These are not the brightest, but they are far from the worst.  To go even further, I enjoyed these three crappy comic book movies more than I enjoyed The Dark Knight (*yawn*) Returns Rises.  See what you think about my Unofficial Trilogy:

Maybe I should have picked all DC/Vertigo adaptations… Would anyone have noticed?

CONSTANTINE (2005)

Based on the main character from Hellblazer, and released a year after Hellboy, this film at least benefited from a variety of baddies and demons.  All Hellboy faced was a multitude of Sammael’s (the devil squid-dog creature), but I digress.  Constantine was fun because the story was about heaven versus hell, Satan was played to hammy oddness by Peter Stormare, Shia LeBeouf dies (spoiler!), and it followed logic and a plot.  It was crappy because John Constantine was played by Keanu Reeves, Gavin Rossdale of Bush was in it, and Shia LeBeouf came back as an angel (double spoiler!). The rise of John Constantine felt much more natural than Bruce Wayne’s.

FANTASTIC FOUR (2005)

This was a breezy adaptation of a very old comic book.  To begin, Doctor Doom was nowhere near menacing and maniacal enough.  But they got the relationship stuff right, especially when it came to the pranks between The Thing and Johnny Storm.  Even the shout outs to Yancy Street and the inclusion of Alicia Masters were surprising.  But still… it was cheesy.  But I guess Fantastic Four should be cheesy.  TDKR shouldn’t, but you wouldn’t have known by the ending (which was the only thing I liked incidentally).

GREEN LANTERN (2011)

Greg Berlanti, one of the writers of this film, knows nothing about superheroes.  His TV shows, No Ordinary Family and Eli Stone (he had powers, sort of), were flimsy attempts at showing the extraordinary in the ordinary, and this film was no different.  So why did I like it better than TDKR?  Even though it had purple aliens and power lamps and magic rings and a killer cloud and Blake Lively’s cleavage, it still made more sense than all the loose story threads in The Dark Knight Rises.  Perhaps if The Dark Knight wasn’t so damn good…