10 Best Superhero Movies in Film History

For more than two decades, superhero movies have been Hollywood's biggest obsession. But somewhere along the way, quantity started winning out over quality. Now, for every great superhero film, there are five forgettable ones, and they’ve started to feel like they’re coming off the same assembly line.

So, we decided to cut through all the noise and rank the very best superhero movies ever made. We also wanted this list to have some variety. It would have been very easy to hand half the spots to the Avengers and Spider-Verse movies, but that wouldn't make for a very interesting ranking. There are too many great superhero movies outside those franchises to ignore.

10 ‘Batman Returns’ (1992)

While Batman '89 was a Batman movie directed by Tim Burton, the sequel is more of a Burton movie that just happens to have Batman in it, and that's exactly why it's held up so well. Danny Elfman's score is phenomenal. Danny DeVito's Penguin is so grotesque, and yet so tragic and sympathetic underneath it all. Selina Kyle's (Michelle Pfeiffer) transformation from a meek, walked-over assistant into a leather-clad, half-feral avenger is handled incredibly well. Wonder Woman 1984 tried to recreate that same arc with Cheetah (Kristen Wiig) and failed miserably, and it just goes to show you how terribly off the rails Batman Returns could have gone in lesser hands.

Burton’s Gotham is also the defining version of Gotham for a lot of people. It feels so distinct, so gothic, so fantastical. You had penguins with rockets strapped to their backs. And not just rockets; they got little targeting monocles, and they were given a rousing motivational speech before being sent off as suicide bombers. That's the kind of unhinged lunacy Batman is actually dealing with in the comics, and it's stuff we haven’t seen since the 90s because every modern take on the character is obsessed with grounding him in gritty realism. Colin Farrell is never going to have a penguin army attack Batman with rockets, and that's why this movie earns its spot on this list.

9 ‘Superman’ (1978)

Before Superman, nobody had proven a superhero movie could work as a big four-quadrant blockbuster instead of a campy Saturday morning cartoon. Richard Donner's film changed that. On paper, this hokey dork in long johns and a cape should have had no selling power in that era. And then along comes this kid named Christopher Reeve, and he blows it out of the park. He completely sells us on Clark Kent, the clumsy reporter in love with Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) and afraid of his own shadow. And even more importantly, Kal-El. The Last Son of Krypton. The Man of Steel who flies through Metropolis, thwarting crimes with ease.

Other filmmakers would have changed aspects of Superman to "fix" him, to put some distance between the character in the movie and the drawings it’s based on. Donner didn’t. He called his guiding philosophy verisimilitude, the idea that if every other part of the world feels real, audiences will believe the impossible part too. And he adapted Superman for the big screen with an earnest sincerity. Coming off of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War, Superman was exactly what audiences needed during a low point in America’s history. And every superhero movie that came after owes something to this one.

8 ‘The Incredibles’ (2004)

The Incredibles is a superhero movie unlike any other, one that is just as much a family drama as it is a larger-than-life adventure. It balances genuine emotion and incredible action with some of the funniest gags in the genre. Edna is an absolute scene stealer. Frozone is insanely funny. And the fact that the Superman/Captain Marvel/One Punch Man archetype, the most overpowered character, isn't the main hero but a literal baby; that juxtaposition is hilarious.

The Incredibles is also incredibly dark for a Pixar movie (no pun intended). Right before the kids get thrown into a firefight, Helen asks them, “You know the bad guys you see in your Saturday morning Cartoons?” Dash nods excitedly, and she says, “Well, these bad guys aren’t like those bad guys. They will not exercise restraint because you’re children. They will kill you if they get the chance.” And mind you, these henchmen didn't have laser guns or blunt clubs. They had actual SMGs that they were unloading onto children, in a Pixar movie! That one line from Helen made the action feel so much more threatening, and the entire film is packed with such small details that elevate it far beyond a run-of-the-mill animated movie made for kids.

7 ‘Iron Man’ (2008)

This was the movie that kickstarted the entirety of the MCU. Jon Favreau's film sits at a rock-solid 94% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and critics have consistently pointed to one reason above all others: Robert Downey Jr. This was a generational casting, and it's hard to imagine anyone else selling the character's brash, self-obsessed charm quite the way he did, with much of his best dialogue reportedly improvised on set.

Tony building the Mark I armor from scraps. The Mark III suit-up sequence. Him walking away after blowing up a tank. All of it looks just as cool today as it did back in 2008. And then Nick Fury's (Samuel L. Jackson) post-credits scene introducing the Avengers Initiative set up a franchise tradition and paved the way for the interconnected cinematic universe that would redefine blockbuster filmmaking for years to come. But strip away everything the MCU eventually became, and Iron Man would still be remembered as one of the greatest superhero films ever made.

6 ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ (2014)

This was essentially the Endgame of Fox's X-Men universe. With Days of Future Past, Bryan Singer managed to merge the original trilogy cast with the First Class prequel cast. The movie sends Wolverine's (Hugh Jackman) mind back in time to stop a future where the Sentinels have nearly wiped out mutantkind, and it is packed with iconic X-Men moments. There's the opening battle where characters like Blink (Fan Bingbing), Bishop (Omar Sy), Sunspot (Adan Canto), and Warpath (Booboo Stewart) fluidly chain their abilities together in ways the franchise had never achieved before. Magneto (Michael Fassbender) lifts an entire stadium! And then there's the emotional scene where the older Charles (Patrick Stewart) talks to his younger self.

But the real highlight is obviously Quicksilver's (Evan Peters) kitchen rescue scene set to Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle." It's one of the most rewatched scenes in all of movie history, and still remains the greatest use of super speed ever put on screen. So many following films have tried to copy it, and even the X-Men series did it again, but nothing has matched how perfect this sequence was.

5 ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ (2018)

With Infinity War, the Russo Brothers somehow balanced dozens of heroes on screen without any of them feeling shortchanged, and they filled the runtime with character interactions fans didn't even know they wanted. Tony meeting the Guardians. Quill (Chris Pratt) getting jealous of Thor (Chris Hemsworth). Cap (Chris Evans) awkwardly greeting a teenage Groot. That's what an Avengers movie is supposed to deliver, and this one delivered it better than any before or since.

At nearly two and a half hours long, it’s also paced incredibly well, and every scene moves the story toward the next action sequence. Titan and Wakanda remain two of the coolest battles in the genre's history, and the Russos knew exactly how to play with audience emotions across both. Theaters erupted when Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) multiplied himself on Titan, and you could hear a pin drop minutes later when Thanos stabbed Tony. Thor's entrance in Wakanda still might be the single coolest hero entrance in MCU history, with the Avengers theme swelling as he screams, "Bring me Thanos!" And then the movie does something no superhero blockbuster had really done before: it lets the heroes lose.

4 ‘Spider-Man 2’ (2004)

Now that Spider-Man: Brand New Day is out, a lot of reviews are calling it the best live action Spider-Man movie since Spider-Man 2, and that is because for over two decades, Spider-Man 2 has been the gold standard. It's still the movie every new Spider-Man film gets measured against. Sam Raimi's sequel was built around a really intriguing premise: what if Spider-Man lost his powers? And somehow, after giving us Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin in the first film, Raimi followed him up with yet another all-time great villain in Alfred Molina's Doc Ock.

The train sequence is, of course, the movie’s defining moment. Spidey (Tobey Maguire) has to physically stop a runaway train full of passengers using nothing but sheer willpower and webbing, pushing himself until he collapses from exhaustion. He falls into the arms of the very strangers he just saved, and they quietly pass his mask back to him and promise to keep his secret. It's one of the most iconic superhero scenes ever put on film. But even the small bits in between, like him being late for a pizza delivery because he was saving someone, avoiding his landlord for overdue rent, or rushing into a burning building despite having no powers, all of it was just pure comic-booky Spider-Man goodness.

3 ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ (2014)

This was basically a Jason Bourne/Mission: Impossible style spy thriller set in the world of the MCU, full of cool action set-pieces and insane plot twists. Steve Rogers spends the movie unraveling a conspiracy inside S.H.I.E.L.D., only to discover that Hydra has infiltrated the organization and has been rotting it from the inside for decades. It's a thinking person's action film, one that poses genuinely challenging questions and doesn't take shortcuts finding the answers to them, and the journey getting there is tightly written and confidently directed, full of setups that actually pay off later.

The film also has some of the best action choreography in MCU history. The opening ship rescue, the elevator fight, the SUV chase scene, the highway ambush, and the final battle on the Helicarrier are all still some of the most visually compelling action scenes the genre has ever produced. And the consequences of the movie actually stuck. S.H.I.E.L.D. got eradicated from the MCU. And what could have easily been a throwaway villain twist has turned into one of the key characters of the entire franchise, now heading his very own version of the Avengers.

2 ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ (2023)

A multiversal Spider-Man story doesn't get much better than this. The "canon events" concept gave an actual in-universe explanation for why every Spider-Man story hits the same beats: the spider bite, the dead paternal figure, falling under rubble. And then it uses that concept to build real stakes around Miles breaking the mold. Nearly every version of Spider-Man you can think of shows up somewhere. Comic book favorites stand shoulder to shoulder with characters from cartoons, video games, Japanese TV, obscure alternate universes, and even the live-action Spider-Men.

And on top of all this, it’s also arguably the greatest-looking animated movie ever made. Every frame is packed with tiny details, many of which most viewers will never even notice. In the Spider-Society scene, a background Spidey variant appears briefly on screen with a permanently misaligned suit texture. It looks like a printing mistake from an old comic book, where the different colored ink plates didn't line up perfectly on the page. For anyone who grew up reading comics, those little imperfections are a core memory. The filmmakers didn't have to recreate that, but they did anyway. That's the kind of obsessive love for the character that's woven into every frame of Across the Spider-Verse.

1 ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)

The Dark Knight strips away the fantasy just enough to make Gotham feel real while still delivering everything you'd want from a Batman movie. Nearly two decades later, it remains the definitive superhero movie every other film gets compared to, and very few have come close. Heath Ledger's Oscar-winning performance as Joker is the obvious headline here. He is an unpredictable agent of chaos who is always three steps ahead of Batman (Christian Bale), with no backstory that fully explains him.

He forces Batman into such thrilling social experiments, like making him choose between saving Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal) or Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), then giving him the wrong location. He destroys Dent, Gotham's symbol of hope, and turns the city's White Knight into a reflection of his own philosophy. He almost pushes Batman toward breaking his one rule by forcing him into a situation where killing feels like the only option. But of course, Batman finds another way, because the hero's greatest strength isn't that he can beat anyone in a fight. It's that he refuses to become the monster he's fighting. (A lesson some other superhero movies could probably use. Looking at you, Snyderverse.)