Metal Gear Solid Delta Missed the Opportunity for a Bolder Remake

Just as with the Silent Hill franchise in 2024, Konami has revived its flagship tactical espionage action video game series with Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. As the title suggests, the game is a remake of 2004’s Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, built from the ground up for modern gaming platforms. But whereas […]

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In 1978, Superman made us believe a man could fly. But in 1989, Batman made movie studios believe that comic book stories as a genre unto themselves could be profitable. In the shadow of Batman’s big payday, Hollywood gave the greenlight to material that they would previously ignore. While that IP-hunt certainly proved profitable for the Dark Knight too, who returned to theaters in multiple sequels and in the animated film Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, it mostly applied to B- and C-level characters, most of whom did not come from the pages of DC or Marvel Comics. And even thoses that did, tended to be from the back bench. So in this modern age of MCU and DC domination at the box office, let’s look back at a stranger and now antiquated moment in superhero cinema. Well, at most of it.

*Editor’s Note: We are looking at films that had a impact in domestic theatrical release, which means that you won’t find the Filipino hit Darna here. Also this list will focus on movies based on superheroes or superhero-esque characters from comics. Thus Dick Tracy, with the title character’s distinctive outfit and abilities, earns him inclusion on the list, but Richie Rich‘s largess does not.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

As much as movie studios were willing to adapt comic books in the 1990s, they rarely wanted to adapt them faithfully. Too often they would just take some names and iconography from the comics and shove it into a radically different type of story. That tendency makes 1990’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all the more remarkable. Directed by Steve Barron and written by Todd W. Langen and Bobby Herbeck, the film draws most of its inspiration from the gritty first miniseries that spawned the phenomenon, as opposed to the more popular cartoon series.

As a result, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles holds up remarkably well, and continues to work better than other cinematic adaptations of the heroes in a half-shell (though Mutant Mayhem comes close). There is an edge to this movie with a dark color palette and some relatively tense action for a children’s film. It also takes its quartet of heroes seriously enough that the viewer doesn’t have to as they scarf down pizza and shout “cowabunga.”

Dick Tracy (1990)

Most of the movies on this list went into production because of Batman and later Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Not so for Dick Tracy, a true passion project for star and director Warren Beatty. For years Beatty tried to bring to the big screen Chester Gould’s hatchet-faced detective and his grotesque rouges gallery. At first glance, Beatty’s perseverance was worth it, as Dick Tracy is not only accurate to its comic strip roots, thanks to the incredible makeup work by John Caglione Jr. and production design, but also filled with top-level talent. With Beatty’s insistence on using just seven basic colors—the same you would have found in the funny pages of the 1940s—the film has a visual pop art look that has never quite been matched.

Ironically however, Beatty himself drags down Dick Tracy with his refusal to cover his own handsome mug in makeup or to give Tracy much of a personality beyond “dashing hero.” His one-note copper is never as compelling as the baddies and women around him, making the movie feel both overindulgent and undercooked.

Captain