What I attempt to do with this list is not give the top five best comic book movies, but the films that were able to bring the comic book to the screen…
5. Akira – Easily one of the very greatest anime movies ever made, Akira is a showcase of the potential that animation can utilise. Getting more than a thousand pages of story crammed into a two hour movie is a monumental achievement that the makers have achieved, from the dazzling chase scenes to epic explosions, Akira is made with a real passion that comes across clearly to the audience.
4. Batman Begins & The Dark Knight – Christopher Nolan took one of the most iconic superheroes of all time stuck him in the most realistic world possible. With this, the true darkness of the books could come to life and making two of the most popular comic-book movies ever made. The casting choices are all perfect, the use of music brilliant and the action truly amazing, Nolan really has extracted any feel of comic-book campiness that previous incarnations of Batman have had.
3. Sin City – Co-directed by Frank Miller (the author of the original series) and with a pretty amazing cast (Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Elijah Wood, Rutger Hauer, Rosario Dawson, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro just to name a few) makes for what is definitely Robert Rodriguez’s best film. The aesthetics are pretty much right from the book, and with the intelligent use of green-screen it really works, with only one physical set (the bar) being made. The use of colour is a bit more generous than in the original books, but it works perfectly, and the way Rodriguez and his team have weaved the stories together is brilliant.
2. Danger: Diabolik - Who other than Mario Bava could perfectly pull off the comic book aesthetic on a shoe-string budget? The plot is brilliantly campy, the acting perfectly cheesy, but the stand out is most certainly the visuals, which mix the colour palette of the Giallo movement with the energetic framing and editing that creates a true comic-book feel.
1. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - With a loyalty to Bryan Lee O’Malley’s fantastic comic books, Edgar Wright has mixed the visual flare of the likes of Danger: Diabolik, Flash Gordon and Sin City and with his own editing and storytelling style. The choice of actors for each and every character is perfect, the music is beautifully realised and the aesthetics are mindblowingly awesome, but above all of this, most of which has been done in other films, the thing that distinguishes Scott Pilgrim as the best comic book movie of all time is the transitions. The way that Wright continually melds each scene into the next has never been done to the same effect. Such efforts as Ang Lee’s Hulk fall flat on their face, but in the hands of the masterful Edgar Wright, nothing can go wrong. This is the pinnacle of comic book cinema.
