20 Best Female Characters In Comic Book Movies - Ranked

A dazzling array of superheroines, villainesses and personalities, ranked. Not like that, pervert.

Comic Book Females
Marvel Studios/Warner Bros/Columbia Pictures/Universal

Truly, we are living in the age of the superhero. In 2016 alone, we witnessed as Batman came to blows with Superman on the big screen, while Captain America and Iron Man brought their whole world into disarray with a deep schism that turned hero against hero. Most recently, we've had Doctor Stephen Strange bending genres in 3D, and the Justice League assembling for a 2017 release. It's a good time to be a comic book fan.

And yet, we ask, where are the women at? With even relative second-stringers like Ant Man, Doctor Strange and Green Lantern getting their shot at the big time (with varying degrees of success), how about a little recognition of the female element? One of the few characters in Batman v Superman that wasn't a soul-sucking misery (for all of her fifteen minutes or so of screen time), that Wonder Woman movie can't come fast enough.

And so, join us as we take a look at 20 female characters who have provided a welcome relief to all of the rampant testosterone over the years. Some superheroes, a few villainesses, love interests and assorted personalities, from movies both good and bad. Fair warning though: no version of Halle Berry is on this list.

20. Poison Ivy

Comic Book Females
Warner Bros.

No, bear with us. Joel Schumacher's franchise-killing Batman & Robin got a lot of things wrong - alright, almost everything - but the one thing it managed to pass off was Uma Thurman's Poison Ivy. If we take the movie as it was surely intended - a modern update of the 60s TV show - this Ivy is a spot on depiction of a supervillain one could easily imagine going toe-to-toe with Adam West and Burt Ward.

Like everything else in Batman & Robin, Ivy is a scenery-chewing florescent nightmare, but Thurman delivers a deliciously devious performance as Ivy (the film's real villain, beyond Schwarzenegger's simplistic, ridiculous and mostly sympathetic Mr. Freeze), easily wrapping the Dynamic Duo around her little finger. Her early transformation sequence is pretty great too - and surprisingly comic book accurate. To date, she remains one of the few villains not murdered by Batman, currently sharing a cell with a vengeful Freeze in Arkham.

Contributor
Contributor

A film critic and professional writer of over ten years, Joel Harley has a deep and abiding love of all things horror, Batman and Nicolas Cage. He can be found writing online and in print, all over the Internet and in especially good bookstores.