there isn’t a “Return of Captain Invincible” comic book just so we can have that movie in the list. It is a special kind of brilliant that ought not to work but somehow does.
Jason: I will probably mention the Donner cut — I’m going to be doing all four Reeve Superfilms together, so that will certainly come up.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This sounds really fun. I love George Reeves as Superman and have been wondering if you’d ever do the TV series? I am not old enough to remember the first runs but have seen them in syndication or during some marathons at a local TV station. (They even featured appearances by Noelle Neil, Phyllis Coates and Jack Larson!) The mysterious death of George Reeves would be an intriguing subject for a post, too.
What I’d really love to see on Tor.com is a rewatch of my favorite Superman incarnation – Lois and Clark! As much a romantic comedy as a superhero series, I think it probably had a strong female audience and would prompt some interesting discussions. The quality of the episodes varied wildly because of production issues but there were some really good episodes I’d love to see discussed.
*Crosses fingers for 3 Dev Adam*
It’s weird.
Oh, this is going to be emotionally painful for me. So many of the movies and TV-movie on this list, I watched because I believed they were the closest thing I’d ever get to a decent superhero movie. I’m so, so glad to have been wrong. Yet another instance where, if I could bring teenaged me into the present, he’d die from shock.
Yes, I admit it: I paid money to see Howard the Duck in the theater. I’ve been waiting for the reboot ever since Disney got the rights to both Marvel and Lucasfilm.
Definitely excited, I’m not at all familiar with these ’80s Hulk Movies mentioned We’ll look back at Marvel’s first attempt at a cinematic universe in their three Hulk movies of the late 1980s and Google is coming up empty on that so that’ll be interesting to read about, too.
So count me in, I’ll be anxiously awaiting and trying to watch along with you either via Netflix or my own collection. That raises an interesting question though…How do YOU manage to get a hold of all these movies? Superman vs Mole Man…that seems like it might be a tough get, lol.
I am so hyped for this, you don’t even KNOW. I could ramble about superhero films for hours. Thank you for doing this, I’m excited to see each article!
@25–The three Hulk films are made-for-TV followups to the TV series:
The Return of the Incredible Hulk: The Hulk teams up with Thor, in a failed backdoor pilot for a Thor series.
The Trial of the Incredible Hulk: The Hulk teams up with Daredevil, in a failed backdoor pilot for a Daredevil series.
The Death of the Incredible Hulk: Exactly what it says on the tin. Apparently there was supposed to be another movie resurrecting the character, but it didn’t happen.
@27/Greenygal: In fact, The Return of the Incredible Hulk was the title of the second TV pilot movie from November 1977, which was repackaged in syndication as the 2-parter “A Death in the Family.” The 1988 revival/Thor team-up movie was The Incredible Hulk Returns. That trips up a lot of people.
Looking forward to this.
Maybe you and Leigh Butler will review the same movie?
Obviously, decisions have been made. But it would really have made more sense for this to have spent at least an introductory post talking about, referencing and, to some extent, reviewing the theatrical serials. The first Marvel appearance (which was actually the first appearance by a TIMELY COMICS character) was Captain America. The Fleischer Superman serials are fairly famous, but people aren’t as aware of the Captain Marvel (Billy Batson) serials from Fawcett. These are the ones that come to mind but there are numerous others. Certainly, these existed because no one thought it made sense to have an entire movie featuring a superhero. The only reason the Adventures of Superman became a tv series was due to the intense popularity and reception of the radio show. It’s possible the Adam West Batman show wouldn’t have existed without the Superman TV show. Certainly, National/DC didn’t expect it or they would have more torridly hung on to the rights of their two most famous characters versus turning them over as they did to Fox and to the Salkinds.
On a different, but related matter, who’s going to define the genre film? It would be nice if Tor went by an independent source, such as, just as an example, Box Office Mojo, which already lists a collection of various types of genre films, with this being one of them, or one of the comic book based sites, which has frequently made all sorts of lists ranking the films.
@30/_FDS: “The only reason the Adventures of Superman became a tv series was due to the intense popularity and reception of the radio show.”
More than that — the TV series was essentially a continuation of the radio show. The first season remade a number of the radio show’s scripts, including a near-verbatim remake of its origin-story script as the first episode. If that seems more like a reboot than a continuation, keep in mind that the radio show itself recycled some of its own stories a number of times, on the assumption that its young audience would turn over every few years. Some of the stories adapted for TV, including the origin and the “Stolen Costume” storyline, had been redone several times before on radio. The TV series also featured a few characters that had originated on the radio show and had not previously been used in the comics, including Inspector Henderson, Clark’s private eye friend Candy Myers, and comic-relief Daily Planet correspondent Horatio F. (for French) Horn, albeit renamed Horatio Hinkle for some reason. Some of the show’s first-season storylines were implicitly written as continuations of the radio series, although others ignored it (just as the radio show often ignored, contradicted, or retold its own past stories).
“It’s possible the Adam West Batman show wouldn’t have existed without the Superman TV show.”
Perhaps, but what really inspired it was the re-release of the 1943 Batman serial, which ’60s audiences reacted to as hilarious kitsch and unintentional camp. The show was an attempt to recapture that feel on purpose.
_FDS: I will be talking about the serials and the radio dramas and the animated shorts to some extent in the first post, since there’s a direct line, as you say, from them to Reeves and West. I excluded them mainly for time reasons — as it is, I have 120 films to cover…. *chuckle*
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
What about some of the miscellaneous superhero movies of recent years, like:
– The Specials
– Meteor Man
– Blankman
– Unbreakable
– Hancock
– Sky High
– The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl
– Zoom
– Birdman
– Paper Man
– Super
– My Super Ex-Girlfriend
or, going back a little further…
– Hero At Large
– Condorman
I think they’re all, or almost all, basically worth your time. Some of them are _interesting_ in ways that Marvel and DC adaptations just aren’t.
@33/Matthew: The series title is “4-Color to 35-Millimeter.” I take that to mean that it’s specifically about film adaptations of superhero comics, not superheroes original to film.
Hmm.
It certainly _could_ mean that. It’s a point.
I hope not, though; I think you lose more than you gain by drawing such a distinction.
Matthew E: As the title indicates, I’m just sticking with adaptations of comic book superheroes. The reason for limiting it is that even with that caveat, I’m looking at 120 films. As it is, this will keep me busy for a couple years. *laughs*
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Thanks!
Oh, so excited to read your review next week after just watching Superman and The Mole Men. I am sure it will be more than ‘just ducky’.
@15 ” Superman was largely based on Doc Savage and was also an inversion of John Carter (an Earthman who effectively had superpowers in the lower gravity of Mars). “
I would say that the biggest influence on Superman was Philip Wylie’s GLADIATOR (1930). Wylie’s Hugo Danner (the book’s protagonist) has the same power-set as 1938 Superman (superhuman strength and speed, invulnerable to everything up to a bursting artillery shell, ability to leap tremendous distances, etc). Plus, a lot of the early Superman stories are basically “happy ending” versions of what happens to Danner.
I would also note that the “escaping-the-doomed-planet-Krypton” business* shows the influence of Wylie’s WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (1933), only with single infant escaping and not an ark-load of colonists.
*Corrected a typo
@11 – Chris: Don’t forget Barb Wire, with Pamela Anderson.
@16 – Dan: In Latin America, the Hulk/Daredevil film was dubbed “Hulk Vs. The Ninja”.
@41/MaGnUs: Keith already said in the post that he would be covering Barb Wire.
@41/42
Isn’t BarbWire just a poor remake of Casablanka
I totally missed that he mentioned it. And the plot was ripped off from Casablanca, but it’s still a comic book-based movie.
And Casablanca was an adaptation of a play…
Yeah, but at least it was an adaptation, not a rip off.
@krad is the first article going up this week?
critter42: It was scheduled for Tuesday, but I got sick, so I didn’t get it done until Tuesday night. I was hoping it would go up today, but it hasn’t. With luck, it will go up Thursday or Friday….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The first installment is up!
http://www.tor.com/2017/08/10/pre-dawn-of-justice-superman-and-the-mole-men-and-batman-1966/
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I love this column, but I’d love it even more if you’d review Blankman!