Popular superhero movies are the biggest event films in modern Hollywood. After the superhero boom in the early 2000s, the birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the release of The Dark Knight in 2008 kickstarted a new golden age for the superhero movie genre that audiences have been living in ever since. Now a common criticism is that there are too many superhero movies, yet the box office results show that, as long as they are good, audiences can’t get enough of them.
Updated November 14th, 2022: This article has been updated to reflect recent superhero movie releases as well as add additional films to the list.
In 2022 audiences have gotten The Batman, Morbius, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, DC League of Super-Pets,Black Adam, and recently Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. With Marvel Studios laying out their plans for their Multiverse Saga and Warner Bros. Discovery refocusing their efforts on the DCU by hiring James Gunn and Peter Safran to run their cinematic universe, it appears that the genre isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
With all that, and with how many superhero movies there have been, it is often wondered which are the best superhero movies of all time. Stretching back to 1951’s Superman and the Mole Men, through the 1978 release of Superman: The Movie and to the recent entries like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, there have been multiple movies made about characters like Batman, Spider-Man, and the X-Men. Even characters like Spawn, Green Hornet, and Kick-Ass have gotten feature films made about them. It is a rich sub-genre with a variety of films, and these are the twelve best superhero movies of all time.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
12 X-Men: First Class
20th Century Fox
By 2011, many audience members had given up on the X-Men franchise due to the back-to-back disappointments of X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Combine that with the emergence of the MCU which promised faithful adaptations and crossovers straight from the comics, and it felt like the X-Men films were a relic of another age. Yet then came X-Men: First Class which not only gave the franchise new life but stands as the best adaptation of the team.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
Setting the film in the 1960s, the same time period in which they were created, not only brings the franchise back to its roots but also gives it a sense of style, unlike any other superhero. While now superhero movies tend to mash up genres pretty commonly, at the time X-Men: First Class was unlike anything anybody had ever seen. Its throwback to the classic James Bond films and bright color palette gave it a sense of style that made it f eel more like the X-Men comics than any previous film.
Finding actors to fill the shoes of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as Professor X and Magneto seemed like an impossibility, yet James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender stand toe to toe with their predecessors as bold new takes on these classic characters. It’s even more impressive to look back on the film and see the amount of talent like Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Zoë Kravitz, Caleb Landry Jones, and Alex Till that was at the time relatively unknown but now are major stars. X-Men: First Class is both a great X-Men adaptation, but also the reset the franchise needed at the time.
11 Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
Universal Pictures
An often overlooked superhero film that was released between Hancock and The Dark Knight, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army stands out as one of the best of the genre. The movie expands the tapestry of the first film and shifts gears from the 2004 film’s gothic Lovecraftian horror to a high fantasy story. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army is Guillermo del Toro coming right off the incredible Pan’s Labyrinth and bringing that same creative production design and creature effects to the world of Hellboy.
Del Toro finds a way to draw real human emotions from fantastical monster characters. There is no superhero movie, or any movie, like Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. Where else could you see the son of the devil and a fish man sing Barry Manilow just a few minutes after seeing a beautiful monologue about the simultaneously destructive and life-affirming aspect of nature? Hellboy 2: The Golden Army stands tall in the superhero genre.
10 Spider-Man 2
Sony Pictures Releasing
Released in 2004, Spider-Man 2 was following an incredibly successful and groundbreaking first film. It built off the foundation for the first Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movie and improved on everything from that film to create the natural next step in Peter Parker’s story. It balances both humor and human drama, focusing on Peter Parker having to live with his decision to accept great power and responsibility. It shows the cost of being Spider-Man and what it means for his personal life, and how it impacts his loved ones.
Spider-Man 2 also has the best action in the entire Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, with the train fight with Doc Ock being a high mark for the entire genre. Alfred Molina’s performance as Doc Ock also stands out as one of the best supervillain turns of all time, giving the character a tragic backstory while also being able to play a classic maniacal supervillain. Aunt May’s speech about heroism has carried over with fans for years and will likely be an inspiration for years to come.
9 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Marvel StudiosDisney
The latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has both the impossible task of creating a sequel to a beloved cultural phenomenon but also must work in the real-life tragic passing of star Chadwick Boseman. While a lesser film might have exploited this, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever respectfully weaves it into the film’s narrative to tell a story of loss, grief, and acceptance.
Death has been one of those elements in superhero movies, particularly the MCU, that has held little weight because the heroes always win but it can always be reversed in some sense. Yet here death is treated with a real-world weight, and the loss the characters feel is real because it is one the audiences also share.
While the movie is a somber more meditative film, it still remembers to have moments of levity and director Ryan Coogler ups the action. The introduction of Namor into the MCU is also a real accomplishment, as the underwater city of Talokan is as fully realized as Wakanda, but Namor stands as one of the best superhero antagonists that audiences can’t help but root for at times. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever had everything working against it, but it pulled off as an incredible film that could resonate with almost anyone on a deeply human level.
8 Logan
20th Century Studios
Logan marked the final time that Hugh Jackman played the Wolverine character after having the role for 17 years and through multiple X-Men films. Logan works because of the unique circumstances that led to its creation. Stripping away all the comic book elements of it, allowing for an R-rated action grit, and a more bleak view works because it stands in sharp contrast to the previous X-Men movies and depictions of Wolverine audiences have known. Because they have such an emotional attachment to this incarnation of the character, his final swan song feels earned.
Logan’s ending is incredibly powerful, as Logan enters into battle one last time to fittingly save a group of children which symbolically represents the child audience who grew up watching Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. The scene is a mirror of the scene in X2: X-Men: United where Wolverine defended the children of the X-Mansion, and symbolizes that Wolverine is not the weapon he viewed himself as but the hero the kids need him to be and that the audience knows him to be.
While the franchise would continue with Deadpool 2, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, and New Mutants, Logan is the proper ending for the X-Men film franchise, one with the death of the franchise’s signature character. It is a bittersweet ending, but one with a glimmer of hope that Wolverine’s sacrifice means that Laura and the rest of the mutant kids won’t have to live the life he had.
7 Wonder Woman
Warner Bros.
While it seems bonkers that a character as iconic and popular as Wonder Woman only just recently got a solo feature film while Superman and Batman had been adapted multiple times, it feels like the reason was the world was waiting for this specific Wonder Woman movie with this exact creative team. Wonder Woman feels like the quintessential iconic interpretation of the character, blending various interpretations of the comics like the original Willam Molten Marston interpretation, the George Perez reboot, the New 52, and DC Rebirth into one cohesive whole that was accessible to anyone.
Patty Jenkins’s vision for Wonder Woman feels akin to Richard Donner’s for Superman or Tim Burton’s for Batman, one that will hang large over the character for generations to come. Gal Gadot captures the warmth, love, and power that make Wonder Woman an icon. Her first sequence in the suit, stepping out into No Man’s Land is one of the most iconic superhero moments of all time and one that will be played in film montages for years to come. Wonder Woman’s release in 2017 came when the world needed it, and the movie became a cultural phenomenon becoming the biggest movie of the summer beating more established franchises like Spider-Man, Planet of the Apes, and Transformers. The world was waiting for a Wonder Woman film, and it turns out that it was this one.
6 Black Panther
Walt Disney Studios
Black Panther was a monumental film when it was released, grossing $700 million domestically and $1.3 billion worldwide, was number one at the box office for five weeks straight, and became the first superhero movie to earn a coveted Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards. All that alone would be worthy of consideration for one of the best superhero movies. The tragic passing of Chadwick Boseman makes the film all the more bitter-sweet, as this feels like a truly once-in-a-lifetime event.
But what elevates Black Panther is the rich themes of the movie. Black Panther both acknowledges the fantasy of Wakanda as a wish fulfillment of an African nation never impacted by colonialism and the white slave trade, but also interrogates the fantasy that Wakanda’s isolationism has also made them complicit with racial oppression. This drives the villain’s motivation, and the rest of the characters debate the pros and cons of Wakanda’s foreign policy with the film ultimately coming down on the side that Wakanda needs to do better by those in the world, and will do so by sharing technology, medicine, and foreign aid. Black Panther is an MCU film that transcends its franchise to become something more meaningful and important to millions who saw themselves reflected on screen.
5 The Incredibles
Buena Vista Pictures
Not based on any pre-existing comic but paying homage to many great superhero comics, The Incredibles works as one of the most exciting, comedic, and character-centric superhero movies ever made. Released in 2004, the film was a groundbreaking movie for Pixar Animation as it made many innovations in terms of computer animation, but what has stood the test of time has been the characters of Mr. Incredible, Elstia-Girl, Violett, Dash, Jack-Jack, Frozone, Edna Mode, Mirage and Syndrome.
From a classic 1960s art deco aesthetic that invokes the Silver Age of comics, an inciting incident that plays on superhuman registration in Watchmen, and heroes who are similar in powers and familial structure to The Fantastic Four, The Incredibles is a love letter to the medium while also standing as an original piece of its own. This movie’s beloved status only grew over time, and showed in just how massive the sequel Incredibles 2 went on to become.
4 Superman: The Movie
Superman: The Movie set the tone for which all other superhero movies would follow. It has been cited as an influence on Sam Raimi, Christopher Nolan, Patty Jenkins, and Kevin Feige just to name a few. Superman: The Movie has not only had an impact on other superhero films but on the character himself. The film added to the mythos, with the S being a Kryptonian crest, the crystal look of Krypton, and the upgrade of General Zod as a major Superman villain making their way into the comics.
John Williams’ score for the film is iconic, and his Superman March is the best superhero theme ever written, and Christopher Reeve’s depiction of Superman is the one against which all versions have and will be judged. Reeve’s incarnation of Superman feels like he stepped fully formed from the public’s consciousness of this character, and felt real.
The film’s director, Richard Donner, committed to a concept called verisimilitude, which is something seeming real. Despite all the high-concept elements of the movie, Donner and his cast and crew committed to taking the material seriously so that Superman felt real. The film’s production design helps ground Superman in a mix of comic book iconography and established film aesthetics. The film’s tagline promised audiences they would believe a man could fly, and Superman: The Movie not only made them believe that but in heroes.
3 The Dark Knight
Warner Bros. Pictures
In the summer of 2008, there was no escaping The Dark Knight. Building off the critical success of Batman Begins whose audience grew in home video, the addition of Heath Ledger as the Joker made The Dark Knight the event of the year. The Dark Knight is paradoxically unique to the sensibilities of director Christopher Nolan and his distinct interpretation of the Batman mythos while feeling like an archetypical Batman as if this is a conflict between Batman and the Joker that would fit in telling of the character’s story. It is a massive crime drama, where the Joker feels like the ultimate villain despite not being a world-threatening foe. Heath Ledger’s Joker still stands the test of time as a monumental performance and deserved his posthumous Academy Award win.
The tragic passing of Ledger certainly helped make The Dark Knight’s legacy more ever-lasting, but the movie stands as a testament to the medium as a film that treats the material seriously, tackles deep and timely themes with the character, while also managing to make an entertaining rousing and thoughtful blockbuster. Even after so many Batman movies, The Dark Knight still casts a large shadow over all other adaptations.
2 The Avengers
It is hard to believe it has been ten years since The Avengers hit theaters. While much has been said about how The Avengers changed Hollywood, with every studio trying to create their own cinematic universe after this turning point for Disney made the MCU into the box office behemoth that it is today, it is often easy to forget just how great The Avengers is as a film on its own.
Despite being the accumulation of five previous films, it works just as well as a stand-alone film (and the box office shows people who likely never watched a previous Marvel movie turned out for this). The Avengers tells a classically traditional superhero story about heroes from different walks of life and genres of storytelling coming together to save the day. In many ways perfectly distilled the magic of reading a comic book, with a bright color palette and a rousing daytime climactic action scene that is the cinematic equivalent of a splash page in a comic. Beyond the action, the film resonated with audiences through fully defined characters and the film is still being quoted all these years later. The Avengers felt like an old fashion type of summer blockbuster and much like Star Wars, Jaws, or Raiders of the Lost Ark will stay a permanent part of pop culture and have fans revisiting and discovering it for the first time for years to come.
1 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Sony Pictures Entertainment
Of all the superheroes, there is something special about Spider-Man. The full body mask means that any audience member regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or more can imagine themselves in that suit. The idea that anyone can be Spider-Man is the thematic driving thesis of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, as it introduces audiences to a host of various different Spider-Man with different backgrounds. Yet at the heart of the story is Miles Morales, a young boy who has greatness thrust upon him and must decide what type of hero he will be.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a gorgeous movie, beautifully animated to showcase a variety of animation styles while also capturing the sheer scope and color palette of a comic book that no live-action film ever truly could. Into the Spider-Verse utilizes comic book-style panels and pop art visuals, bringing them to life in a cinematic way that works as a celebration of the medium in which these superheroes first emerged and is the most a superhero movie has looked like a comic book come to life.
Yet it still is a movie about how one boy becomes a hero by forging his own path, and reminds audiences it is our uniqueness that makes us great. Miles’ moment of suiting up in his Spider-Man outfit, jumping from the building, and falling before the camera inverts to him ascending with ‘What’s Up Danger’ playing in the background (one of many great needle drops in this film) is one of the most iconic becoming-a-hero moments ever put to screen.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was that rare movie that anyone could love, regardless of being a diehard Spider-Man fan or someone who has never read a comic book ever. Young or old, there was something for everyone in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and it went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated film. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse isn’t just a great animated movie or arguably the best superhero film ever made — it is simply a great movie all on its own.
