10 Highest Rated Superhero Movies On Rotten Tomatoes Ranked
Reranking the best of the best.
Whenever a new comic book movie comes out, inevitably, the Internet scrabbles not only to judge it on its own merits, but also to place it careful (or quickly - whichever suits them best) into the great ladder of quality upon which all things must sit.
No MCU movie can be just good - we have to know whether it was better than the last one, or its predecessor in its subfranchise, or the best and worst in the entire franchise. No Batman movie can come out without being assessed in terms of every one that came before. And of course, no DC or Marvel movie can be released without the conversation quickly turning to how it compares to whatever the rival company made last.
That's just the way we work. We want the best food we've ever had. The best movie we've ever seen. The best time we've ever had. And everything else has to be precisely judged, as numerically as possible. Which is precisely why we all love Rotten Tomatoes (or love to hate it): it offers a potted qualification of quality, and that suits every fan, whether they care to acknowledge it or not.
And now that the company has updated its top 50 superhero movies, we have a good idea of where every genre film charts in the great critical scale (based on number of reviews and score). Now all that's needed is for everyone to say why the list is wrong.
So how should those superhero movies really be ranked?
10. Iron Man
Adjusted Score: 103.912%
RT Position: 7th
Iron Man is a great movie, and without it, we wouldn't have the MCU, as everyone is so fond of saying. It's a triumph of the perfect casting of Robert Downey Jr (who almost didn't get the gig at all) and Jon Favreau's eye for a fairly simple, charming story.
He built the tale of personal redemption, cockiness and terrorism on RDJ's shoulders, giving his star the space to build instant mythology, and the result is a captivating portrait of a character who feels like he was written precisely for the actor. He's a bit of a prick, but that in no way compromises his appeal.
The film is so good, in Marvel's eyes at least, that they used it as a model for most of their other films (with the villain representing a dark mirror of the hero). So it made the MCU in more ways than one.