Dis less a movie den it be a student film project gone terribly wrong. Poor akting, lame dialogue, weak direktion, and cheap produktion values be de least of it’s problems. No, biggest issue monster have wit Superheroes Must Die be it’s unforgivable stoopidity and fakt dat it make about as much sense as Lost in czechoslovakian.
Group of superheroes wake up in remote town minus deir superpowers. Foursome made up of bad aktress, bad aktor, worse bad aktor, and bad aktor who spend entire movie walking around wit half a mask because it got torn and he can’t be bothered to just take it off. It turn out dis situation compliments of arch-villain, Rickshaw. Yes, he be named after a two wheeled passenger cart for trotting tourists around. “But how dis possible?”dey ask. Rickshaw supposed to be dead. How he capture dem? What he do to dem?
Don’t hold your breath waiting for any answers.
Thru a series of video recordings, Rickshaw inform “heroes” dey must perform series of tasks in order to save hostages. If dey refuse to participate, whole town rigged to blow!
So, basically, dis entire movie based on classic “stoopid villain” premise. You know what me talking about. Instead of just killing de hero, villain has to create super elaborate set-up for entertainment purposes. In dis case, his NOT ours.
Heroes have to split up into two teams. One team end up having to fight egregious over-aktor dressed up like Uncle Sam. Dey rush him and he push dem down. Really hard me guess because dey mysteriously incapacitated. Uncle Sham pull out knife and stabby-stabby worse bad aktor.
Meanwhile, other team have to split up. While one guy fight skinny circus strongman on trampoline, other have to save hostages strapped to explosives. He attempt to save dem by putting out fuse wit his fingers. It not work (obviously) so he use axe to cut end off fuse. Whew! Dat was close! Only, for some reason, fuse light up again. What can dey do? Use axe again? Maybe yank fuse out of explosives (monster’s first choice)? No. How about run away and let hostages explode?
Second group meet up wit first group and Half-Mask plow into Uncle Sham, demonstrating dat he de only one who got to keep his super powers. Super strength! But it later revealed he didn’t lose his super powers because he never had super powers to begin wit. Even tho…er…he supposedly super strong.
Anyhoo, it too late for stabbed guy. At dis point, remaining heroes finally get around to checking in on second group of hostages. Who also get blown up. Heroes realize it not matter what dey do because Rickshaw going to blow up hostages anyway!
We mistreated to maudlin flashbacks in failed retroactive effort to make us care about dese charakters.
Back in his hideout, villain do de old “cross out dead character’s picture wit red marker” gag – and cackle. Oh, how he love to cackle.
Remaining tree heroes show up at second spot where another tree hostages rigged up to blow. Also in room are a gun and tree coffins wit deir names on it. Only tree coffins because, according to one hero, Rickshaw guessed other hero would already be dead after not completing last task. Uh, right. Dat and produktion not able to afford turd wooden box. Rickshaw tell dem dey must kill demselves to save hostages. Half-Mask grab gun, step up to his labeled coffin, and put gun up to his chin. It look like he about to kill himself. But, instead, he shoot hostages! Dis be a very surprising moment because…it make absolutely no sense! Why he pretend to shoot himself first? Not for benefit of hostages because dey hooded (so dat produktion can save on extras and re-use same tree aktors). What de Fudgee-o?
Dey rush off to next stop where one of heroes’ sisters rigged to blow up. Rickshaw tell dem dey must kill each other and he will let sister go. Of course, at dis point, we already know Rickshaw not letting anyone go. He already killed all de hostages. Heroes already stated he already going to kill all de hostages anyway. So time to try and save hostage instead of playing useless game, right? Right?!!
Nope. Brother suddenly and mysteriously very bitter about fakt he be a sidekick. He get himself killed. Presumably to save his sister. And – surprise surprise – she get blown up anyway.
In final round, Half-Mask and girl superhero must fight to death. Half-Mask seemingly kill himself but it really only a ploy to help him triangulate Rickshaw’s position. Uh, how he do dat? By pulling out a map, connecting a bunch of x’s, and deducing point of intersektion be Rickshaw’s hideout. Me repeat: WHAT DE FUDGEE-O?!
Half-Mask beat up a bunch of henchmen in bear suits. Why dey wearing bear suits? Because it make dem look more fearsome? He get drop on Rickshaw and shoot him. But, wit his last dying breath, Rickshaw pull out remote and trigger timer dat will blow up entire town in tree minutes.
A badly wounded Half-Mask check out security monitors and notice girl superhero. Instead of eskaping town, she race to other place and locate Half-Mask’s ridiculous “triangulation” map. She end up finding him.
As timer tick down, dey limp out of HQ. Sadly too late to save demselves, but happily right on time to save US from crappy sekwel.
A cheese omelet stuffed wit stoopidity. Dis movie aktually make Monster nostalgic for Supergirl.
Verdikt: Worst Superhero Movie Ever!
Rating: 0 chocolate chippee cookies.
Whoa. Not even one cookie. That’s rough, Mr. Monster, that’s rough…but on this one I am very willing to trust your judgment. 🙂
das
Your review was much more entertaining than the actual movie.
hi, joe,
i finished the last book of the ‘stargate atlantis legacy series’ of novels last night… it made me fall for atlantis!!
i’d LOVE to see this novel series made into a mini series! do it, joe! even if you’re making it from your garage. :p
(the actors don’t *have* to be paid, you know! and, you can use your doggies, dressed up as the wraith… ) 😉 :p
Seriously, after watching this movie I actually felt an urge to go watch the 1994 “Fantastic Four” again, to cleanse my mental palate, it was THAT bad. It had the crappiest writing/dialogue (to be loose with the term) that I’ve ever seen. The stuff that happened made no sense whatsoever. The acting was beyond awful. Even as Cookie indicates, as a college level film project it would earn a solid “F”. As in “F*cking Awful.”
A few more thoughts, although to be honest I just started to lose track of every idiotic development in the thing, they being so overwhelming in number. Really, just take any 30 second section of it and you could pull out a half dozen examples of bad film making.
As Cookie mentions, when the fuse starts to go again in the first “battle” why don’t they try to put it out again? Can’t they just PULL the fuse out? STUPID.
Isn’t this movie just like some kind of superhero version of “Saw”? Except the traps are all just basically explosives, and other than their basic (non) destructiveness, there’s nothing particularly horrifying about them.
There is no sense of urgency or drama given the premise – did the bad guy give them all a good dose of Xanax in that injection or something? For a movie where the stakes are supposedly so high, it’s remarkably low energy. The characters discuss issues like they’re debating which pizza toppings to order.
What is the whole point of the evil guy’s games? Why this whole set up? Is it really because he would have gotten away with his nefarious plots if it weren’t for these pesky kids?
How did the bad guy wire up “the entire town” with explosives? Did no one notice someone doing that? Speaking of whom, where are all the residents of this town? It would appear to be completely deserted other than the heroes and the bad guy’s victims. e.g. wouldn’t the police notice the several explosions that have been happening? (Yeah, yeah, who’s gonna pay for all those extras!)
Why are all the bad guy’s henchmen dressed in animal costumes? What are they, refugees from a plushie convention? Now THERE would be an interesting side story!
Also, the bad guy takes a shotgun blast directly to the chest and then still survives long enough to activate the microwave bomb. Ridiculous. Also, the timer was a microwave oven – since most such timers stop when the door is opened why didn’t they try that? Just pop the open button and have it stop? Of course, that would actually have been mildly entertaining, and clearly we couldn’t have that.
Notice that as Cuthroat grabs the knife in the fight to save his sister, he takes the time to spin it around his finger dramatically. He then gets stabbed RIGHT IN THE HEART, and then falls and talks for another while, followed by his sister getting “blown up” anyway. (That explosion wouldn’t have been big enough to give her more than a bad headache.)
I think a good part of the art in a making a low-budget indie film is being able to effectively use the resources that you have, designing the production around those limitations. Done well, it can lead to an interesting, albeit non-mass market film. This one, however, is an execrable mess.
Any cookies that this movie would have received got destroyed while heating in the exploding microwave.
Oh Das, if there were any justice, Cookie would would whacking the makers of the film across the back of the head with a tube of Pillsbury’s Chocolate Chip dough.
But the title was so cool. Not a crumb for the title?
Ooooo. Crumb. Crumby. Crummy. Zero cookies < crumby. There's a joke in there somewhere. It has to be done. I swear on my honor I'm trying to refrain from making it.
Cookie, Great review…You have the patience of a saint to have dealt with that.
@gforce – LOL…great thot for punishment. Ya want cookies? Well, take this…whack!
Looks like “half mask” has conjunctivitis – oh, well.
I looked this movie up on Amazon to see if we could rent it in time for Cookie’s review. Once I saw comments about how bad the movie was, I thought I’d let Cookie watch this one alone. We watched The Avengers instead.
JeffW: “Roaming cheesecake”. The Condo in Florida has a full kitchen but I don’t know what kind of tools they have. Plus, I knew none of us would feel like whipping up a cheesecake. So I’m taking the Cheesecake on the road. One of my friend’s is going gluten free, so I used gluten free cookies as the crust. It turned out delicious! Thanks again for the recipe.
I chose to sit this one out. I am covered — COVERED — with noseeum bites (to which I am highly sensitive) from gardening yesterday, and I felt that was misery enough, without adding this film to the mix.
Instead I’m spending the afternoon researching ways to kill the noseeum population in my yard, while lying in bed like a histamine-swelled Jabba the Hut, wondering how many allergy pills above the recommended dosage I will take before relief comes, and selectively burning the itch from each bite with my Therapik, as the need arises. (About every 5 minutes, a different bite flares up with itch and needs to be beaten down with extreme prejudice.)
Should I have used friends instead of friend’s? Is it singular or plural? I’m not sure what my strong points are but grammar and punctuation are not among them.
Screw it, time for cake!
ZERO cookies? Has that EVER happened before? I was thinking half-mask might have a good idea for keeping your cold compress in place. This way you don’t have to put your head sideways and you could use two hands to type. Hope you are feeling better?
I did not watch All Superheroes Must Die, but I appreciate Cookie falling on the bad movie grenade for use once again – and producing and entertaining review.
I went with my daughter to see the new Star Trek movie instead..
Excellent!
And they had a trailer for Ender’s Game, too!
Does it make you nostalgic for some of these: http://screenrant.com/comic-book-superhero-movies-tv-shows-history-pauly-155733/
Feeling better, Joey?
Joe, will read your post toute de suite, but did you see this list of 100 best written TV shows of all time? http://www.wga.org/content/default.aspx?id=4857 Curious how your views match up, other than the horrible oversight in leaving out Stargate! 🙂 I’m glad Breaking Bad is high up there, for one thing.
Were you watching this movie when your eye went bad? You probably unconsciously tried to poke them out.
Kathode: I don’t know how to kill them but I can tell you how to keep them from biting you. Apply lots and lots of Skin So Soft to any exposed skin whenever you go out when they’re out and it keeps them from biting,
Not much to say about this one, really. I thought it was an interesting premise let down by bad acting, low budget and poor dialogue.
“An interesting premise?!?!?!” you exclaim. “Cookie hated this movie more than Shark Boy and Lava Girl!”
Sure, but just imagine what could have been done with some real writers, actors and $20 million?
Imagine a movie where four superheroes are stripped of their powers and placed in a series of impossible situations. Each situation is tailored to bring out the worst in the superheroes. They can’t save the hostages and they probably can’t even save themselves. What would YOU do in that situation?
I can see where they were trying to go with this movie and in the hands of skilled artists I think this could have been a watchable movie.
Alas, it wasn’t in the hands of skilled artists. 🙁
Line Noise: “I can see where they were trying to go with this movie and in the hands of skilled artists I think this could have been a watchable movie.”
I don’t think even adding skilled artists, writers or actors would have saved this movie. There were just too many holes in the plot, too many unanswered questions. I mean, really, those hostages could have been saved and the evil villain taken care of much faster due to his hiding someone nearby. I mean this movie was just a rip off of Saw and a bad one at that. The movie plot falls apart much too quickly. It would only be successful if the entire thing were scrapped and a new script written, new actors and new props and extras were added.
Poor Cookie Monster, now he has sore eyes from watching this movie! This sounds like one to avoid, thanks Cookie
I agree that there was potential in the most basic premise. Not the stupid villain premise, more basic than that. It’s like someone bought a decent log-line, then made a bar bet about how bad a movie can be made out of that.
I’m presuming the tag line “Some games have no winners”, is a not so subtle jab at the audience?
@gforce – Bwahahaha!
Cookie, does Joe ever let you watch a *good* movie?
@ JccKeith: Thanks for the tip! I’d read that Skin So Soft wasn’t great for mosquitos, so I think I’d just dismissed it out of hand for noseeums, without realizing that it could work great for one bug, even if it doesn’t for a different bug. I will definitely go get some.
I just got back from the Bellingham, WA (where all Vancouverites go to shop at Trader Joe’s and Target), and while I did go to Trader Joe’s, this trip was actually inspired by my need to get bug-killing lawn spray products that the Home Depot in Canada doesn’t stock. Probably because the local bylaws don’t allow homeowners to use it. Something about environmental concerns? Protecting the watershed? Whatever. I need to kill some bugs, and frankly, I don’t care about the bylaws. I never want this many bites ever again in my life. Here’s hoping the poison works!
Wow, as terrible as ths film was I’m glad they made it so I could read Cookie’s review! I like that this film was written and directed by the lead superhero. Gotta give him props for getting his film made; he could be a budding John Carpenter who just need to find a good script.