Spider-Man

In translating comic strips to the screen (in this case, as pilot for a TV series), film-makers generally seem either to remove all the guts, or to adopt such a derisive tone that they come out looking a whole lot dumber than their source. Some attempt is made to avoid these traps here: Stan Lee worked on the script, and most of Marvel Comics' larger-than-life characters are retained, while the plot just about takes itself seriously enough to generate a certain momentum. But the film falls down largely because its lack of resources necessitates so much repetition. The video special effects of Spider-Man crawling up walls work a whole lot better than the way it was done on Batman; but as Star Wars so decisively showed, comic strips demand budgets as lavish as their conception.