The Dark Knight Rises finally ascends into theaters Friday amidst of din of nearly unrivaled buzz and anticipation. Some fans are so juiced for the arrival of Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to 2008’s monumentally successful The Dark Knight that they made death threats against the few critics who dared to pan the film. Luckily, the majority of critics have been ecstatic about the Batman blockbuster; Time calls it “a film of grand ambitions and epic achievement.” But is it—as the most ardent Caped Crusader supporters venture—the best superhero movie ever? To find out how it stacked up against past spandex smashes, we ranked its critic score on movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes against past comic-book classics. Where it places may surprise you.
Critic score: 95
The best superhero movie, it turns out, is the original. Director Richard Donner’s 1978 blockbuster, Superman, was launched with the simple tagline, “You’ll believe a man can fly,” and awestruck audiences and critics believed the hype. Starring Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel—and Marlon Brando, in the then- priciest cameo in movie history ($3.7 million for roughly 10 minutes of screen time)—the film was hailed by Roger Ebert as “a pure delight, a wondrous combination of all the old-fashioned things we never really get tired of: adventure and romance, heroes and villains, earthshaking special effects and wit.” The film also leaped over box-office records in a single bound, earning $134 million domestically—roughly $454 million when adjusted for inflation.
Critic score: 94
The rapturous reception for 2008’s Batman sequel, The Dark Knight, marked a monumental shift in the entire notion of what it means to be a summer blockbuster. “When was the last time you saw a blockbuster that was impeccably executed and simultaneously thought-provoking, audacious and unnerving while consistently being fun and entertaining?” asked Claudia Puig at USA Today. The extent to which the film outclassed nearly all popcorn movies before it led to a vicious backlash when it was inexplicably snubbed in the Best Picture category at the Oscars, despite being one of the best-reviewed movies of the year. The next year, the Academy even expanded its field of nominees to 10 films, deemed a direct response to the egregious Dark Knight omission.
Critic score: 94
It might have been The Dark Knight that ignited a firestorm of controversy when it was passed over by awards groups, but that year’s other big superhero movie, the comparatively lighthearted Iron Man, actually earned the same, remarkably high critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. The film’s $318 million domestic gross and critical love letters are largely attributed to Robert Downey Jr.’s unexpectedly slick and sardonic performance as the film’s title character, a billionaire-playboy-turned-world-savior. “The gadgetry is absolutely dazzling, the action is mostly exhilarating, the comedy is scintillating and the whole enormous enterprise, spawned by Marvel comics, throbs with dramatic energy because the man inside the shiny red robotic rig is a daring choice for an action hero, and an inspired one,” said Joe Morgenstern at The Wall Street Journal.
Paramount / Courtesy Everett Collection
Critic score: 93
When director Sam Raimi launched his Spider-Man franchise, it was a culturally defining moment for the new millennium. It set the precedent for what’s become the appointment blockbuster, setting records for the biggest opening day and for being the first film to pass the $100 million mark in a single weekend. Spidey’s first web-slinging through Manhattan skyscrapers and his upside-down kiss with Mary Jane became iconic. Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst became superstars. And then Spider-Man 2 topped all of that, setting new box-office records, introducing more exhilarating action sequences, and turning a silly comic-book yarn into a grown-up love story for the ages. Rene Rodriguez at The Miami Herald called it “a masterpiece of pop filmmaking—a fantastic, exuberant entertainment that manages to be both sleek and substantial without being patronizing.”
Critic score: 92
Uniting six of Marvel’s most iconic comic-book heroes, boasting a cast that included five Oscar winners, and costing a reported $220 million to produce, The Avengers created dauntingly high expectations. That explained the euphoria from fans and critics alike when the film ended up not just meeting those expectations, but exceeding them. Many critics credited Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon, who directed The Avengers, with its superlative status: “He didn’t just make the best superhero action film ever made, he somehow did it while making a Joss Whedon film—smart, funny and dramatic, but with all the trappings of a sci-fi action movie presented fully intact,” said James Hunt at Den of Geek. As for audiences, they responded by helping the film become only the third ever to reach $600 million at the domestic box office.
Columbia Pictures / Everett Collection
Critic score: 89
It took 40 years for Spidey to make his big-screen debut, which explains the lavish $120 million production budget for 2002’s Spider-Man, and the unbridled enthusiasm with which audiences responded to its premiere. The film’s colossal May opening set the benchmark for what’s become the norm: Moviegoers flocking to theaters in growing, record numbers for each successive summer blockbuster. It also raised the bar when it came to the special effects audiences have come to expect from action movies, and introduced the expectation of a beating heart to accompany all that computer-generated imagery. The film “reminds us of just how exciting and satisfying the fantasy cinema can be when it’s approached with imagination and flair,” said William Arnold at The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Critic score: 88
Reviews for 2000’s first big-screen foray into the X-Men franchise were a mixed bag, with most critics griping that the overreliance on big effects combined with a feeble script made for a mutant movie not nearly as compelling as its comic-book origins. “X2 is actually an accurate title for the X-Men sequel, as the new picture is about twice as good as the original,” said Todd McCarthy at Variety, joining a legion of critics who found the sequel to be more ambitious, entertaining, and coherent than the franchise’s first installment. Audiences agreed, helping the film gross nearly $60 million more at the domestic box office than the first X-Men.
Critic score: 88
The first Superman sequel may not have lived up to the precedent set by the standard-bearer original, but critics and audiences still were dazzled. “It’s funny, it’s full of tricks and it manages to be royally entertaining,” said Janet Maslin at The New York Times. She conceded that it “doesn’t break new ground in the thrills-and-chills realm, the way [Indiana Jones sequel] Raiders of the Lost Ark does. But the makers of the 1978 Superman have set out to build a better mousetrap, and they’ve succeeded.” Still, it didn’t pack enough punch to out-gross the original, falling short of Superman’s record-breaking haul.
Critic score: 88
X-Men: First Class came at a crucial time for the mutant franchise, as both 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins—Wolverine were ravaged by critics. The 2011 film served less as a reboot of the flailing franchise, but more of a “preboot,” an origin tale of Magneto, Professor X, and their young recruits that reinvigorated the X-Men series by telling us how the mutants, as we know them, came to be. The result was a “potent reminder of what jazzed us about Bryan Singer’s first two X-Men and the Marvel comics that spawned them,” said Peter Travers at Rolling Stone. But the two lousy previous installments may have done too much damage with audiences, as First Class was the lowest-grossing entry in the franchise.
Critic score: 86
Perhaps there was no way it could live up to the hype. Though obsessive speculation about The Dark Knight Rises predicted that the conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy would receive more laudatory reviews than superhero movies have ever seen, some critics lamented that the film crumbled under its lofty expectations. “Christopher Nolan concludes his Batman trilogy in typically spectacular, ambitious fashion with The Dark Knight Rises,” says Christy Lemire at the Associated Press, “but the feeling of frustration and disappointment is unshakable.” Still, the majority of reviewers didn’t find the film as “coldly cerebral” as Lemire; Kenneth Turan at the Los Angeles Times raves that it is “more than an exceptional superhero movie, it is masterful filmmaking by any standard.”
Ron Phillips
Critic score: 86
It’s unlikely that those forecasting that The Dark Knight Rises would be the greatest superhero film of all time ever thought it would earn the same critic score from Rotten Tomatoes as Hellboy II: The Golden Army, a film many mainstream comic-book movie fans have never heard of, and those who have probably assumed the worst by its wonky title. Still, the 2008 film saw Ron Perlman reprise his role as the titular red-skinned demon who becomes a crime fighter sworn to combat Earth’s strangest, nastiest creatures. The visual spectacle was directed by Pan’s Labyrinth’s Guillermo del Toro, “who has the wildest imagination and grandest ambitions of anybody in modern movies,” said Richard Corliss at Time. But the film’s $75 million domestic gross is positively paltry compared with the heights other superhero movies have reached.
Critic score: 85
The teen heroes in Chronicle trade in spandex for mall jeans and battle personal demons instead of mutant villains, making the 2012 film a unique entry on this list. The movie follows three small-town high-school students who acquire superpowers such as telekinesis and the ability to fly. The movie plays out mostly through the perspective of one teen’s camcorder, as he and his friends struggle with the temptation to abuse their new talents, creating a movie “with an emotional and visual crispness that gives the superhero genre its best crack at naturalism so far,” said Amy Biancolli at The San Francisco Chronicle.
Alan Markfield / 20th Century Fox / Everett Collection
