Ranking The Best Movie In Every Major Comic Book Franchise
30 franchises and over 80 movies, but which one manages to come out on top?
Various analysts have been predicting that the comic book bubble has been on the verge of bursting for years now, but it's been two decades since X-Men kicked off the massive surge in popularity, and the genre is arguably more popular than ever.
While there's been more than a few failures over the years, there have been just as many successes, and the vast majority of duds simply end up being rebooted anyway. It seems that we're always knee-deep in superheroes and spandex, so it might be a little surprising to hear that there have 'only' been thirty deemed worthy enough to get a high-profile sequel, and we're here to separate the best from the rest.
In the interest of fairness, each of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's standalone franchises are included along with the various offshoots of the X-Men series, but unfortunately there's only one spot for the DCEU given that we won't be getting a genuine sequel from Warner Bros.' shared universe until Wonder Woman 1984 arrives later this year.
The history of the comic book genre brings both the best of the best and the worst of the worst, and if it can maintain a reputation as Hollywood's most lucrative genre for the foreseeable future, then the number of major franchises is only going to keep getting bigger and bigger in the future.
30. The Smurfs
Somebody has to wind up at the bottom of this list, and that unwanted honor falls to The Smurfs, even though a lot of people might not be aware that the little blue buggers are even based on a comic book.
Having made their printed debut way back in 1958, it would be another half a century before The Smurfs were awarded the chance to star in their own feature-length movie, which managed to earn over half a billion dollars at the box office despite being terrible.
At least it wasn't as bad as the sequel, which people disliked so much that it made over $200m less in theaters and forced the studio to abandon any plans for a trilogy. But don't worry, The Smurfs were eventually rebooted in 2017's forgotten The Lost Village.