10 Coolest Superhero Movie Scenes Ever

For longer than I care to remember, I’ve considered this the greatest scene in movie history. I am, of course, both monumentally biased and not entirely serious when I say that... but it's still true.

With Zack Snyder’s Man Of Steel knocking down skyscrapers and punching people into orbit, these 1983 special effects ain’t all that special anymore. Despite that, there’s more dramatic heft here than in a dozen overwrought Messianic melodramas - thanks almost entirely to the perennially underrated acting gifts of the late Christopher Reeve.

In Superman III, the villains succeed in exposing Superman to artificially created kryptonite, which has an unexpected effect on the hero. Becoming increasingly erratic, Superman eventually turns bitter, hateful and self-loathing, inflicting harm and property damage and eventually settling in a bar and trying to drink himself to death.

Trying to fight off the effects of the pseudo-kryptonite, Superman lands in a junkyard and primal screams the living sh*t out of the place… and then splits into two: himself, Dark Superman, drunk, dark and dishevelled, and Clark Kent, complete with suit and tie, glasses and geeky side parting.

Dark Superman begins beating seven shades of sparkling sh*te out of Kent, snarling insults like a school bully, until Clark squares his shoulders and begins to clumsily fight back.

It’s pretty obvious that all this is happening in Superman’s head, which makes it psychologically interesting that the Clark Kent persona seems to have no superpowers other than the super strength and invulnerability. At one point, Dark Superman mocks him for not being able to fly.

The scene reaches its crescendo when Kent, overpowered and knocked out, is dropped onto a conveyor belt to be crushed. Dark Superman crushes his timid alter ego’s glasses in his hand in sullen triumph… and that’s when this happens.

It’s cheesy, and one could argue even cliched to have Superman battle himself for the future of his soul… and it absolutely doesn’t matter, because it’s amazing. Reeve genuinely looks like a different actor, such is the striking difference between the two portrayals.

When a victorious Clark, exhausted, stands up, John Williams’ iconic score swelling around him, and wearily pulls open his shirt to reveal Superman’s uniform beneath it, it’s one of the most sky-punchingly cool moments in movie history.

Thirty-odd years hasn’t diminished the effect of that scene, and it’ll still have that impact in another thirty-odd years, regardless of the now hokey FX. That’s the power of great performance, and why Christopher Reeve remains the greatest Superman in cinema.