Comic Book Movies - What's coming, what to watch and what to avoid

I'm a lot bummed out that Mitt Romney dropped out of the Presidential Race :( I guess I can take solice in the fact that 2008 will feature a few comic book movies that I'm really looking forward to. First off is Iron Man. I've been a big Iron Man fan since the late 80's and so has the director of the movie. I have high hopes for this one! Next up is Batman: The Dark Knight. This will get a lot of press with the death of Heath Ledger. The first movie was phenomenal and everything that a Batman movie should be. Next up is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It has Harrison as the main man and Speilberg directing it. It WILL be good. Technically it isn't a comic book movie, but I don't care. :) The Hulk is returning in The Incredible Hulk. I liked, but didn't love the first movie. This time he faces off against a villian that's just and strong but smarter than he is. July will have the Batman and Hellboy sequels. Hellboy as a comic didn't hold my interest at all, but I really liked the movie. Hellboy 2 should be equally fun to watch. A couple of other films I should mention, we'll have the 6th Harry Potter movie around Thanksgiving, another James Bond flick at the first part of November, and the latest installment of Star Trek. The prequel to The DiVinci Code will be out in time for Christmas. I loved the book up until the very end, then I got pissed off. If you leave with 5 minutes left in the movie you'll probably enjoy it a lot. So with that said and if you're now jonesing for some over the top comic book action, here is a list of the good, the bad and the ugly, in no particular order of preference.

The Good

Batman Begins - Christian Bale portrays the Batman in the best Dark Knight movie ever!
Ghost Rider - Nicolas Cage is the avenging spirit on a flaming bike fighting against evil.
Hellboy - A baby demon grows up to fight evil along side his unique companions.
MiB - Will Smith learns that not everything is as it seems as he saves the world from hostile aliens.
Sin City - An impressive translation of Frank Miller's graphic novels. Not for the kids.
Spider-man 1&2 - Impressive visual effects and a great story set up the first movie and made it great. The second movie was even better with incredible character development and a bad guy that you cared about. My only gripe is Kirsten Dunst. Uggh.
Superman 1&2 - Christopher Reeve as the quintessential powerhouse and more human than human icon of comic book-dom. These movies were fun to watch and rewatch.
The Mask - Bet you didn't know this was based off a comic book! The source material is actually really dark and violent, but they took the lighter parts of it, throw in Jim Carrey and made for a very funny and entertaining movie.
TMNT - This was a guilty pleasure of mine but the new CGI version that came out was a fun popcorn movie that I would watch with my boys.
X-Men 1, X-Men-2 - Great action, better characters and a plot that made you think. X-Men 2 is one of the best movies of the genre, claws down.

300 - Another Frank Miller graphic novel made into a movie. Based loosely on real life events, this is about 90 minutes of guys killing stuff. Again, not for the kiddies.

The Bad

Daredevil & Elektra - Ben Afflect and Jennifer Gardner may make a cute couple in real life, but their characters were one dimensional and not entertaining.
Catwoman - This wasn't even based on Batman's classic foe. Look up craptastic, you'll see a picture of this movie.
Batman & Robin - Not even George Clooney could save this one. Featuring the Governator and Uma Thurman, this movie had horrible lines, awful costumes (can you say bat-nipples?) and the most disappointing villian with Bane. Bad Bad Bad.
Superman IV - If someone asks you to watch all 5 Superman movies, just politely ask to see the first two. The third installment is bad, but this is just awful! Please, don't watch this one!
Howard the Duck - George Lucas + Talking Duck = Lame
X-Men 3 - I was sad to see this movie. X2 was one of the best, only to be followed up with this pathetic attempt at tying in the Dark Phoenix saga.
Spawn - One of the most popular comics in the 90's was also one of the worst movies too.
MiB 2 - This felt like watching a commercial with all the blatant product placements in it. Rumor has it Will Smith wants to do a third. If it's as bad as the second, please use a neuralizer on me.
Spider-Man 3 - Once again a great franchise that tried to do too much in a 2 hour time frame. Having too many villians was what killed it. You could have made two more movies with the material you had. Venom - cool character, Sandman - great performance that was almost as good as Dr. Octopus. But throwing them all together with the "New Goblin" and it was woeful. I'm sure you'll see a Spider-Man 4, but the series may have jumped the shark.

The Ugly

These are movies that didn't suck so bad to be bad, but weren't good enough to be good, or they spawned several comic books after the movie came out.

Fantastic Four - The first one was almost good, but not quite. The second was was much better, but they screwed up portraying how powerful the Silver Surfer and Galactus are.

The Hulk - Visually this was a great film, but the rabid poodle and super sized Hulk were a bit much.

Superman Returns - Almost as bad as X-3 or Spider-Man 3, I just don't think the Man of Steel was done justice.

Alien vs Predator - Alien 1 & 2 and Predator 1 were awesome!!! Every sequel since then hasn't been as good.

Robocop - Overly violent in the first two installments, and too silly in the third, the series as a whole was lacking. However, one of my favorite comics of all time is Robocop vs Terminator, written by Frank Miller and drawn by Walter Simonson.

Terminator - T1 - ok, T2 - Fantastic, T3 - somewhere inbetween. It's definately time for Ahnold to hang up this role. He's just too flabby. I think they're doing a T4 so that might be kind of fun.

And there you have it. Lots of movies, lots of action and lots of stuff to avoid.