10 Movies That Almost Destroyed The Superhero Genre

6. Ghost Rider (2007)

As the genre grew it was only a matter of time before we got something like Ghost Rider. As the books on which they were based had long viewed as being "for kids", superhero movies had been rather light, completely ignoring some of the darker sides of comics. And we're not talking about what D.C. misreads as dark - grey colour palette and brooding actors. We mean deals with the devil and fiery violence. Featuring some of Nicolas Cage's best overacting (that is before the sequel, Spirit Of Vengeance), Ghost Rider is less a proper adult superhero film and more something to get teenage boys screaming "awesome". There's some real potential to the idea of a stuntman who sells his soul to the devil and must do his bidding, but it's clearly something the director of Daredevil wasn't up to; this was another failure from a unknown hero. Coupled with the increasing failures of the big franchises this made it look like superheroes had little elsewhere to go. Although we know things didn't end, Ghost Rider did still have a rather negative effect on the genre; it made 'adult' (or rather, non-family) superhero movies be viewed as unviable projects, something Watchmen, which bombed at the box office, seemed to prove. What save it: Iron Man showed unknowns could work, although we're yet to see non-PG-13 films work in a proper way.