Best Comic Book Movies Since 2000

[bjornolf]

Been two years (and several comic book movies) since this has been updated. Pretty remarkable to see how many "comic book" movies have come out since X-Men started it all. Well over 50 in 19 years. And I've seen them all...many more than once (or twice). I'm rearranging my ranking to include a few more tiers. Here they are

Tier 1: Absolute Top Movies (each so good it's damned near impossible to rank them)

The Avengers
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Avengers Endgame
Avengers Infinity War
Deadpool
Guardians of the Galaxy
Spiderman 2 (with Doc Ock)
Spiderman Homecoming
X-Men 2
X-Men Days of Future Past
Captain America - Civil War
Black Panther
Spiderman Into Spider-Verse

Think about it...that's 14 simply great movies. That I can (and have) watched over and over. And all but 1 are from Marvel. I'm not sure what I would rank first there. Maybe the first Avengers - it was amazing how they pulled it all together and then generated interest for the future. Or Iron Man, or Deadpool, or Guardians, or the last 2 Avengers, or Black Panther, or...it's just too hard to rank.

Tier 2: Fun movies that I enjoyed, but can't quite put into that top tier. Here I will try to rank them (though some are close)

15. X-Men
16. X-Men First Class
17. Thor: Ragnorak
18. Spiderman (first one with Tobey)
19. Batman Begins
20. Captain America: Winter Soldier
21. Deadpool 2
22. Guardians of the Galaxy 2
23. Dr. Strange
24. Captain America
25. Thor
26. Shazam
27. Wonder Woman
28. Ant Man & Wasp
29. Aquaman
30. Avengers 2
31. Amazing Spider Man (without Player X)
32. Antman
33. Venom (mainly because I had no expectations for this, and it exceeded them)

Tier 3: Disappointments (Movies I was excited to see and let me down...didn't go see them again in the theater)

34. Logan (just didn't do it for me, and hated how weak they made Wolverine and Professor Xavier)
35. Captain Marvel
36. Iron Man 2
37. Dark Knight Rises
38. Amazing Spiderman 2
39. Batman v Superman
40. The Wolverine
41. Man of Steel
42. Superman Returns
43. Iron Man 3
44. Incredible Hulk
45. Thor 2

Bottom Tier (Just Pretty Bad Movies) **

46. Green Lantern
47. Fantastic Four
48. Justice League
49. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
50. X-Men Last Stand
51. Spiderman 3
52. X-Men Apocalypse
53. Fantastic Four (the remake)
54. Hulk
55. Suicide Squad
56. Fantastic Four: Silver Surfer

** None of these are as awful as Superman IV, which forever will hold the title of Worst Comic Book Sequel ever

I didn’t see Green Hornet. Was that not a comic book?

[Acymetric]

I didn’t see Green Hornet. Was that not a comic book?

I believe in older posts Udaman explained excluding some titles either because they were so bad (which seems like it would warrant inclusion in the final tier) or deemed too obscure. This seems arbitrary to me, but I'm also not the one that took the time to rank ~60 movies so I don't get to make the rules.

A couple notable omissions from the list (I'll include graphic novels as well). Some of these were pretty awful, but some were good!

Hellboy
Daredevil
V for Vendetta
Sin City
TNMT reboots
Kick I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.
Scott Pilgrim
Watchmen
Jonah Hex
The Punisher
Dredd
Catwoman
Ghost Rider
Kingsman

Blade II, Blade Trinity (fair enough to exclude this since the original was released well before 2000, but these movies weren't)
The Crow sequels (same as Blade above)

These were all notable enough releases to be considered. There are some probably some others.

Edit: I'm leaving the filter in place, you guys should be able to figure it out

[Udaman]

Catwoman should definitely be on the list. I guess Hellboy and Daredevil should be as well. Admittedly, I have seen neither. And yeah, Watchmen technically was a comic book...but it just doesn't feel like a comic book movie to me, and so (stubornly) I keep it out. The others I just don't quite put in the category (I thought Scott Pilgrim was fantastic, by the way).

Catwoman would be the at the absolute bottom of the list. It was awful. Almost unwatchable (thanks to the story, the acting, and - by far the worst part - the editing...only movie even close to this was Charlie's Angels, the longest non cut scene in Catwoman is like 6 seconds. It's painful to watch. Literally). That said, it's not as bad as Superman IV. Nothing will ever be that bad. It almost completely ruined a franchise. In fact, Superman has never recovered from that disaster.

Speaking of Superman...the old movies aren't in there because I only went back to X-Men and 2000. If I did go back, I would probably have Superman in the 2nd Tier. It was good, but long, and doesn't hold up that well with time. I think I would put Superman 2 at the top of Tier 2. It also doesn't really hold up, but was much better (to me) than Superman. Superman III would be in the Disappointing tier. As for all of the Batman, I really liked the first. The second was massively disappointing. Batman Forever was good not great (and man it could have been great). Batman & Robin would be right above Catwoman. Another movie that just about destroyed a franchise.

[Dr. Rosenrosen]

Time to update this list from last year. Again, I didn't put the Graphic Novels in there (hence no Watchmen), and it only goes back to 2000, which is when X-Men really rebooted (and set the foundation) for how Comic Book Movies would be made going forward. One observation is that the X-Men (other than the awful 3rd one) have been incredibly strong and consistently good movies. If we were doing all-time Super Hero Movies, then I think Batman and Superman 2 make the top list, Superman 1 makes the middle list as does the Batman with the Riddler and Two-Face, and all of the others make the bottom list, with Superman IV in a new category called "This One Goes to 11 In Its Awfulness"

Tier 1 (excellent movies, or at least movies that I thoroughly enjoyed)

1. The Avengers
2. The Dark Knight
3. Iron Man
4. Spider-Man 2
5. X-Men, Days of Future Past
6. Guardians of the Galaxy
7. X-Men 2
8. X-Men First Class
9. X-Men
10. Avengers 2
11. Spiderman
12. Batman Begins
13. Captain America: Winter Soldier
14. Thor
15. Captain America
16. The Amazing Spider-Man
17. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Tier 2 (and I think it's a pretty steep drop-off)

18. The Wolverine
19. Man of Steel
20. Superman Returns
21. Thor 2
22. Iron Man 2
23. Dark Knight Rises

Tier 3 (what I would call disappointments)

24. Iron Man 3
25. Green Lantern
26. Fantastic Four
27. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
28. X-Men Last Stand
29. The Incredible Hulk
30. Spider-Man 3
31. Hulk
32. Fantastic Four: Silver Surfer

I’m no movie expert but you’re missing some important films. For example...

Into the Spiderverse?
Wonder Woman?
Ragnarok?
Endgame?

[Acymetric]

I’m no movie expert but you’re missing some important films. For example...

Into the Spiderverse?
Wonder Woman?
Ragnarok?
Endgame?

Look again?

Endgame and Spiderverse are in his tier one. Ragnarok (misspelled Ragnorak so you may have missed it if you ctrl+F'd it) is in tier 2 as is Wonder Woman (17 and 27, respectively).

Edit: Oooooh I see. You took his original list from the first post. That post is several years old. I'll quote his new list (which revived this old thread) below, you can find it on page 3 of this thread:

Been two years (and several comic book movies) since this has been updated. Pretty remarkable to see how many "comic book" movies have come out since X-Men started it all. Well over 50 in 19 years. And I've seen them all...many more than once (or twice). I'm rearranging my ranking to include a few more tiers. Here they are

Tier 1: Absolute Top Movies (each so good it's damned near impossible to rank them)

The Avengers
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Avengers Endgame
Avengers Infinity War
Deadpool
Guardians of the Galaxy
Spiderman 2 (with Doc Ock)
Spiderman Homecoming
X-Men 2
X-Men Days of Future Past
Captain America - Civil War
Black Panther
Spiderman Into Spider-Verse

Think about it...that's 14 simply great movies. That I can (and have) watched over and over. And all but 1 are from Marvel. I'm not sure what I would rank first there. Maybe the first Avengers - it was amazing how they pulled it all together and then generated interest for the future. Or Iron Man, or Deadpool, or Guardians, or the last 2 Avengers, or Black Panther, or...it's just too hard to rank.

Tier 2: Fun movies that I enjoyed, but can't quite put into that top tier. Here I will try to rank them (though some are close)

15. X-Men
16. X-Men First Class
17. Thor: Ragnorak
18. Spiderman (first one with Tobey)
19. Batman Begins
20. Captain America: Winter Soldier
21. Deadpool 2
22. Guardians of the Galaxy 2
23. Dr. Strange
24. Captain America
25. Thor
26. Shazam
27. Wonder Woman
28. Ant Man & Wasp
29. Aquaman
30. Avengers 2
31. Amazing Spider Man (without Player X)
32. Antman
33. Venom (mainly because I had no expectations for this, and it exceeded them)

Tier 3: Disappointments (Movies I was excited to see and let me down...didn't go see them again in the theater)

34. Logan (just didn't do it for me, and hated how weak they made Wolverine and Professor Xavier)
35. Captain Marvel
36. Iron Man 2
37. Dark Knight Rises
38. Amazing Spiderman 2
39. Batman v Superman
40. The Wolverine
41. Man of Steel
42. Superman Returns
43. Iron Man 3
44. Incredible Hulk
45. Thor 2

Bottom Tier (Just Pretty Bad Movies) **

46. Green Lantern
47. Fantastic Four
48. Justice League
49. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
50. X-Men Last Stand
51. Spiderman 3
52. X-Men Apocalypse
53. Fantastic Four (the remake)
54. Hulk
55. Suicide Squad
56. Fantastic Four: Silver Surfer

** None of these are as awful as Superman IV, which forever will hold the title of Worst Comic Book Sequel ever

[Dr. Rosenrosen]

Look again?

Endgame and Spiderverse are in his tier one. Ragnarok (misspelled Ragnorak so you may have missed it if you ctrl+F'd it) is in tier 2 as is Wonder Woman (17 and 27, respectively).

Edit: Oooooh I see. You took his original list from the first post. That post is several years old. I'll quote his new list (which revived this old thread) below, you can find it on page 3 of this thread:

Oops! My bad. I somehow read and replied to a really old post. Still learning how to use this internet machine thingy.