10 Most Forgettable Superhero Movies Since 2000

You can say this for Marvel: if at first they don’t succeed, they try and try again. 1990’s The Punisher (with Dolph Lundgren) was such a stiff that it went straight to video in the US, so they tried again 14 years later with Thomas Jane in the role. It didn’t work either, so they tried again in 2008 with Ray Stevenson etc.

As origin stories go, Frank Castle’s is pretty routine and would’ve been better alluded to rather than fleshed out over two hours (at 140 minutes, the “alternate version” runs longer than 2001: A Space Odyssey!). Writer/director Jonathan Hensleigh seems content to keep the surprises to a minimum, but when you know what’s going to happen in advance where’s the fun in watching characters that have “dead meat” written all over them going through the motions?

Hensleigh should’ve known better than to include The Russian, a 7 foot tall muscleman in a red and white striped shirt. Even though he’s capable of tearing a toilet out of the wall and using it to beat his opponent, though, he’s surprisingly easy to defeat – his skin is so sensitive that throwing boiling water in his face is enough to transform him into Freddy Krueger.