No Good Very Bad Movies Countdown 2: The one that's the worst Marvel movie

 

Title: Man-Thing

What Year?: 2005

Classification: Improbable Experiment

Rating: Dear God WHY??!! (1/3)

 

With this review, I’m continuing my countdown of worsts, and the next up is the Marvel superhero movie. What complicated this is that I already have long since covered the most notorious entries in the genre, like Howard The Duck, the Spiderman TV movie, and even Roger Corman’s unmovied Fantastic Four movie. But by my usual standards, the least of these are at a high standard of mediocrity, and you aren’t really going to find anything much worse without delving into cancelled animation pilots, foreign knockoffs, fan films and the like. There’s one, however, that falls in its own category of badness, and far from being a bootleg from long ago, it was made well within the modern era under Marvel’s own movie arm. As a bonus, it happens that I watched it not long ago and forgot almost everything about it, which as I established with Inseminoid is a very, very bad sign. Here is Man-Thing, a film based on the Marvel counterpart to Swamp Thing that somehow makes that movie look good.

Our story begins with teenagers partying in the wetlands of an unspecified Deep South location. Of course, it leads to a grisly end for two young lovers who sneak off by themselves. We jump forward to a new sheriff in a town whose main employer is an oil company drilling in the middle of a tribe’s sacred land. A reporter and a spunky school teacher warn the lawman that people are disappearing or turning up gruesomely mutilated in the swamps. He quickly runs afoul of the head of the petrochemical company, who would clearly be puzzled by the suggestion not to engage in corruption. Meanwhile, a tribal elder warns that the cause of the shenanigans is a supernatural entity outraged by the company’s desecration, and one of his peers has disappeared on a mission of sabotage or worse. Things heat up when one of the sheriff’s deputies becomes another victim. He sets out to find the monster- but the real evil may be human!

Man-Thing was an American-Australian film by Artisan Entertainment and Marvel Enterprises. The film was based on the character and comic from Marvel, first published in 1971 two months before DC’s Swamp Thing. The companies had previously produced the 2004 version of The Punisher, as part of a venture that was reportedly planned to create up to 15 films. The film was directed by Brett Leonard, following The Lawnmower Man and Virtuosity, with Marvel’s Avi Arad as producer. While the story was set in the American Everglades, filming took place entirely in Australia. The cast was led by Australians Matthew Nevez as the lawman and Jack Thompson as the villainous industrialist Schist, with New Zealander Rawiri Paratene as the medicine man Horn. A Man-Thing suit was created by the Make-Up Effects Group. By the best estimates, the film was made for $5 million. Arad stated that the Marvel had little or no direct control. The film was withdrawn from US release, in part due to the bankruptcy of Artisan, but received limited theatrical showings in foreign markets as well as airings on the Sci Fi Channel. It is currently available on free streaming from Tubi.

For my experiences, I first encountered this one on the used shelves, which left me interested enough to request it in my rental queue around 2016. I ultimately watched it on portable equipment in 2016 during a ride to work, and gave it little thought after that, even (indeed especially) after starting my misbegotten Super Moviesfeature. What kept me somewhat intrigued is the very odd placement within the genre timeline. It at least technically predates the start of the “MCU” with Iron Man, yet still falls well within the “modern” era, long after X-Men and the Raimi Spiderman made big budgets and mainstream talent were the norms rather than exceptions. What it really represents is a throwback to the 1990s direct-to-video wave, when offerings like the first Punisher were good enough for near-respectability. In hindsight, it might have opened the way for more low to mid-budget entries and perhaps to a level of creativity only animation achieved before or since. But that, of course, would have meant being good.

Moving forward, the central reality of the movie is that the scenery and the effects are the only things going for it, in that order. The swamp landscape is spectacular, far more so than I could have assessed on the equipment I first viewed this on, and the creature mysterious and very physical. Everything else fails any potential they offer. The acting, characters and dialogue barely average out as tolerable, with all the relatively good moments coming from Thompson and Paratene. The real defects kick in with the story, which manages the common comic-book flaw of being simplistic and convoluted at the same time, while also remaining unaccountably dull. It doesn’t help that a number of story points completely ignore actual tribal law, which would in fact allow the natives to throw the hero and the bad guys off their land at any time. But the one thing that racks up the irritation factor is the bizarrely flat camerawork, certainly far inferior to Craven’s, which inexorably erodes any sense of atmosphere and mystery. While I’m usually indifferent to analog purists, this is definitely a case where the old tech did a far better job. The gritty look of film was a key part of what made Swamp Thing interesting, where even the better moments of this one look as bland as an infomercial.

Even with these problems, what invites the closest and most unfavorable scrutiny is Man-Thing himself. To start with, his role amounts to cameos in his own movie, an approach that definitely could have worked for other characters, especially “dark” protagonists like Wolverine and The Punisher. Given this setup, however, it would have made more sense to frame the story from the perspective of the villains rather than the sheriff. (The fact that I have said even less about the love interest is by all means an intentional snub.) This is where it would have helped greatly to know more about the character’s origin and backstory, if only to heighten the confusion and growing dread of his adversaries. Then the fundamental problem is that there’s simply no way to frame the creature as the “good” guy, even in relative terms. We might accept his crusade if his victims were workers for the company and others who were harming the environment, however reluctantly or unknowingly. But far too many of them are simply random bystanders, or those who would otherwise be on the same side. What’s even more difficult is that, outside of the hazily explained ending, there’s no sense of a character who might once have had a more positive role. All we really have is an ecoterrorist version of the Punisher, with even less moral judgment.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the encounter between Horn and the creature. By the finale, the medicine man is desperate enough to seek out Man-Thing himself. We find him in the swamp at night, moodily lit. He sings his songs and shakes a ceremonial rattle, until Man-Thing appears. It’s our first really good look at the creature, and it is certainly very effective, by the filmmakers’ accounts realized with a practical suit augmented by CGI for the tendrils and the eerie red eyes. The creature just stares as the shaman calls out his challenge, finally saying, “Take my life, and be done with it!” It’s the one time we see some sign of grief or remorse from the creature, but it doesn’t change the outcome as creature picks up the human. Then, as if to add extra offense, the character goes through a series of distractingly strange convulsions. We get back to some sense of pathos as the camera zooms in on his face, just in time for a bizarre gore effect. It’s easily the best sequence in the movie yet still a showcase of its flaws and squandered potential.

In closing, I am back at the rating. This is one where I went through some debate, and it’s been one of the few times where the “hate” factor wasn’t much help. I can’t say this one left me angry or offended like Inseminoid or The Golden Child, or disappointed the way Star Trek The Motion Picture and the TV Spiderman did. What it really came down to was an equally subjective test, whether this felt like incompetence or actual laziness, and I definitely go with the later. Maybe the filmmakers couldn’t have gotten better effects, cameras or even actors, but surely, with Marvel behind them, they could have gotten a better story and script. Even apart from such considerations, the fact remains that this is easily the worst film to come out with Marvel’s name in the current millennium, if not for all time. The bottom line remains, boring is even more unacceptable than “bad”, and that especially applies for an entry in a genre built on action and vivid characters. So congratulations, Marvel, you did your worst before anyone was paying attention, and I am not forgetting it.