10 Comic Book Movies Everybody Should See

10 Comic Book Movies Everybody Should See

Comic book movies have been some of them top movies every year for about 20 years now. It’s such an important genre for pop culture and movies, but what are the must see movies? What are the movies everybody should see? Those are the questions we’re answering in today’s blog post! Let’s get started!

• Superman the Movie (1978): Of all the movies on this list, this is probably the most important one. For the simple reason of it’s the film that basically invented the genre. We wouldn’t have the genre as we know it today without this movie. If you watch it now, it’ll probably look very dated because it is. The movie is about 45 years old so the visuals do look very dated, but that’s ok. You may or may not like the movie and that’s fine, but you should watch it because it is so important. This movie was truly groundbreaking at the time of its release. The tag line for this movie was “you’ll believe a man can fly”, this was the first time any Hollywood production was able to make a man fly like Superman does in this movie. The studio also felt so confident in the movie they gave the movie a $55 million budget, when adjusted for inflation is about $260 million. They got Richard Donner to direct it, he was coming off of The Omen. The script is by Mario Puzo who wrote the book of The Godfather. And John Williams does the score for it, this is a movie that came out and was such a success that it invented the genre. Kevin Feige has said multiple times that before they make a MCU movie they watch this movie, that’s a big deal if Kevin Feige is saying that. So if you’re looking to start in the genre, this is one you HAVE to check out. 

• Batman (1989): After Superman the Movie was a big hit, that movie spawned a four film long franchise with Christopher Reeve in all four films. And finally in 1989, The Dark Knight himself, Batman made his big screen debut with Batman. This was kind of an important one because it was the first dark comic book movie. The other ones were more light hearted films with bright colors. This one is darker with darker colors used in the look of the film. It was kind of the first time that Batman was adapted onto the big screen. I know we did get Adam West’s Batman the Movie (1966) but that was more of a promotion for the tv show. So this version was really the first time Batman got a stand alone movie on the big screen. It was another big box office hit for WB where it made over $400 million and even won an Oscar for Best Production Design. And the casting for this movie was a bit weird at the time. Jack Nicholson was this big star who already won 2 Oscars for Terms of Endearment and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But to my knowledge hadn’t really done a lot of lighter comedy roles like The Joker prior, so he wasn’t even the obvious pick for the character. Michael Keaton was primary a comedy actor known for Beetlejuice and Mr. Mom, and there were a lot of conflicted feelings surrounding his casting as Batman. Tim Burton wasn’t really a big name director at the time. If you love Batman and maybe you like darker movies, this could be a good one to check out. 

• X-Men: In the year 2023 we know Marvel has been one of the top dogs of the genre and pop culture. But in the 90s they’d done a lot of direct to video or tv movies. The only theatrical film in the 80s was Howard the Duck which bombed hard with the reviews and at the box office. But one of the more popular IPs under Marvel were the X-Men. They had a hit animated show running in the mid-90s. And in 2000 their first live action theatrical appearance happened with this movie. It was the first hit comic book movie in quite a few years, the 90s was not a great decade for comic book movies. This is a movie that helped pave the way for the modern comic book movie genre, there’s another movie that helped even more a couple years later (we’ll talk about that next). Where they found a better tone for the movies, they found ways to have drama and have action and humor. Like I said, this was Marvel’s first big hit film so it’s important in that regard. And it gave us Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, which is one of the most iconic and celebrated castings in a comic book of all time. He became so popular that pretty much the entire X-Men film franchise focused around him, he’s the only character to have a spin off franchise. He’s even coming back 24 years later in Deadpool 3. And nowadays when people think about Marvel they think about The Avengers and the MCU. But the X-Men are a great superhero team that helped start the genre, without this movie we might not have the MCU. 

• Spider-Man (2002): X-Men was a hit film that made lots of money, a couple years before that we got Blade which did something very different for the genre. But when Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man came out in 2002, it became a mega hit film that made over $800 million worldwide. It was the first movie ever to make over $100 million domestically in its opening weekend. But it also moved technology forward in a very big way, seeing Spider-Man swinging so gracefully through New York City had never been done before. That level of gracefulness for doing something like that was groundbreaking when this movie came out. Tobey Maguire is probably the most iconic Spider-Man casting we’ve gotten, he was the first and he got to tell a more traditional Spider-Man story. And for people that were born in the early to mid-90s they group with Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man, so he helped define an entire generation with his performance and his movies. Like I said earlier, X-Men and Blade were hit movies, but since this was a mega hit. This movie gave studios more confidence in making comic book movies and probably is what led Kevin Feige to creating the MCU. Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man and Willem DaFor as Green Goblin became so iconic and beloved that they returned in Spider-Man: No Way Home 19 years after this movie came out. 

• Iron Man: The film started it all for the MCU and basically defined an entire generation’s childhood. I'm a part of that generation that grew up with Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man and Chris Evans as Captain America. It all started with this movie, that 15 years later and 40+ movies and tv shows, Iron Man is still a great movie. The casting of Robert Downey Jr is a bit of an interesting one, where Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige wanted Tom Cruise. Obviously, Tom Cruise is this big movie star that attracts a lot of different people. But Jon Favreau wanted Robert Downey Jr, Cruise said no and they went with Downey Jr, and it paid off so well for them. RDJ as Tony Stark has become so iconic and legendary, that it’s so hard to imagine anyone else being Iron Man. Jon Favreau wasn’t a big name director prior to this movie, he was known for Elf. The idea of taking a B-list superhero in Iron Man that stars RDJ and directed by Jon Favreau sounded like a bad idea, and it was quite successful. But the MCU is like the top dog of comic book movies for the last 15 years, it’s the biggest movie franchise of all time. The MCU started with Iron Man so you have to go and check it out. One thing I will add on here, the list doesn’t include Avengers Infinity War or Endgame. I think that’s another must see movie, but I think you need to watch the entire Infinity Saga before those movies.

• The Dark Knight Trilogy: Now I’m cheating on this one because I’m putting three movies in this slot. Now of course the big must see movie in this trilogy would be The Dark Knight, it’s one of the most celebrated comic book movies of all time. A lot of people have it as their number 1 comic book movie, it’s a beloved classic that is a must see. But Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises are also fantastic movies, there isn’t a single bad movie in this trilogy. Batman Begins would be my least favorite of the bunch, but that’s still an A- level movie for me. There’s multiple reasons as to why I think you NEED to watch this trilogy. First up, it revitalized the Batman lore and character. Batman has always been a top superhero, but after Joel Schumacher fumbled with Batman with Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, it killed the franchise. Christopher Nolan came in and created his own version of Batman and brought the character back to life, in a different way but a beloved way that people still talk about to this day. Second, it gave us some truly iconic casting for the genre. Of course Heath Ledger’s Joker is maybe the greatest comic book movie villain of all time. It’s a performance where you don’t see Ledger all you see is The Joker, this force of chaos. It was the first time that an actor won an Oscar for a comic book movie, which was groundbreaking at the time. Christian Bale as Batman, widely regarded as the best live action Batman out there. It’s a great version of both Bruce Wayne and Batman. Third, Christopher Nolan is a very important director, he’s one of the top directors of the last 20 years. So you need to see it because Nolan is such a powerhouse of a director. Even this year released Oppenheimer, which could give Nolan his first Oscars and Best Picture win. These movies are so important to me, because The Dark Knight Rises is one of the first movies I ever saw in the theater. So I’ve been watching all of these movies for over 10 years now. I watched them in 2023 and they still hold up, they’re awesome movies.

• The Avengers: The first team-up movie inside of the MCU that closed out phase 1. This is a movie that wasn’t a for sure banger of a movie when it came out. There hadn’t been a big team-up movie like this before, they hadn’t brought together multiple different characters from different franchises together in one movie. Joss Whedon was known for directing and creating television, he hadn’t done big movies on this scale before. So it was a big risk whether this movie would work or if the movie would fail and crumble. It’s been 11 years since this movie came out, safe to say things worked out rather well for this movie. This movie got fantastic reviews and made $1.5 billion at the box office. I believe this was the first movie to make over $200 million domestically in its opening weekend. It was beloved and worked so well that so many other studios tried to copy the formula. WB was trying to make their own MCU, but it didn't work out all that well. When Zack Snyder had to leave production of Justice League, they brought Joss Whedon to finish the movie. Even Universal was trying to do a shared universe with horror creatures like The Mummy, Frankenstein, and stuff like that. This movie changed the next 10-15 years of blockbusters, because Marvel nailed it so well with this movie other studios and franchises tried to copy it and failed. 

• Black Panther: This is another groundbreaking superhero film when it comes to the Oscars. This was the first time a comic book was nominated for Best Picture, so it’s important in that regard. It didn’t win Best Picture, but it won three Oscars. It was the first MCU to ever win an Oscar. This was the first time where a very large portion of the cast was African American that was leading a big superhero blockbuster. So it’s a film that is so important to a large population of children that can watch Black Panther and see a superhero that looks like them, that’s very special that this movie exists. Of course, just a few years back we lost Chadwick Boseman and he’d only been acting for about 10-15 years, so there’s only a handful of his movies out there with him. One of them being this one, that it became such a global event that people went to go see it, it made $1.3 billion with 7 Oscar nominations. You could probably even throw the sequel, Wakanda Forever in here as well as it did a great job of honoring the legacy of Chadwick Boseman. Angela Bassett got a Best Supporting Actress nomination at the Oscar, she became the first actor or actress in a Marvel movie to be nominated. She actually did win a Golden Globe for her role in that movie. 

• Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse: Another 2018 superhero movie that was once again beloved by critics and audiences. Prior to this, Miles Morales wasn’t really all that well known. Comic book readers knew who he was, he appeared in some of the animated Spider-Man tv shows. But he wasn’t this A-list superhero, the general public had no idea who he was. This movie came out and he became so popular and so beloved. He got a video game that was a spin-off from the PS4 Spider-Man game from 2018. Next month, in Spider-Man 2 on PS5 it’s a co-lead video game with Peter Parker and Miles Morales. There’s talks about a live action Miles Morales movie being in the works, so Miles Morales has become so popular since this movie came out in 2018. Its sequel, Across the Spiderverse released earlier this year and was met with fantastic reviews, a lot of people saying it was better than the first film. The movie made a $120 million opening, about 4x the amount the first film made opening weekend. So there was a lot of hype going into the sequel, it was met. And they introduced this very cool animation style where it’s like a comic book brought to life, The Mitchells vs the Machines and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish both had a similar style that started with this movie. So it kind of created/reignited this entirely new style of animation. I’m very curious to see what they do in Beyond the Spiderverse (whenever it releases), so easily this movie had to make the list. 

• Joker: The second time an actor won an Oscar for playing a comic book character, that character being The Joker once again. And I think it alone shows how popular a character Joker is when he’s the only comic book character that has an Oscar to his name. This was another movie that got a Best Picture nomination and the year it came out got the most Oscar nominations. And it’s a movie that of course won Best Actor for Joaquin Phoenix who gave this super transformative performance that really gave you chills and helped showcase the greatness of an actor he is. This is also a movie that had a lot to say about society and the world we live in. Of all of the movies on this list, this might be the most thought provoking and thematic film. Another thing with this movie, it’s the first time an R-Rated movie crossed $1 billion so it was groundbreaking in that regard. I think another thing with this movie is that it feels very different from other comic book movies. One of the things they did with this movie was take inspiration from Taxi Driver and other Scorsese movies. The movie feels different and distinct amongst other films in the genre. So between this movie and The Batman being a success, I think the genre should start taking inspiration from outside sources, not taking inspiration from movies inside of the genre.