(Photo by 20th Century Fox Film Corp, Warner Bros., Walt Disney, Columbia Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection)
The 50 Best Superhero Movies of the 2010s
The late 2000s may have hearalded the arrival of a new breed of superhero movies with the likes of Iron Man and The Dark Knight, but who could’ve predicted their utter pop culture domination of the last 10 years? Well, maybe Kevin Feige. Naturally, you can’t talk about these momentous leaps from panel to screen without mention of the Marvel Studios mastermind, who cobbled together Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow, Thor, and Hawkeye into The Avengers. Even that seemed like a miracle of blockbuster needle threading at the time, but it nearly pales in comparision to the scope of the Infinity Saga, which roped in some Guardians of the Galaxy, an Ant-Man and a Wasp, and Doctor Strange, culminating in the biggest movie ever, Avengers: Endgame.
Marvel’s foil, as always, was DC Comics and their DC Extended Universe, which counts Man of Steel, Justice League, Wonder Woman, Shazam!, and Aquaman among its galaxy. One-off Joker became the first R-rated movie to gross $1 billion. The X-Men franchise finally sputtered to its end, but not before reaching top forms with Days of Future Past, First Class, and the Oscar-nominated alternate story Logan. Meanwhile, iconoclast Deadpool was able to hit the big screen, by sheer will of Ryan Reynolds. The superhero subgenre grew large enough to even accommodate indie voices, seen in original takes like Chronicle and Fast Color.
Whatever the style, or budget, we took every superhero movie from the decade and then ranked them by Adjusted Tomatometer, a formula using multiple factors, including a movie’s release year and its number of reviews. Speaking of, each movie needed a minimum of 80 reviews to be considered. And now, it’s time to fly face forward into the 50 Best Supehero Movies of the 2010s! —Alex Vo
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