13 Comic Book Villains That Movies Ruined Worse Than Dr Doom

9. The Octopus (The Spirit)

The Octopus was never seen in The Spirit comics (except for his distinctive purple gloves, of course), but it makes sense that director Frank Miller had to give the character a face owing to the differences between the comic and movie mediums, and casting Samuel L. Jackson as a maniacal, larger-than-life big bad sounds like a great idea, right? Jackson can't be hugely blamed here beyond agreeing to take the part in the first place, but the real problem is that his Octopus does a lot without much of it really being interesting or entertaining. He wears a lot of different clothes (because he was a master of disguise in the comics, get it?) including, in the movie's worst scene, a Nazi uniform, which his accomplice Silken Floss (Scarlett Johansson) also has to wear, to their mutual humiliation. Given the relatively gritty tone, Jackson's take on the character just doesn't fit at all: he's too outlandish and over-the-top (which is what any filmmaking hiring Jackson should naturally expect), but at the same time his antics are also strangely boring, making him almost wholly unsatisfying as an antagonist.