Folks, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but comic book movies sort of took over the cinematic experience over the last ten years.Iron Manwas just outside the decade, yeah, but it kicked off an era of superheroes, mega-villains, caped crusaders, and crime-fighters flying across the screen almost every month of the year. Sure, there are drawbacks—hello, Mr. Scorsese!—but the genre, at its best and biggest, became something to unite us. These “event” films created the modern-day watercooler talk; think ofAvengers: Infinity War’s “snap”, or the Marvel v. SonySpider-Manhullabaloo, or the first reactions to every single thingJared Letodid as The Joker. For ten years, comic book movies have been synonymous with pop culture as a whole.
But! That doesn’t mean there isn’t a vast range in quality to these bad boys. The comic book movies released over the past decade have ranged from moving works of art that literally changed pop culture forever to straight-up unwatchable disasters that make you question every choice that led you to that theater seat. So, naturally, I’ve ranked them. All of them, from worst to best. Scroll on through the list below, and please remember that A) Comic book and movie fandom is a place for positivity and if your favorite landed somewhere un-ideal, I still think highly of you as a person, and B) Should you feel the uncontrollable need to yell about it, you can find me on Twitter. Love a good, healthy convo.
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56) ‘Fantastic Four’
Director:Josh Trank
Writers:Josh Trank, Jeremy Slater, Simon Kinberg
Cast:Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell
One of the hottest messes to ever hit a movie screen, and maybe the only film in history to follow a 1.25-act structure. Genuinely baffling. Whether it was on-set turmoil, a turbulent editing process, Josh Trank’s inexperience, or something else altogether we might never know, but the result is a movie about The Fantastic Four—Marvel’s colorful, super-powered founding family—completely lacking any humor, charm, chemistry, plot, or, most importantly, the one interesting shot from the trailer of The Thing jumping out of an airplane. The luckiest member of the cast isToby Kebbellas Victor Von Doom, who effs off to another dimension only to return for the most lifeless final showdown in comic book history. The rest of this supremely talented cast—Miles Teller,Kate Mara,Michael B. Jordan,Jaime Bell,come on—don’t get a single genuine moment to work with, unless you count Mara’s Herculean effort of keeping a straight face under a wig so distracting it deserves its own IMDB credit. Just…a mess. A mess!
55) ‘Jonah Hex’
Director:Jimmy Hayward
Writers:Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Cast:Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, John Malkovich
Jonah Hexis a strange, kind’ve fascinating relic from a time when the MCU was just three movies old—and that’s twoIron Mans and a barely-countsIncredible Hulk— andGreen Lanternwas still a year away. Studios were getting the earliest inkling that people weresuperinto comic book movies again and started digging into their vaults for any IP available, resulting in something like this 80-minute shoulder-shrug of a movie that feels like it was finished about a week out from picture lock.Josh Brolindoes his darndest as the scarred title cowboy with the ability to raise the dead but not even he could pull this DOA clunker outta’ the grave. Better left buried.
54) ‘Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance’
Directors:Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Writers:Scott M. Gimple, Seth Hoffman, David S. Goyer
Cast:Nicolas Cage, Johnny Whitworth, Ciarán Hinds
I’ll say this: It is agenuinely impressivefeatto take Nicolas Cage at his most batty playing a vengeful demon biker with a flaming skull for a head and make it boring. But somehow, against all odds, everyone involved withGhost Rider: Spirit of Vengeancepulled it off. Set 8 years after the first Ghost Rider movie, which at least had a novelty factor going for it,Spirit of Vengeancesees good ol’ Johnny Blaze racing against Satan himself (Ciarán Hinds) to save the soul of a young boy named Danny (Fergus Riordan) who is caught up in a diabolical conspiracy. Read that sentence back and tell me how this movie—which also boasts some of the worst 3D CGI this side of the year 1953—manages to be so uninteresting. Much like Cage himself, it simply cannot be explained.
53) ‘Green Lantern’
Director:Martin Campbell
Writers:Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim, Michael Goldenberg
Cast:Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Mark Strong
How often is a movie so bad that the main star is still making jokes about it eight years later? Truly, there’s nothing to be said here aboutGreen Lanternthat Ryan Reynolds hasn’t already said. TheyCGI’d the dang mask on to his face, for goodness sake. I would pay a huge sum to go back and be a fly on the wall when that decision was made. There’s also the Oa digital effects that aimed forStar Warsbut looked more like a computer hangover-vomited ones and zeroes onto a blank canvas. Oh and alsoalsopoorPeter Sarsgaard’s massive head as Hector Hammond, a look that’s comics-accurate but rendered objectively hilarious because of how straight this movie played it. No part ofGreen Lanternlooked good, so its aggressively mediocre script stood out with all the Yellow Energy in the cosmos. Really, though, the greatest crime of Green Lantern is making one of the best, most interesting characters in DC Comics canon pretty much untouchable for all this time. HBO Max finally decided to give it another go nine years later, so hopefully technology has advanced to the point where we can [checks notes] craft a tiny green mask to fit over someone’s eyes and nose.
Writer/Director:David Ayer
Cast:Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Jared Leto, Viola Davis
What in the name of Jared Leto’s forehead tattoos happened withSuicide Squad? As multiple reports might suggest, a combination of studio panic and the consistently-souring public opinion of the DCEU caused David Ayer’s grittier take to be chopped and screwed into something closer to the trailers’ candy-coatedGuardians of the Galaxy-esque vibe. The result is a neon-lit pile of cringiness, featuring a soundtrack of songs your dad thinks are cool to play at the BBQ after three light beers. (I still wake up at night in a cold sweat thinking of this movie’s Eminem needle drop. The horror, the horror.) To be fair, the premise was always an uphill battle: In the aftermath of Batman vs. Superman, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) has the genius-brain idea of dealing with the next Kryptonian-level threat to Earth by assembling a team of expendable criminals, including but not limited to a sniper (Will Smith), a mentally ill woman with a baseball bat (Margot Robbie), a guy who can throw boomerangs (Jai Courtney), and another guy who can climb real good (Adam Beach). That already rocky road then gets edited into near-incomprehension; just enough footage of Leto’s Joker was left in to make his presence hilariously distracting, while a character like Katana (Karen Fukuhara) gets pushed so far to the side that Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) introduces her with the worst bit of exposition ever said out loud on-screen. (You know the line.) Just completely damaged from top to bottom.
51) ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’
Directors: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller
Writer:Frank Miller
Cast:Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin, Eva Green
How much longer must I yell “Eva Greendeserves better” into the void before the universe listens?Sin City: A Dame to Killwasdefinitelynot the answer. This 2014 follow-up to the surprisingly slick 2005 original is the definition of style over substance.Robert RodriguezandFrank Millerco-direct four different tales of wise-guys, gamblers, and degenerates that occasionally interweave but are mostly connected by the fact they’re all unpleasant to sit through.
50) ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’
Director:Bryan Singer
Writer:Simon Kinberg
Cast:James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac
The second someone decides to plaster enough purple prosthetics to kill a rhino overOscar Isaac’s face, someone in pre-production needs to speak up.X-Men: Apocalypseis what this franchise looks like on auto-pilot, a big, loud, “event” film with no soul to speak of. Sound and fury, signifying nothing, etc etc. A large bulk of thisvery longfilm sees resurrected mutant-god En Sabah Nur (Isaac) assembling his four horsemen, which leads to Magneto (Michael Fassbender) trying to decide if he wants to be a bad guy or not (shocker!) and the world needing to be saved from a vague cataclysmic event (double shocker!). There is not a single thing inX-Men Apocalypsethat no other comic book movie—including several other X-Men movies—hasn’t already shown you, but Singer and Co. forge ahead anyway over two-plus hours to a CGI-barf climax that sloppily sets up the Dark Phoenix saga like an afterthought.
49) ‘Hellboy’
Director:Neil Marshall
Writer:Andrew Cosby
Cast:David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane
Are you the edgiest teen in your local mall’s food court who knows how cool it is to do swears and troll newbs? Then I apologize for rankingHellboy, your favorite movie of 2019, so low on this list. Instead of giving Guillermo del Toro a third film in his Hellboy series, Lionsgate decided to reboot the character, handing the director’s chair to Neil Marshall—who was behind the incredibly tightThe Descentand some of the bestGame of Thronesepisodes out there—and recasting the title role withDavid Harbourat the height of his charm offensive. That’s a pretty solid crew, so it’s double the shame that this movie leaned so hard into the fact it’s R-rated that it forgot to come up with an actual story, resulting in something with all the blood and guts ofMike Mignola’s source material but none of the pathos, charm, or intrigue. The first time I watched this movie, it was an airplane cut without curse words, violence, or innuendo, and I truly have never been so confused as to what the hell was going on in my entire life.
48) ‘Dark Phoenix’
Writer/Director:Simon Kinberg
Cast:Sophie Turner, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jessica Chastain
IfApocalypseis the X-Men on auto-pilot,Dark Phoenixis the franchise on life support. I don’t even know if I consider Simon Kinberg’s directorial debut a “bad” movie as much as I think it’s…nothing. It’s empty air where a glorious shining bright spot should be. A huge part of the problem is the script taking the story out of Jean Grey’s (Sophie Turner) hands, largely turning her into a mute atomic bomb with only a sliver of motivation or internal conflict. It certainly doesn’t help that the antagonists of the film borrowed their look fromSignsbut never really explained exactly why they want the Phoenix Force. Highlights of the film, by a wide margin, areMichael Fassbendercranking every acting muscle in his body to 11 while aggressively screaming at a helicopter, followed closely by nobody behind the scenes noticing that Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) getting dragged up those steps looked way, way funnier than intended.
47) ‘Thor: The Dark World’
Director:Alan Taylor
Writers:Christopher Yost, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
Cast:Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Christopher Eccleston
The greatest trick Marvel ever pulled was usingAvengers: Endgameto makeThor: The Dark Worlda vital piece of the MCU, perhaps as a way to get everyone to stop dunking on this aggressively forgettable film. Folks, the dunkings were, are, and will remain warranted. At this point in the MCU’s history, A) Nobody had quite figured out how to perfectly harness Chris Hemsworth’s natural charisma without relying on a lack of sleeves, and B) that Marvel Movie Formula wasshowing, so you’re mostly bored for two-ish hours as another threat hunts down a vaguely mystical glowing object. Those Dark Elves, man. It would not shock me if there are still people out there who don’t even knowChristopher Ecclestonplayed a Marvel villain.
