Throughout April, we’re counting down to the release of Marvel’s Iron Man 3 with our picks for the Greatest Comic Book Movies of All Time; here’s #21…
Mystery Men, 1999.
Directed by Kinka Usher.
Starring Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, Hank Azaria, Greg Kinnear, Kel Mitchell, Paul Reubens, Janeane Garofalo, Wes Studi, Geoffrey Rush, Ricky Jay, Eddie Izzard, Lena Olin, Tom Waits, Claire Forlani, Dane Cook and Doug Jones.
Superhero teams are all the rage in Hollywood these days, but before The Avengers – and even before X-Men – there was… Mystery Men.
Loosely based on the team created by Bob Burden as part of his Flaming Carrot Comics series, the film adaptation sees misfit superheroes Mr Furious (Stiller), The Shoveler (Macy) and The Blue Raja (Azaria) recruiting even more misfit superheroes in an effort to defeat the supervillain Casanova Frankenstein (Rush), who has escaped captivity and is holding the champion Captain Amazing (Kinnear) hostage.
Mystery Men received mixed reviews when it hit cinemas in 1999, and also bombed at the box office, recuperating just under half of its $68 million budget. As you’d expect, there’s been little (as in zero) talk about any potential sequel. Still, there was a surprising amount of love for Mystery Men among our writing team, although it just falls short of a place in the top twenty.
Keep up to date with our entire countdown here.
Holy Franchise, Batman! Bringing the Caped Crusader to the Screen – Available now via Amazon.co.uk
Originally published April 5, 2013. Updated November 7, 2019.
