The explanations why a superhero film fails vary depending on the project. Sometimes the content is simply unsuitable for a large screen. When directors play fast and loose with their references, they sometimes lose sight of what made the original comics so remarkable. Other times, they may be overly authentic, cramming too much backstory and character development into a two-hour movie. Sometimes the casting is off, or the special effects aren't up to par.
There are just so many diverse approaches a superhero film may go wrong that it's amazing that any of them end out good at all. Unfortunately, these are not the films that did well. The ten worst movies since the genre's golden period, at least among those based on existing comic book source material, are listed below.
#1 Dark Phoenix (2019)
In some respects, director Simon Kinberg's second attempt at "The Dark Phoenix Saga" — he previously co-wrote X-Men: The Last Stand — is better than his first. (Neither film can compete with the original comics.) As is customary in subsequent X-Men films, Michael Fassbender shines as Magneto, bringing more gravity to the part than the franchise perhaps deserves. Magneto is really 60 years old in this film, but he looks like Michael Fassbender? That magnet treatment thing is insanely effective.
#2 Bloodshot (2020)
Thirty years after the company's heyday, Valiant Comics finally hobbled into movies with Bloodshot, featuring Vin Diesel as a dead soldier resurrected and given superpowers by microscopic robots in his veins. Diesel delivers the same stock action hero portrayal in all of his blockbusters, and the visual effects and set pieces are much below the par of recent tentpoles. Bloodshot seemed like a flashback to a simpler period, when comic-book characters were still used as fodder for schlocky B-movies, at an era when superhero movies were the largest blockbusters in Hollywood. In this situation, perhaps a D-movie.
#3 Justice League (2017)
Justice League was supposed to be the grand finale of a series of interconnected storylines. Instead, it marked the demise of a once-promising cinematic world. For individual matters, director Zack Snyder left the movie in the middle of production; Joss Whedon took over, and the outcome doesn't look like anything either of them would have created. The editing is shoddy, the tone is off, and the main antagonist is a generic CGI bozo with no personality or reason. (Do you think he wants to dominate the world? Because he does!) While Snyder's preferred edit is now available on HBO Max, the original Justice League will always be remembered as one of the poorest DC films ever created.
#4 Green Lantern (2011)
Comic book enthusiasts are often up in arms when an adaptation fails to stay true to its favorite source material. Green Lantern, which squeezes a ton of narrative about DC's interplanetary cops and their mystical rings into its 114-minute duration, is the strongest case against accuracy in superhero movies. It may be argued that it tries to squeeze too much information into a little space. You see Tomar-Re, Kilowog, Abin-Sur, and Sinestro, but you don't learn much about them, and they don't give Ryan Reynolds' Hal Jordan any screen time before or after his metamorphosis as Sector 2814's defender. Peter Sarsgaard is convincing as Hector Hammond, a telekinetic monster with what seems to be a big testicle coming out of his forehead, and credit to him for taking on such a role. Despite the fact that their characters apparently grew up together, Sarsgaard is not convincing as a classmate of Blake Lively, who portrays Carol Ferris and is 16 years younger than Sarsgaard.
#5 The New Mutants (2020)
The conclusion to Fox's X-Men series finally arrived in cinemas in the summer of 2020, after years of delays and predictions. It was accurate to the New Mutants comic characters, such as timid werewolf Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams) and brash Bobby da Costa (Henry Zaga), but it horribly botches its idea, about an immense hospital for mutants with new powers that appears to be manned by only one doctor. The allusions to the greater X-Men universe only add to the confusion. (Where is Colossus, and why is he fine with his sister being treated by this shady doctor?) Overall, New Mutants was a huge squandered opportunity.
#6 X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
The wacky title pretty much sums it up. Is this an X-Men film, a Wolverine adventure, or a prequel? What about all three? If filmmaker Gavin Hood had concentrated on just one component, he could have had a chance at making a decent film. But it was doomed from the start when it was designed as a mash-up of a half-dozen other X-Men and Wolverine adventures. "We didn't sign up for this," Hugh Jackman's Logan growls at Liev Schreiber's Victor, one of several statements in X-Men Origins that also serves as a meta-commentary on the film's awfulness. (Others include "We've done enough!" "You look like a man about to do something bad," and my personal favorite, "Wake me when it's over.")
#7 Fantastic Four (2015)
A group of young talented scientists develops a device that can move people to other dimensions, but they are afraid that their federal stakeholders will steal their project and claim the credit, so they use the machine and inadvertently end up with incredible powers and/or gigantic appearances. In other words, the storyline of Josh Trank's disastrous Fantastic Four serves as a metaphor for the making of the movie, with a bunch of young directors and producers with lofty goals developing a creative spin on well-known characters, only to have their creativity affected by craven interests concerned with the profit margin. This Fantastic Four feels like a mish-mash of like ten different sorts of storylines, none of which work together. It's sometimes a depressing horror movie, sometimes an effects-heavy superhero movie. It's like a salad with lettuce, gummy worms, and carpet samples on top of some Mike's Hard Lemonade. Also, why does the Thing wander about nude for the whole of the film? Is anyone else perplexed by that?
#8 Elektra (2005)
Elektra, the world's greatest hitman, is so meticulous about her task that she consistently scrubs her floorboards to make sure she leaves no DNA that could be traced back to her, and she's also so careless that she hangs out together with her gossipy new neighbors in the midst of a task, and also so incredibly stupid that she doesn't recognize her new neighbors are her mission. Consistency! In addition, dying in Daredevil and being resurrected has given Jennifer Garner the capacity to foretell the future and even reverse time when necessary, thereby making her an immortal deity. So she clearly utilizes her omnipotence to... go about stabbing ninjas. "Garner apparently did not want to make the picture and only did it because she was legally compelled owing to contractual commitments from Daredevil," according to the movie's Wikipedia entry. Elektra was someone's first superhero film, somewhere out there. Spare a thought for this person.
#9 Jonah Hex (2010)
Jonah Hex from DC Comics is basically a gruff Western vigilante with a scarred visage. A film should have been a slam dunk — simply throw Josh Brolin into a Fistful of Dollars-style narrative and let him be a gunslinging badass. Instead, the picture strangely bestowed upon him supernatural abilities (he can communicate with the dead) and ludicrous, cartoonish weapons to fit its absurd, cartoonish narrative. The only reason it isn't at the bottom of our list is that it's mercifully brief. On the other side, because it's been cut into nonsensical parts, it's just 80 minutes long. Jonah Hex is such an unusual and one-of-a-kind calamity that it makes Wild Wild West appear like The Searchers.
#10 Catwoman (2004)
Halle Berry finds her cosmetics company's new product is hazardous and is murdered as part of a cover-up by her executives. Cats then resurrect her as the latest in a series of Catwomen who have prowled the Earth throughout history. Berry's Patience Phillips now fights criminals with all of a cat's most renowned skills: she's highly nimble, always lands on her legs, is the world's best basketball player, gets a kick out of snatching jewelry, whips criminals, makes horrible basketball jokes, and loves leather. Exactly like a genuine cat. Pitof, Catwoman's filmmaker, has experience in visual effects, but there are undoubtedly worse-looking superhero flicks out there. However, there has never been a worse edited one. Catwoman is pure catnip for lousy movie fans due to her amusingly weird decisions and horrible ineptitude.