Culture

Listless: Unsung superheroes

Yeah, I know. Pretty much everyone has done one of these “which superheroes need a movie?” lists. That said, given the glut of them in the past year or two, and now that a lot of unexpected titans (Thor, I’m looking at you) have received their shine, I feel it prudent to take another look at who’s still getting short shrift and needs their story told. Now that Captain America: The First Avenger is dropping tomorrow, all the essential pieces are in place for The Avengers. However, this means that it’s time for some new side quests as well. Let’s begin.

5 Superheroes Deserving of a Feature Film

1) Deadpool

Yeah, I know. Deadpool was already in a film, if not one directly about him, in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. That said, Fox’s brilliant plans for Deadpool involved taking “the merc with a mouth” and stitching his mouth shut, turning him into some kind of ass-backwards artist’s rendition of Baraka from Mortal Kombat dreamt up during an ether binge. That’s not Deadpool. Deadpool makes one-liners, kills guys with swords and doesn’t afraid of anything. There was word of Ryan Reynolds getting another shot at Deadpool in a full-length feature, and I dearly hope that his gig as Hal Jordan doesn’t interfere; that’s perfect casting, and it’d make a fantastic movie.

2) Ant-Man

Like Deadpool, word of an Ant-Man film has been floating around for some time. Around the time that the crop of Avengers-related projects started to leak, Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim) was attached to direct the adventures of a scientist who can shrink himself using nanotechnology. The script is in endless turnaround, with IMDB slating its release for 2014, but I’d rather they take as much time as they need and doing the Irredeemable Ant-Man arc from five years ago, where Eric O’Grady steals the Ant-Man suit and uses it to mostly just be an asshole to everyone around him. It even has the perfect franchise-starting ending: O’Grady faces off with a legion of cancelled comic characters.

3) Kraven

Some may say that Kraven is one of the dumbest supervillains in the Spider-Man universe. Or that he doesn’t belong on this list precisely because he’s a villain. I say pshaw to you good sirs and madams, and suggest instead that this would be the best and most exciting way to adapt “The Most Dangerous Game.” We re-posit Kraven as an anti-hero, a big-game bounty hunter who hunts superheroes that have the hubris to bust petty crimes for acclaim and accolades. Because Kraven is a badass, he hunts strictly with his bare hands, and therein likes the challenge: Most superheroes have a power or, say in Batman’s case, expensive-ass weaponry. Who can’t respect a man who abides by the rules of the hunt when some pussy who can mainipulate all the elements is using that gift to beat up purse-snatchers. I’ve always imagined a young Sean Connery in the role (“You filthy beasht!”).

4) Gambit

Returning for a moment to characters ruined by Origins, Gambit is one of the only X-Men to not get his proper shine relative to his popularity with audiences. Even Brett Ratner’s messy X-Men: The Last Stand left the cajun wonder out, and that movie had every goddamn X-Man you can possibly think of. Between his debonair attitude, his skirt-chasing and the fact that he blows shit up with psychically-charged playing cards, there are myriad angles that can be taken with his story that simply have not been. Tell me you don’t want to listen to a movie where the address of every female character ends with “mon chere” and a twirl of the trenchcoat.

5) 3-D Man

I’ll admit, unlike the above heroes, I didn’t know about 3-D Man until I started researching this column. Now that I do, though, I’m absolutely convinced that he’s the perfect character for the current 3D boom in theaters. Sort of like a bizarre form of astral projection, Hal Chandler’s brother Chuck is imprinted onto his glasses after a Skrull kidnapping attempt ends in Chuck’s demise. When Hal concentrates, Chuck becomes 3-D Man, a bald man in a red-and-green jumpsuit capable of…stuff. It’s gimmicky, and very much a page out of Marvel’s 1970s playbook, but let’s consider that at least 3-D Man would be an honest gimmicky con, as opposed to The Last Airbender and any other film from the past two years that’s been all 3D and no substance.