Talk to a movie geek long enough, you’ll eventually hear about the most famous candidates for the best years ever for movies. 1999, 1939, and 1971 are always go-to choices for years when cinematic storytelling was at its peak. Superhero movies have also had especially strong years, such as 2008 or 2018. But what about years when things go south for feature films? Those are stretches of history whispered about in hushed terrified whispers. So far, for superhero movie devotees, 2024 is shaping up to be one of those infamous years.
The last 11 months have delivered titles like The Crow, Joker: Folie a Deux, and Madame Web, not to mention a slew of underwhelming direct-to-video superhero titles. Are moviegoers living through history in the making? Is 2024 truly the worst year ever for superhero movies?
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Certainly, 2024’s lows have been exceedingly low, particularly given the year’s high-profile misses. Past failures like Dark Phoenix or Spawn weren’t especially surprising. Joker: Folie a Deux, meanwhile, was the sequel to a beloved $1+ billion box office bonanza launched at the heart of award season. Madame Web, meanwhile, assembled some of the buzziest young talent (Dakota Johnson, Isabel Merced, Sydney Sweeny) around for a new superhero outing. Even The Crow had nowhere to go but up after a string of direct-to-video turkeys exploiting the original Brandon Lee feature.
Even with hopeful elements in play, these and other 2024 superhero movies became critical punching bags and box office failures. Madame Web will forever be remembered as the movie that spawned phrases like “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died,” and “But I don’t have a neuromuscular disorder!” rather than any bold artistic swings. Similarly, Joker: Folie a Deux’s historically terrible word-of-mouth will greatly inform its pop culture reputation. As for The Crow, not enough people saw that feature for its defects to inspire mocking memes.
Even the direct-to-video animated movie realm hasn’t produced a wave of acclaimed superhero features to help pick up the slack. This domain previously contained well-received projects like Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. By contrast, this year’s animated three-part Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths adaptation has drawn largely boos from the general public. Each new installment has garnered significantly less and less hype. Watchmen Chapter I scored better critical marks, but it’s made no real pop culture traction. Anticipation for the forthcoming Part II is basically non-existent.
These direct-to-video animated features encapsulate a key problem plaguing 2024’s superhero fare: repetition. These animated DC features rehash famous graphic novels and comic storylines previously adapted for either film or television. On the big screen, Joker: Folie a Deux failed to build on its predecessor’s success. The Crow banally retread so many other modern gritty origin story reboots and was cut from the cloth so many other post-9/11 grimy blockbusters that it might as well have been the product of generative A.I. As for Madame Web, it suffered from glaring shortcomings (like uninspired cinematography and preposterous storytelling elements) that also hampered Sony’s 2022 motion picture Morbius.
Even the bigger moneymakers in 2024 superhero cinema had familiarity caked into their bones. Deadpool & Wolverine packed multiplexes with endless reminders of the 20th Century Fox era of Marvel adaptations. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman were uniting for the first time; however, that partnership largely resulted in ceaseless callbacks. Venom: The Last Dance, meanwhile, gleefully extended running gags from its predecessors and even utilized cast members (playing new characters) from prior Marvel Comics movie adaptations. That title’s big third act ended up revolving around a bunch of CG aliens fighting each other over the fate of Earth. That’s not exactly a novel sight in superhero cinema. Repetition was everywhere.
What a drastic difference from ten years ago. That’s when the Guardians of the Galaxy and Big Hero 6 came to the big screen for the first time. Heck, even as late as 2018, Miles Morales, Aquaman, and Black Panther were getting their first-ever solo movies. A willingness to let conceptually obscure characters take the spotlight ensured these superhero movies could offer audiences something they hadn’t seen a million times before. That ambition was absent from 2024’s reliance on reminding people of what they already knew. Even Madame Web, based on a deeply unknown Marvel superhero, still had Uncle Ben as a supporting main player. That S.J. Clarkson directorial effort’s main characters, meanwhile, duke it out with a villain decked out in a black-colored Spider-Man outfit.
Relying so heavily on the past may have reassured rattled studio executives during the pre-production phase of these movies. However, that tendency has created a superhero movie landscape full of reheated leftovers. Even in lower-budgeted direct-to-video superhero titles, visual or narrative ambition is curbed in favor of rehashing Watchmen. 2024 superhero cinema’s downturn has only been exacerbated thanks to the genre’s troublesome previous year. With titles like The Flash and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, 2023 already signaled severe creative problems for the modern superhero movie. Following up all that lackluster filmmaking with 2024’s superhero features is incredibly discouraging.
Considering all that: is 2024 actually the worst year ever for superhero cinema? Recency bias may lead to people assuming that today’s horrors are the most arduous ever endured. But does 2024’s superhero fare actually topple other bad years for the genre? 2024’s excessive number of new superhero films makes comparisons to earlier years difficult to calculate. 1996’s only theatrical superhero films, for example, were The Phantom, Solo, and The Crow: City of Angels. Ditto 1987’s lackluster slate that only included Wild Thing and Masters of the Universe.
In modern years for superhero movies, though, one year stands above all others (including 2024) as the subgenre’s likeliest nadir spot: 2006. The big Marvel and DC projects that year were X-Men: The Last Stand and Superman Returns. Neither of them has endured the test of time. Ultraviolet also hit theaters at the end of the year to dismal reviews, while the comedic pastiches of superhero stories in films like My Super Ex-Girlfriend and Zoom drew the worst critical marks of any 2006 feature.
If anything keeps 2024 above 2006, it’s that at least audience reception to Deadpool & Wolverine was generally positive. 2006’s biggest superhero films collapsed after opening weekend. In contrast, the latest Deadpool outing stuck around in theaters for months. Venom: The Last Dance experienced an unexpectedly strong second weekend hold indicating solid word of mouth. Then there’s Hanu-Man, a Telegu-language superhero movie that opened in January. That Prasanth Varma directorial effort starring Teja Sajja drew positive reviews and made enough at the box office to immediately greenlight a sequel.
The presence of such projects indicates audiences consider 2024’s superhero movie landscape at least an improvement on the age of Zoom and Ultraviolet. This crop of superhero movies is also faring better financially and critically than the ones that debuted in 1997. That stretch of superhero cinema history included infamous turkeys like Batman & Robin, Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie, and Warriors of Virtue. A handful of past years do suggest moviegoers could be doing worse than Madame Web.
However, just because audiences aren’t at the very bottom of superhero movie history doesn’t suddenly turn 2024 into the subgenre’s golden age. There aren’t that many other past years of superhero cinema that are discernibly weaker than what 2024’s offered up. Acclaimed indie superhero films like Fast Color and Super have been absent this year. The more creatively audacious high points of past years like 2012 and 2002 are M.I.A. within 2024’s superhero movie exploits. Even 2023 delivered the one-two punch of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The pathos and visual bombast of those two 2023 films are completely absent from a year of superhero storytelling too reliant on fan service.
Especially troubling is that 2024’s final superhero movie is riddled with negative buzz. Nearly three years after it began shooting, Kraven the Hunter finally hits movie theaters in mid-December. This motion picture is barreling into multiplexes with minimal hype and lots of questions surrounding its very existence. 2016’s final superhero movie was Doctor Strange. 2008’s penultimate superhero feature was the future cult-classic Punisher: War Zone. Meanwhile, 2024 is wrapping up with a movie already drawing Morbius comparisons.
The grand arc of superhero cinema history indicates there are one or two other years out there keeping 2024 from the genre’s artistic bottom. However, this has still been a deeply disappointing year for superhero motion picture fans. 2012 or 2018’s glory days are deep in the rearview mirror in a year dominated by Madame Web, The Crow, and Joker: Folie a Deux. Now all eyes are on whether or not this domain can step up to the plate in 2025.
James Gunn’s Superman (2025) is supposed to start an entire new DC Universe. A trio of Marvel Cinematic Universe titles (including a Fantastic Four reboot) will try to get audiences ready for the next big Avengers blockbusters. Delivering more features on par with Joker: Folie a Deux will not suffice. If the superhero movies of 2025 can’t shake off the creative doldrums plaguing 2024’s superhero titles, then these blockbusters will be careening toward extinction.
