Top 5 Wost DC Comics Character Adaptations

For some reason, DC Comics doesn't have the luck that Marvel has had with their live action movies. While I likes Green Lantern, most did not. Sure the Dark Knight was great but The Dark Knight Returns was more lukewarm. And then there's really crappy things like Jonah Hex


But somethings are more than just bad movies. They don't even come close to honoring the original character. Why make an adaptation if you're going to alienate the fans?  Here are five adaptations of DC comics characters that were so bad, that people are still talking about how bad they were.



These are from TV and movies, but only released productions. So no mention of that god awful Wonder Woman pilot from a few years back. Of course this is all opinion.



#5.Birds of Prey


This is a case of close, but no cigar. This TV series came along and was supposed to be based on the classic Gail Simone run on the comic of the same name. But they took to many liberties. Like what? Catwoman was killed by the Joker before the series began. Batman vanished and hasn't been heard from. Huntress and Oracle are joined by a woman named Dinah who...is kind of boring. There was only one good episode which featured Black Canary and was pretty good. Sadly, that didn't last and the series quietly went away.








#4.Batman & Robin

 I was torn on what to put in this spot. I wanted to put in something that was meant to be taken seriously. This movie is certainly bad, but I also wanted movies or shows which were bad adaptations of characters. Did this count. Then I remembered something......




Apologies to Doug Walker but in about a minute he summed up what was so bad about this movie. Reducing the dark and gritty Batman to 60's era was just a bad idea. And to make matters worst Clooney sucked at the role. The whole thing was just one big epic fail. Robin also, being reduced to a whiny baby. Batman Forever may not have been perfect but at least it respected the characters (well, except Two-Face). This was just BAD.




#3.STEEL

This may seem like an odd choice but I think deserves a place here. This was a bad movie, no question about it, but there's more than that. In the comics Steel was introduced in the Return of Superman arc, and originally a movie was supposed to be made based on that. Steel was supposed to be the spin-off film. But when the Superman movie fell through, they made the spin off movie anyway. While they did get the names right and some of the back story is there, it just isn't the same character that fans liked in the comics. Blame it on the writing or blame it on the awful acting by Shaquille Oneil, this movie was just bad. I never saw it and can only by what I saw in the NC review. But that was enough, bad movie.




#2.Wonder Woman

So who's heard of this awful TV movie? Before Lynda Carter made the character popular on TV we had Cathy Lee Crosby. And she played a Wonder Woman who wore a red jumpsuit and had no super powers. Yes, you read that right. No magic lasso, no invisible plane...nothing. THIS WAS AWFUL! It has so little to do with the comics aside from the names that it hurt. I know, this mirrored events going on in the comics back in the day. But imagine you were me, a kid who only knew Wonder Woman from the cartoons and TV show. And you watch this crap. I still remember thinking WTF!! Oh and did I mention Crosby was BLONDE. To quote Sheldon Cooper, in what universe is Wonder Woman blonde? I don't know what the thinking here was. To be fair, Crosby is ok in the movie and it probably would have worked if they had called it something else. Ricardo Montalban was also in, that accounts for something. But when I think Wonder Woman I don't think spy I think amazon princess. This is worth a watch just to see how awful it is.


To be fair there have been worst Wonder Woman products out there. There were two god awful unsold pilots, and the time when Wonder Woman appeared in The Brady Kids cartoon. Yeah, I'm serious. Wonder Woman met The Brady Bunch Kids once.



So what's #1? Oh say it with me now.....



#1.Catwoman

Oh you knew this had to be on here. This is probably the first thing you thought when you saw the title. This is truly the worst of the lot. Unlike Birds of Prey it has no redeeming characters. Unlike Batman & Robin the villains are boring, Sharon Stone? Unlike Steel it doesn't even have good supporting characters to at least help it. And unlike Wonder Woman it doesn't even try to honor the mythos of the original character. It just makes it all up, and is beyond bad. Like Steel it was meant to be the sequel movie to Batman Returns but that fell through. Instead we get Halle Berry embarrassing herself. I don't know what else to say since it has been reviewed to death over and over. The writing sucks, the acting sucks, that stupid costume Berry wears sucks, the story sucks. It's bad, very bad.





Ah DC Comics, when you will ever get it right?