A campaign to look at the ‘worst superhero movie ever’ in a better light has begun.
Bulletman and Bulletboy (released in 1995) is regarded as one of the worst – if not the worst – superhero movie. As the fourth film in the series, it was slammed for being too broad, too family-friendly, and too focused on selling toys and junk food related to the franchise.
Though a recent article from website PopKol4U has defended the movie, celebrating its good points for its 30th anniversary.
Excerpts from the article below:
“At the time, Bulletman and Bulletboy was controversial. After two excellent movies that focused on the hero’s dark and gothic side, and a third that was slightly more mainstream but still enjoyable, this fourth movie tried to introduce the sidekick Bulletboy and seemed to fail miserably. Bulletboy was hard to take seriously in the comics, and the homoerotic undertones between him and Bulletman were unavoidable, no matter how hard the writers tried to ignore it…
So, was Bulletman and Bulletboy just a loud and blindingly bright two-hour toy commercial? Or is it redeemable? While the director and lead actors have publicly acknowledged the movie as a mistake, surely it gets bonus points for leaning into the campiness and having fun with how blatantly silly it was?…
It didn’t help that the cast was made up of ‘so hot right now’ TV stars – cast to get the casual fans into theatres – and not ‘proper’ film actors. They did their best with a barely-there script and shouldn’t be blamed. And remember this was a time when comic book movies were still for kids and weren’t taken remotely seriously? Especially after the darker tone of the first two movies scared off the studio because they couldn’t sell the toys tied to movies that were too creepy and violent for kids…
The movie’s failure was good in hindsight: rather than the studio pumping increasingly boring Bulletman movies every second summer, the franchise had a much-needed break before the excellent Bulletman trilogy in the early 2000s….
So, is Bulletman and Bulletboy the WORST of the eight movies since 1989? Probably. But it’s wasn’t the crime to cinema that some people believed it was. Would you rather watch an overly-serious, convoluted superhero movie that’s so obsessed with connecting to its Extended Universe that it becomes impossible to follow? Or would you rather heat up some popcorn and enjoy some silly superhero fun?”
