5 Superhero Movies That Are Only Worth It For One Scene

But the rest of the stuff in the room implies that when the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher Batman wasn't eviscerating clowns or neon terrorists, he was still pretty busy. Beside the Riddler's suit is a doll, so at some point, was Val Kilmer punching the shit out of B-list villain Toyman? Or is that the work of the Dollmaker, a guy who made dolls out of his victims' skin? Is that dude still in Arkham? It's unlikely, considering that Michael Keaton's Batman was one part hero and nine parts sadist, and probably attached a bomb to Dollmaker and peed on him a little bit before even learning his name. But still, the scene adds history to a series that seemed to be mostly about Batman sitting around in his office, waiting for crime to happen.

And then, on the right side, we see a pair of boxing gloves. So good luck, guy who was using those. I'm sure your career as Two-Punch Man was really hitting its peak just before Michael Keaton ripped your intestines out through your eye holes.

But the most interesting part is the big mechanical suit that we see, and on first glance, you'd probably assume that it's Mr. Freeze's suit, since that's what Poison Ivy broke into the locker to get. But Mr. Freeze's suit looks nothing like that. So either Mr. Freeze has been fighting Batman and Robin for so long that he's had to upgrade his technology in order to keep his chilly ass un-kicked, or it belongs to another mech-suited villain. The pyromaniac Firefly, maybe? That would be so awesome, and now I'm so pissed that I never got to see Val Kilmer stare expressionless around a bug man with a flamethrower. What were you even good for if you couldn't give us that, the '90s?

Judge Dredd has sweet set design, but other than that, it's a lot of Stallone and Armand Assante shouting at side characters who are too useless to be given their own shouting dialogue. The only time it really perks up is when Stallone and his little buddy Rob Schneider get captured in the wastelands by the Angel Gang. The Angel Gang are cannibals, and their role in the movie almost feels like Judge Dredd DLC. But during the gang's brief vacation in your eyeballs, Judge Dredd ceases to be a humdrum exploration into the beauty of shoulder pads, and starts feeling special.

There are plenty of movies wherein superheroes fight random gangs. There are just as many superhero movies where the hero is forced to fight a guy who could've been a hero, but instead went evil. But there are very few superhero films in which the hero has to tangle with the cast of The Hills Have Eyes. The Angel Gang is a bunch of wild cards. They don't want to build a city-sinking torpedo or open up a portal to release an ancient evil whatever; they just want to snack on you a little bit. They won't say any clever lines or reveal any master plans. At most, they'll maybe give you a recipe for you, medium-rare.

Sadly, their stay is brief, because Stallone soon escapes and jams an electrical wire into the head of most monosyllabic among them. Of course, the mutant does get to say, "You killed my Pa," so it's not a total waste.

It also gives the movie (and the series) a sense of grand scale that it had been lacking. Oh, THIS is what the vampires were hyping up when they were jabbering on about their big vampire plans. Well, I apologize for not paying more attention, emo ghouls. My bad. My bad.

That's the feeling you get during the scene in which Wolverine escapes: pure, pee-your-pants, "Oh my god, I was not properly trained for this" terror. Sure, Logan has a lot of scenes where he cuts his way through dudes, but that movie frames it as action, while this turns Wolverine into a slasher villain. It doesn't hurt that the scene ends with a splash of blood coming from offscreen, which is slasher movie code for "Daaaammmnnn."

The rest of the movie is pretty subpar. The X-Men's most powerful villain, Apocalypse, is handled so poorly that you just wish Magneto could be the main bad guy for the fourth time. But I guess it's to be expected that the best part of an X-Men film would include Hugh Jackman. Oh, Hugh. Was it something I said? Please come back.

On a more positive note, Batman v. Superman does have one awesome scene: the warehouse fight. Now, before I get into why this part is so great, I do have to say that a lot of it has to do with the critically acclaimed Batman: Arkham games, which make every other Batman fight scene in every other medium look like a slap fight among friends. In the Arkham games, you can sneak up behind a dude, choke him out, zip up to a gargoyle, fly over and drop-kick a man's torso off his body, zip back up to another gargoyle, tie a guy up to said gargoyle, throw a smoke pellet, hit a thug with an electric shock gun, choke out another dude, and then run up to the last dude as he fills you with bullets and hope that your body armor holds up for long enough so that Batman can someday wear the man's skull as a shoe.

That's the kind of thing that we got in the Batman v. Superman warehouse scene, during which Batman goes back and forth, rearranging an entire gang's internal organs using everything in his disposal. Here are a few highlights:

- A guy comes into the room brandishing a grenade, so Batman kicks a guy he already has hanging from the ceiling into the grenade man.

- Batman Rock Bottoms a dude into the floor -- a technique most assuredly taught to him by Ra's al Ghul when Batman trained with all of those ninjas. "You must learn to conquer your fear, Bruce," I remember Ra's saying in Batman Begins. "CONQUER IT WITH THE PEOPLE'S ELBOW."

- Batman uses his grappling hook gun thing to sling a box into a guy, and the guy gets hit so hard that he flies into a wall and the back of his goddamn head apparently comes off.

There are a lot of people who have a problem with Batman committing murder, but since my favorite superhero film is Batman Returns, I don't think it's that big of a deal. At the very least, it gave us a chance to experience an Arkham City level on the big screen, narrated entirely by Ben Affleck's grunts.

Daniel has a Twitter. Go to it. Enjoy yourself. Kick your boots off and stay for a while.

Live long enough to see yourself become the villain with your own Batman Utility Belt!

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