8. Daredevil - Soundtrack
Despite what you may have heard, Daredevil is not the worst comic book movie ever made. Yes, there are aspects that hold it back from greatness, but to lump it in with movies like Catwoman and The Punisher '89 is doing it a huge disservice. You may have also heard that the director's cut is significantly better - by bringing a darker tone and further exploring the psyche of Matt Murdock and his decision to fight crime, it erased a lot of the bad memories suffered at the hands of the theatrical release. It does not take all the blame away from director Mark Steven Johnson but perhaps, as we know they have a tendency to do, the studios interfered and we ended up with a Daredevil movie no-one really wanted. However, his decision to populate the soundtrack with the likes of Nickelback and Hoobastank was a step too far. Leaving personal taste aside, this kind of music just doesn't work in a comic book movie. Every action or fight scene is underscored by a generic piece of soft rock which elevates it to a level of cheesiness that could have been avoided. Some of the worst scenes in the movie, such as the playground fight, would have been a lot more tolerable, and believable, if the music actually fit with what we were seeing onscreen. Looking at the best comic book movies, we can see how crucial a good soundtrack is. Superman, Batman and X-Men all have great scores and even Sam Raimi had the good sense to place Chad Kroeger's awful 'Hero' over the credits of Spider-Man and use Danny Elfman's theme in the movie itself. One of the biggest obstacles a comic book movie has to overcome is selling the unrealistic elements of the story to the audience and a good soundtrack goes a long way to achieving this. It's clear that Mark Steven Johnson was operating under a tighter budget than Raimi and company, so I can forgive some of the dodgy CGI and choreography, but he could have papered over some of these cracks by hiring a composer that can deliver an epic score, and leave the crap rock for teen comedies.