The 10 worst superhero movies of all time
There’s no doubt that superhero movies have become the bread and butter of modern Hollywood, with films from the likes of DC and Marvel having dominated the release schedule for over a decade. As such, the language of the genre has changed dramatically since the very first superhero movie, 1941’s Adventures of Captain Marvel, with the genre having moved away from a camp comic-book aesthetic to something that harnesses the power of contemporary CGI.
No doubt, the modern MCU would baffle 20th-century audiences, who would undoubtedly be blown away by the sheer scale of such modern flicks, with hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into the money-making machines. Since 2011, when the genre became a clear modern trend, studios have become lazy, relying on a formula of success that makes each new release feel like a uniform product rather than a unique creative endeavour.
Such makes modern superhero movies seem far more cynical than their 20th-century counterparts, with time being kind to ‘bad’ campy flicks such as 1987s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and 1990s Captain America. Charming, original and bursting with a sense of genuine identity, these superhero movies might be stupid and eye-rolling, but compared to modern efforts, they’re far from objectively bad.
So, what are the very worst superhero movies of all time? We’ve sorted through the history of the genre to find the most unoriginal, most disappointing and most visually insulting of the lot.
The 10 worst superhero movies:
10. Dark Phoenix (Simon Kinberg, 2019)
The inner workings of 20th Century Fox unfurled onto the screen with the release of the truly awful 2019 X-Men movie Dark Phoenix, with the business decisions of the studio becoming all too obvious to see. Wanting to create a massive era-defining superhero movie, the studio picked one of the series’ most beloved comic books and tarnished the source material with a movie that doesn’t even nearly do the film justice.
Rushed and cack-handedly put together, there are few redeeming qualities about this movie, aside from a handful of endearing performances from the likes of Evan Peters, Sophie Turner and Jennifer Lawrence, even if they’d all clearly prefer to be somewhere else.
9. Kick-Ass 2 (Jeff Wadlow, 2013)
The original Kick-Ass movie from 2010 was an ingenious satire way beyond its years that imagined a world of real-life superheroes trying to save the day. One of the best superhero films of the new millennium was followed up with one of the very worst, with Kick-Ass 2 sullying the work of the original film with a cheap, lethargic follow-up that was trying to cash in on the emerging superhero genre.
Feeling very much like a cynical cinematic venture, Kick-Ass 2 featured just as much violence as the first film but lacked the sharp satire to turn the blood and guts into good-natured fun, feeling instead nasty and mean-spirited. It’s an ugly, detestable piece of cinema.
8. Spawn (Mark A.Z. Dippé, 1997)
Dipping into pre-millennium cinema for just a moment, Mark A.Z. Dippé’s 1997 imagining of the African American superhero Spawn is a culmination of stagnant superhero cliché. Though it’s commendable for being one of the first superhero movies to feature a black lead star, the film tells the story of a murdered US Marine who is resurrected as the reluctant leader of a nightmarish army, doesn’t do its contextual importance justice.
An awful product of its time, dripping in gooey, rudimentary special effects, Spawn isn’t worth anybody’s time, with Dippé wasting a potentially interesting concept for a quick cash-in.
7. Elektra (Rob Bowman, 2005)
Back in the early 2000s, Marvel was seemingly throwing anything and everything at the wall to see what would stick. Such resulted in some of the most curious superhero films of the new century, including Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Punisher and Ang Lee’s Hulk. Our pick for the worst of the bunch is the 2005 Jennifer Garner-led film Elektra, a film the lead star herself admits is “awful”.
Refusing to give the female superhero the credit she deserved, director Rob Bowman removed any personality from the character, instead choosing to sexualise her in a skimpy red corset. Thankfully, modern superhero movies have come a long way, making this 2005 film look dated and, all in all, quite insulting.
6. Steel (Kenneth Johnson, 1997)
Kenneth Johnson’s Steel, loosely based on a supporting character from a DC superhero comic, is something of an oddity on this list, displaying an earnest surrealism that gives it a little bit of character. But, at no point did Johnson try to take this film seriously, to the detriment of the final product, making something that felt like a cinematic insult and a cynical way to get bums on seats and money in the back pockets of investors.
Starring Shaquille O’Neal as John Henry Irons, a scientist and weapons designer who turns himself into a superhero, the film plays out like one big joke and is subsequently a pretty dull watch. Whilst in another reality, this could’ve been a ‘so bad it’s good’ kind of movie, don’t waste your time with Steel, it’s that bad.
5. Catwoman (Pitof, 2004)
Whilst Marvel was off galavanting, making an array of random releases, DC was doing something rather similar, albeit in a more toned-down practice. Still, they found the time to produce some really hot garbage, releasing Catwoman with Halle Berry in 2004, a film that follows a woman gifted with cat-like reflexes, which is so curiously poor that it’s a wonder how it got made in the first place.
With a meandering plot, awful script and ineffective villain, Catwoman is an utter bore of a movie which is made all the worse when you consider the later iterations of the character in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises and Matt Reeves’ The Batman, who were both far superior.
4. Justice League (Zack Snyder, 2017)
DC has produced a large number of turgid cinematic experiences in the past decade or so as they desperately attempt to catch up with Marvel’s superior business model. In response to Marvel’s team-up movie sequel Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015, DC fast-tracked their own version of an all-star superhero cast, rushing Justice League into development, despite only a handful of the characters having been introduced with their own movie first.
The result was a complete and utter mess which felt arduous to consume thanks to its overstuffed and nonsensical plot, boring characters and dire reliance on CGI, making every single shot look like it was shot with a muddy puddle in the background. Although Zack Snyder did a decent job in making a re-cut of the movie watchable, the original is truly horrific.
3. Batman & Robin (Joel Schumacher, 1997)
Joel Schumacher’s hilariously bad 1997 movie Batman & Robin almost evaded this list for its camp sensibilities, but there’s no getting away from the fact that the movie was cynically created as a vehicle to sell an abundance of merchandise and toys. On top of this fact, Schumacher totally betrayed the central character with a depiction that was totally comic inaccurate, disappointing fans of DC whilst insulting the general moviegoer.
So bad was the movie that, since its release, its lead star George Clooney felt compelled to apologise for the release and even director Joel Schumacher regretted the final product of the cinematic travesty.
2. Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)
DC thought it knew what it was doing in the mid-2010s, releasing such movies as Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in the build-up to their ‘massive team-up movie’ Justice League in 2017 (see above). In hindsight, the studio didn’t have a clue. The perfect illustration of their utter aimlessness is the awful 2016 movie Suicide Squad, directed by David Ayer.
Featuring the worst cinematic Joker ever put to screen, Jared Leto’s candy cane version of the character helps the film to become a laughing stock, and that’s even before you’ve gotten into the real meat of the movie. Telling the story of a group of reluctant villains-come-heroes who must defeat an ugly CGI threat, the plot of Suicide Squad is too boring to fully explain, with DC failing to fully grasp the potential of its premise with a lazy Guardians of the Galaxy wannabe flick.
1. Fantastic Four (Josh Trank, 2015)
Why is Josh Trank’s 2015 reboot of Fantastic Four the worst superhero movie of all time? A troubled production that wrestled with creative differences across the board, the final result is an ugly amalgamation that reflects everything wrong with what the modern genre has become. Fantastic Four was a toxic production from top to bottom, with 20th Century Fox meddling heavily with Trank’s vision, which in itself was totally inappropriate for the source material.
A difficult comic book to pull off, Fantastic Four is a story of a group of scientists who obtain cosmic powers, with one becoming super-stretchy and another transforming into a massive rock-monster strongman. The concept was never meant to be taken deadly seriously, with Trank’s approach betraying the original source material, meaning the film had failed before it had even started.
Dull, boring and devoid of any original personality, 2015’s Fantastic Four has nothing to entice viewers back for a re-watch, disappearing into the ether of forgettable cinema to never be seen again. It’s a pathetic excuse of a film that thinks the audience actually cares about its narrative, even being so arrogant as to try and set up a sequel. It’s a hollow, cynical artistic travesty.
