When It Worked:




Christian Bale as Batman


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Now this is how it's done, son. If you've got a comic book franchise that's been infected by a lethal dose of camp humor and Batsuit nipples, you've gotta do a complete one-eighty and ground the hell out of your superhero.

American Psycho star Christian Bale brought an intensity and physical dedication to the role of the caped crusader that made you believe he could actually pull the whole one-man army thing off.

Watch the scenes where he's masquerading as an oafish Bruce Wayne to see a little bit of Patrick Bateman coming through.









Daniel Craig as James Bond


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Timothy Dalton had tried to give James Bond more of an edge in his two outings as 007, but it took Daniel Craig to finally make the superspy seem downright dangerous.

Craig's tortured, almost unhinged post-Bourne take on this iconic character seemed fresh even after 20 films, yet retained the cunning resourcefulness that make him so enduring.

It proved more than enough to erase images of Brosnan tsunami surfing in Die Another Day.









Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter


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Yes, that's right, as much as he now owns the role, Hopkins did not originate the erudite cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lecter onscreen. In Michael Mann's underappreciated 1986 film Manhunter (later remade with Hopkins as Red Dragon,) Brian Cox of Rushmore fame played the role -- as "Hannibal Lecktor"-- but it was Hopkins who took home the Oscar five-years later.

Of course, Sir Anthony later ran the character and his fondness for fava beans into the ground in two sequels sans Jodie Foster. There are none of us perfect.









Edward Norton as The Incredible Hulk


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Ang Lee's 2003 monstrosity Hulk took a character that should have been a slam-dunk onscreen and ruined him with every counterintuitive decision in the book-- distracting split-screens, powers change from one scene to the next, the Hulk cries, etc.

When Marvel brought the character back to the fold for a reboot truer to the comics, they wisely selected Edward Norton, no stranger to duality after Fight Club. Norton threw himself completely into the role, rewriting the script to make Bruce Banner more intellectual and the green beast more heroic.

Mark Ruffalo perfected things further in The Avengers, but only time will tell if he can carry a whole story as ferociously as Norton did.









Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan


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Don't get us wrong, Alec Baldwin was awesome as CIA analyst Jack Ryan in The Hunt For Red October, but who can argue when Indiana Jones comes knocking at your door?

Ford succeeded in making the part his own, emphasizing the kind of action hero physicality you would expect from him as he battles Irish Republican terrorists led by Sean Bean, who (like all Sean Bean characters) is later killed.

Ford did the Jack Ryan two-step once more in Clear and Present Danger, then gave up, presumably because he had enough successful trilogies under his belt.









Jaden Smith as The Karate Kid


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Will Smith is an unstoppable success machine, so why wouldn't his genetically gifted progeny be as well? Jaden steps out from his father's shadow, carrying this remake of the 1984 classic with considerable gusto for a twelve year-old.

Having Jackie Chan on hand to dole out old sage martial arts wisdom helps, too. And yes, we know they're in China, not Japan, doing Kung-Fu, not Karate. If you want to get into semantics, Ralph Macchio was a teenager in the original, and then an awkward adult in the sequels, so at least they got the "Kid" part right in this one!









Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man


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The most recent member of the takeover club is charming Brit Garfield, who took the reins of the Spidey franchise before Tobey Maguire's chalk outline was even hosed off the sidewalk.

With his foofy hair, skateboard, and emo mood swings, this new take on Peter Parker is more James Dean than nerdcore, but has proven popular enough that a sequel is already in the pipeline.

When It Didn't Work:




Brandon Routh as Superman


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First of all, it was a bad idea on Bryan Singer's part to just pick up where Richard Donner's Superman 2 had left off nearly three decades before. But the bigger mistake was hiring an actor who bore such eerie similarity to Christopher Reeve, physically and vocally, that he could only get the short end of the stick in comparison.

Luckily Routh won his way back into our comic book-loving hearts via his awesome vegan powers as the third evil ex in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.









George Clooney as Batman


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Clooney may be all salt-and-pepper smiles now, but for a brief moment in time he was fanboy Public Enemy #1 for the onscreen atrocity that was Batman & Robin.

Corny lines, a Batman credit card, and costume design so flamboyant even David Bowie would probably plea to "Tone it down." This movie doesn't even work for ironic Rocky Horror camp value, it's just a horror that nearly eighty-sixed one of our great pop culture icons.

Years later, Clooney freely opens up about the experience: "Batman is still the biggest break I ever had and it completely changed my career, even if it was weak and I was weak in it. It was a difficult film to be good in."









George Lazenby as James Bond


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Though others like Roger Moore -- and more recently Daniel Craig -- have served as able caretakers to the Bond legacy, the one guy who really came up short was Lazenby.

The phrase "Nobody Does It Better" does not apply here, as untested Australian model Lazenby clearly looks bored with the role before he even gets going, and despite established supporting thesps like Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas, this new 007 was DOA.

Even though the film's more serious, gadget-light take on the Ian Fleming property has earned kudos in recent years, Lazenby's performance remains un-reappraised.









Robert John Burke as RoboCop


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Having a charismatic actor play slain officer Alex Murphy in Paul Verhoeven's knockout first film was key to charting the dehumanization in his robotic resurrection.

The disappointing Robocop 2 proved that whoever wore the buckethead suit from here on out was incidental, so Weller peaced out of Part 3 to make David Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch" (thank god).

In his place is Robert John Burke, a solid character actor in films like Good Night, and Good Luck, but here required to do little more than endure a sweaty suit and have a square jaw while delivering lines from comic book writer Frank Miller's ridiculous script.









Jamie Kennedy as The Mask


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It's ironic that one of the biggest sleeper hits of the '90s gave birth to one of the 2000s most cataclysmic catastrophes. This utterly unredeeming cash-in had the audacious ego to think that the only reason people liked the first one was the crazy CGI effects.

Nothing to do with having a wildly brilliant young comedian like Jim Carrey at the top of his game, doing more with his own contorted facial tics than ILM could do with a million-dollars.

As Senator Lloyd Bentsen might have said, Jamie Kennedy is not only no Jim Carrey, he's not even as funny as Dan Quayle.









Hilary Swank as The Next Karate Kid


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Before she entered the boxing ring for Million Dollar Baby and came out clutching an Academy Award, Swank trained diligently under Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) only to have the box office do a "sweep the leg, Johnny" on her career.

This is a case where reinventing a franchise with a gender reversal (tagling: "Who says the good guy has to be a guy?") wasn't necessarily a bad idea.

Swank received good notices for her role as fledgling butt-kicker Julie Pierce, but unfortunately the movie around that performance was hardly up to par. Wax on, turn it off.









Wesley Snipes as The Fugitive


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How can you do a sequel to The Fugitive when Dr. Richard Kimble was no longer a fugitive at the end of the first one?

Enter Wesley Snipes. His Mark Roberts scores way higher marks in the martial arts department than Kimble did, but even with Snipes' magnetism this all feels like a pointless retread of the first, with Tommy Lee Jones' Marshal Sam Gerard carrying a "let's get this over with" grimace throughout.

Still, Snipes seemed game, and performed a few memorable stunts and getaways. If only he could have used similar skills in real life while evading the IRS...









Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan


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Ben, didn't you learn anything from Wesley Snipes? Don't try to walk in Harrison's shoes, your feet are too small.

Rebooting the Jack Ryan series with a young buck in the lead wasn't a bad idea, considering Tom Clancy's hero has eight bestsellers to his name. While Affleck has redeemed himself in recent years as an ace director, with the upcoming Argo looking excellent, this attempt to capitalize on his then burgeoning stardom was met with indifference at best.

Top off the fact that we were still reeling from 9/11 and you could understand why people didn't want to see a movie where a football stadium gets blown up.

Dark Knight Rises, however...









Roberto Benigni as the Son of the Pink Panther


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Benigni (Life is Beautiful) is a comic genius, no question, with a physicality and personality that harken back to Charlie Chaplin. Unfortunately his talents were utterly wasted on this sorry attempt to cash in on the brand that Sellers owned.

Though the role was offered to other ideal talent like Kevin Kline, Rowan Atkinson, Gérard Depardieu and Tim Curry, it's hard to blame Benigni or his fractured Italian-English when series director Blake Edwards was clearly just hacking this one out for the sheer mercenary assignment of it.

Edwards' strained, laughless slapstick sensibilities had clearly run their course. In trying to recapture his glory days, he only made Sellers the more obvious MVP of their many collaborations.









Danny Glover in Predator 2


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Coming off the successful Lethal Weapon franchise, that series' producer Joel Silver must have looked at Danny Glover and thought, "Hey, why not?"

While Glover is a highly capable, often brilliant character actor or supporting lead, he doesn't have that special, indefinable something (probably pecs) that Schwarzenegger had in Part 1.

Gary Busey's character, Keyes, was intended to be the Austrian Oak's character Dutch, but The Governator bailed, deciding (quite correctly) that setting the Predator in Los Angeles was a pretty dumb idea.









Ice Cube as xXx


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It's a shame this didn't work, because the original xXx is one of our favorite big dumb action movie guilty pleasures.

Slotting in a new adrenaline-junkie to take over for Diesel's Xander Cage after only one flick would have been a ballsy idea if it had worked, but Cube's Darius Stone had a little too much attitude and not enough sex appeal for the ladies, not to mention the film having clearly been hit hard by what we would call a "stupid truck."

Who could have been the next xXx after Cube, as promised by Samuel L. Jackson at the end of this film? Our vote goes to Peter Dinklage.









Christian Bale as John Connor


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The man who brought Batman back from the brink couldn't work the same miracle on the moribund Terminator franchise, which had already had its name sullied with the James Cameron in-absentia Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

Bale's shot at future savior John Connor, while admirable compared to the mediocrity of the previous entry, is so relentlessly grim that it's just no fun, and the PG-13 rating only hampers the realism he was going for.

Makes us pine for Edward Furlong.









John Goodman, Joe Morton & J. Evan Bonifant as Blues Brothers 2000


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Here's a novel approach. Original director John Landis and star/co-writer Dan Aykroyd knew they had a John Belushi-sized hole to fill for their unnecessary sequel, and while no one individual could replace Jake Blues, why not have a little boy, a black guy, and a fat dude?

You get the kid audience, the African American market (they are stealing their music, after all), not to mention the highly lucrative middle-aged chunky demographic. Well, they were wrong.

Besides a few rousing musical numbers, this revisitation of a cult classic offers so little even Jim Belushi passed on it. That should tell you something.









Jackie Mason in Caddyshack 2


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Dangerfield always boasted about getting "no respect," but truth is almost everyone in comedy thought he was the sh-t, and worshiped him like the slovenly god that he was.

Jackie Mason, on the other hand, was not the best call to carry a lackluster sequel to 1980's classic Caddyshack. Sticking the slobby Dangerfield among the snobby at the exclusive Bushwood country club was as apt as dropping Groucho Marx into an opera house, but Mason's kvetchy Jew shtick might only have seemed taboo in the 1940s.









Romola Garai & Diego Luna in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights


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Capturing lightning in a bottle is hard, which is why the chemistry between the late Swayze and a pre-rhinoplasty Grey was so special to audiences when the original Dirty Dancing dropped in 1987.

English actress Garai is unquestionably a bombshell, and Luna was hot off of Y tu mamá también, but the sparks were not 'a flyin'. Setting a sequel in Havana seems almost arbitrary, and only having Swayze's Johnny Castle drop in for what could charitably be called a cameo as a dance class instructor make this seem like a generic dance movie with Dirty Dancing slapped on for name recognition.

The public was not fooled, staying away in droves.

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