20 Greatest Movie Blockbusters Of The 21st Century (So Far)

Some lists are pretty easy to draft. After all, we’re all obsessive enough to remember Ten Great Horror Films Which Take Place Entirely In One Location off the top of our heads—right?

Just us? Alright, well nonetheless there are some titles which we can handle easier than others. But some articles, the definitive likes of The Best Sci Fi Sequels or Scariest Sci Fi Films, are sufficient to keep us up at night, wondering whether there’s a Deadpool 2 or Xtro we’ve left out in the lurch whilst whittling down our shortlist. And when it comes to difficult lists to compile, rest assured that few have ever been harder than the 20 Greatest Movie Blockbusters of the 21st Century (So Far).

Blockbusters come in all forms from the surprise sleeper hit of the summer to the massively popular tentpole franchise instalment. The term covers everything from Baz Luhrman’s lush literary The Great Gatsby, to the self-aware pulse pounding silliness of Furious 6, to the warm animated comedy of Monsters University, to the gritty angst of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

And that’s just in 2013. And we didn’t mention any MCU or DECU projects. Or The Hobbit.

However, we here at Whatculture are never one to shy away from a challenge, so with the inevitable addendum that we’re only including one entry from any given franchise for the sake of fairness and diversity, here’s the bumper mega-list of the twenty finest blockbuster offerings since the year 2000.

This one may be a surprise appearance on this list, as the shine of director Peter Jackson’s stardom has dimmed somewhat due to questionable choices in the years since his phenomenal work on the Lord of the Rings—The Lovely Bones, anyone?

Anyone at all?

But this lengthy, gorgeously realized monster movie remake from 2005 is the finest screen distillation of Kong’s tragic story since the original.

As fun as the likes of Kong: Skull Island may be, there’s no way the 2017 action spectacle would even exist without the success of Jackson’s gory, scary Skull Island sequence in this flick—and that’s just one of many staggering set pieces, including Kong’s doomed excursion to New York, which elevate this from standard blockbuster fare to classic status.