10 Movies That Almost Destroyed The Superhero Genre

7. X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

X-Men was the film that created the modern superhero genre. Treating the material seriously and adding, gasp, subtext to proceedings, Bryan Singer's film showed everyone that these sort of characters could work on screen without requiring a large pinch of salt. The third film in the series, The Last Stand, saw Singer leave and the budget almost double (literally). Fox were clearly going all in with the genre now, but with raised stakes comes increased gamble. A gamble Fox certainly didn't rake in from; the film underperformed. The central problem was with Singer's replacement, Brett Ratner, who didn't have the same understanding of the material and delivered something that not only annoyed fans, but was so sloppily made general audiences weren't too hot on it either. The Last Stand isn't the worst superhero movie ever, but as part of the franchise that brought the genre to dominance its failure raised the question of whether superheroes had run out of steam. For a brief period in the mid-naughties it did appear that way; this was part of a duo of threequels that almost spelled the end of the genre. What saved it: The Dark Knight and Iron Man. That summer of 2008 proved crucial in reinvigorating superheroes.