With Batman v Superman recently made available to buy on iTunes and other digital stores, we thought now would be a good time to look at a few oft-forgotten superhero films you can generally buy or rent for much cheaper. These ones don't suck, either.
Head off on a tour of the usual digital movie sites this week and you'll doubtless get the hard sell on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The film's release at retail has been nicely timed to coincide with Comic-Con, and the first trailers for follow-up films Justice League and Wonder Woman.
Of course, as high-profile as Batman v Superman is, most sources will agree that it simply isn't very good. If you want to see a genuinely decent superhero film without the £13.99 outlay, you could do a lot worse than these alternatives.
Admit it, you'd forgotten about some of them, hadn't you?
Image: Warner Bros.
Way before Superman became a furrow-browed, homicidal bore, he was the goofy super-powered boy scout we all know and love in Richard Donner's 1978 movie. Okay, so the special effects are pretty cheesy by today's standards, but Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman are on hand to provide extra-thick slices of ham by way of an accompaniment. And we all love ham and cheese, right?
There's been a bit of revisionist thinking around Spider-Man's cinematic treatment of late, culminating in a historic deal to return the web slinger to Marvel's creative control through Spider-Man: Homecoming. It's easy to forget that in Spider-Man 2 Sony produced a truly excellent superhero film a full four years before Marvel began its cinematic surge. In this one, Tobey Maquire's Spidey takes on Dr Octopus, a villain who manages to be simultaneously chilling and sympathetic. Quite a feat, that.
Image: Buena Vista Pictures
We all remember The Incredibles - it's one of Pixar's best films, after all. But it's all too easy to categorise this 2004 CGI film as such and be done with it, rather than to face what it actually is: a contender for the best superhero movie ever made. Mixing a beautiful Golden Age-inspired art style with a clever breakdown of family roles and genuinely imaginative superheroic action, it's something both DC and Marvel would do well to learn from.
Image: Twentieth Century Fox
Alongside Spider-Man 2, X-Men 2 is another early-noughties superhero film that shows there was plenty of life in the genre before Tony Stark and co. swooped in. X2 fulfilled the promise of the patchy original with a strong ensemble cast, a decent script, and a distinctive style you could almost call grounded - if it didn't involve a teleporting blue-skinned assassin and a man who can shoot lasers out of his eyes.
Image: IMDb
Deadpool recently did great business at the box office, demonstrating that there was a sizeable market for R-rated comic book films. But really, Kick-Ass proved as much way back in 2010 - albeit with far more modest financial returns. Based on Mark Millar's riotous comic, Kick-Ass tells the tale of a young schlub who decides to become a superhero. Only trouble is, he doesn't have any powers or discernible skills beyond the ability to take a beating. But the stars of this particular film are a foul-mouthed 12-year-old girl and her psychotic Batman-aping dad, played by Nicholas Cage.
Image: Twentieth Century Fox
Chronicle did pretty well at the box office back in 2012 - and phenomenally well given its $12 million budget. This modest budget hints at why it's perhaps easy to forget about Chronicle as the top notch superhero movie it is. Josh Trank's debut isn't based on any pre-existing comic book property, and it approaches the genre from a much more personal and even realistic perspective. Shot in a found-footage style, the film focuses on three normal high school kids who stumble across a meteor that gives them phenomenal telekinetic powers.
Image: Disney
A notably expensive flop for Disney back in 2012, John Carter suffered from poor marketing, a bizarre renaming that removed the vital 'Of Mars' bit from the title, and the lack of a big star with pulling power. Viewed in the here and now, however, John Carter is an enjoyable Sunday afternoon sci-fi romp in which a former American Civil War Confederate Army captain takes on the role of a proto-superhero on the planet Mars. No, really, it's quite good - in a $300 million B-movie kind of way.
