10 Movies That Almost Destroyed The Superhero Genre

8. Howard The Duck (1986)

Marvel are now a cinematic powerhouse. The dominant force in superhero cinema, their Cinematic Universe has provided the blue-print for blockbusters in general. This year they even turned Guardians Of The Galaxy, a property even die-hard comic fans hadn't heard of, into a film with so much swagger it become one of the summer's biggest hits. The customary post-credit scene even paid reference to how far they'd come, featuring a cameo from Howard The Duck. Star of his own movie in 1986 that was, for a time, Marvel's most high-profile release, he's not the best love character. Howard is a brilliantly subversive comic book character, but in the hands of producer George Lucas his feature outing lost all its bite and replaced it with a bunch of duck puns. An underground comic book with little fanbase, few in the audience got this was wildly unfaithful adaptation, blaming the very concept of the character. And with comic books yet to have their dark renaissance (Watchmen was a few months away), it served as a cautionary tale about the whole process of adapting panels to frames. What saved it: The film skewed closer to sci-fi so escaped being associated with the usual men in spandex.