Aug 22 2011

List of Superhero Movie Rotten Tomatoes Scores

5 responses so far

5 Responses to “List of Superhero Movie Rotten Tomatoes Scores”

1. # Age of Heroes: Comic Book Adaptationson 24 Jul 2012 at 2:24 am

   […] the films which stayed true to the characters/source material did far better both financially and critically. Image via bixentro on […]

2. # B. McKenzieon 24 Jul 2012 at 3:34 am

   “This is often done in order to try and achieve greater commercial success, but what is ironic is, the films which stayed true to the characters/source material did far better both financially and critically.” I’m not sure how you might argue this conclusively one way or the other, but anecdotally, this feels a bit counterintuitive to me. First, almost all superhero movies have been faithful to the source material, so we don’t have very much evidence that this is an element of success.
   
   As far as I’m aware, only a few superhero movies have deviated substantially from its source material. Hellboy 1 is probably the most notable example–it introduces Agent Myers, who’s probably the second-most important character in the movie but never shows up in the comics. Nevertheless, the movie scored 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. The sequel was more faithful to the comics (e.g. no Myers), but did almost identically on Rotten Tomatoes (87%). Hellboy II did better at the box office ($160 million against a production budget of $85 million, compared to $99 million against a production budget of $66 million), but I suspect that other factors (like a wider release overseas and marketing) played a much bigger role. For example, the original sold $1.5 million of tickets in Russia/CIS, whereas the sequel sold $8.5 million ($3.5 million in the opening weekend). If we look at just the United States, Hellboy 2 did not do much better ($76 million vs. $60 million).
   
   UPDATE: More recently, the Guardians of the Galaxy movie is radically different from its comic series. For example, the movie is an adventure/comedy, several teammates were omitted, Rocket is notably less psychopathic (E.g. no “Blam, murdered you!” catchphrase), and Quill’s backstory has been made Earth-centric and considerably simplified. I think the comic series was such a slog that a radical overhaul for the movie was probably necessary.
   
   The second example is Nolan’s Batman series introducing Rachel Dawes. She wasn’t terribly interesting, but I think inventing a female character to build competition between Wayne and Dent was probably the right call here. She fits the script better than, say, Pamela Isley or Vicki Vale would. The Batman series did extremely well both creatively and financially. I wouldn’t attribute either mainly to the Dawes character, but she doesn’t appear to have hurt.
   
   The last example that comes to mind is Green Lantern. Ryan Reynolds and the writers took the character in a more action-comedy direction than the comic writers usually do. This may have contributed to the movie being a creative and financial debacle. However, I don’t think going in a more action/sci-fi direction would necessarily have made this a better movie–the execution was horrible and I think the comedy came closer to working than the action did. Good action-comedy writers could have pulled off an action-comedy and good action writers could have pulled off an action, but Green Lantern had neither.
   
   Incidentally, Green Lantern probably should have tweaked the source material with regards to Hector Hammond’s grotesque forehead. In contrast, X-Men had more success with costumes (and even generated a funny line for Cyclops) by eschewing yellow-and-blue spandex.

3. # Anonymouson 27 Dec 2013 at 6:05 pm

   avengers should totally be no.1

4. # Aj of Earthon 28 Dec 2013 at 9:39 am

   I can’t wait for Days of Future Past.

5. # Superheroes of Summer – WIF Underrated Movies | WRITING IS FUN-DAMENTAL from Gwendolyn Hoffon 23 Sep 2015 at 3:37 am

   […] Incredibles wowed audiences of all ages and impressed the critics, boasting the highest Rotten Tomatoes score of any superhero movie and winning an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. Brad […]

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