50 Worst Comic-Book Movie Moments

Considering how much of a mess X-Men: The Last Stand turned out to be, it's perhaps unfair to pick at X-Men: First Class ' far more superior follow-up/prequel.

Yet while there are a few niggles here and there, it's hard to deny it nailed the key casting of Michael Fassbender as Magneto and James McAvoy as Xavier.

Unfortunately, Fassbender's accent was somewhat lost in translation thanks to post-production audio gremlins, meaning pretty much the entire final act has him slipping back into a very OIRISH moniker.

It's hard to focus on all the submarine levitating when you can't help but hear an Irish Magneto behind it.

Superhero Success 101 - a hero is only as good as their bad guys.

So the prospect of an Elektra movie was tantalising in the possibilities that arose from the character's comic roots.

Yet instead of a twisted, undead ninja clan hellbent on kicking (bad)ass, poor Jennifer Garner was saddled with a wishy-washy mumsy tone, and subsequently some spiritually guffy bad guys like 'Tattoo' - a villain who can manipulate the tattoos on his body into existence.

Like wolves or snakes.

Stupid in itself, that is until you question why he didn't tattoo a nuclear bomb, or gattling gun to his ass?

Of all the Fantastic Four movies' many faults, it's safe to say humour is not their strongest suit.

So getting Reed Richards to 'shake his groove thang' on the dancefloor was never going to end well.

Not only is his designer suit magically stretchy, but using his Stretch Armstrong elastic arms to ensnare a couple of short-skirted nightclub ladies is creepy.

And even creepier for the implication that these women are somehow wooed by his super-stretchy prowess.

The last we checked, Captain Nemo's submarine didn't have a 'resize-at-will' lever.

Which makes the irksome moment that his enormous battle-ship magically winds its way around Venice's tight canals all the more preposterous.

We tried. We really tried not to include this, but as it's so known and mocked around the world (even affectionately), we can't help but include it.

Yip, it's every single line uttered by Arnold Schwarzenegger during the movie.

So…. many ice puns…. so…. much to mock.

"You're not sending me to the cooler!"
"I'm afraid my condition has left me cold to your pleas of mercy."
"Tonight, hell freezes over!"

Etc etc

Fans knew it was coming, but somehow the on-screen reality of a CGI suit was even more rubbish than many had feared.

With anything rooted in comic book fantasy, a certain suspension of disbelief is a given. Which is why the look and feel is so important in selling the inherent silliness.

So strapping Ryan Reynolds into a floaty, ethereal, strobe light of a suit wasn't the best move.

Exposition, thy name is out-of-nowhere Butler man.

Not only does Harry's butler's appearance in Spider-Man 3 contradict the trilogy's own continuity (he says he saw the Green Goblin's body before Harry did, and 'tended to his wound' - but the original Spider-Man movie says differently), but he serves as no help to the plot other than to waffle weirdly specific, emotionally and psychologically precise soliloquies to Harry in times of need.

Love it or loathe it, it's hard to deny that for two of its three acts, The Wolverine was a very different type of comic book movie.

Grounded, moody, character-focused, and rather explosion-free, you can understand why many found it refreshing.

That is, until the third act, where things take a very silly left-turn, as giant robotic Silver Samurais and high camp licky-lady costume-changing villainesses dominate the screen for a tonal shift that undermines everything that came before it.

Next time, keep your Poison Ivy-lite and mini-Jaegers to yourself.

Christopher Nolan's epic Bat-trilogy gets its fair share of plaudits, so it's easy to forget and forgive its niggles.

And while The Dark Knight Rises was a fitting conclusion to the saga, for a series so inherently grounded in reality, there were a few head-scratching inconsistencies.

Get over the fact, for example, that Bruce Wayne has magically recovered from a spine-crushing disability of paraplegic proportions. And that he's recuperated so quickly that an Olympian task of climbing (one which most able bodied people have failed time and again) seems less bother than a quick scamper up a tree.

No, the stupidest part of Bruce's 'evil cave escaperoo' is that once he clambers out the mega-well, he manages to get from the middle of a middle-eastern desert to Gotham - despite the fact he has no passport, money, shoes, or phone.

Who needs logic when you have a BAT COSTUME.

We get it - Peter Parker doesn't have the happiest or most shiny/happy of lives.

But Tobey Maguire's approach to dramatic emotion - wobbly lips, cheeks and eyeballs - grates when you're seeing it ever 15 minutes.

Just look at it. (SPIDER) MAN UP ALREADY, MAN.

The original comic on which From Hell was based is a stunningly bleak, metaphysically clever analysis of one of history's most infamous serial killers.

The movie version wasn't.

Yet while it's just about possible to get over the weird blockbuster-y camp of all the Victorian hijinks, you're never quite able to get over Heather Graham's 'COR BLIMEY GUVNOR COCKNEY SPARRAS' London accent.

It's a moment that sets the tone at jarring and never quite recovers.

John Leguizamo's almost unrecognisable in his role as Spawn villain The Violator.

Unfortunately it's not enough to have helped him escape this super-FAIL of a comic adaptation from tarnishing his CV.

Part Honey Boo Boo, part To Wong Foo and 100% bizarre, it's a performance that falls on its (fat) face.

In retrospect, casting Sylvester Stallone and Rob Schneider as an odd-couple 'comedy' double act may have been the first problem with 1995's mega-flop.

But it was the fanboy/girl-enraging decision to do the one thing that - at the point of the movie's making - hadn't happened in the 18 years of the character's comic creation.

They took off his helmet. For pretty much the entire movie.

It instantly declared that the film was more preoccupied with showcasing Stallone's gurning leading man-ness, than focusing on character.

There's a lot to hate (and mock) in 1990's first movie stab at Marvel's most patriotic of heroes.

But the numerous plot inconsistencies (since when has the Red Skull been Italian?!) pale in comparison to a schizophrenic tone that jumps all over the place.

Most 'family films' don't open with a sequence in Italian subtitles that culminates with a machine-gun slaughter.

Rock-em' sock-em' superheroic funtimes for all the family? Not really.

"I want my boird. I WANT MY BOIRD!"

As far as supervillain battle cries go, it's not the most intimidating.

Yet Mickey Rourke, having obviously taken a cue from the Nicolas Cage School of Acting Eccentricities, decides to spend more time badgering Sam Rockwell about his pet bird than he does actually, you know, crafting a scary, believable and imposing villain.

Superman IV , to be fair, was a movie beset by production problems.

But it's still hard to justify the awkward miscasting of one of its key nemesis.

Nuclear Man's introduction is a masterclass in how to undersell a villain. For a start, he's not even allowed to do his own dialogue - it's all dubbed by Gene Hackman.

"If you will not tell me, I WILL HURT PEOPLE", Hackman says with all the staccato, emotionless delivery of a confused underwear model.

Pretty much every transformation scene is a delight in 'so-bad-it's-good-but-no-wait-it's-actually-quite-bad' kitschness.

We understand the difficulty of selling a bottled up psychological demonic presence has got to be tough to sell to an audience.

But you'd still have to reign in the crazy Cage quite a bit to make it anywhere near believable - instead you get 'HE'S SCRAPING AT THE DOOR', repeated clawing of his own face and bug-eyed, crazy-pupilled screaming man.

Zack Snyder's reboot was successful in a lot of ways, and while the CGI may have polarised filmgoers, it was clear that they at least tried to focus on establishing character, and Clark/Superman's multiple daddy issues.

Yet the denouement with which Kevin Costner leaves the cinematic earthly plain is oddly anti-climatic and frustratingly nitpickable.

We get that Pa Kent has finally got around to convincing Clark he has to keep his powers secret, but how would him saving his father be ANY DIFFERENT or more life-threatening to the countless times he's done it before?!

Not only that, but Clark should actually be more invested in saving him than anyone else he's ever helped.

Oh, and there's a tornado they could use for cover or distraction while Clark's zipping around saving people.

Oh, and why did Jonathan go back for the dog - putting himself in mortal danger - while Clark - who could shrug it off - stayed with the crowds?!

Gah.

It's hard to deny that Spider-Man didn't ever need a reboot, a mere eight years after the original trilogy even started.

So you can understand why Marc Webb and co were keen to differentiate themselves from the origin story as much as possible.

Yet the way in which they tried to circumnavigate the most iconic Spidey line of all, delivered with such poignancy by Cliff Robertson in the 2002 version, is so waffly and beyond the point that it's amusing in its pussy-footedness.

And thus, the easy to remember and conviction-led "with great power comes great responsibility" becomes "These [troubles] send us down a road… they make us who we are. If anyone's destined for greatness, it's you, son. You owe the world your gifts. You just have to figure out how to use them and know that wherever they take you, we'll always be here."

Don't know why they didn't use that super-snappy version in the first place.

If you're of a certain age, this will probably provoke more nostalgia than irritation.

But it doesn't justify Vanilla Ice's appalling cameo/shameless product placement.

As the turtles gatecrash a 'super-cool' warehouse-cum-nightclub, they begin fighting off against a host of ninjas and monsters.

Vanilla Ice does the only sensible thing to do in times of life-threatening danger - he decides to rap and dance his way through the pain, like some kind of crotch-thrusting, tween-baiting distraction tactic.

The Punisher has never really been one for truly imposing nemeses.

But those found in War Zone take things to a whole new level.

Not only are they insta-experts in parkour, but they rejoice in jumping their way (in slow-motion, obviously) across rooftops, and cheering their success on every landing.

Oh, and all to the soundtrack of some RAWK soft-metal.

Glorious.

The Punisher's used to making pretty impressive statements. This is, after all, a man who uses a bazooka when a handshake will do.

But the level of planning and pay-off that goes into The Punisher's big visual stunt is beyond pointless.

Upon taking down another gang of nefarious goons, The Punisher sets off a series of explosions under around 30 cars that collectively form a flaming skull shape.

But only one that you can see from a plane.

Just think of all the mobsters he could've been offing while he was fannying around making pretty bird's-eye fireworks.

See also: The Dark Knight Rises ' way-more-effort-than-it-was-worth flaming bat symbol announcing Bats' return to Gotham.

The movie's climatic fight scene takes place in a church, with Bullseye and Daredevil throwing fisticuffs at each other in a terrible melange of bad CGI, skewed proportions (at one point Daredevil seems to fall around 40 metres from an organ seen to be around 20 feet high), and some heavy handed Christ metaphors along the way.

Urgh.

Of all the Bat gadgets in all the world, it's surprising just how many 'super-cool' 90s-tastic XTREME sport tricks Batman has up his sleeve.

From ice skates that magically appear whenever Batman or Robin click their heels together, to skyboarding on rocket ship doors, it was clear that Joel Schumacher was crafting a picture more concerned with merchandise opportunities than genuine artistry.

Dr. Doom, in the comics, is one of the Marvel Universe's most fearsome, tyrannical and megalomaniacal villains.

In fact, it's hard to pick a character who instils as much insta-fear or terror.

So casting pretty-boy cheese-tastic actor Julian McMahon was always an odd choice.

But then introducing a jarring romantic subplot with Susan Storm, and subverting the character's hideous mutation for a PG-friendly audience was the last straw, as Von Doom revealed his mutation by picking away at his 'skin condition' like it was super-powered sunburn.

Terrifying.

In the first of many naff one-liners on this list, all the good work done by Stephen Norrington's 1998 actioner is somewhat undermined by Blade's final bad guy-offing quip.

After a whole movie of build-up, he defeats his nemesis Deacon Frost with the forgettable, somewhat confusing line of "Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill."

You what?

When Tim Burton's involved, you have to allow for a certain amount of gothic silliness.

But having The Penguin - in himself an inherently naff but impressively realised and tragic figure - have a masterplan primarily concerned with launching an army of weaponised, very real penguins at Gotham just feels a little too on the nose.

While The Spirit flopped pretty hard for countless stylistic, plotting and acting reasons, there was one scene that's indescribable even to this day.

It's the scene where Scarlett Johansson and Samuel L. Jackson are dressed up as Nazis because… erm…

Well.

Nope. Still don't know.

Daredevil and Elektra are supposed to be the ultimate super-sexy ninja romance.

Yet the movie version managed to suck all the flirtation, heat and passion from the pair with an initial meeting that had the pair square off in a populated playground for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

BE AMAZED as Elektra runs up seesaws.

MARVEL at Daredevil as he throws his stick in the air. AND CATCHES IT.

GASP as Elektra pretends to kick Daredevil in the face. Then, well, doesn't.

The Spidey films in all their incarnations have always held a certain amount of super-congratulatory jingoism.

But it's the scene in the 2012 reboot where Spider-Man is injured and needs to make it across the city that made our eyes super-roll.

As he plummets to his near-death, a crane operator uses his crane to lift him up. And then all the other crane operators swing into place to help him on his way, too.

The fact that he could've made it just as easily by simply pivoting his swinging angle is beyond the point. As is the miraculous timing or psychic communication between the workers to line-up perfectly in sync.

Joss Whedon's a master when it comes to perfecting witty, snappy dialogue. Yet while he contributed in redrafting the X-Men script, there was one infamously clunky line that'll haunt him to his scriptwriting grave.

Upon confronting Toad, Storm delivers a line with all the intensity and confidence of an impending one-liner smackdown. Instead she comes out with:

"You know what happens to a toad when struck by lightning?"

Cue dramatic pause.

"The same thing as everything else."

Oh.

There's a certain amount of nerd sympathy that comes with seeing Nicolas Cage in a comic book movie.

We get he's a massive fan - which is why it makes his casting choices, and the eccentricities he brings to his roles all the more frustrating.

In wanting to bring a unique and distinctive Ghost Rider to the big screen, Cage opted to quirk it up. Annoyingly quirk it up.

Yip, his Ghost Rider - you know, the demon-headed, fire-biked blazing bad-ass - is a fan of Karen Carpenter. And likes to eat jelly beans.

Oh Nic, you so keeerazy.

Now, we're not denying it's a nifty trick, but Superman's spontaneous, newfound ability to turn back time is the very definition of 'self-defeating cop-out'.

Exhibit A: Surely that abrupt a reverse rotation of the earth's gravitational gubbins would kill everyone on the planet before it actually turns back time?

Exhibit B: Why not do that whenever something crappy happens? World War? Pfft - just reverse time *waves hands, swooshes cape*

Exhibit C: Why bother being proactive in anything?! Surely that kind of power would just breed the laziest superhero ever?

"Clark! There's a tsunami!"

"Ah, I'll just fly backwards around the world later."

Blade surprised everyone with its refreshingly focused, tonally strong take on a lesser-known comic character.

So expectation was high for Blade II . While Guillermo del Toro certainly made his own stamp on the series, it was reprehensible for its sub-par CGI and flimsily directed fight scenes.

The worst of all was undoubtedly the introduction of a pair of vampire ninjas, who enter Blade's haven as human actors, and swiftly mutate into Playstation 2 -quality sprites that bounce around the environment with all the awe-inducing fear of a couple of particularly sugar-addled squirrels.

As demonstrated by its seven Razzie win, Catwoman is a masterclass in how to ruin not only a movie franchise, but how to do its darndest to ruin a career along the way.

While we'll come back to the other reasons later, its most embarrassing scene (for not only viewers, but all involved) came in a basketball flirt-off between Halle Berry and Benjamin Bratt.

Keeeeraaazy 90s MTV camera angles, a soundtrack courtesy of Mis-Teeq (a failed English RnB girl band), and some weird seduction tactics combine to create a scene as head-slappingly dull as it is rubbish.

A straight replica of Michelle Pfieffer's infamous, insta-iconic Batman Returns would only have ever paled in comparison, but it's still baffling to think that a collective group of costume designers, DC Comics staff, directors and actors all agreed that Halle Berry's eventual costume would pass muster.

Part kinky S&M attire, part Halloween costume and 100% naff, it was a costume designed solely to show off Berry's (admittedly impressive) body, with no rationale for practicality.

Janet Jackson, to be fair, doesn't know the first thing about a proper wardrobe malfunction.

If you want to see the real definition, we'd like to direct you to the embarrassing style-fart that is Joel Schumacher's take on the Bat-threads.

Not only did you get toy-friendly metallic Bat symbols all over the place, but fans were treated to a host of spandex nipples and six-packs galore.

Remarkably, this was only the tip of the idiotic iceberg.

It's got to have been tough taking over the X-gig from Bryan Singer. But while audiences may have gone into the cinema with hope and a little leeway in their hearts, they were swiftly short-changed with a series of storytelling choices that flabbered a fair few gasts.

Case in point, the death of one of the franchise's biggest characters, Cyclops. Had his swansong consisted of a heroic sacrifice, that would've been shocking but digestible. Instead Brett Ratner kills him off off-screen, after his recently resurrected beloved returns from the grave and kills him with a scary kiss.

Oh, the pathos.

A Deadpool movie has been in the works for a very long time. So long, in fact, that Ryan Reynolds recently described the pre-production hell as "the worst relationship I've ever had."

Things weren't helped by the character's initial on-screen debut, as a mercenary for hire in X-Men Origins: Wolverine . Reynolds certainly had the initial crazy patter down. And the name was at least correct.

But everything else goes downhill from there. The character's tagline is 'The Merc With A Mouth', so why they decided to mutate the character into a mouthless, bald, eyelid-less, super-serious freakshow is beyond us.

There were numerous reasons why Spider-Man 3 failed.

Throwing too many villains and supporting characters into the plot didn't help, but it was Peter's descent in Venom-influenced douchery that really rankled.

Under the influence of an extraterrestrial goo that'd turn even the saintliest of churchgoers into a murderous nutjob, he embraces his - snigger - 'dark side'.

The reason we know this? Well, first off, he adopts a pseudo-emo-combover, starts wearing lots of black, sexually harasses women on the street, and then thoroughly tarnishes any warmth we'd accumulated towards dweeby Parker by cringe-worthily Saturday Night Fever-ing his way around a jazz bar, whislt publicly humiliating his ex-girlfriend.

Somehow, the delivery manages to be even more cringe-worthy than the description.

Four words for you. The Loom of Fate.

Some comic book movie stupidities can be argued away as faithfulness to their admittedly looser source material.

But The Loom of Fate wasn't even in Mark Millar's original book - this was an incredibly dense, handy and utterly bonkers Deus Ex Machina introduced to explain away the assassin's guild's modus operandi.

They'd consult a loom that would give them the names of their targets through binary code hidden in weaving errors of the fabric.

Boggling.

Back in 2005, two (likely inebriated) friends decided to dub over an episode of the X-Men Animated Series with a bunch of very silly, very sweary profanity.

Numerous times, The Juggernaut exclaimed the line: "I'm the juggernaut, bitch."

For a one note joke, it went - as the kids say - pretty 'viral'.

Yet no-one expected Brett Ratner to directly reference a crude fanboy gag in the multi-million dollar blockbuster threequel.

But they did. And, unsurprisingly given the complete lack of context, it was very, very strange. And even MORE out of context considering the original voiceover pastiched gangster slang, and the movie delivered a limey-accented, performance-stunted Vinnie Jones.

Superman II gets its fair share of plaudits for good reason, but there's one moment of naff super-powery that's gone down in fanboy-mocking history.

As Supes confronts Zod and his crew of super-strong Kryptonians, he dives deep into his powerset to save the day.

By, well, ripping off his 'S' chestplate and lobbing it at the encroaching Kryptonian, utilising its clingfilm, plastic-y ability to stick to people to bind him to the floor.

Seriously. Wut.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer started off so well. For one thing, it managed to create a foe as visually stunning and super-powered as you'd hope from a cinematic take on a shiny, surfboard-rocking, Power Cosmic-imbued alien.

But it was all a tease for an even biggerer bad, and one who's pay-off was about as messy and irritating as its on-screen design.

In the comics, Galactus is a skyscraper-sized pink and purple besuited curio. For obvious reasons, that wouldn't instil much terror in a cinematic audience.

But what the movie settled for was something so whiplash opposite that it was hard to contain the sniggers - a big dust cloud. A REALLY BIG DUST CLOUD.

Yep. Eater of worlds. Devourer of planets.

That could, in theory, be defeated by THE WORLD'S BIGGEST FAN.

Superman, to be fair, is a hard character to make relevant.

As the ultimate do-gooder with relatively rigid morals, it's hard to surprise audiences.

But Bryan Singer certainly tried in 2006's predominately snoozeful reboot-that-wasn't-really-a-reboot.

While the SFX made you believe a man could fly, it was down to the script to sell the character, and his place in the world - and most importantly, why audiences should even care anymore.

For some reason, it was decided this'd be by granting him his own illegitimate super-child. Not only is the concept ridiculous (don't get us started on the biological impossibilities) and make Supes seem like the ultimate super-absent-parent, but the pay-off's more eye-rolling than fist-pumping, with Lois' pathetic sprog lobbing a grand piano at the bad guy in her time of need.

If you're going to turn any animal into a super-powered, gamma-irradiated version of itself, we'd opt for a good old lion. Or a tiger. Hell, even a liger at a push.

But no, Nick Nolte decides to breed a super-poodle (amongst other dogs) to take down the Hulk.

That in itself is silly enough, but watching the Hulk punch a bunch of dogs in the face to save the day is as underwhelming as it is weirdly cruel.

It was always going to be difficult to create a prequel to a character who's allegedly forgotten his entire past.

Gavin Hood's way of getting around it? Have an already messy script muddled even further by a Deus Ex Machina that managed to undermine the entire movie in one, head-slappingly stupid swoop.

After going through significant character development, seeing loved ones die, learning about himself and going on a journey of fight-tastic self-discovery, Logan is shot with a 'memory-erasing bullet', and promptly forgets everything that's happened over the last 107 minutes.

Because, erm.

Anyone?

There's nothing quite like some roofie saliva to spoil the romanticised image of your favourite boy scout superhero.

For when Lois finds out Superman's true identity, Clark uses a hitherto unknown power to make her forget the whole thing ever happened - by kissing her.

Get past the magnificent stupidity of the thing, and it's all too easy to think about its more sinister applications.

Unsettling or what?

It's testament to Catwoman 's collective, overwhelming stupidity, that it's even possible to catalogue the idiocy of its individual moments.

But we're particular fans of the scene in which Patience Phillips, having just gained otherworldly cat-like superpowers, goes to the home of a mysterious cat lady (stop sniggering) to discover the secrets of her gifts.

Only while she's there, she gets a little distracted. By catnip.

Which insinuates she's barely hours away from pooping in litter trays, spray the arm chair, and clawing the sofa.

We get that Howard the Duck , as a concept, is pretty out there.

An anthropomorphic wise-cracking duck from a planet called Duckworld, is propelled from his armchair through outerspace onto Earth.

Buy into that though, and things only get weirder, and infinitely more creepy, as he woos a human lady called Beverly. Woos her to the point of them lying next to each other in bed, joking about the logistics of duck/human intercourse.

Wrong on so, so many levels.