Back in May, I couldn’t wait to write this column. I started this yearly recap of comic book films mainly as a counterpoint to the number of articles in the mainstream media bemoaning the fact that comic book films exist at all and the journalists who are trying to speed up them going out of favor.

So, when The Avengers broke big, setting all sorts of box office records and becoming not only the highest grossing film of the year, but also the third highest grossing film of all time, I thought 2012 was going to turn out to be one of the best years for comic book films in their entire history.

And it was. But it was also one of the worst years as well.

In the early morning hours of Friday, July 20, James Eagan Holmes entered the crowded Theater 9 of the Century 16 multiplex in Aurora, Colorado. The theater was full of fans eager to be the first to see The Dark Knight Rises, the last film in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. They would become victims of one of the most violent crimes in recorded history. Holmes, dressed in armored clothing and carry numerous firearms with him, opened fire in that crowded theater. By the time shooting had stopped, 58 people would be injured, and 12 people would be killed.

It is impossible to talk about the year in film in any context without talking about the Aurora shootings. The joy of seeing a film in a crowded theaters full of your fellow fans is forever tainted. This type of exuberant film fan became prey that night.

Now, four months on, it is still easy to look back on that night and see only the darkest part of human nature. An evil man methodically came up with a way to kill as many people as he could. It doesn’t get more sinister than that.

But I found that when great darkness shows its face to the world, there is always a bright and shining light that rises up to greet it. It’s natural to focus on Holmes and his despicable acts. But I also look towards the example of Matt McQuinn, who shielded the bodies of his girlfriend and brother with his own, sacrificing his life to save theirs. I look to Jarell Brooks, a young man who was wounded getting a woman and her two small children, people he didn’t know, to safety. I look to Emma Goos, who stayed in the theater to tend to the wounds of an injured victim while the shooting was going on. I look to All C’s Comics Collectibles, the Aurora comic shop that started the Aurora Rises charity to help benefit the victim’s and their families and I look to the numerous comic artists and writers that helped make that charity an ongoing endeavor  I also look to Christian Bale, who, on his own with no fanfare and publicists in tow, visited the Aurora area after to shootings to give his fans whatever comfort he could.

Yes, the Aurora shooting gave us a glimpse of the worst that humanity had to offer, but it also gave us a glimpse of the best that humanity has to offer as well. And while we filmgoers will never be free of the paranoia that night in July caused (especially when just two weeks ago a plot to do a similar shooting in Missouri during a showing of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 was, thankfully, stopped before it could be put into fruition), we should never let that fear stop us from doing the things we enjoy. We might never be able to stop bad things from happening, but we can always be there to help each other out when they do.

Now that I’ve said what I needed to say on that, let’s go back to the frivolous world of comic book films.

List taken from BoxOfficeMojo.com (http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2012&p=.htm)

As of last night, comic book adaptations hold three of the top five spots on the yearly highest grossing films list. I’m sure Skyfall and the aforementioned Breaking Dawn, Part 2 might have some say if The Amazing Spider-Man stays in the Top 5, but even if it does fall out, we will have three comic book adaptations in the Top 10. And that has never happened. The closest we came to that was in 2008 when The Dark Knight and Iron Man were one and two and the original superhero comedy Hancock was number four. Add to that the fact that a sequel to another comic book adaptation, Men in Black 3, was #11 this year and you have a very good year for the comic book film.

Even Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, a film with a well-deserved 18% fresh over at Rotten Tomatoes and which debuted an underwhelming third in its opening weekend was able to make over $132 million worldwide against a $57 million dollar budget. Yes, I am a fan of comic book movies and even I am stunned by that fact. That’s why Nicolas Cage keeps on getting to make movies.

The only true flop of this year’s six comic book adaptations was Dredd, whose $30,931,946 worldwide take was considerably less than its $50 million budget. I can only assume that the Sylvester Stallone version killed just about any interest anybody might have had in the character, which was a shame. I found the film a faithful adaptation of the original source material which held up well as a film on its own.

As lucrative as this year was for the comic book film, it is a year in flux. The Avengers marked the end of the first phase of Marvel’s film slate, and Phase 2 begins next year with Iron Man 3 in May and Thor: The Dark World in November. It will be interesting if they can carry any Avengers momentum over into those releases, or will fans force the studio to prove itself all over again.

And The Dark Knight Rises closes the Nolan era on DC/Warners’ Batman property. They start anew with their Superman franchise with The Man of Steel in June. There’s a lot riding on this new take on the character, as Warners is looking to not only get a franchise to replace Nolan’s Batman films on their docket, but also potentially use the film as a springboard into their planned Justice League film and to bring other DC comic heroes to the big screen.

In addition to those three films, there are at least nine other comic book adaptations scheduled for next year, including Hugh Jackman returning as Logan in The Wolverine, sequels to Red, Kick-Ass,300 and Sin City, and properties from publishers such as Dark Horse, Boom! and other smaller companies. 2012 proved that people still are willing to go to see comic book films. However, odds are that not all of the films released next year will be great successes, so we can expect the mainstream doubters to start the chorus of the comic book films doom next year. But for now, let’s bask in the highs the comic book film rose to, and take a moment to contemplate the lowest lows they experienced this year.

In this day and age, if you are a form of media that covers another form of media, eventually you will come up with a list. Rolling Stone has put out special, oversized volumes about what songs, albums and guitarists are the best in their eyes. Entertainment Weekly can be counted on at least one issue a year feature a list of some kind, most recently it was the “50 Best Films You’ve Never Seen” and “25 Best Cult TV Shows From the Past 25 years.” And VH1 and E! have made it a staple of their programming.

The reason why they turn to list making is simple–because it’s popular. In a world full of opinionated people, any collated list  that represents the authoritative ranking of anything will get attention. People want their tastes validated. Or, they want to see how wrong these media outlets are. These lists sell copies.  They garner high ratings. They get shared on Facebook. They get linked to. And the more controversial the better, For example, take Sight and Sound‘s yearly poll’s swapping of Citizen Kane with Vertigo and the furor that kicked up.

But sometimes, it appears that there’s more that goes into constructing these lists than just picking the best or worst of a particular medium. Some lists seem to be compiled just to garner controversy. Yes, there will be “no brainer” items on the list, but there will also be notable omissions as well. There will be items included that seems to serve no other purpose than to make people angry. And even if you agree with every item put on and left off, you have the rankings themselves to quarrel over.

A sterling example of this are two lists that have appeared on Newsarama.com, one of the oldest comic book news sites on the Internet, over the last week. One was the “10 Best Comic Book-Based Movie PERFORMANCES Of All Time” and the “10 Worst Comic Book-Based Movie PERFORMANCES of All Time.” Both lists were compiled by the “Newsarama Staff,” and both are controversial in their own right. At best, the lists were sloppily compiled with mind-numbing gaps of logic, at worst, the list were compiled deliberately to anger comic book movie fans and generate controversy.

Here is Newsarama’s 10 Best List:

1. Heath Ledger, The Joker, The Dark Knight
2. Robert Downey, Jr, Tony Stark/Iron Man, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, & The Avengers
3. Gary Oldman, Commissioner Gordon, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises
4. Hugh Jackman, Wolverine, X-Men, X2: X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men First Class
5. J.K. Simmons, J. Jonah Jameson, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3
6. Tom Hiddleston, Loki, Thor & The Avengers
7. Chloe Grace Moretz, Hit-Girl, Kick-Ass
8. Andrew Garfield, Peter Parker/Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man
9. Anne Hathaway, Selina Kyle, The Dark Knight Rises
10. Chris Evans, Jensen, The Losers

The lists are “best comic book-based performances” not “Best SUPERHERO comic book-based performances”: Granted, Newsarama focuses mostly on the mainstream superhero genre, and adding another word to the already gangly title would have made it even ganglier, but we have to take the titles of these articles to heart. That means, this should be the definitive list of ALL performances from ALL movies based an ALL kinds of comic books. Yet, there is no Paul Giamatti from American Splendor on this list. Nor is there Thora Birch or Steve Buscemi from Ghost World or Tom Hanks, Paul Newman or anyone else from Road to Perdition. 

I could go on. But what these titles are doing is advertising one thing and selling us another. And that is a recipe that is custom made to generate the kind of “you left XXX of the list” controversy that builds up links.

The Green Hornet? The Phantom? Comic Book-Based?: You’d think a news website with 10 years of independent coverage of the world of comic books would be able to tell what films were made from comic books and which ones weren’t. Baring that, you’d think they’d be able hire writers with an active connection to the Internet and the ability to access Google from it. Newsarama apparently is able to do neither.

The Green Hornet was based on a radio program that began in January1936. The Phantom was based on a comic strip that began in newspapers a few weeks after the Hornet made his first broadcast. . While both were adapted into comic books, neither originated there nor were their comics their most remembered incarnations. Calling The Green Hornet and The Phantom “comic book-based” would be like calling Star Wars and Star Trek comic book-based. And you can find far worse actors than Seth Rogen and Billy Zane in those franchises.

This might seem to be just a matter of semantics. But I believe it is indicative of the hap-hazard way these lists were constructed. Because you don’t have to look too hard to find two more bad performances in a film that was actually based on a comic book.

To Newsarama, “all time” means “within the last 12 years”: With the exception of The Phantom, the Schumacher Batman films, and the early Superman movies, all the films on the list were made after 2000. That means out of over 70 years of comic books being made into films, only a little over a decade of films were being seriously considered.

Yes, there have been a whole lot more comic book films to chose from in the last 12 years. But, as I realized doing my History of the Comic Book Film feature, the comic book film did not begin with X-Men. What? Newsarama couldn’t find a top ten worthy bad performance in Sheena, Red Sonja, Howard the Duck or in Dolph Lundgren’s Punisher? And on the good side, what about Brandon Lee’s Crow, Jack Nicholson’s Joker or Wesley Snipes’ Blade? The fact that there wasn’t one performance from the above that made either list is a disservice to what Newsarama was trying to create. It shows tunnel vision, something that handicaps any attempt at creating a comprehensive list.

Their selection process is dubious and abitrary at best:  They pay lip service to the quality work Chris Evans has done in a number of comic book films, yet make a point of telling us that they can pick only one performance of his for the list (and the pick his least well-known role at that). Yet, Hallie Berry gets slammed for playing both Storm and Catwoman. They lump the combined casts of two films as one entry, and two actors who had played the same role almost 20 years apart as another selection.

You get the feeling they were making up the rules as they went along. Or, rather, constructing the rules of selection so that it suited them best.

Take, for instance, this “ground rule” from the introduction to the worst list.

…it would be way too easy and frankly not all that much fun to pick-on a lower class of Hollywood actor in barely feature-quality train wrecks like Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four or the 1980s Captain America. So yes, Shaquille O’Neal, you get immunity this day.

Okay, I’m no fan of Shaquille O’Neal, and I’m sure he would want his being left off a list of bad actors argued, but the reason Newsarama left him of the list just doesn’t make sense. When Shaq made Steel, he had already made two feature films (Blue Chips and Kazaam). And Steel was a $16 million dollar film made by Warner Brothers, not some film made for $200 and a bag of potato chips in someone’s basement. Could Shaq be considered a “lower class of actor”? Probably. But so could Billy Zane, king of the B-movie. Maybe if Shaq had a small part in Titanic, then Newsarama would have considered him worthy of inclusion.

This is how they defend their position:

Well, Tobey’s Peter Parker was naive and earnest enough, but he just didn’t have Parker’s inner beauty.

Yes. Really.

Putting Christopher Reeve on the list of worst actors might have been done just to anger people: I’m trying not to believe that they’d do something so wrong just to generate site hits, but Newsarama is not making it easy by how they open their defense of their opinion:

Yes, we’re going there, and in advance, we’re genuinely sorry you’re upset.

Yes, they went there, but did they go there thinking their opinion would be controversial, or knowing it would be controversial and get a lot of reaction?

Listen, whenever you have a list like this, there will be items on it that butt up against conventional wisdom. But seldom has there ever been a case where something flew in the face of overwhelming public opinion like Newsarama is is doing here.

If you are going to “go there,” then you’d better have an incredibly strong argument to back up your position. Unfortunately, Newsarama doesn’t.

…Reeve just wasn’t that accomplished a film actor.

In defense of this position we could point to his lack of much of a post-Superman resume, but the truth is now 30-plus years later with a more critical eye we simply don’t find his portrayal of Superman and Clark Kent very much like any Superman or Clark Kent we know… or like, for that matter.

His Clark wasn’t mild-mannered, he was a cartoonish buffoon. His Superman far too earnest and eager-to-please for someone with the power of a god. In short, he was a mild-mannered Superman, frankly lacking in the charisma you’d expect from an actor playing a cultural icon. A more theatrical rather than natural actor, Reeve’s Superman was a caricature of a comic book Boy Scout superhero and not a fully developed character.

Where to begin. Hmmm.

I wonder who this editorial “we” is? Perhaps it is someone who  is 12 and has only known the John Byrne interpretation of Superman. But, the character was around for 50 years before Byrne revamped him. Back when the film was made, the comic book Superman was a more staid version of the one found in the film. The mental image the editorial “we” has of Superman is so contrary to what the character’s image really is that it makes it seem that this entry came from a website that wouldn’t know a comic book if it fell in their lap, not a “respected” comic book news site.

I’m so glad they didn’t use Reeve’s lack of a post-Superman career as their only defense for their position, because is a defense that could be swatted away with one word–typecasting. Typecasting is the reason why Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher had less than stellar careers after Star Wars, and why Harrison Ford’s post-Star Wars career is so extraordinary. It is what the cast of the Harry Potter films are struggling with now, and what the cast of Twilight is working hard to avoid. Once you become so associated with such an iconic character, it’s hard for Hollywood to see you in any other role. This was the reason for Reeve’s lackluster post-Superman career, not lack of talent.

But Reeve’s performance was pitch perfect as Superman. I don’t know what the editorial “we” was thinking, but Superman doesn’t stand “Sarcasm, Bullying and Badassery”, he stands for “Truth, Justice and the American Way.” Yes, Reeve’s Superman was earnest–and honest and forthright–but that IS Superman. And Reeve played him in such a way that he never was hokey or corny.

As for Clark Kent, Reeve played Kent as a role Superman was himself playing. Superman portrayed Kent as an awkward and bumbling fool so no one would see through the flimsy disguise and put two and two together. It’s a brilliant piece of acting, and if you aren’t able to pick that up, then you have no business talking about acting performances whatsoever.

I have to laugh at the  ”30-plus years later with a more critical eye” part. Like that is supposed to win us over, that they’re looking at the performance in a serious manner as an adult, and therefore, he is right. That might have held more water if Chris Sims and David Uzumeri didn’t take a similar look back on the first Superman back in March for rival comic book news site Comics Alliance.  They ripped the film to shreds, but still called Reeve’s performance, and these are direct quotes, “amazing” and “darn near perfect.” So much for that argument.

Taking this into consideration, it’s hard to not believe the trashing of Reeve was done purely to garner controversy. If so, at least it worked. Not only am I talking about it, but also many comic book professionals, the people Newsarama make a living covering, took umbrage with the list as well.

Creators like Amazing Spider-Man writer Dan Slott:

Marvel Comics editor Steve Wacker:

And legendary comic writer Mark Waid:

That tweet set off a Twitter war between Waid and Newsarama editor Lucas Siegel,which is not the behavior you expect from an editor who should be keeping a journalistic distance from one of people he would be covering, but it is the kind of behavior you’d expect if you want add more controversy to the already controversial matter.

Another sign that this whole thing might be hit bait is that they spun of the controversy to another article on the site, an OP/ED piece by frequent Newsarama contributor Vaneta Rogers , glorifying Reeve’s performance and giving yet another page full of ads for Newsarama from the controversial list.

I hope this isn’t the case, that Newsarama is manipulating the popularity of lists to gain hits for itself. Presenting honest, well-formed and well-thought out opinions is always something that should be striven for. But putting out incendiary opinions in a clumsy and hap hazard manner isn’t. And it looks like Newsarama did the latter and is trying to pass it off as the former.

Who can guess what drives the Motion Picture Association of America’s Classification and Ratings Administration board to rate a movie the way they do?

It’s not like the group has a strong, codified standard for each rating that movies must adhere to. They don’t. Their general rule of thumb of leaving filmmakers alone to make the movies they want has lead to numerous misunderstandings about filmmakers think will constitute a specific rating and what the ratings board actually rules. Oft times, their decisions appeared to have little relationship to the actual content of the films themselves. The year 2010 was no exception, filled as it was with several incidences that left observers scratching their collective heads. Here’s a the top five controversies coming out of the MPAA last year.

A Film Unfinished

Documentaries generally aren’t affected too much by whatever rating that they may receive as their audience and distribution is rather limited. But director Adam Yauch hoped that his documentary about an incomplete Nazi propaganda film A Film Unfinished would be used as a teaching aid in high schools around the country. However, that hope was dashed when the MPAA gave the film an R rating for “disturbing images of Holocaust atrocities including graphic nudity.” Yauch countered in a statement “This is too important of a historical document to ban from classrooms… I understand that the MPAA wants to protect children’s eyes from things that are too overwhelming, but they’ve really gone too far this time. It’s bullshit.” And while he might be right in calling the MPAA’s reasoning “bullshit,” it probably was not the smartest move to do so a week before going into an appeal hearing with them. The ratings board turned down Yauch’s appeal, even though he sited The Last Days, another Holocaust documentary that the board had only rated PG-13 but noted it had “disturbing images of Holocaust atrocities including graphic nudity.” I’m sure that the fact that Steven Spielberg was a producer on The Last Days had nothing to do with his film getting the lesser restrictive rating. Right?

The King’s SpeechWhile the ratings board doesn’t have too many hard and fast rules, but its most famous concerns the use of “F-bombs.” Drop one and your film can receive a rating no lower than PG-13. Drop more than one and you automatically receive an R-rating. And as director Tom Hooper found out, there is no exception for context or even if the multiple uses are confined to a profanity-free film. The scene in question comes in his film The King’s Speech, which details the relationship between England’s King George VI (Colin Firth) and speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) who helps him overcome an oft-times debilitating stammer. In one scene, Rush needs to help the Prince prepare for an important speech to the British people in the face of Nazi Germany’s nightly bombing raids. To do so, he has the Prince blast through a string of profanities at high speed, including a number off-bombs.” Despite an appeal and the fact that it was clustered in one (historically accurate) scene, the MPAA still gave the film an R rating. Fortunately, that hasn’t stopped it from being one the most highly acclaimed films of the year and generating some strong Academy Award buzz.

The Tillman Story

Most people know the story of Pat Tillman, the NFL player who enlisted in the Army following the attacks on 9/11 and who was subsequently killed in action in Afghanistan. What is perhaps lesser known is that Tillman was killed accidentally in an incident of “friendly fire,” not in the manner that the Pentagon informed his family and the media. The Tillman Story is a documentary that follows his family as they dig for and uncover the truth about the death of their loved one and records their outrage over the use of his and other dead soldiers’ deaths as public relations tools by the Pentagon and the Bush administration in order to drum up support for their war on terrorism. Despite a lack of explicit violence or sex, the MPAA tagged The Tillman Story with an R-rating for excessive language, language that is no harsher than what one can hear from most teenagers anyway. Harvey Weinstein, the head of the film’s distributor, The Weinstein Company, himself no stranger to appealing ratings, couldn’t get the board to budge with the argument that the film was important for young people to see. Now since the MPAA also serves as an industry lobbying organization, it undoubtedly has many ties to Washington politicians and bureaucrats. Was there some back channel pressure applied to keep the film from getting higher visibility or was the MPAA proactive and took it upon themselves to protect their Washington friends from further widespread embarrassment over the whole incident?

Bereavement

In addition to rating films and cozying up to Washington politicos, the MPAA also gets final authority over the content of advertising materials that the studios release. And as Kevin Smith, the producers of the Saw franchise and others over the years have discovered, you can get into hot water with the group if you don’t get their stamp of approval on anything you wish to release. But if you expect the MPAA’s rulings on advertising to have more of a logical consistency than how they’ve rated films, then you’re very much mistaken. Case in point, a proposed poster for the horror film Bereavement, which featured a young girl holding a knife. The MPAA nixed the poster citing its “depiction of a child holding a weapon.” Now this could seem a bit reasonable, except for the fact that this year also saw the release of the comic book adaptation Kick-Ass, which was also advertised in part with a poster of a young girl holding a weapon. A much bigger weapon, I might add. So why was one approved and the other not? Was the MPAA distracted by the shiny bright colors of the Kick-Ass poster? Who can say?

Blue Valentine

Perhaps the most puzzling, and certainly the most publicized, controversy coming out of the MPAA this year was the one over the rating of director Derek Cianfrance’s drama Blue Valentine. Those who had seen the movie at its Sundance premier were stunned when the ratings board handed down an NC-17 rating. Attention soon focused on a sequence where Ryan Gosling’s character performs o s on Michelle William’s character. Shot from the side at a slight distance, the scene featured no nudity and was as explicit as a similar scene in Darren Aronofski’s Black Swan, which only received an R rating. Ironically, the scene in Black Swan featured Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, having the MPAA going against its traditional stance of rating a homosexual sex act harsher than its heterosexual counterpart. Perhaps it has something to do with Blue Valentine being distributed by indie house Weinstein Company while Black Swan is from Fox Searchlight, a subsidiary of MPAA sponsoring member Twentieth Century Fox. Williams offered her own thoughts on the matter, speculating that the realism of the scene versus the fantasy element of the Black Swan scene may have informed the decision.

While it is not surprising that Harvey Weinstein appealed the decision, more than a few eyebrows were raised that he was able to get the rating lowered to the less restrictive (no pun intended) R rating. This lead to the issuing of polar opposite statements from the MPAA and national, self-appointed nanny group the Parents Television Council. The MPAA stated that the appeal shows that their rating system works with filmmakers while the PTC stated that the MPAA’s system was broken because they, in the PTC’s eyes, backed down. Of course, the PTC also stated that they had never seen the film themselves, so take their opinion for what it’s worth.

2010 has been a rocky year for the comic book film. There were two blockbuster smash hits. The first, Iron Man 2, which $621 million worldwide box office take more than tripled its estimated $200 million dollar budget. So what if this edition was less favorably received by the critics than its predecessor, that haul guarantees a sequel, which is already been scheduled.

The second, Kick-Ass, is sort of a phantom hit. It made only $48 million in the United States, just over a 50% profit on its $30 million budget. However, it duplicated its U.S. take over seas making it a healthy hit and a sequel all but certain, when schedules align.

After that, it gets a bit dicey. The Losers, and underrated film if there ever was one, made $29 million worldwide against an estimated $25 million budget. That’s barely covering your costs if you don’t add in advertising.

Then there are the flops. Jonah Hex made $10.9 million at the box office, less than a quarter of its relatively modest $47 million budget. And Scott Pilgrim vs. the World made only $31.5 million domestically, half of its$60 million budget. It made another $12.7 million overseas, which only means that it made three fourths of its budget back instead of only half.

With two sizable flops such as the ones listed above, talk begins anew  about the death of the comic book film. This time, the talk might be right on, although the performance of RED this past weekend gives us hope.

The reason why we should worry is because the failure of Jonah Hex and Scott Pilgrim can be laid at the feet of one thing–the movie studios.

The Jonah Hex we got differs quite a bit from the one that was on paper. The script I read was closer to the original comic book stories. There were no superpowers for Hex, no superweapon for him to stop. I believe that a majority of this original script was shot. The climax between Hex and Turnbull from the script makes its way into the film as a dream sequence, so we know it was filmed.

However, there were a number of reshoots done on the film. If I was to hazard a guess, I’d imagine that a studio executive saw a cut of the film made from the script, question where Hex’s superpowers were and why the film wasn’t more comic book-y, and demanded reshoots to bring the film in line with what his idea of a comic book film should be.

The result is an awful movie. Characterization was truncated, exposition was given in big info dumps of dialog, and the more blockbusteresque aspects added were laughable. Would the original version be any better? Maybe not. But it certainly wouldn’t be any worse.

Quality was not an issue with Scott Pilgrim. The film was a visual masterpiece and incredibly inventive. While changing quite a bit from the original text, it kept true to the tone and feel of the original graphic novel.

The problem came in the way it was marketed. It was sold mainly as a comic book action film. It was marketed as a story of a young man who must fight the seven evil exes of his current paramour. That leads to fairly straightforward expectations–we’ll see Scott Pilgrim fight his girlfriend Ramona Flowers’ exes from the onset. I’d imagine many people were fairly surprised when the first 10 to 15 minutes of the film details Scott’s relationship with another woman, Knives Chao. Ramona Flowers isn’t introduced until much later and the fighting doesn’t come in until later still.

By marketing it as a frenetic version of your typical comic book film instead as a layered romance and story of a man growing up, it set up unrealistic expectations on the film. And when these expectations weren’t met, audiences rebelled.

RED is a sign of hope, mainly due to the fact the studios got it right. Instead of marketing the film to the typical comic book movie audience–the 18 to 35 demographic, they skewed 35 and above. The film made $25 million in its opening weekend, not enough to cop the number one spot but far better than its rather mediocre reviews call for. It’s too soon to tell if RED will truly be a hit, but making half its budget back right out of the gate and well before it opens internationally is a very good sign.

Of course, this does not mean that the future of comic book films is guaranteed to be rosy. Yes, there are a lot of comic book films in the pipeline, but there are a lot of potential question marks in the road as well.

January brings is The Green Hornet, not truly a comic book property but close enough. It’s release has been delayed and it has the makings of being the kind of campfest that destroyed the first Batman film franchise. Marvel’s Thor is scheduled for May. While Marvel’s films they do in house seem to be can’t miss opportunities, Thor leads more to the epic fantasy genre than the conventional superhero one. Outside of The Lord Of the Rings trilogy, these kind of films are hit or miss.

June brings us X-Men: First Class and Green Lantern. The former is a prequel to the X-Men franchise, focusing on the early days of Charles Xavier and Magneto. Granted, it is understandable that FOX would want to get a little bit of separation from Brett Ratner’s disappointing X-Men: The Last Stand, but is this taking the franchise too far back for the fans to follow?

And Green Lantern has a solid script that could be turned into a very good comic book film. But this is put out by Warner Brothers, the same studio that ruined Jonah Hex. Since GL is more of a conventional superhero flick anyway, I can’t see Warners needing to meddle at all. But if they do, the results could be disasterous.

After that we have Captain America: The First Avenger in July. On paper, this seems to be a can’t miss proposition. A man dressed as an American flag fight Nazis in Europe during World War II? In a film that stylistically resembles the Indiana Jones franchise? Directed by the man who made one of the best, if severely underrated comic book films of all time in The Rocketeer? I’d buy ticket to that right now if I could. But would anybody else?

And after that? Well, we have a Ghost Rider sequel nobody really asked for or wants, the culmination of Marvel’s cinematic universe build with The Avengers, sequels to The Dark Knight and Iron Man 2, both which should be decent, and revamps of the Spider-Man and Superman film franchises, the former which was unnecessary and the latter which will be rushed–to say the least. Lots of potential pot holes in the future.

The continued success of the comic book film depends on how well studios understand the reality that each comic book film is unique and should be treated as such. If the studios come to that realization, then the genre will remain vibrant. If not, then the naysayers who hope that the comic book film will just go away will get their wish.

1. RED (Summit Entertainment, 3,255 Theaters, 11 Minutes, Rated PG-13): 2010 has not been kind to comic book films. You had one hit (Iron Man), one moderate success (Kick-Ass), one that barely broke even (The Losers) and two rather big flops (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World & Jonah Hex). It is not hard to see why people are looking to the performance of this movie as to whether or not comic book films have a bright future.

Of course, this film might be helped by the fact that it doesn’t resemble a comic book at all. Oh, it does come from a comic book–one written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Cully Hamner, but it’s plot could come directly from Hollywood.

A group of retired CIA agents are targeted for death. They band together to find out who is behind the plot, blowing up a great deal of stuff in the process.

It has an all-star cast–Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren have Oscars, John Malkovich has been nominated twice, and you can make a strong case that Bruce Willis and Mary-Louise Parker should have been nominated in the past. And the film has that “old people kicking ass” quality to it that is somewhat appealing. Who knows? This could be where the comic book movie bounces back.

2. Jackass 3D (Paramount, 3,081 Theaters, Rated R): However, no matter how well Red does at the box office, it probably still wont beat this one. Unfortunately.

I have never been a fan of Jackass. I quickly turned the channel when it was on TV, never saw either of the prior two movies, and pretty much avoided all the spin-offs and films starring the cast.

It’s not that I dislike watching people getting hit in the crotch. Hey, I still watch America’s Funniest Home Videos. But I thought these guys were just too smarmy and creepy for me to enjoy what they are doing. I don’t like people who laugh at their own jokes, especially when those jokes involve people sitting in a porta-potty being launched into the air via a slingshot.

But for those of you who like this sort of stuff, here it is in 3-D, another craze I can’t stand. Now I can ignore both of them at the same time.

As a new feature of these New Releases posts, from now until the end of the year, we will be running Oscar Watch 2010. Every week, we’ll run down the contenders for the Oscars so you could be ahead of the game before awards season rolls around.

I think it’s safe to say that Jackass 3-D will not be a Oscar contender in any category outside of the technical ones. So, if seeing potential Oscar nominees is your big thing, you can feel fairly secure if you miss this one.

Usually, action films don’t score a lot of acting nods at the Oscars. This year could be different. There are a lot of old Oscar favorites in the cast, and Malkovich and Mirren have showy roles that could garner a nod if the Academy is feeling generous. It is a longshot, but it is a possibility.

It appears that X-Men: First Class is on the fast track to get made as casting confirmations are coming almost as fast as the casting rumors hit the wire.

Variety is reporting that Nicholas Hoult (A Single Man) has signed to play Hank McCoy, a.k.a. The Beast and Caleb Landry Jones has signed to play Sean Cassidy, a.k.a. Banshee. And Ain’t It Cool News is reporting the rumor that Aaron Johnson is “one hundred percent locked” to reteam with his Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn in the role of Scott Summers, a.k.a. Cyclops.

If this is true, they will join the previously cast James McAvoy (Professor Charles Xavier), Michael Fassbender (Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto), and Alice Eve (Emma Frost).

This would mark the second comic book adaptation for Johnson (after Kick-Ass), McAvoy (after Wanted) and Fassbender (after Jonah Hex).

Banshee is an Irish Mutant with the power to generate destructive force by using his scream. It is funny to note that the only American member of the cast (so far) is playing the only character from the United Kingdom, and the rest of the roles are played by actors from the U.K. (Landry Jones is from Texas, McAvoy is Scottish, Fassbender was raised in Ireland, and Hoult and Eve are British).

Continuity buffs are already trying to sort this cast out. The Beast is portrayed as being much older than Cyclops in X-Men: The Last Stand, yet they are essentially the same age here. Emma Frost appeared to be the same age as the rest of the mutants in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but Alice Eve is closer in age to McAvoy and Fassbender than she is the students. Let’s not mention the fact that McAvoy and Fassbender are, at most, only 13 years older than any of the students but in the other X-Men films the age different seems to be much greater.

Kick-Ass introduces itself as a movie that wants to deconstruct super heroes and, by extension, super hero movies. By placing non-super-powered, costumed vigilantes into the real world, it explores, with a dash of humor, the ridiculousness and the dangers inherent in the concept. But even though it gleefully tosses its own thesis out the window quite literally by the final reel, Kick-Ass is no less entertaining for it.

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), high school comic book fan, one day innocently asks his friends why no one has ever actually put on a costume and gone out to fight crime on the streets. He quickly finds out exactly why not when, after putting on a wetsuit and some common kitchen rubber gloves and anointing himself “Kick-Ass”, he sets out to stop some car thieves and gets knifed and then hit by a car when stumbling in to traffic. But the near death experience doesn’t deter him from venturing out on to the streets again once he gets out of the hospital. On his second attempt at being hero, he manages to do better and some video of his exploits quickly become an internet viral sensation. He soon meets the gun-totting vigilante Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage) and his young sidekick/daughter, the lethal Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz), and is drawn in to their much more deadly crusade against a crime boss (Mark Strong).

Dave/Kick-Ass has no real motivation to put on a suit and fight crime other than his desire to help people. Of course, without any kind of training it does not go well for him. Even as he gets better at it, he still manages to get beaten pretty hard. But where Dave’s character is used to explore the practicality of putting on a costume and patrolling the streets, Big Daddy and Hit Girl are used to see what would happen if it a revenge-driven character like Batman or Punisher actually existed in the real world, and the results aren’t pretty. Some may argue that Christopher Nolan’s two recent Batman films – Batman Begins and The Dark Knight – also explore similar territory, but Nolan’s films still have an element of fantasy about them. Here, though, the approach is done slightly tongue-in-cheek, as evidenced by such things as Cage’s dead on Adam West-impersonation when in his Big Daddy armor. But the point is made just the same.

Although the kid sidekick has been a standard comic book trope for some seven decades now, the way that Kick-Ass looks at them has drawn criticism unseen since the 1950s. But those who have decried the heavy level of violence being meted out by the pint-sized Hit Girl have missed the point that director Matthew Vaughn and comics creators Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., are making. Hit Girl is a critique of those carefree young characters who launch themselves into life-threatening situations with little more than a glib quip. And let’s face it, if Gotham City’s police Commissioner Gordon was more competent, he would have had Batman arrested years ago for child endangerment. Interestingly, this is actually the first comic book film that actually has a young sidekick character, so possibly some are reacting to the satire without a strong grasp of what was being satirized. (For the two Batman films in the 1990s in which Robin did appear, the filmmakers side-stepped the issue by making the Boy Wonder in his late teens/early 20s.) Hit Girl is no more a glamorization of youth-perpetrated violence than Trainspotting is an endorsement of heroin use or Thomas Payne’s “A Modest Proposal” actually encourages cannibalism.

But the film manages a few mis-steps. The character of Hit Girl is so strong compared to the rest of the main cast that she steals the focus away from Kick-Ass much in the same way that Jack Nicholson stole 1989’s Batman away from Michael Keaton. The storyline between Dave and his new found girlfriend seems perfunctory and doesn’t add much to the overall story. Her mistaken belief that he is gay and his refusal to tell her the truth feels like the setup for a punchline that never comes. Had it been excised from the script, it would never have been missed.

1. Kick-Ass (Lionsgate, 3,065 Theaters, 117 Minutes, Rated R): I think this film could very well be the most controversial comic book movie of all time.

I think that people think that this will be a funny type of deconstruction of the comic-movie genre, which it most likely will be since the comic it’s based on is a deconstruction of the comic genre. But people who come in through the ads which only hint at the graphic violence and shocking themes will be shocked, surprised, and possibly a lot angry. From most of the TV ads, this looks exactly like the type of film you would risk taking your kids to see. This would be a mistake because if it is even half as true to the comic book, it will be way not for kids.

Based on the comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr., it gives us what the creators view as what would really happen if superheroes existed in the real world. Of course, as is typical of Millar, there is a lot of over-the-top themes and comic book tropes taken to their logically illogical extremes. Millar likes to shock, and this film will probably follow suit.  So beware.

2. Death At A Funeral (Sony/Screen Gems, 2,459 Theaters, 90 Minutes): The 2007 British version of Death at a Funeral made $8.5 million domestically, which wasn’t even enough to cover its budget ( it made $46 million worldwide, just to be fair). It garnered a 63% positive review rating at Rotten Tomatoes, which is just three percentage point above it being rated as “Rotten”.

The original is no where near a classic. So, why is it being remade with a primarily African-American cast? You got me. I guess the powers that be thought that they had something to add.

But from all that I can see, all they added was a cultural reference or two about the difference in color of certain cast members. Outside of that, it seem to be a rote, by-the numbers remake of a film that no one saw three years ago.

Pity Neil LaBute. His film career started off great, but between this and The Wicker Man he has become the go-to hack in charge of poorly conceived remakes of British films. At least he has his stage work, where he is still respected as a risk-taking artist.

Kick Ass is probably not a comic series well known to the general public, but after its film adaptation hits screens next year, I have a feeling that a lot of people are going to be seeking it out. That is, if Lionsgate can get those people into the theaters to see the film version that is.

But will their first trailer for the upcoming adaptation get that potential audience into theaters? Perhaps. It certainly starts off strong enough, though I think the second half suffers a bit in that it has to hold back some of the more outrageous bits of writer Mark Millar and artist John Romita Jr.’s story of ordinary people who don costumes to fight crime. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing a red band trailer soon that gives a better taste of what director Matthew Vaughn managed to do with the material.

When Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s comic book Kick-Ass premiered a few months back, I passed it by for a couple of reasons. First and most of all, I was tired of the whole “realistic” costumed vigilante story. Also, there was a load of hype around the comic which always makes me a bit wary. Placing a blurb which reads “The GREATEST SUPERHERO book of ALL TIME is FINALLY HERE!” across your cover also guarantees me to keep on walking by.

Even the fact that it was quickly announced soon after its debut that the film rights to the series had been snatched up didn’t excite me all that much. In fact, it further set off little cynical alarms in the back of my mind. Was the book merely a way to market the much more lucrative film rights to the character and story?

It wasn’t until last week when a draft of the screenplay for the Matthew Vaughn-directed big screen adaptation land on my desk did I start to take an interest. A quick read of the script’s first dozen or so pages, quickly got me hooked into the story of a teenage comic book collector who decides to put on a costume and fight criminals just because it strikes him as the right thing to do. I haven’t progressed much further into the script because I want to read the first few issues of the comic to see how they compare. Right now I have the first issue (third printing) waiting patiently for me to pick up copies of the second and third issues so I can sit down and read them all together. After that, I will dive back into the script and hopefully have a report on it for you.

Meanwhile, over at HitFix, there are three new pictures from the production. The first features Aaron Johnson as Dave Lizewski in his costume, ready for action. The second features Nicholas Cage and  Chloe Moretz as a father and daughter who will follow Dave’s lead into the realm of superheroics. The third picture features Dave with some friends at the comics shop where he first begins to hatch his plan.