The release of Avengers: Endgame certainly marked a turning point for blockbuster cinema, particularly the superhero genre. The ultimate culmination of the MCU’s Infinity Saga (with Spider-Man: Far From Home‘s release two months later being a sort of epilogue), the movie’s recording-breaking $2.79 billion gross felt like the superhero genre reached its peak. Combine that with the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down theaters for nearly a year later and reshaping the entire cinematic landscape; it felt like Avengers: Endgame was truly the final chapter in the peak of super movies.
A common sentiment among people, particularly online, is that superhero fatigue has arrived, and the once profitable genre is on the way out. While the sentiment typically is shared regarding the MCU not being the same since Avengers: Endgame, with disappointments like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Thor: Love and Thunder, it extends beyond them.
After high-profile box office and critical disappointments like The Flash, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Madame Web, Morbius, The Crow, and what looks like another failed Hellboy reboot, one would think superhero movies’ best days are behind them. Yet since Avengers: Endgame, there have been plenty of great superhero movies, ones that show there are still plenty of stories left to tell. Here are the 12 best superhero movies since Avengers: Endgame.
12 Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
Deadpool & Wolverine is the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and is seen by many as a comeback for the MCU as it has grossed over $1 billion at the global box office.
The film is a multiverse adventure that sees Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) teaming up with a Wolverine variant (Hugh Jackman) as they traverse the void and attempt to find a way back to Deadpool’s reality to prevent it from being destroyed by the TVA, in a meta-commentary for the 20th Century Fox era of Marvel stories being cut short when Disney purchased the studio and looking to bring the characters into the MCU.
Filled with references and characters like Elektra (Jennifer Garner), Blade (Wesley Snipes), Gambit (Channing Tatum), and Laura/X-23 (Dafne Keene) being more than mere cameos, Deadpool & Wolverine delivered the laugh-out-loud movie of summer 2024.
The Time of Your Life
Deadpool & Wolverine certainly has plenty of issues, but the film makes up for it thanks to the humor of its lead character and also a sincere message of giving old properties a second chance.
Bookended by two great musical numbers – a bloody dance set to NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” to start the film with a laugh, and a final mid-credit montage to the 20th Century Fox Marvel movies that helped pave the way for the MCU set to Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” to make you cry – Deadpool & Wolverine has a little something for everyone.
11 Blue Beetle (2023)
Blue Beetle was originally intended for a Max streaming release, but unlike Batgirl, which was deleted as a tax write-off, Blue Beetle was bumped up to a theatrical release. That original streaming plan shines through in the movie’s smaller-scale story, but that works in the film’s favor at a time when superhero movies are so massive in scope that Blue Beetle felt like a breath of fresh air.
The film follows Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña), who accidentally bonds with an alien scarab and becomes the superhero Blue Beetle. With the help of his family, Victoria Kord, daughter of the prior Blue Beetle Ted Kord, Jaime must learn to bond with the scarab and become a hero to stop an evil industrialist from gaining the power of the Scarab and unleashing a dangerous new weapon.
Back to Basics
Blue Beetle is very much a back-to-basics approach to the superhero genre, and the fact that it feels so similar to Iron Man feels deliberate since Maridueña likely grew up with the first Iron Man and the movie feels like a new generation putting their own spin on the story.
Combine that with a wonderful supporting cast for Jaime’s family that is reflective of the Latino-American experience, even pulling from the horrific imagery of ICE raids, and Blue Beetle is a superhero movie that is small in scale but has a lot on its mind and delivers an entertaining experience. It didn’t reinvent the genre, but it reminds people why the genre took off in the first place.
10 The Batman (2022)
The Batman sees Matt Reeves make an epic ’70s inspired crime drama within the world of Gotham City. While one might feel a grounded Batman is well-worn material following Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, The Batman finds its own voice in a more deliberately paced mystery that draws heavily from the work of David Fincher and movies like Se7en and Zodiac.
Robert Pattinson stars as the most broody live-action incarnation of Batman, one who is more Batman than Bruce Wayne, while Zoe Kravitz, Colin Farrell, and Paul Dano bring something fresh to iconic Batman foes Catwoman, The Penguin, and the Riddler, respectively.
Epic Crime Saga Begins
The Batman looks incredible thanks to a combination of legendary cinematographer Greg Fraiser and production designer James Chinlund, with a propulsive score by Michael Giacchino. The movie does lose some points for its extended runtime, which feels unnecessary, particularly as the final action scene feels obligatory and tacked on, which clashes with the rest of the film’s more grounded aesthetic.
That said, the film’s final moments of Batman emerging from the shadows and becoming a symbol of hope for Gotham instead of something to be feared help make up for that and hint at an even more exciting sequel.
9 Birds of Prey (2020)
Birds of Prey is a film that got sadly glossed over due to being released just one month before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down movie theaters, but it certainly stands as one of the best movies to come out of the DCEU. A spin-off of Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) follows Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) following her breakup with The Joker, looking to make a name for herself.
She ends up finding herself teaming up with cop Renne Montoya (Rosie Perez), vengeful orphan turned vigilante Helena Bertinelli/Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and superpowered lounge singer Dinah Lance/Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett) to save young girl Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Bosco) from the sadistic gangster Roman Sionis/Black Mask (Ewan McGregor).
A Good Time Riot
Birds of Prey is just a fun time. It isn’t interested in expanding the wider DC story but instead expanding the characters, not only adding new layers to Harley Quinn but introducing a new host of DC characters that could have been spun off into their own stories. It expands the hierarchy of Gotham’s criminal underworld, which most live-action Batman films have failed to do, while showing a new daylight side of the city’s life.
The movie also has a great riot-girl punk rock aesthetic that makes it feel fresh and like an underground alt-comic adapted into the world of DC. Birds of Prey showed that the DCEU was often best when they focused less on interconnectivity and more on character-centric movies.
8 Ultraman Rising (2024)
Netflix’s animated Ultraman Rising is easily one of the best superhero movies of the 2020s, one of the best movies on Netflix, and a promising addition to their recent push towards animation. The film acts as a new entry point to the Ultraman franchise as it makes loose references to the established lore of the series while also forging its own path.
The movie centers on Kenji “Ken” Sato, the latest Ultraman who took up the mantle from his father. He is an arrogant baseball player who hates being a superhero, but following a strange encounter, he must take care of a baby Kaiju, which not only forces Ultraman to reconcile with his father but also rethink his mission to fight Kaijuis.
A Hero Who Teaches the Importance of Taking Care of Others
Ultraman Rising is easily one of the most breathtaking animated films of 2024, with ILM doing the animation for the movie and perfectly merging the anime aesthetic of Japan with a conventional Western-animated GCI movie. Yet for all the impressive fight sequences, of which there are plenty, the movie’s heart of a young man becoming a surrogate father and learning to take care of a young Kaiju named Emi is sure to tug at one’s heartstrings.
It is a refreshing change of pace to see a superhero movie put less focus on fighting and more on nurturing. It is a positive message, particularly for the young male crowd that these action stories tend to market themselves to, and it shows that heroism comes not from who one can beat up but from who one protects.
7 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a fresh take on the iconic TMNT property, putting the emphasis on both the “teenage” and “mutant” parts of the title. The film follows the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as they encounter teenage reporter April O’Neal (Ayo Edeberi) and help her track down the criminal Superfly (Ice Cube) in the hopes that it will help them become accepted by the surface world.
When Superfly turns out to be a mutant with his own mutant family, the Turtles must fight this new threat while also trying to get their father, Splinter (Jackie Chan), to shed his prejudice off the surface.
A New Era for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Mutant Mayhem goes through the familiar beats of the Ninja Turtles’ origins but puts a fresh spin on them, emphasizing the teenage aspect of the characters, young boys looking to forge their own identities makes them more compelling than ever.
Pulling from the mutant characters in the franchise’s history, particularly from the classic toy line, allows the film to have one foot in the past and another in the future, showing it is not afraid to switch up alliances and characterizations, or even create new ones.
Meanwhile, the art style, designed to resemble teenagers’ doodles, gives the film an added edge that ties back into the franchise’s indie underground roots. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem redefined the Turtles for a new generation and also created what might be the best film incarnation of the heroes in a half-shell.
6 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was dealt many impossible hands. Not only did it need to follow up 2018’s Black Panther, one of the most successful movies of all time that also earned Marvel Studios their first ever Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, but it also had to work around the real-life tragedy of star Chadwick Boseman passing away in 2020.
It’s a movie that should not work, but the fact that it does is a minor miracle, and the only reason some people would call this $859 million worldwide hit a “disappointment” is the unrealistic expectations of it not bringing in as much as or more than its predecessor’s $1.3 billion gross. Even without a Chinese release date, the fact that Wakanda Forever was able to come even close to $1 billion with a rather tragic story speaks volumes about the movie.
A Fitting Goodbye and a New Beginning
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever tackles T’Challa’s death head-on and makes it the heart of the movie, as all of the characters are left to grapple with his loss and its impact on both the MCU at large and the characters themselves. This taps into the audience’s own collective heartbreak of losing Chadwick Boseman and makes the movie a cathartic watch.
Letitia Wright handles the difficult task of shifting Shuri from the comedic heart of the first film into the new lead, but the new tragic motivation for Shuri carries a great deal of weight and makes her a worthy successor. Angela Bassett gave a powerful performance as Queen Ramanda and deserves an Academy Award nomination. Tenoch Huerta’s Namor is one of the best new additions to the MCU and even surpasses his comic book counterpart. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever shows the MCU can still tackle powerful stories even after Endgame.
5 Shang-Chi & The Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
The second MCU film in Phase 4, following Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings felt like an MCU Phase 1 film like Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger in the best way possible, as it introduced audiences to a new corner of the franchise with an exciting new hero and mythology that could go on for years.
The movie follows Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), who, after years of being on the run, must reunite with his sister Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) to confront their father, Wenwu (Tony Leung) to stop him using his powerful ancient weapons, the Ten Rings, to unleash a great evil upon the world. The finished film is one of the best recent films in the MCU that can stand toe-to-toe with many in the Infinity Saga.
What Marvel Does Best
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings does for Marvel Phase 4 what Guardians of the Galaxy did for Phase 2 and what Black Panther did for Phase 3: act as a new entry point for audiences. The wider connections to the overall cinematic universe are minor and, instead, it focuses on introducing new characters and concepts, making the MCU feel more exciting and enticing.
In another timeline, all three of these films could easily have been the first MCU films instead of Iron Man. With an incredible soundtrack, charismatic new leads that could carry the MCU for years, and some incredible action, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings shows that the MCU’s best days are far from behind them, and they still understand that the secret to their success is their characters.
4 Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Spider-Man: No Way Home was the first real cinematic event following the COVID-19 pandemic crippled theaters. The third entry in the MCU Spider-Man franchise also acted as a long-awaited follow-up to the 2000 Tobey Maguire-led Spider-Man movies and Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man film.
After having his secret identity exposed following the events of Spider-Man: Far From Home, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) asks Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to create a spell to make everyone forget Spider-Man is Peter Parker. Yet when the spell goes wrong, it ends up pulling in past Spider-Man movie characters throughout the multiverse like Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Doc Ock (Alfred Molina), Electro (Jamie Foxx), Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church) and Lizard (Rhys Ifans) as well as the two previous Spider-Men played by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield themselves.
More Than Fan-Service
In the years since Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s release, the movie has gained a reputation that people only liked because of nostalgia. While that certainly was a major factor in getting audiences to go to the theater, the $1.9 billion worldwide box office showed it was far more than that. Spider-Man: No Way Home is a classic Spider-Man story in which being a superhero truly impacts Peter Parker and forces him into making difficult choices, sometimes at a great personal cost.
The movie does for supervillains what The Avengers did for crossing over superheroes by allowing the past Spider-Man villains to build new dynamics. Bringing back Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield allowed those characters to get some semblance of closure after their film series were cut short, and their dynamic with each other and Tom Holland shows what makes each Spider-Man unique.
3 The Suicide Squad (2021)
Talk about a franchise that did a complete turnaround. 2016’s Suicide Squad is one of the worst superhero movies of the 2010s. It was made to be DC’s version of Guardians of the Galaxy, with obvious needle drops that made it come off as a poorly made knockoff. The solution was to save the franchise by just getting James Gunn, the director of Guardians of the Galaxy, to direct The Suicide Squad.
The result is one of the best DC movies, as Gunn digs into the 1980s action movie vibe that the iconic comic books drew from. The movie follows a team consisting of Bloodsport (Idris Elba), Peacemaker (John Cena), Ratcatcher II (Daniela Melchior), Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), King Shark (Sylvester Stallone), Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) on a mission to the fictional island nation of Corto Maltese to destroy all traces of the giant alien starfish known as Starro the Conqueror, where they also discover a sinister conspiracy behind the creature and the United States government.
Better Than the 2016 Film in Everyway
Of all the DC movies, The Suicide Squad feels most like a DC Comic come to life as it is filled with colorful, unique villains that stretch to the far corners of the DC Universe make it feel lived in (no wonder Warner Bros. has tapped Gunn to oversee their new new slate of films).
Gunn takes characters audiences joked about for years, like Polka-Dot Man, and makes them great. The Suicide Squad is bloody, hilarious, and surprisingly heartfelt, with the idea that everybody, no matter how broken, can find a purpose. The film is also incredibly political, a rare summer blockbuster willing to comment on the United States’ unsavory involvement in foreign affairs.
The Suicide Squad is an incredible film that gets better with each watch, and the spin-off series Peacemaker somehow manages to be even better, which is saying something.
2 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
James Gunn has delivered two of the greatest superhero movies since Avengers: Endgame, hinting that the future looks bright for the DCU. 2023’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 had a long road to the big screen, as Disney fired James Gunn in 2018 due to a fake outrage campaign by an alt-right group (he was later rehired in 2019).
The third entry in the Guardians of the Galaxy film franchise digs deep into the tragic origin story of Rocket (Bradley Cooper) as the Guardians confront his maker, The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji). While they don’t know it at the start, this will set them on the course for what will be their final adventure as the team we’ve come to know.
We Will Miss the Guardians of the Galaxy
The Guardians of the Galaxy films are easily the best trilogy in the MCU, and part of the reason for that is Gunn’s unique vision for these characters. There is a love for every one of them that is present in every frame, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 shows the true importance of this found family to not just one another but in how their love has saved the galaxy numerous times.
Through it all, the movie maintains the humor that audiences have loved while also making for incredibly moving, fully realized characters. The final sequence, set to Florence & The Machine’s “Dog Day Are Over,” is the cathartic happy release these characters and the audience have been waiting for.
While 2023 was a rough year for Disney and Marvel, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 showed to not count them out. The door is open for future Guardians adventures with a new team, but this entry marks a great closing chapter for the Marvel franchise that took everyone by surprise.
1 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was the best superhero movie, so a lot of expectations were put on its 2023 sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The sequel delivered in every respect, even setting up a massive cliffhanger that, while frustrating due to the various delays, felt like the best kind of ending tease up there with the endings of The Empire Strikes Back, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, or Avengers: Infinity War, where the audience can’t wait to see what’s next.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse sees Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) discover that there is an entire team of Spider heroes protecting the multiverse, including his friends Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) and Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson). The sequel takes Miles to other dimensions in the multiverse to stop the villainous Spot (Jason Schwartzman) while also teaming up with Spider variants like Hobie Brown/Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya), Pavitr “Pav” Prabhakar / Spider-Man India (Karan Soni), Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman (Issa Rae) and Miguel O’Hara/Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac) all while uncovering a dark secret about his past.
Digging Deeper into Superhero Stories
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is what everyone wants from a superhero movie. It features all the incredible visual spectacle of a comic book brought to the big screen through impressive animation that merges different styles. It also keeps its focus centered on its characters.
Despite all the fun fan service and cameos, the movie never loses sight of the main characters’ stories, particularly Miles and Gwen. It fits two lead protagonist stories into one, and it never feels over-stuffed. It serves as a great meta-commentary on the nature of Spider-Man stories, mainly commenting on the fandom’s constant insistence on what makes someone the “real Spider-Man.”
While a segment of the fans might refuse to call Miles Morales Spider-Man for ridiculous reasons, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse not only proves Miles Morales is Spider-Man, but the film’s box office of $690 million at the worldwide box office, doubling the gross of its predecessor, proves audiences all over the world have embraced him and the Spider-Verse movies.
