For the better part of the last two decades, superhero movies have reigned supreme. They have dominated the box office and the zeitgeist, with the best of them breaking ticket-sales records, pleasing critics, and even scoring a Best Picture nomination. Although the era of the superhero movie may be drawing to a close, the genre has already produced more than its fair share of classics.
That said, superhero movies also include some of the worst cinematic disasters of all time. For every Black Panther, there’s a Ghost Rider (or three). The worst superhero flicks misunderstand their source comics, serve up listless plots, and underwhelm with shoddy special effects. In fairness, making a good movie is not easy, but the following films fail so spectacularly that they can’t really be defended. A few of them were so bad that they actually derailed their franchises for several years. With that in mind, here are the ten worst superhero movies, ranked.
10 ‘Jonah Hex’ (2010)
Directed by Jimmy Hayward
“War and me took to each other real well.” Josh Brolin stars in this one as the title character, a tormented bounty hunter who can communicate with the dead. He’s on a mission to track down the villainous Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), who murdered Hex’s family and left him for dead.
The film had potential given the quality of the original comics and the caliber of the main cast (Michael Fassbender and Michael Shannon also appear, and Brolin’s performance is committed) but the result is an erratic and unfocused mess. The characters are flat, delivering cringe-worthy, clichéd dialogue (penned by the writers for Jason Statham‘s Crank, though Jonah Hex makes that movie seem almost Shakespearean), while the plot meanders with barely any clear direction. To make matters worse, the whole affair is tonally confused. Is it a comedy? A pure action flick? The cast and crew don’t seem to know.
9 ‘Supergirl’ (1984)
Directed by Jeannot Szwarc
“Such a pretty world. I can’t wait until it’s all mine.” The Supergirl movie attempts to expand the Superman universe by introducing Kara Zor-El (Helen Slater), Superman’s cousin, who travels to Earth in search of a powerful artifact that has been lost from her home planet. However, she soon finds herself in conflict with Selena (Faye Dunaway), a sorceress who seeks to use the artifact for her own nefarious purposes.
There’s nothing wrong with the premise, but the execution is abysmal. Goofy special effects, some wooden performances (though Slater is good, especially given how little she has to work with), and a clunker of a script weight it all down. The movie wastes time on irrelevant subplots and multiple plot developments either defy logic or rely upon unbelievable coincidences. As a result, the film was both a critical and commercial disaster, grossing just $14.3m against a $35m budget. Hopefully, the upcoming Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow gives the character the feature adaptation she deserves.
8 ‘The Spirit’ (2008)
Directed by Frank Miller
“My city screams. She is my mother. She is my lover, and I am her Spirit.” The Spirit is a stylized adaptation of Will Eisner’s classic comic strip about Denny Colt (Gabriel Macht), a police officer who returns from the dead to fight crime. He soon faces off against the nefarious Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson), in a battle to save Central City from destruction.
Director Frank Miller, known for his work on Sin City, tells the story with visual panache, but everything else feels hollow. No amount of style can paper over the cardboard characters. Sure, the main character was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but the joke just doesn’t land. On top of that, tepid action scenes and an incoherent plot quickly test the viewer’s patience. Miller clearly intended for The Spirit to be a hyper-stylized noir/superhero hybrid, but the end result is just plain weird. To see Macht playing a better specter, rather check out Suits.
7 ‘Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance’ (2011)
Directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor
“I’ve tried to fight it, to hold it back, but the darkness inside me only gets stronger.” Yet another awful movie about a ghostly avenger. Here, Nicolas Cage reprises his as Johnny Blaze, the cursed biker who transforms into the fiery Ghost Rider. This time, Blaze is hiding out in Eastern Europe, trying to control his curse, when he is approached by a secret sect of the Church to save a young boy from becoming the vessel for the devil.
The movie tries to up the ante from the first film, embracing the philosophy of ‘go big or go home’. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work. The plot is genuinely ludicrous, less a real story and more a means of stringing together the generic action set pieces and shaky CGI. Everything about the movie feels like a gimmick, the 3D aspects most of all. Critics eviscerated Spirit of Vengeance, but it actually performed well at the box office, raking in an impressive $132m.
6 ‘Fantastic Four’ aka ‘Fant4stic’ (2015)
Directed by Josh Trank
“You said I had the potential to be something important. Who’s to say this isn’t it?” This reboot attempts to reimagine the origins of Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Sue Storm (Kate Mara), Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), and Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell). But despite a promising cast and a talented director in Chronicle’s Josh Trank, the film was widely regarded as a failure.
So what went wrong? First up, the humor is sorely lacking. The Fantastic Four comics are comedic; fun and irreverent rather than the self-seriousness on display here. In addition, story-wise, the movie wastes time with the characters building machines and staring at computer screens rather than doing anything actually interesting. Finally, the script renders the protagonists and villain Dr. Doom (Toby Kebbell) practically one-dimensional, squandering the cast’s considerable talents. Less focus on science experiments and more on character development would have gone a long way toward salvaging this missed opportunity.
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5 ‘Batman & Robin’ (1997)
Directed by Joel Schumacher
“You have eleven minutes to thaw the bird.” In this woefully campy take on the Caped Crusader, Batman (George Clooney) and Robin (Chris O’Donnell) must stop the villainous Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman). The neon lights, fluorescent face paint, and extravagant costumes make a comeback for yet another round of painfully cheesy superhero antics but Batman & Robin falls far short of the Tim Burton-directed installments or even Batman Forever.
The whole thing is gaudy and over-the-top, slapping garish visuals over a convoluted plot. The corny one-liners, needless humor, and infamous “bat nipples” quickly earned the film a reputation as one of the worst superhero movies ever made. In fact, Batman & Robin‘s awfulness is widely credited with sparking a complete rethinking of how superhero stories were told on screen. For a time, it invalidated the more comedic approach, paving the way for darker and more serious films like Batman Begins. In other words, Batman & Robin became an object lesson in what not to do.
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4 ‘Superman IV: The Quest for Peace’ (1987)
Directed by Sidney J. Furie
“I just wish you could all see the Earth the way that I see it. Because when you really look at it, it’s just one world.” The Christoper Reeve Superman films contain both one of the genre’s finest masterpieces (the first installment) and its absolute lowest points (the fourth and final one). Superman IV: The Quest for Peace sees the Man of Steel resolving to rid the world of nuclear weapons. In the process, he must take on the supervillain Nuclear Man (no, really, that’s his name).
This premise was topical for the time, but it comes across as odd and kind of inappropriate. This would have been okay if the story was good but, instead, it’s sluggish and uninspired. Perhaps this explains why the actors appear bored and noncommittal. Despite these flaws, Superman IV made a profit, but it was considered a failure, and the planned sequel was canceled. The film was so disliked that almost twenty years would pass before Superman returned to the big screen.
3 ‘Catwoman’ (2004)
Directed by Pitof
“The day I died was the day I started to live.” Another famously bad superhero film, Catwoman features Halle Berry as the iconic DC character, but it strays far from the source material, resulting in a finished product that pleased exactly no one. The plot revolves around Patience Phillips, a shy graphic designer who is resurrected by an Egyptian cat and gains feline superpowers. She transforms into a vigilante seeking to uncover the corruption within the cosmetics company she works for.
Halle’s star power is considerable, but rescuing Catwoman was beyond even her powers. Where to begin? The script is inconsistent and shallow, failing to delve adequately into Patience’s transformation and its impact on her. Many of the big plot developments are similarly nonsensical. Frenetic, almost nauseating camerawork and editing compound problems further. But most of all, the movie just feels soulless, as if the filmmakers didn’t care about the project they were working on.
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2 ‘Son of the Mask’ (2005)
Directed by Lawrence Guterman
“You are hereby stripped of your immortal powers and forever banished to the land of mortals.” The Mask with Jim Carrey was a fun if silly good time, but the sequel is unbearably unfunny. It centers on struggling cartoonist Tim Avery (Jamie Kennedy) who discovers the magical Mask of Loki. When his son is born with the mask’s powers, chaos ensues as both the baby and the family dog become embroiled in a battle for control of the mask. Kids may get a kick out of the slapstick antics (although several scenes are not appropriate for younger viewers), but adult viewers are bound to be disappointed.
Watching Son of the Mask makes one appreciate how much Carrey’s high-energy, gonzo performance carried the first installment. There’s a reason he was, for a time, the highest-paid movie star in the world. Where his version of the character was charismatic and funny, Kennedy’s is simply irritating. Overall, this movie is an overblown disaster.
1 ‘Steel’ (1997)
Directed by Kenneth Johnson
“I laugh at danger.” Steel may not be as well-known as some of the other duds on this list, but it arguably beats them in terms of sheer awfulness. It sees Shaquille O’Neal of all people taking on the role of DC Comics character John Henry Irons, also known as Steel. He’s a weapons designer who creates a suit of armor to fight crime after his creations are used to wreak havoc in his community. In other words, a dollar-store Iron Man. Despite its decent source material, Steel is hampered by clunky dialogue, cheesy special effects, and O’Neal’s wooden performance.
The film attempts to capitalize on Shaq’s popularity, but his performance is so weak that it obliterates any star appeal or novelty he might have brought to the production. The action sequences also lack any zest or creativity, making Steel an interminable slog that seems more interested in serving up basketball references than telling a genuine story. All told, Steel was a massive bomb, grossing just $1.7m against a $16m budget, and quickly fading into obscurity. It’s not so-bad-it’s-good. It’s just bad.
