Fresh Loaf

ELECTRIC SLIDE: Unlike animated features, live-action adaptations require intricate and expensive special effects, such as Jon Osterman's (Billy Crudup) transformation into Dr. Manhattan for 'Watchmen.' (Photo courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures)

After more than 20 years, DC Comics’ Watchmen will make the quantum leap from comic-book page to live-action film with its release this Friday. If hype and anticipation translate to even a fraction of box office success, Watchmen will affirm the popularity of superheroes — and even R-rated antiheroes — as Hollywood’s saviors. The blockbuster could join the ranks of such record breakers as the Spider-Man trilogy and the Oscar-winning The Dark Knight.

Superhero movies make the transition from ink and paper to celluloid the hard way, however. Saving the world and defeating flamboyant evildoers is the least of it. Simply making an exciting, convincing superhero movie that doesn’t insult an audience’s intelligence practically demands a miracle. Cinematic, super-powered derring-do requires massively expensive special effects, along with the challenge of casting flesh-and-blood actors to play literally two-dimensional, archetypal roles with impossible physiques and ridiculous costumes.

For every hit like The Dark Knight, there’s at least one costly flop: take the nipple-costumed Batman & Robin or Halle Berry’s embarrassing Catwoman. Even with the successes, audiences face flaws like the obvious CGI-rendered Spider-Man and Hulk in their first movies, or unfortunate choices such as Ian McKellen’s dumb-looking Magneto helmet in the X-Men films.

Animation holds out an easier approach; it goes with comic book stories as comfortably as a cape and cowl. The best cartoon features and TV series can do an end run around the real world’s limitations to offer an unlimited canvas that emulates iconic comic book art while putting exciting designs into motion. The right voice performances can even convey emotional heft without hanging a tights-wearing movie star from wires.

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It’s a clash of the titans. Superhero publishers Marvel and DC Comics have had a pitched rivalry for decades, and in the battle for the big screen, Marvel has enjoyed more victories at getting its costumed characters like Spider-man into movie theaters (the huge success of DC’s The Dark Knight notwithstanding). DC takes the consolation prize for crafting much better shows for television and straight-to-DVD, from the longstanding live-action hit “Smallville” to last year’s intriguing cartoon feature Justice League: New Frontier.

Apart from such tolerable, kid-oriented series as “X-Men: Evolution” and “The Spectacular Spider-man,” Marvel’s animated output isn’t nearly as interesting. DVDs like The Invincible Iron Man and the two Ultimate Avengers films feel more like marketing trial balloons for future film products. Marvels newest animated movie, Hulk Vs. (released today) proves to be a notch above its predecessors, but its eyes still seem more focused on the cinema than its immediate audience.

Hulk Vs. contains two films of about 40 minutes apiece. “Hulk Vs. Wolverine” seems like a way to prime the pump for this May’s theatrical X-Men Origins: Wolverine prequel starring Hugh Jackman. The other, “Hulk vs. Thor,” provides an animated dry run for the characters tapped for 2010’s announced Thor film, reportedly to be directed by Kenneth Branagh. Essentially, the Hulk is a sort of guest star in his own films.

In a sense, the films succeed by aiming low. Hulk Vs. harks back to the pleasures of special double-length, giant-size issues of comic books that would contain two stores of monster mayhem for the price of one. Although the Hulk’s Jekyll-and-Hyde relationship to his alter ego Bruce Banner provides plenty of metaphors for the tension between emotion and intellect, Hulk vs. puts all the emphasis on the monstrous green protagonist’s ability to smash stuff. So which film is better? Who wins in “Hulk vs. Wolverine” vs. “Hulk vs. Thor?”

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