10 Comic Book Movies That Should Have Won Oscars

10 Comic Book Movies That Should Have Won Oscars

It’s been over a month since the 2025 Oscars happened (apparently Adrien Brody just finished his speech). One of the biggest frustrations with the Oscars is they tend to overlook franchise films, mainly comic book movies. Over the years several comic book movies should have won Oscars. Today I’m looking at 10 comic book movies that should have won Oscars. Let’s get started!

NOTE: Some of these movies did win Oscars but they either didn’t win in a specific category or they weren’t even nominated. It’s a bit of a mix of examples in this blog post. 

• Superman the Movie (1978): This one didn’t win any Oscar. It did get a special achievement Oscar for special effects but it was presented during a different night so that one doesn’t really count. The visual effects were so groundbreaking when they came out where the tagline for the movie was “you’ll believe a man can fly”. That absolutely was the case with this movie and there’s very few movies that have gotten special achievement Oscars. What it should have won was the best original score. Superman the Movie (1978) was the original big blockbuster comic book movie. All of these decades later the score is still the best and most iconic comic book movie scores. John Williams is the master of film scores and throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s. The score was nominated but it didn’t win. The movie that did win was Midnight Express by Giorgio Moroder. I’ve never heard of this movie or this composer. Maybe it’s not fair for me to say Williams should have won over Moroder. Of the nominees for best original score that year, which one has stuck with the popular culture more and been widely regarded over the years, it’s 100% and easily Superman the Movie. John Williams should have taken him another Oscar for this movie. 

• The Incredibles: This is one actually two Oscars including best animated feature and sound editing. This is pretty interesting because there’s not a lot of animated movies that win more than one Oscar. It 100% deserved to be nominated and win an animated feature Oscar. It won over Shrek 2 and Shark Tale, rightfully so The Incredibles is the clear winner there. With all of that said there’s two Oscars that it should have been nominated for. Michael Giacchino’s score for the movie is absolutely fantastic. This is my favorite animated film score of all time, it’s one of my favorite scores in general. The fact that it wasn’t even nominated is crazy to me. It should have gotten nominated because it’s one of those scores that’s super memorable and probably far more memorable than any of the scores nominated that year. I think it also should have gotten a Best Picture nomination. This movie came out when they were only doing five Best Picture nominees. If they had 10 nominees I think The Incredibles would have gotten in. This movie got four nominations and won two. That’s rare for an animated movie and a lot of the early Pixar films got multiple nominations. The Incredibles should have gotten a Best Picture nomination and probably would have had there been more nominations

• Iron Man: This one did get multiple nominations including visual effects and sound editing, it didn’t win anything. The big nomination is Robert Downey Jr. for best actor. At some point throughout the MCU’s run, Downey should have gotten an Oscar nomination. Of performances of the 2010s that have stayed in popular culture, Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. Part of the problem with the Oscars is they don’t acknowledge blockbuster performance when they should. They nominated Johnny Depp for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, rightfully so. In that decade they nominated blockbuster performances but not Downey. The Oscars and other award shows tend to like narratives. This was his comeback film. He was a rising star in the early ‘90s and then got his life messed up for years. He starred in Iron Man, which was a critical and financial hit. He eventually got an Oscar for Oppenheimer but he should have gotten one for Tony Stark at some point in the MCU. Maybe part of the reason why he didn’t get the nomination was because he was nominated for Tropic Thunder. He was nominated that year and maybe they didn’t want to give him the double nomination. 

• The Dark Knight: 2008 was a pretty fantastic year for comic book movies as Iron Man and The Dark Knight both released. The movie that started the MCU and one of the most important comic book movies came out the same summer. Of course, The Dark Knight did get multiple nominations and wins. It got eight nominations with three wins including cinematography, sound editing, and of course supporting actor for Heath Ledger. It did win three Oscars which for a comic book movie is pretty impressive. I’m pretty sure Black Panther is the only other comic book film to win three Oscars. If you don’t know, The Dark Knight was one of the films the led to the Oscars changing the number of nominations for Best Picture. For years it had five best picture nominations. So many people viewed it as a snub that The Dark Knight didn’t get nominated for Best Picture. It was a film that caused them to add more nominations to the point where now it’s 10 movies nominated. With eight nominations there were 10 nominees, The Dark Knight absolutely would have been nominated and should have been nominated with only five nominees. The other one was Christopher Nolan for best director, he didn’t get a director nomination until Inception, The Dark Knight should have been his first. Possibly in adapted screenplay it should have gotten a nomination. Maybe this one is stretching it, but maybe Christian Bale for best actor. If you’re nomitnign the film for multiple awards but not nominating the star, that’s weird. I’m happy that The Dark Knight got eight nominations. It should have been nominated for more than 10. 

• Man of Steel: At first glance this one might be a bit weird to include on it because this is one of the most polarizing comic book movies of all time. This is a movie that I’ve come to appreciate more and more as time has passed. I don’t think it’s top tier comic book movies, I think it’s really good but not fantastic. What is fantastic about this movie is Hans Zimmer’s score. This might be my favorite Hans Zimmer score and that’s pretty impressive considering all of the fantastic work that he’s done over the decades. Once again looking at the nominees for score the year I’ve heard of these movies but I couldn’t tell you anybody that still talks about these scores. I know you can’t predict the future as to which scores are going to stay and which ones aren’t. But I guarantee any average person would say that Man of Steel’s score is better than any of the other scores nominated that year. What should have gotten Zimmer the Oscar was Superman’s first flight scene where he first puts on the suit and flies around. It’s not as good as John Williams’ score but for what a modern version of Superman would be especially with what Snyder’s take on the character is, the score fits perfectly. 

• Guardians of the Galaxy: To this day, this was one of the MCU’s biggest gambles and it paid off. It launched Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, and James Gunn to begin household names. It got fantastic reviews and made almost $800 million at the box office. It did get two Oscar nominations with make-up and visual effects. Visual effects that year were pretty stacked. Interstellar did take home the award that year and I would say rightfully so. It lost make-up to The Grand Budapest Hotel, a movie that I haven’t seen yet. But I remember the clips they showed for the film and The Grand Budapest Hotel had very subtle makeup but it doesn’t compare to Guardians of the Galaxy and that should have won. The other thing that maybe this could apply to the entire trilogy but Bradley Cooper as Rocket Raccoon is great casting. To what I said earlier about the Oscar not recognizing blockbuster performances I don’t feel they recognize motion capture performances. If they did then Andy Serkis should have multiple nominations and wins by now, but he doesn’t. I really wish he got his flowers for this performance and motion capture performances in general should be talked about more. 

• Avengers: Infinity War & Endgame: I’ve decided to clump these together because I have a lot of the same reasons for why these films should have been nominated. First up, these films should have been nominated for Best Picture. The cultural impact that these movies had is unlike anything else we got in the 2010s. They’re movies that people still love to this day, they’re still my top two favorite MCU movies. The fact they weren’t even nominated is bizarre and wild to me. Especially with Avengers Endgame which was a beloved film that closed out 11 years worth of storylines in a satisfying manner that critics and audiences loved. It made $2.7 billion at the box office, it was a cultural event not just a movie. And it wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture. Beyond that, I would argue that Robert Downey Jr. should have been nominated for best actor in Avengers Endgame. Like I said earlier, RDJ’s performance as Tony Stark is truly iconic and legendary. Of the performances of 2010 it’s the most iconic. Given this was RDJ’s swan song as Tony Stark, Iron Man this would have been the perfect opportunity to at least nominate him for Tony Stark. Also, Alan Silvestri should have been nominated for Infinity War and Endgame’s core. Silvestri has been in Hollywood for a long time scoring films going back 40+ years. He’s been nominated two times in the past for Forrest Gump and The Polar Express (how he wasn’t nominated for Back to the Future is beyond me, that’s for a different day though). The piece of music that puts the biggest smile on everything I listen to is “Portals” from Endgame. I would imagine most other fans would feel the same way. The score played over one of the most celebrated movie scenes of all time. In Endgame’s year, Joker took it home. That’s a fantastic score that fits the movie well. But Alan Silvestri should have taken it home, 100% no question.  Infinity War and Endgame were both nominated for best visual effects but lost out to First Man and 1917 respectively. The fact that neither one of these movies won an Oscar is pretty crazy to me, it’s madness, madness I tell you! 

• The Batman: The Batman is my favorite movie of the decade so far so naturally I think it should have been nominated for more Oscars and won a few. This one did get three nominations in sound, visual effects, and make-up. I’m so excited it got make-up because Colin Farrell’s transformation into The Penguin is truly incredible. The make-up team deserved to be recognized at the Oscars. I would have nominated it for best picture and I think it should have gotten it, most people would probably agree with me. But if it needed to get more technical nominations, cinematography and score should have been locked. I’m not somebody who normally talks about cinematography, that's not something that I tend to notice when watching a movie. I noticed the impeccable cinematography for The Batman when I first watched it. This is one of the best looking comic book movies ever made. It did get cinematography at several other award shows but got snubbed at the Oscars. Michael Giacchino is my second favorite film composer behind John Williams. His score here is fantastic. I think this is the second best Batman score behind Danny Elfman. That’s one of my favorite superhero film scores of all time, it was 100% snubbed. Both cinematography and score should have gone to The Batman. All Quiet on the Western Front took home those Oscars. Really good movie and the technical elements were fantastic. But both of those elements were better in The Batman. Hey, I’m happy that at least it got three nominations which is more than most superhero movies get. 

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: This is one that would have been a very cool Oscar win. Coming out of Wakanda Forever, the performance that everybody was talking about was Angela Bassett. People were saying Oscar love when it came out, she got the nomination. For the longest time it looked like she was the frontrunner to win. At the Oscars ceremony they gave it to Jamie Lee Curtis from Everything Everywhere All at Once. I’m a big fan of Jamie Lee Curtis, excited that she has an Oscar. Everybody wants her to have an Oscar. I liked Curtis’ performance more than most people but Angela Bassett should have taken this home. If she had won, it would have been the first time an actor won an Oscar for an MCU movie. If they weren’t going to nominate Robert Downey Jr. they should have given it to Angela Bassett for this movie. Of course, Downey and Chris Evans are legendary in the MCU and gave several great performances. But as far as passionate line delivery and passion for the work, Bassett’s performance delivers that. The throne room scene with Okoye is fantastic because of Bassett’s performance. The movie did get five Oscar nominations including supporting actress, visual effects, original song, makeup and hairstyling, and it won costume design. Ruth Carter won costume design for both Black Panther films, rightfully so. I believe these two movies are the only MCU movies to win Oscars, that’s crazy to me. 

• Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse: I really liked Into the Spiderverse, I thought it was great but I’ve never loved it the way other people do. Across the Spiderverse is a movie that I do love and I think surpasses the original. In a lot of ways, I think Across the Spiderverse deserved an animated feature win over Into the Spiderverse. Unpopular opinion, but I think Incredibles 2 should have won that year. And Across the Spiderverse should have taken it home at the 96th Oscars. The Oscar ended up going to The Boy and the Heron. That feels more like a lifetime achievement award for Hayao Miyazaki than an actual deserving win. Miyazaki said this was going to be his last film so that’s probably 90% of the reasoning behind The Boy and the Heron winning the Oscar. I wasn’t a big fan of The Boy and the Heron so I 100% disagreed with this decision. Beyond that, Daniel Pemberton should have been nominated for the score. That seems to be the common snub in several of these, the score not getting nominated. Infamously over the years the Oscars have not been kind to animated or comic book movies. With Across the Spiderverse being both of those, this hurt its chances of getting nominated in other categories. Pemberton’s score was one of the best of 2023. When one of the nominations is John Williams for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, that feels like they are nominating it because it’s John Williams not because it’s a great score. If best picture is meant to celebrate the best film of that year. Across the Spiderverse should have gotten in for best picture because that was a groundbreaking and visually stunning animated movie that everybody loved.