Superhero Movie Mount Rushmore

watson [5:41 PM]
Ok. Here is the game. Four films from the genre that you’d put on the Mount Rushmore of superhero movies. The standard is totally yours but we will make fun of stupid standards. It doesn’t need to be your four favorites. It may have a thematic significance. A film to represent four different moments in the history of the genre. Show your work!

I’ll start with my list. 1. Superman: The Movie; 2. The Dark Knight; 3. Iron Man; 4. Wonder Woman.

watson [5:51 PM]
Rationale? Superman is the granddaddy of Superhero movies. It is really the first tent pole in the genre and was tough to replicate until Burton’s Batman came along more than a decade later. The Dark Knight is the superhero as film. It should have won Best Picture of 2008 and paved the way for Logan; which is my second favorite but stays off Rushmore because it plays in the same space. Iron Man is historic for (a) being awesome and (b) transitioning to the shared universe concept. Wonder Woman is historic because it was amazing AND historic in that it took a strong female protagonist and had everyone from little girls to senior citizen men rooting for her to kick ass. Plus there was an aspect of timing in that it was nice to see a powerful woman beat up on the forces of totalitarian evil. Almost made up a little for Hillary losing to Trump…ALMOST.

[5:52]
Let’s open it up to the geeks for theirs.

tomk [5:56 PM]
joined #superherofilmrushmore.

tomk [6:44 PM]
Well, obviously the faces up there should be Dolph Lundgren, Corey Feldman, Halle Berry, and Trey Parker.

[6:49]
Rationale? No one embodies the two dimensional nature of the Punisher better than a Swedish chemical engineer who doesn’t wear a skull shirt, opening the world up to the idea that a lesser known Marvel property can somehow make it to the big screen. Feldman, as the voice of Donatello in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, anchored a movie that was a huge hit and showed the potential of Muppets representing beings of power that have abilities far beyond most of their kind and in Feldman’s best role to date. Berry represents the actor who can make the flip from one universe to the other, capitalizing on her whatever she has to be both a bland Storm and an embarrassing Catwoman. And Parker was Orgazmo, the proof that when you need to find a porn star superhero, you can’t go wrong with a Mormon missionary…I assume. I’ve never seen that one (or Catwoman for that matter), and got tired of South Park’s disgusting humor and overall preachiness, but Cannibal the Musical was quite funny.

[6:51]
Or maybe I’ll get back to you on this.

ryan [8:25 PM]
joined #superherofilmrushmore.

Seems like if it’s Mt Rushmore it should be characters and not movies. But I agree with your first three choices Watson. I would change the fourth. I think in the long term Wonder Woman is going to earn her spot and possibly dethrone one of the others but for now I think the fourth spot belongs to Spider-Man. Not only did that one movie launch THREE franchises but it also changed the dynamic of superhero movies. X-Men could be in its own universe and nobody really cared. But once MCU took off there was a lot of fans wishing for spidey to rejoin the fray. And he did in a very cool way.

ryan [4:28 PM]
Don’t know if you’re monitoring Watson but I wrote on the Mt Rushmore channel

watson [4:30 PM]
I saw. Liked yours. Hoping for a real response from Tom. His first effort wasn’t even funny enough to consider as content.

watson [4:31 PM]
And Jimmy.

tomk [4:31 PM]
NO ONE ELSE WILL WORK ORGAZMO INTO YOUR TRIBUTE MOUNTAIN! NOT EVEN YOU!

watson
[5:45 PM]
Hehehehe

jimmy [11:24 AM]
joined #superherofilmrushmore.

jimmy [11:38 AM]
I think Superman: The Movie and Iron Man are locks. After that it gets harder. I think Burton’s Batman was more important/influential and set the stage for future (albeit many crappy) superhero films. But I can see the argument for The Dark Knight.

My other two toss ups are Spider-Man and X-Men. Spider-Man has been the bigger franchise overall, but X-Men really set the stage and was really the beginning of the modern super hero craze (prior to Iron Man sending it into the stratosphere and leaning to the MCU and of all geeks now being cool).

On a related note, has there been any better casting, or casting on par with RDJ as Stark and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine? (I bet Dougray Scott is still pissed at Tom Cruise about that one.)

tomk [1:24 PM]
OK, here’s a real answer.

[1:25]
Well, obviously the faces up there should be Dolph Lundgren, Corey Feldman, Halle Berry, and Trey Parker.

Rationale? No one embodies the two dimensional nature of the Punisher better than a Swedish chemical engineer who doesn’t wear a skull shirt, opening the world up to the idea that a lesser known Marvel property can somehow make it to the big screen. Feldman, as the voice of Donatello in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, anchored a movie that was a huge hit and showed the potential of Muppets representing beings of power that have abilities far beyond most of their kind and in Feldman’s best role to date. Berry represents the actor who can make the flip from one universe to the other, capitalizing on her whatever she has to be both a bland Storm and an embarrassing Catwoman. And Parker was Orgazmo, the proof that when you need to find a porn star superhero, you can’t go wrong with a Mormon missionary…I assume. I’ve never seen that one (or Catwoman for that matter), and got tired of South Park’s disgusting humor and overall preachiness, but Cannibal the Musical was quite funny.

[1:25]
Nah, here we go.

tomk [1:31 PM]
Reeve’s Superman is the obvious lock. An virtually unknown actor takes on the role of the Silver Age Superman and actually embodies him perfectly in a manner that actually makes him seem like a real person.

I’m going with the Burton/Keaton Batman movies next. They showed superheroes could be highly profitable and high profile, spawning a minor attempt at the superhero genre as we know it when you consider there were a few attempts at getting stuff done after that with the likes of Darkman and the first live action TV version of the Flash.

Next up, I’m going with Toby Maguire’s Spider-Man. Moreso than Keaton, Maguire’s Spidey showed the current trend of taking an unlikely actor and placing him or her in the lead role for a big action franchise. I’m not sure we’d get the likes of Paul Rudd or Chris Pratt as superheroes were it not for Maguire.

And finally, no to RDJ. I’m going with Jackman’s Wolverine. As much as we want to clamor and put RDJ up there for the whole MCU thing, in many ways RDJ is just playing himself as Iron Man. As much as Iron Man was a success because of RDJ, it would take other people on other movies to really make the MCU something. Jackman, on the other hand, has shown a hell of a lot more range when you go from X-Men to Logan, and considering he started as an Australian song-and-dance man, that’s even more impressive. While I am not sure what the MCU will do when RDJ finally quits, I am even less certain what Fox is going to do for more Wolverine in the near future.

watson [4:53 PM]
We’ve debated that before (both in the bullpen and on the podcast): who’s more important to their franchise? Jackman’s Logan or RDJ’s Iron Man. I agree that Wolverine is tougher. Iron Man can at least keep the same visual when he’s not in armor.

tomk [4:57 PM]
Well, I know which studio is more confident to run a movie without their big character considering I’ve seen many MCU films without Iron Man but no X-films without Wolverine.

ryan [5:10 PM]
First Class was good and it barely had any Wolverine.

jimmy [5:18 PM]
True. And the cameo in Apocalypse was gratuitous and unnecessary. But that film sucked anyway, so not like it mattered.

tomk [5:29 PM]
Maybe, but the MCU didn’t feel the need to toss Tony Stark into Ant-Man, GotG, Thor, and a host of others.

ryan
[5:36 PM]
MCU is a much more robust universe than X though. Those are all around one group of heroes so Wolverine is either there or you wonder why he isn’t. MCU is bigger and they’ve treated it as such. That’s why I think RDJ gets the spot. What he launched is far more successful than what Hugh Jackman launched.

watson [8:32 PM]
I’m sure we are all surprised when Shaquille O’Neal’s “Steel” didn’t launch an MCU style franchise.

ryan
[10:46 PM]
He did follow it up with Shazam.

watson [11:47 PM]
Kazaam thank you very much. Although Clayton insists we call it Kaptain Marvel.

ryan
[3:06 AM]
Oh right Sinbad was Shazam.

tomk [5:19 AM]
The Shaqoverse just didn’t catch on.

watson
[5:55 AM]
And wasn’t the world poorer for that…?