With the release of the 4198435715719587th Superhero movie this week in BATMAN V SUPERMAN and the general consensus being that superhero movies are fast approaching saturation point one of the besties and I attended the premiere of BvS and then went out for a birthday lunch a couple of days later and debated superhero movies most of the time. Rixy Dix and myself end up debating anything and everything to do with movies and over beers and red wine in a pub, using a TAB horserace betting slip as our notepad we started negotiating what were the best superhero movies. By negotiating I mean arguing :).

Sadly the Bat V the Supe is being generally enjoyed by fans and members of the public but is being decimated by critics. Somehow Rotten Tomatoes is seeing it annihilated and the score at about 30% but IMDB appears to have banned critics reviews as they aren’t appearing – the public has it at about 71%. Odd considering Warner owns Rotten Tomatoes and they made the film where IMDB is owned by Amazon. Go figure.

The list started at ten movies, I only ever really write Top 10 lists and wasn’t keen to stray from that but the more we looked at the films of superheroes the more we realised this would not be possible, so it ended at the TOP 21 SUPERHERO MOVIES OF ALL TIME (Hollywood films only).

As for what classifies a movie as a superhero movie, it was pretty simple, it had to involve superheroes. I ended up going fairly closely with Wiki’s explanation as the basis but made some amendments as I don’t believe all superheroes have to be 100% good i.e. Deadpool, Wolverine, Watchmen and so on. One movie I couldn’t include was GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY although it deserves a special mention, for me this movie is purely a science-fiction with some heroes in it, I wouldn’t call them super as such.

A superhero film, superhero movie, or superhero motion picture is a film that is focused on the actions of one or more superheroes: individuals who usually possess superhuman abilities relative to a normal person and are (generally) dedicated to protecting the public. These films typically feature action, fantasy and/or science fiction elements, with the first film of a particular character often including a focus on the origin of the special powers and the first fight against the character’s most famous supervillain, or archenemy.

NB: I have kept this to English speaking/ Hollywood superhero movies, I would love to work on an Asian superhero list at some stage as I have a few faves in the genre.

 

TOP 21 SUPERHERO MOVIES OF ALL TIME – in order – I did have most of these reviewed on my old site until the owner of the blogging network saw every one of 12000+ sites erased, so no reviews, just posters.

21) X-Men First Class

 

20) The Avengers

 

19) The Amazing Spiderman

 

18) Iron Man

 

17) X-Men

 

16) Unbreakable

 

15) The Rocketeer

 

14) Watchmen

 

13) Deadpool

 

12) Chronicle

 

11) Big Hero 6

 

10) The Dark Knight Rises

 

9) Batman Begins

 

8) Batman Returns

 

7) Kick-Ass

 

6) The Crow

 

5) Superman: The Movie

 

4) Batman

 

3) The Iron Giant

 

2) The Dark Knight

 

1) The Incredibles

 

Jason King is the owner and editor of Salty Popcorn and Spooning Australia. He is a movie, food, restaurant, wine, chocolate, bacon, burger and brussels sprouts addict. He is a member of the Australian Film Critics Association and has been in the Australian movie industry for 25yrs. He loves watching people trip over and is Leonardo DiCaprio’s biggest fan. All the social media links to the right and up will allow you to abuse, troll or stalk him :).

** All images courtesy of various sources on Google or direct from the distributor or publisher – credit has been given to photographers where known – images will be removed on request.