TheRetroCritic

Though it's often forgotten, there was an early attempt at making a film about The Fantastic Four back in 1994 when German producer Bernd Eichinger teamed up with B-movie maestro Roger Corman to make a low-budget film based on the iconic Marvel characters. The film cost about $1M and was never released though it would later resurface on bootleg videos. Stan Lee was not directly involved with the project except for selling the rights temporarily but it still stayed surprisingly true to the comics both in spirit and story-wise which shows that there definitely was a genuine attempt at making the most of that low-budget. The film sees scientist Reed Richards (Alex Hyde-White) gather a team to perform an experiment in space, an experiment which, of course, goes wrong and they crash-land back on Earth unharmed thanks to unusual powers they somehow picked up along the way. An ex-colleague of Richards', Victor Von Doom (an over-the-top Joseph Culp), lives up to his last name and

I talk briefly about Captain America: Civil War , Marvel's epic new blockbuster. Assemble!

Only a month after Batman faced Superman in DC's pre- Justice League crossover movie, Marvel graces us with Captain America: Civil War , bringing to the screen a sort of mini-Avengers movie steeped in Cap lore based on a classic comic-book storyline. The film sees Captain America (Chris Evans) having to protect his friend-turned-Hydra pawn Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) who may or may not have attacked the UN. Steve Rogers believes he may have been framed but, when half of The Avengers agree to the Sokovia Accords, a list of laws which would restrict their freedom to jump into action, things get somewhat more complicated and an elaborate manhunt is soon underway. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), after a blunder involving The Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) taking out villain Crossbones with a lot of collateral damage, decides that the superteam should probably be held accountable for their destructive efforts but he quickly finds that convincing Captain America of that is not s

As we prepare for Marvel's new Doctor Strange movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the role of the iconic sorcerer, I take a look back at an early attempt to bring the character to the screen. Dr. Strange is a TV movie from 1978 that was meant to be the Pilot episode for a potential series but it was never picked up. Stan Lee worked as consultant on the project so the goal was definitely to stay somewhat true to the comics but a low-budget, a dull script and some wooden performances all around contributed to a film which is forgotten for a good reason. Reviewing it is, in fact, no easy feat since very little actually happens in the film story-wise: there's an evil witch, she wants to defeat a wizard, she doesn't, the end. The witch is Morgan Le Fay, played by a glamorous and over-the-top Jessica Walter who tries to make the film entertaining but fails due to an underwritten character that's hardly a genuine threat at all. Dr. Stephen Strange is played by Pete

After listing some of my worst , here is my Top 10 Best Modern Marvel Movie Villains . Again, by "modern" I mean post-2000. Here we go: 10 BARON ZEMO Captain America: Civil War Although he may not look much like he does in the comics, the Baron Zemo we got in Captain America: Civil War somehow still works really well. We're first introduced to Crossbones early on in the film and he's your typical supervillain with the badass costume and everything but Zemo is then revealed to be the film's true main baddie and the fact he's a meek everyman you couldn't pick out in a line-up makes him all the more effective. To think that one guy with nothing to lose can single-handedly tear apart The Avengers from within, manipulating everyone from afar, says a lot about what Zemo is capable of. I shudder to think what he has in store next for the superteam...  9 YELLOWJACKET Ant-Man While Yellowjacket may not be the most memorable of all

I taste Joker Fruit Punch , the least fruity energy drink out there. Love that Joker!

Modern Marvel movies have gotten a lot of things right over the years including telling more out-there superhero stories in an approachable way, pulling off the craziest crossovers and bringing to the screen some iconic characters in style, heroes and villains alike. But there were also missteps and we also got some less-than-stellar efforts with less-than-stellar villains facing some of our favourite heroes. So, before I list my favourites, here are 10 of my worst modern (post 2000) Marvel movie villains: 10 THE LIZARD The Amazing Spider-Man The Andrew Garfield-starring Spider-Man reboot may not have been the most original piece of storytelling out there, once again laying out the whole Spidey origin story so soon after Sam Raimi's trilogy. Having said that, it had its moments. One of the most disappointing things about it, however, was The Lizard. Not only did the filmmakers seemingly go out of their way to make the character look nothing like he does in the comics

Based on the 70's anime series, Casshern was a 2004 live-action film which looked very promising yet it left me feeling somewhat conflicted leaving the cinema after watching it: parts of it pissed me right off but other parts were all kinds of awesome. So how does Casshern fare now, after a re-watch? Much better, actually. The flaws I'd picked up on the first time watching it are still there and they are still distracting but the stuff that works in the film does very much outweigh them. If you're not familiar with the film's plot, it involves a Dr Frankenstein-style scientist (Akira Terao) who finds a way to regenerate dead tissue through what he calls Neo-Cells. During a war, a lightning bolt mysteriously hits his lab and, as a result, a new race of people is born. At the same time, his son Tetsuya (Yusuke Iseya) is killed in the war and he brings him back as some kind of superhero who ends up calling himself Casshern. The new "monsters", Neo-Sap

Post Batman & Robin , back when superhero movies weren't quite as common and quite as expensive as they are today, Marvel decided to take advantage of Batman's irritating demise and kick-start their own rise with the X-Men franchise. Being an X-Fan myself, this was a big deal and, although the result wasn't quite as mind-blowing as I had expected, there was still a lot to enjoy in this first instalment. For one thing, the character introductions were excellent: whether it was Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) cage-fighting or a young Magneto prying open the doors of a concentration camp, the pieces were perfectly set and the show was ready to begin. Only, it doesn't so much begin as it does... go on. This first movie really is just one slow build-up to the X-Men finally becoming a team. And, for the most part, director Bryan Singer does get the characters right: Patrick Stewart makes a spot-on Xavier, Jackman is great (if tall) as Wolverine, Ian McKellen's turn

True story.

Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films never aspired to any gritty realism or a dark, brooding tone. They were bright, colourful, cartoony, gloriously silly comic-book flicks with the principal goal of just being loads of fun. And no matter how dumb the films got, they were always entertaining. So after Spider-Man 3 , the franchise's jump-the-shark moment, and before the eventual reboot I thought I should check out the best film of the trilogy to see if it still holds up. And you know what? It really does. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not flawless: you do get some very goofy moments here and there and the film could have been trimmed a tiny bit but, on the whole, this is one surprisingly solid Spidey movie which fixes most of the first film's shortcomings and is all the better for it. For one thing, you've got a good villain in Alfred Molina's Doc Ock. With the Green Goblin's tight rubber suit far from sight, Molina makes Dr Octavius appropriately geeky

Captain America may technically be the First Avenger but, really, this was Marvel's final pawn setting up their epic, ambitious blockbuster crossover The Avengers . Beating past film incarnations of the character quality-wise was never going to be a big challenge so I had fair expectations for this one. Like Thor , Captain America is an inherently difficult superhero to pull-off on the big screen without it coming across as very dumb and/or very silly. Luckily, Marvel have done incredibly well to make their iconic character and his solo film work, creating a badass hero even non-Americans can happily root for without feeling particularly offended by the obligatory patriotism the character brings forth. The big revelation here is Chris Evans whose usual tongue-in-cheek persona could have easily made Captain America nothing more than a joke but the man plays it completely straight and is all the better for it. His Steve Rogers is a goody-two-shoes you nevertheless genuinely feel

There are infamously bad superhero movies and then there's Catwoman , a film so clueless one wonders if the filmmakers were even aware of the character's existence before making the film. Calling Pitof's movie a Batman spin-off is a stretch, to say the least. Not only does none of the action take place in Gotham City but Halle Berry's character is not Selina Kyle and she doesn't so much dress up as Catwoman to steal jewels and/or fight bad guys as she does have super-powers to use however she pleases, kinda like The Mask but not fun. Looking past the fact that the film is set in New York, Berry's character is actually called Patience and can crawl over walls like Spider-Man (because cats do that?), she becomes Catwoman when an animated cat breathes on her face, said cat being an Ancient Egyptian messenger in charge of choosing Catwomen across the centuries in order to, in this particular case, stop a deadly make-up from being sold all over the world. L