Batman’s debut in Detective Comics #27 in 1939 was a massive hit, so much so that National Periodical Publications gave him his own title in 1940, though he also continued to star in Detective Comics.

Batman’s villain in the debut issue of his eponymous comic was the Joker. The story of the character’s creation is a he said/he said mess among Bob Kane, Bill Finger, and Jerry Robinson, but they all at least agree that the Joker’s look was inspired by Conrad Veidt in the 1928 movie adaptation of Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs and a joker playing card.

He quickly became Batman’s arch-villain, and has remained so for eighty years.

Joker has had numerous origin stories over the years, but they don’t always match, and they’re always left particularly vague. Very few of those origins have revealed his real name. The general origin has remained mostly consistent in that the Joker was a criminal (often a costumed criminal called the Red Hood) who fell into a vat of chemicals that bleached his skin and turned his hair green.

Only twice has he been given a full name, both in live-action movie adaptations: Jack Napier, as played by Jack Nicholson in 1989’s Batman, and Arthur Fleck in 2019’s Joker.

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Todd Phillips had been fascinated by the Joker character, and was interested in doing a comic book movie that was more grounded in reality. Because Joker’s origin was vague and contradictory, Phillips felt that there was more creative freedom to explore the character without being too bound to the comics. To that end, the first thing he got rid of was dipped-in-acid origin, deemed too outrageous. Phillips wanted his film to be completely grounded in reality.

Joaquin Phoenix had long been fascinated by the idea of doing a character study of a super-villain, but didn’t want to commit to a series of films, as taking a role in, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe would require. Initially not interested in the Joker because he had been done so many times (Cesar Romero in the 1966 TV show, Nicholson, Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, Jared Leto in Suicide Squad, not to mention Mark Hamill’s incomparable voice work in numerous animated series), Phoenix was put together with Phillips and a beautiful friendship was born.

Phillips and cowriter Scott Silver set the story in 1981 and included Thomas Wayne, father of Bruce, as an antagonistic supporting character. Inspired partly by the origin provided by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland in the 1988 graphic novel The Killing Joke (specifically that the future Joker tried to pursue a career in standup comedy to pay the bills and wasn’t very good at it), but mostly by the Martin Scorcese movies The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver (going so far as to cast Scorcese regular Robert De Niro in a supporting role), the movie showed the evolution of Arthur Fleck into the psychotic killer we know from the comics.

Supporting Phoenix as Fleck are De Niro as Murray Franklin, a late-night TV talk show host who is a combination of Joe Franklin and Jay Leno, Brett Cullen as Thomas Wayne, Zazie Beetz (last seen in this rewatch in Deadpool 2) as Fleck’s neighbor, Frances Conroy as Fleck’s mother Penny, Douglas Hodge as Alfred Pennyworth, Dante Periera-Olson as eight-year-old Bruce Wayne, and in various other roles, Shea Whigham, Bill Camp, Glenn Fleshler, Leigh Gill, and Josh Pais.

The movie was released to general acclaim from critics and mixed reviews from comics fans. Phoenix has already received a Best Actor Golden Globe, and the movie received an impressive eleven nominations each from both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science and the British Academy Film Awards.

“All I have are negative thoughts!”

Joker
Written by Todd Phillips & Scott Silver
Directed by Todd Phillips
Produced by Todd Phillips, Bradley Cooper, and Emma Tillinger Koskoff
Original release date: October 4, 2019

Screenshot: Warner Bros.

Arthur Fleck is a clown-for-hire in 1981 Gotham City, which is gripped by a garbage strike. He’s having mandatory counseling sessions, following being hospitalized for mental illness. He’s also on several meds, and has pseudobulbar affect,  a condition that causes him to involuntarily laugh out loud whether its appropriate or not. (He has a card he can show people when this happens around strangers, which he has to give to a woman on a bus at one point.)

While working outside a music store that’s going out of business, some kids steal Fleck’s “GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SIGN.” They lead him on a chase through the streets and into an alley where they whack him in the face with the sign (which shatters it) and then kick the shit out of him.

Fleck returns home, where he lives in a tiny apartment in an old, poorly kept building with his mother. His mother, Penny, has been writing letters to Thomas Wayne, for whom she used to work. Wayne is considering running for mayor, and Penny is hoping that Wayne will help them once he learns what squalor they’re living in.

Fleck also has a brief encounter with his neighbor Sophie, a single mother. They have a weird, awkward conversation in the elevator.

Each night, Fleck and Penny watch The Murray Franklin Show, a late-night talk show. Fleck hallucinates being in the audience for the show and being singled out by Franklin, who then calls him up onto the stage and tells him what a good guy he is.

The next day, Fleck follows Sophie to work and around the city.

Randall, one of Fleck’s fellow clowns, commiserates with him over what happened at the music store and then gives him a gun to protect himself. Fleck doesn’t like the idea, but takes it.

The boss calls him into his office reprimanding him for walking off the job and stealing the store’s sign. Fleck explains what happened, but the boss doesn’t believe it.

He does a gig at a children’s hospital, and the gun falls out of his pocket during his routine. He tries to pass it off as a prop gun that’s part of the act, but nobody believes that, and he’s fired, especially since Randall claims that Fleck tried to buy a gun off him.

On the train home, three dudebros in suits are harassing a woman. Fleck starts laughing uncontrollably, and the dudebros turn their attention to him, one of them singing “Send in the Clowns,” since Fleck is still in his clown makeup. They start harassing him aggressively, throwing his bag around and kicking the shit out of him the same way the kids did, but then he shoots two of them and chases down the third and shoots him on the 9th Street platform.

Despite there being no witnesses (except the woman, so maybe it came from her?), the fact that a guy who looked like a clown shot three young men (who all worked for Wayne Enterprises) becomes a major news story. In particular, people are taking the clown’s side for taking a stand against the rich bastards. Wayne himself goes on TV and refers to the people siding with the killer as clowns, a remarkably tone-deaf statement by someone who’s planning to run for mayor.

Wayne’s comments just make things worse, as people start dressing as clowns and protesting. Meanwhile, we see Fleck going on dates with Sophie, honing his standup act, and actually getting a gig at a club called Pogo’s, after going around to other clubs and taking notes about people’s acts. He opens his act with a very long nervous laugh, though when he gets past that, his jokes get a laugh or two, at least, and we see Sophie in the audience cheering him on.

Unfortunately, city services are being cut, and Fleck will no longer be able to get his counseling sessions, nor receive his meds.

Penny writes another letter to Wayne, and this time Fleck decides to open it and read it. To his shock, in it Penny claims that she and Wayne had an affair, and Fleck was the result of their liaison. Fleck is furious, but eventually calms down.

He then takes a commuter rail to the suburbs and approaches Wayne Manor (which is quite stately), and tries bonding with Wayne’s eight-year-old boy Bruce with magic tricks. Then the Wayne’s butler, Alfred, intercedes. When Fleck says who he is, Alfred explains that Penny is delusional and there was no affair with Wayne. Fleck starts to strangle Alfred through the gate, but stops at Bruce’s look of horror. Then he leaves.

When he arrives home, there’s an ambulance at the building and Penny is being taken away—she’s had a stroke. Fleck accompanies the ambulance to the hospital. He sits with her, and we see Sophie by his side.

At one point, he steps outside for a cigarette break, and there are two detectives waiting. Turns out they were talking to Penny and their questions about Fleck led to her being agitated, which in turn led to the stroke. Fleck refuses to speak to them.

Fleck watches The Murray Franklin Show in Penny’s hospital room. Franklin got his hands on video footage of Fleck’s show at Pogo’s and he mocks Fleck’s performance rather nastily. Fleck is devastated.

Wayne is attending a gala opening of a movie theatre, and there are protests outside of people in clown masks. Fleck somehow manages to sneak in despite there being a massive police presence, steals an usher outfit and walks around with impunity (nobody ever notices the ushers). He sees Wayne in the men’s room and confronts him. Wayne explains that, not only is Penny delusional and committed to Arkham State Hospital, but also Fleck himself was adopted. Fleck is livid, and denies it, and yells at Wayne, who punches Fleck in the face.

Fleck goes to Arkham and manages to steal his mother’s file, which confirms that she was indeed hospitalized there with delusions and because she endangered her child—or, rather, her adopted child, as copies of the adoption papers are there. According to the file, she sat and watched while her boyfriend abused Fleck, possibly causing him brain damage. (We also get a flashback to one of her interviews, even though Fleck couldn’t have been there.)

Returning to the hospital, Fleck suffocates his mother with a pillow. This somehow goes unnoticed by hospital staff. (Then again, Fleck was smoking in the room prior to killing her, which isn’t allowed, and nobody noticed that, either…)

When he gets home, he goes into Sophie’s apartment (which is inexplicably unlocked; nobody who lives in an apartment in a big city leaves their door unlocked, I don’t care how many times you saw it in Seinfeld), which scares the hell out of her. She says, “You’re Arthur from down the hall, right?” at which point we realize that every encounter we’ve seen with Sophie has been as much a delusion as his “appearance” on Murray Franklin, and that this is the first time he’s seen her since their elevator meeting.

Back in his own apartment, he gets a call from Franklin’s booker. Apparently the footage of his routine was popular, so Franklin now wants him on the show. Stunned, Fleck agrees.

The night of the recording, there are protests planned at City Hall, with tons of people in clown outfits protesting the garbage strike and the state of the city. Fleck starts to put on clown makeup, but midway through, there’s a knock at his door: it’s Randall and another of their fellow clowns, Gary, a little person. Fleck stabs Randall in the eye with a pair of scissors in revenge for helping get him fired. He lets Gary go, though, as Gary was always nice to him.

He cleans the blood off, finishes putting on his clown makeup and suit, and then goes to the studio. On his way, he’s chased by the two detectives, but he loses them in the subway, which is full to bursting with people in clown regalia heading to the protest. In the confusion, one detective’s gun goes off and a riot starts.

Fleck gets away in the confusion and arrives at the studio, where Franklin is a bit surprised by the clown makeup, thinking it’s a political statement, but Fleck insists it’s just part of his new standup act.

Franklin introduces him by his own request as “Joker,” as when he made fun of Fleck on the show previously he introduced the footage of Pogo’s by saying, “Check out this joker.”

Fleck goes on an unfunny screed about any number of subjects, including how people like him and his mother are ignored and tread upon and also taking credit for being the clown killer on the subway. Contrary to his saying his clown makeup wasn’t political, he goes on a very political rant, concluding it with shooting Franklin in the face.

He’s arrested, but the cop car is T-boned by a stolen ambulance driven by someone in a clown mask, who pulls Fleck out of the vehicle.

The Wayne family exits a movie theatre (which is playing Blow Out and Zorro the Gay Blade) and try to get away from the rioting in the streets. The guy who stole the ambulance follows them into the alley and kills both Wayne and his wife Martha while Bruce watches.

Fleck is eventually arrested again and hospitalized. He laughs at the doctor examining him, and when she asks what’s funny, he says she wouldn’t get it. The next shot is him walking alone down the hallway leaving bloody footprints behind, so he presumably killed the doctor. The last scene is him being chased by an orderly.

“There is no punchline”

Screenshot: Warner Bros.

The responses to this movie were many and varied, ranging from fulsome praise (particularly, though not exclusively, from film critics, not to mention film academies of two different countries) and nasty vitriol (particularly, though not exclusively, from comics fans, not to mention people decrying the violence). I was hoping to come down on one side or the other once I finally saw it, but sadly, I’m just as conflicted as the aggregate opinions.

First of all, let me state up front that this is a brilliantly made movie. Beautifully filmed, excellently acted, cleverly scripted. Todd Phillips chose several fairly run-down locations and also many buildings in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Newark that haven’t changed much in the last forty years.

The era is generally portrayed well, though—as is far too common—the clothes and hair are completely wrong. But the set design gets it right, at least, as the cars are all accurate, as is the available technology (corded phones, no computers or cell phones, old graffiti-covered subways, etc.), plus there’s lots of indoor smoking going on. (The only time someone goes outside to smoke is at a hospital.)

Joaquin Phoenix’s performance is one of those really strong performances that nonetheless never lets you forget that he’s acting. It’s both impressive and completely not naturalistic. Which is fine, I have no problem with this type of performing, generally, except it’s in a movie that’s going for stark realism, so the mannered acting doesn’t seem to fit, almost like he’s acting in a different movie.

And what’s especially hilarious about his doing so is that Joker should be played in an over-the-top way, in the abstract. He’s an archetypal, larger-than-life, mysterious figure. But this movie isn’t about that, it’s about deconstructing that. He’s not a manic, insane force of nature who will go on to kill Robin and maim Batgirl, he’s a mentally ill aspiring stand-up comic who was raised by a delusional narcissist (with whom he still lives), possibly is suffering brain damage from being beaten as a boy, and then has had his counseling and meds cut off by Ronald Reagan’s social services cuts. (Reagan isn’t mentioned by name, but we can assume.) He doesn’t cackle all the time because he’s batshit crazy, he cackles all the time because he has a medical condition (he has a card to hand people and everything). It helps to ground the character, make him feel more real—but it also lessens him in so many ways.

Joker isn’t a super-villain anymore. It’s hard to say what he is. He’s the protagonist of the film, obviously, but he’s also an asshole. The movie tries to make us understand him better, and show how he’s a victim of the system, but do we really want to feel sorry for this guy who guns down three people in the subway? One of whom he, in fact, chases down in the subway and murders in a manner that is 100% premeditated.

It’s an interesting notion to have Joker be the cinematic/DC universe equivalent of Bernhard Goetz. In 1984, Goetz shot four African-American kids on a New York subway who he thought were trying to rob him. To be clear, the four victims of Goetz’s shooting had criminal records and testified that they were on their way to a robbery. Nonetheless, Goetz took it upon himself to shoot the four, an extreme penalty for asking for five bucks, even if it was a mugging rather than panhandling as the four said at the trial.

It was a cause célèbre here in New York in the 1980s, with opinions on Goetz hugely divided, in terms of extreme response, in terms of the high crime rate in New York in 1984, in terms of it being white-on-black violence, and in terms of vigilantism.

Phillips was very obviously inspired by the Goetz case, though he hedges his bets by making his victims wealthy white guys who are sexually harassing a woman, so you have a much easier time watching them get shot.

And that’s just a cowardly way to approach it. Joker’s supposed to be a villain. That’s the whole point of the character. Why not make his victims a gaggle of poor African-American kids? Instead, they’re “safer” victims, members of the 1% against whom the poor of the city already have an animus. They’re easy targets, and they also are yet another attempt to make Fleck/Joker into a sympathetic victim, which is a problem for a mass murderer.

The guy in the clown makeup who shot the three dudebros becomes a rallying point in Gotham after that, and my first thought watching it was: how? This is 1981—surveillance in subways wasn’t really a thing then. And there was literally nobody else around. The woman the dudebros had been harassing was long gone, and there was nobody else in the car, nobody else in the train station. How do people even know that a guy in clown makeup shot these guys? I mean, I suppose the conductor or engineer saw it, but that’s not at all clear in the movie, which goes out of its way to make the subway and the platform be completely empty.

The thing is, as a critique of the inconsistent and harmful way the modern U.S. tends to treat the mentally ill, this movie is pretty damn good. The system completely failed the Fleck family, mère et fils, and the results are horrible and, up to a point, believable.

Part of the problem is that this is a popular movie, and in popular movies, heroes kill people all the time. It’s part of the price of doing business if you’re in an action movie. Joker keeps killing people who’ve hurt him, and a lot of them aren’t nice people, from the dudebros on the subway to his mother who lied to him to his fellow clown who helped get him fired to Murray Franklin who mocked him on television. He even spares the little person who was nice to him, so how bad can he be?

But he is bad. Yes, the system failed him, but it fails lots of people with mental illness who don’t go on killing sprees. Fleck at once is too broken and not broken enough for this to entirely work.

And yet, just the fact that there’s so much here to unpack and talk about shows that it’s a well-made piece of art. I think Phillips would’ve been better off divorcing it entirely from DC and just doing a piece about Arthur Fleck. We could keep De Niro’s magnificently smarmy talk show host and the backstory with an industrialist who has a different name than Thomas Wayne. (As it is, this movie continues the 2010s tradition of DC heroes’ fathers being assholes, following the character assassination of Jonathan Kent in Man of Steel. Seriously, Thomas Wayne is a total tool in this movie, with a level of tone-deafness that indicates that his run for mayor would not have survived primary season, had he lived that long.) As it stands, this feels like bad Joker fanfic rather a strong movie about what makes a serial killer.

Also, I really didn’t need to see the Waynes get shot while young Bruce looks on again. Especially since Phillips can’t resist again showing Martha Wayne’s pearl necklace shattering, riffing on that Frank Miller visual from The Dark Knight Returns yet again. (Which makes no sense anyhow, as pearl necklaces worn by very rich people do not break that easily.)

This brings “4-Color to 35-Millimeter” to a pause, as we’ve now caught up to real time. There are literally no more live-action feature-length movies based on superhero comics to write about—

—yet. The 2020 docket currently includes Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), Black Widow, Bloodshot, Eternals, Morbius, The New Mutants, Venom 2, and Wonder Woman 1984. The plan is to put this feature on hold until December, when I’ll take a look back at the year’s superhero releases.

In the meantime, thank you all for reading this overview of the hottest thing in cinema in the early 21st century, going all the way back to its roots in the 20th. This has been a delightful look back at a subgenre through its extremely high ups (The Dark Knight, Black Panther) and very low downs (Son of the Mask, Man-Thing), and I got to learn a few things too (like I had no idea there were Dick Tracy films in the 1940s!).

I’m not going anywhere on this site, of course. As announced yesterday, next Thursday will see the debut of the Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch, and I’ll also be reviewing each episode of Star Trek: Picard’s first season and Star Trek: Discovery’s third season as they’re released. And I’ll keep babbling about other TV shows, movies, and more ’round these parts, worry not.

Thank you all again. Most of these entries had thirty-plus comments, and more than a score broke into three figures. Best of all, though, unlike far too many internet comments sections, this one was free of trollery and melodrama, and instead was intelligent, fun discourse about the movies in question. You all have my eternal gratitude, appreciation, and admiration for that.

Excelsior!

Keith R.A. DeCandido is looking forward to every single 2020 superhero movie release, with the possible exception of Bloodshot (about whom he has no feelings one way or the other) and Venom 2 (because the first one was, um, not good). He is particularly heartened to see that four of the eight movies have female leads. About damn time.

I didn’t expect to love Birds of Prey so much, but I’m currently sitting on my bed in a gold lamé jumpsuit, eating a breakfast sandwich and pretending my cat is a hyena, so here we are. On the surface, it’s just a dumb superhero action movie that gave me cause to yell things like “HELL YEAH MURDER SLIDE!” or “KICK HIM IN THE NADS!” at full volume in a movie theater. The film is designed to be pure fun, a carnival of sartorial delights and one-liners tied together by glittery explosions and a soundtrack that can only be described as “bitchin’.” I’m a simple woman, and that would have been enough for me.

But there’s actual substance lurking beneath the surface. This isn’t the first time we’ve gotten a Harley Quinn story, but it’s finally the version of Harley Quinn I’ve always wanted to see—and it’s because she gets to choose who she becomes, and choose the people around her.

My first real introduction to Harley Quinn was seeing a ton of cosplayers waving enormous mallets around at New York Comic Con. I knew she was the Joker’s “crazy” girlfriend, but my knowledge was lacking beyond that; I’d played her as a character in Batman: Arkham Asylum a few times, had seen little snippets of her crooning mischief to “Mista J” in cartoons, but I’d never gotten familiar with her. Harley just hadn’t featured prominently in any of the Batman content I’d consumed until that point. I asked my then-partner what the deal was, and she excitedly gave me the bold strokes of Harley’s backstory: Harleen Quinzel was a teen gymnast who went on to earn a degree in psychology that in turn led her to interning at Arkham Asylum, and falling in love with the Joker. I am convinced my face actually turned into the heart eyes emoji when I heard that. I already loved seeing the cosplayers fully give in to gleeful chaotic energy in their little harlequin getups, and the idea of this kitschy cartoon character having some actual intellectual heft made my nerdy little heart expand ten sizes. A nuanced character, coded as being mentally ill, but also hyper-competent enough to give both The Joker and The Batman a run for their collective monies? Sign me all the way up.

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I borrowed my partner’s copy of Paul Dini and Bruce Timm’s The Batman Adventures: Mad Love, excited to dive into Harley’s origin story. Reader, I fucking hated it. It was a betrayal of everything I wanted for HQ. It implied that Harley was just a hot prep school babe from a snobby, cold family. She’s got the flexibility of a gymnast, earned her psychology degree on her back and traded on connections to get a prestigious internship at Arkham. Once there, ditzy little Harleen was dumb and weak enough to fall for the Clown Prince of Crime; he worms his way into her head and uses her to escape the asylum, and then to complete whatever weird anti-Batman plot he’s got going. Harley Quinn isn’t even a sidekick; she’s a means to an end dressed up in skimpy spandex, and her only goal is to make the Joker fall in love with her. It’s the opposite of fridging; she isn’t murdered to give someone who loved her a purpose—her whole character is built around the sole purpose of making someone love her.

I was furious. I wanted a Harley Quinn story where Harley’s psychology degree is in full effect; she’s in the Joker’s head as much as he’s in hers, and she’s able to pull one over on him just as often as he does to her. In Mad Love, we see hints of Harley’s brilliance: she hatches a plan to capture and kill Batman by feeding him to a school of piranhas in order to make The Joker love her. Yes, it’s cartoonish and wildly improbable—but it also works, which is more than The Joker can say for himself at this point in the story. Batman is trussed up like a Christmas ham at Harley’s mercy, and the only reason Brucey boy is able to get free is that he preys on Harley’s doubts about her Puddin’, and convinces her to lie to the Joker and tell her she’s killed him, just to see how he’ll react (for those wondering, the answer is “not well;” The Joker throws Harley out an actual window).

Sure, Harley Quinn isn’t fully stable, but who among us is? After reading Mad Love, I shied away from Harley Quinn stories, because they just disappointed me.

I was craving a woman who didn’t exist—until, against all my expectations, Birds of Prey. At the beginning of the movie, Margot Robbie drunkenly delivers a powerhouse line that encapsulates her whole journey: “Do you know what a harlequin is? A harlequin’s role is to serve. It’s nothing without a master.” That’s the whole core of Birds of Prey; it’s about Harley Quinn finding out who she is without a master.

There is so much power in that movie: the outfits, the plethora of hotties that are not objectified, the fight scenes that could go toe-to-toe with anything out of the MCU big leagues, the bonkers one-liners. The first few minutes of the film, it’s Harley going through a break up with the Joker, and boy howdy, she is not taking it well—but it’s not because he broke her heart; that’s a part of life, and she gets that. What’s so depressing to Harley is that no one thinks she’s worth anything by herself, or she can stand on her own without the Joker—and worse, she’s not sure if they’re wrong. It’s a breakup movie that doesn’t automatically say “Don’t worry, Harley got herself a new man” (unless you count the sandwich). The film is bookended by Harley trying to woo her new roller derby friends with a platter of margaritas, and overhearing them badmouthing her—and then, at the end, offering her new friends a tray of “Morning Margaritas” (iconic), and overhearing them complimenting each other. She’s breaking up with her past, and instead of getting a new man, she got herself a new crew, who support each other—not a new master. Harley Quinn is literally trying to redefine the meaning of her name, and by extension, her whole sense of self.

Harley Quinn has a powerful story because she’s unable to fit in to the world she’s born in, so she goes and finds a new crowd to run with—but in choosing the Joker and his gang, she chooses wrong. Birds of Prey is not just a found family narrative; it’s a second chance at found family, one that acknowledges personal growth and self discovery—that maybe, this harlequin in particular, doesn’t need a master in order to be someone, and also the sometimes enormous need we all feel to explode a chemical power plant. A harlequin’s role may be to serve, but who she serves, and how she fulfills the terms of that service are of critical importance. Harlequins don’t just exist to serve a master; they function as part of a court. In Birds of Prey, Harley trades in her old master for a new court of misfits, all of them unwillingly bound in service to the new would-be master of Gotham City, Roman Sionis. And they want nothing to do with him. So what is a harlequin without her master? The answer is: whatever she wants, so long as she’s got a full court backing her up. No gods, no masters, only mayhem!

Screenshot: Warner Bros.

Lately, the biggest properties in nerddom have all been found family narratives; The Mandalorian adopts Baby Yoda and woe to anybody who tries to hurt his smol green son; Geralt of Rivia accidentally wins a baby in a bet and now he’s a father, dammit; Rey spends a lot of time with sexy space bisexuals and decides to reject her biological father; and of course, let us not forget the Fast and Furious saga, which taught us that not all blood is family (and also that Coronas and cars are family too).

It’s a powerful trope; it represents the ability to forge deep bonds and connections with people of your own choosing. For nerds, specifically, it also harkens back to the moment when you finally find “your people.” Sure, being a nerd is “cool” now, but it wasn’t always—and there’s no feeling quite like discovering that there are SO MANY OTHERS who go hard on that one niche subject that you thought only you liked! And let’s not pretend that finding a new group of besties who teach you how to fight super well isn’t also wish fulfillment on some level; many of us were bullied, and while violence doesn’t solve all problems, I think having an enormous mallet (and the ability to use it) would have made my junior high school years much more palatable. So it’s no wonder to me that every new sci-fi/fantasy/comic book film or television show seems to have done a deep dive on the “found family” tag in AO3.

Suicide Squad is also a found family narrative, in its own way—but for Harley, it’s like going from the frying pan into the Jared Leto-looking fire. Birds of Prey gives Harley a second chance at finding herself. Being mentally ill means that you wear different versions of yourself every day, and sometimes, the clothes don’t fit. By that logic, Harley’s arc in Birds of Prey is the equivalent of realizing you’ve spent several years building up a wardrobe that you hate, ceremonially burning it in the moonlight, and then going on a shopping spree for the new look you so desperately need. Ever put on a pair of jeans that just fits, after trying to squeeze yourself into something that didn’t? It’s freeing. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a second chance at a found family story, but now I want more.

Harley’s girl squad is full of extraordinary badasses who maybe don’t all have the most neurotypical brains, but who accept that about each other nonetheless. One of the most wholesome moments in the whole movie comes when Huntress endearingly and awkwardly tries to compliment Black Canary on how high she’s able to kick in her very tight pants; they build each other up for their skills, instead of trying to take each other down. They accept each other for the roving trashbags that they are, and as a self-identified trashbag, I find that inspiring.

There’s a flashback scene where Harley remembers how the Joker made her jump into a vat of chemicals to prove her devotion (kids: jumping into a vat of chemicals is not a good way to prove love—Chuck Tingle wouldn’t want you to do that!). This dumb man literally made a genius babe take a bath in some toxic shit to show she was “down to clown,” as it were. Meanwhile, there is no need for proof between the Birds of Prey; they’re not always great to each other, but they’ll always hand a bitch a scrunchie during a fight, or call each other on their shit over a round of morning margaritas.

Harley hasn’t always gotten the story she deserved, and maybe she made the mistake of choosing a master instead of a family the first time around, but that’s what second chances are for.

Caroline Perny is a lover of glitter, chaos, and breakfast sandwiches. She is a publicity manager at Tor Books by day, and a nerdy metalhead by moonlight. Pronouns are she/her. Follow her on Twitter @CarolinePerny.

A new Batman movie means a new Batsuit and a new Batmobile (not to mention, of course, a new Batman), and director Matt Reeves has been feeding fans bite-size sneak peeks at his redesigns on Twitter. This week, he unveiled the Caped Crusader’s new ride, and some fans are picking up on an interesting source of inspiration: Mad Max.

#TheBatman pic.twitter.com/qJFNprk1ut

— Matt Reeves (@mattreevesLA) March 4, 2020

Just take a look over on r/Batman, where comparisons to the post-apocalyptic franchise abound (“serious Ford GT Falcon-Mad Max vibes,” “Mad Max meets Adam West,” “Mad Max meets Fast and Furious meets classic Adam West batmobile,” etc.) There’s no shortage of references over on Twitter, either, where fans have been comparing side-by-side screenshots.

From everything we have seen so far, THE BATMAN seems to capture that similar masculine yet strange energy of MAD MAX: FURY ROAD.

There's a raw type of practicality from the suit to the bike to the batmobile. #TheBatman pic.twitter.com/TC2SjcTI17

— Jesabel (@JesabelRaay) March 4, 2020

Getting Mad Max vibes from this new Batmobile… anyone else?#TheBatman pic.twitter.com/VOv1Ysls0O

— Erik Davis (@ErikDavis) March 4, 2020

Other possible Batmobile inspirations that have been floated around: Blade Runner, Fast & Furious, and even Back to the Future. (And yes, the puns do write themselves.)

The director himself has not revealed which (if any) car-centric movies were running around his head as he sat down to design this iteration of the Batmobile. But if he really wanted to lean into this whole Mad Max thing, there’s no reason why he can’t have The Penguin barreling in on one of these bad boys.

Just sayin’. Your move, Matt.

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Every year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts a large fundraising gala in partnership with Vogue to celebrate the opening of the Costume Institute’s themed exhibit. Dubbed “fashion’s biggest night out”, the Met Gala draws celebrities, socialites, fashionistas, and anyone able to secure a coveted invite from Dame Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue. This year’s event has been postponed, so instead we imagined what the Met Gala would be with all of our favorite fashion-forward characters from fiction.

We humbly present About Time: Fashion and the Space-Time Continuum, a galaxy of fashion, hosted by Master of Ceremonies Cesar Flickerman & Effie Trinket.

Cesar: WELCOME, welcome welcome welcome to this years Met Gala, in support of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. I’m your host, Cesar Flickerman, and I’m here with my delightful cohost, Effie Trinket. This year’s theme is About Time: Fashion and the Space-Time Continuum. It’s a special theme this year, isn’t it Effie?

Effie: That’s right, we’ve spent months getting ready for tonight and now it’s finally here! I’m so excited to see how our guests are going to interpret this theme. I have a feeling we’re going to see lots of looks inspired by history tonight, but time, as we know, is a wibbley-wobbley mess, so we could see some forward-thinking choices too.

Cesar: This is fashion’s biggest night of the year, and these guests have been working with designers on unique pieces just for this walk up the red steps. I want to see glam! Pizzaz! I want to see dresses as big as a house! I want to see through space and time with these looks!

screenshot: Warner Bros. Pictures

Coming first up the steps is Bruce Wayne, one of the museum’s biggest benefactors and one of our hosts for the evening. Mr. Wayne has given millions of dollars to the museum over the years, and has arrived wearing a classic black suit and a bowtie, looking very dapper indeed. Not really on theme, but who are we to judge one of the world’s most eligible bachelors! Timeless is one interpretation, right?

Effie: Here we have Kell Maresh, fresh from Red London, looking striking in a red brocade jacket and tails that surprisingly doesn’t clash with that ginger hair! Look at that detailing! Those are hand-stitched flourettes and gold button detailing along the front and gold braided epaulettes on the shoulders, very reminiscent of a military uniform but of course, made couture for tonight. But oh—what’s that? He’s slipping off the jacket and twisting it over to reveal another jacket underneath! That’s right fashionistxs, we have our first red carpet costume change of the evening! Kell Maresh is now wearing a glittering black dinner jacket! A very modern cut, very well-fitted. How delightful! We love a surprise, don’t we, Cesar?

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Cesar: There’s nothing we love more than drama!

Effie: Do you think we’ll see any more of that tonight?

Cesar: One can only hope, Effie dear. We’ve got so many more looks to see!

Screenshot: Lucasfilm

Effie: Oh, look, here comes Amilyn Holdo! She looks stunning in her signature lilac hair and a drapey ivory gown with a strong square shoulder. There’s a little crystal and gold belt detail under all that draped fabric to add a bit of glimmer. A very elegant silhouette, wouldn’t you say?

Cesar: Very elegant indeed! And what’s that I spy? That looks like a crystal ring in the shape The Alliance Starbird! Well, we certainly know whose side Holdo is on tonight!

Effie: We love a strong statement!

Cesar: Yes we do, and a potentially risky statement too! Now, who do we see coming round the corner?

Effie: I do believe that’s Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy! These two have been staples at the gala for many years, and always look elegant. Mr. Malfoy has his trusty cane with him and his hair pulled back with a velvet bow, a very classic look. But Mrs. Malfoy’s dress, wow…

Cesar: Yes, Mrs. Malfoy is wearing an incredible ballgown that takes up almost the entire width of the staircase. It’s an enchanting strapless silver number with what appears to be carefully beaded numbers around the circumference of the skirt, just like the face of a clock. Each one of those is hand-stitched, that must have taken weeks to do! And oh! What is that! The numbers are moving and changing as she poses on the carpet! That’s right viewers, her dress is transforming right in front of our eyes!

Effie: Now that’s what I’d call a real passage of time, wouldn’t you?

Cesar: That’s absolutely right, Narcissa Malfoy has turned herself into a shape-shifting clock and I love it!

Screenshot: Cartoon Network

Effie: Alright, coming up the stairs are Avatar Korra and her date, Asami Sato, heiress to the Future Industries. Now, this is a power couple if I’ve ever seen one, Cesar.

Cesar: That’s right, their budding romance has had society buzzing ever since they made their first public appearance a few years back. This is a couple we love to see thrive together, and here they are in matching holographic fabric…Asami in a one shouldered gown with a beautiful long train and diamond detailing around the bodice, and Korra in a matching tailored suit with a blue tie, a little salute to the Water Tribe, looks like!

Effie: I absolutely love that fabric choice, that’s exactly what staring into a nebula is like, right? A beautiful shimmering cascade down those steps.

screenshot: NBC

Cesar: Here we have prominent psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter, and that. suit. is. KILLER.

Effie: It looks almost alive, doesn’t it? That’s a gorgeous deep red velvet suit with a bold black silk tie and pocket square, and a beautiful antler-shaped pin on his lapel. Absolutely devastating. That fabric is absolutely otherworldly, it’s shimmering under the lights of the camera flashes, almost like it’s…wet somehow…what is that splashed all over his suit?

Cesar: Maybe it’s better not to ask too many questions, right? Speaking of fashionable power couples, here comes King Margo and former king Eliot of Fillory. Now, these are two people that really know how to make a red carpet moment.

Screenshot: Syfy

Effie: And they have not disappointed today. Eliot is wearing a deep emerald green silk suit, a classic three-piece with tulle floral detailing around the collar and cuffs, that looks handprinted, almost real…

Now Margot is really the stunner here, as she always is. This is a gorgeous dress covered in what looks like live flowers, very reminiscent of the Fillorian Rainbow Bridge, gorgeous shades of pink and purple and blue. And—oh no, it looks like the flowers are dying as she’s walking up the steps, that seems like poor planning on the designers part, they could have freshened her up before sending her down here! That’s right, the petals are falling and turning brown—but oh, look at that! We’ve got new blooms beginning on her dress! The flowers are coming back to life! And it looks like we’ve got fresh vines forming crowns for both of them! What a wow moment, King Margo and Eliot Waugh making a real statement about life and death on the steps tonight.

Screenshot: Marvel Studios

Cesar: That was really something special. Now, here’s another red carpet staple, our dear friend Tony Stark! Mr. Stark looks absolutely dashing in a gold suit. This is a man that always looks great. And what’s this? He’s pressed a button on his cufflinks and—yes, that’s a hologram of himself in the Iron Man suit! That’s right, Tony Stark has brought his younger self as a date tonight. How did he manage that!

Effie: The man is a genius, I’ll tell ya.

Cesar: Truly inventive. We’ve got past Tony and current Tony walking up the steps together. Now that is a real show-stopping moment. Leave it to Tony Stark to create something truly memorable.

screenshot: New Line Cinema

Effie: Now we’ve got someone very interesting coming up the steps. In a rare appearance, Thranduil, son of Oropher, Elven king of the Woodland Realm is marching elegantly through on his Elk steed, alongside his son Legolas. Both are wearing simple silver suits, with a leaf pattern in glittering thread. Wow, that Elven craftsmanship really is stunning up close. Do you think that elk will be allowed into the museum?

Cesar: Now of course, elves have an extended life, much more so than us mere humans. So they really exemplify time itself, don’t you think?

Screenshot: HBO

Effie: Absolutely, timeless beauty. I’m so excited about the two elegant ladies coming around the corner now. That’s Margaery Tyrell and her close friend, Sansa Stark. Two of the most stylish women in the Seven Kingdoms!

Cesar: So nice to see them together and smiling, don’t you think? We love seeing female friendship on this carpet.

Effie:: Gal pals!

Cesar: That’s right. Margaery is wearing a very daring dress, very low cut in the front indeed, with delicate crystal beading and a high slit up the leg. Sansa has on a gorgeous floor-length gown with intricate corsetry at the waist, both strong and sophisticated. Look at that stitching! This looks like a vintage fabric, does it?

Effie: We’ve heard from the designers that both girls are wearing fabrics sourced from every era of Westeros, stretching all the way back to the invasion of the Andals. And it looks like Sansa is wearing accessories and jewelry that belonged to her mother, including a beautiful necklace with the direwolf insignia of House Stark. We love a tribute, don’t we?

Cesar: Love a tribute. Now, I’m so excited about our next guest, the incredibly famous intergalactic DJ, Ruby Rhod.

Screenshot: Columbia Pictures

Effie: This is a look I’ve been waiting to see! Ruby is wearing head to toe sequins in his signature jumpsuit style and giant platform shoes, with sequins in his hair too! He looks like a disco ball, doesn’t he? And there are two turntables attached to his chest and oh—that’s right, he’s going to play something for us!

Cesar: What is that song?

Effie: It sounds like several songs all at once! We’ve got a galactic mega mix playing, and the whole room has just come alive! We’re getting a whole music history lesson here. You know, music really transcends time and space and cultures. Ruby Rhod is working this red carpet. This man really knows how to command a room!

Cesar: Oh my goodness, look at what’s coming down the carpet!

Effie: Is that Jupiter Jones?

Cesar: That is Jupiter Jones in the most devastating dress I’ve ever seen.

Effie: It’s almost like the fabric itself is made of stars!

Screenshot: Warner Bros. Pictures

Cesar: I think that dress might actually be made of stars—it does appear to be changing with the light! That really is spectacular, this dress exactly mimics the night sky, and if we get a closer look we can make out constellations and distant planets. Looking at this gown is just like looking through a telescope, wouldn’t you say?

Effie: And she’s wearing a beautiful headpiece made of gold interlocking circles that seem to orbit each other. Jupiter Jones has completely shut down the Met steps with this dress, she is wearing the whole universe on her shoulders. What a beautiful moment!

Cesar: Well, folks, after that, there’s nothing more for us to do than head inside for the evening. We’ve seen some truly incredibly looks tonight, a great mix of magic and science. Thanks for spending time with us for a special evening at the museum, celebrating the Space-Time Continuum through fashion!

Michael Keaton is reportedly in “early talks with Warner Bros. to reprise his role as Batman in the upcoming DC film The Flash, reports The Wrap. The long-gestating film is set to premiere in the summer of 2022.

The Flash is part of the newer slate of DC films to come out of the company’s Expanded Universe franchise that included Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League, Wonder Woman, Shazam!, and Aquaman. It’ll be loosely based off of the crossover comic series Flashpoint, in which Barry Allen (reprised by Ezra Miller) tries to change the past when his mother died. The film will be directed by Andrés Muschietti (It and It: Chapter Two).

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According to The Wrap, Keaton will return to the franchise as a way to explain the DC franchise’s multiverse concept, something that’s familiar to fans of the comics. The concept is that all of the various adaptations of DC properties are connected because they’re part of a multiverse, and thus, if you travel from one parallel universe to another, you could have characters from various films and TV shows meet one another in a way that remains canon. Keaton played the caped crusader in 1989’s Batman and 1992’s Batman Returns, and The Wrap notes that the film will essentially ignore 1995’s Batman Forever and Batman & Robin in that particular continuity.

Most recently, The CW’s Arrowverse has put the DC multiverse to use with its own franchise of DC properties, using its latest crossover event, Crisis on Infinite Earths to pull in a number of actors from prior DC adaptations, including Burt Ward from Batman, Tom Welling and Erica Durance from Smallville, Brandon Routh from Superman Returns, Tom Ellis from Lucifer, and The Flash‘s Miller. If it happens, Keaton would be the latest example to be part of this project.

Warner Bros. is looking to expand on the Matt Reeve’s upcoming film The Batman. It was announced today that it’s greenlit a TV series set in Gotham City’s police department from Reeves, Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter, and The Batman producer Dylan Clark.

Earlier this week, Reeves signed an overall deal with Warner Bros. TV to develop new projects for the studio, including its just-launched streaming service, HBO Max. Reeves and his production company are no strangers to television: they produced shows like Fox’s The Passage and Amazon’s Tales from the Loop. This project is the first under this new deal.

According to Warner Bros., this series will “build upon the motion picture’s examination of the anatomy of corruption in Gotham City, ultimately launching a new Batman universe across multiple platforms.”

The Batman is the latest cinematic take on the caped crusader. The film stars Robert Pattinson as the titular hero, as well as Colin Ferrel as The Penguin, Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as The Riddler, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, and Jeffrey Wright as Commissioner James Gordon. There’s no word on whether or not any of those actors will appear on the series, but it seems like it wouldn’t be out of the question for them to make at least a cameo appearance. The film is slated to be released on October 21st, 2021.

Warner Bros. is working to build up its library of original content to pull in new subscribers, and it looks as though Reeves and company are looking to build out a larger Batman universe. This show joins other high-profile tie-in projects that’ll stream on HBO Max. Dune director Denis Villeneuve is set to direct the pilot for Dune: The Sisterhood, a companion series to his upcoming adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel. The streaming service is also getting some big tent-pole shows like adaptations of Madeline Miller’s Circe and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, as well as a Green Lantern Arrowverse series.

What do you do if you’re trying to hide your audition for the world’s most high-profile superhero role from a director who just so happens to have directed three whole movies about said superhero? Well, if you’re Robert Pattinson, apparently you go with the flimsiest work excuse in the playbook.

“It’s funny because Chris is so secretive about everything to do with his movies,” the actor told The Irish Times while promoting Tenet. “And then I had to be really secretive about Batman stuff. So I had to lie to Chris about having to go for a screen test – I said I had a family emergency. And as soon as I said ‘it’s a family emergency’ he said: ‘You’re doing the Batman audition, aren’t you?’”

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Good thing it all worked out in the end, because Pattinson revealed in the same interview that all that running around against the stream of time has done wonders to Bruce Wayne-ify his body.

“When I’m running on screen I’m generally paired with John David who is an ex-NFL player so it was the most unfair thing in the world,” the actor told the publication. “The maximum workout I do most of the time is a casual stroll. John David can run all day long. It was good that I ended up being pretty fit. But definitely, at the beginning, there were days I just could not walk afterwards.”

Matt Reeves’ The Batman also stars Colin Farrell as The Penguin, Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as The Riddler, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, Jeffrey Wright as Commissioner Jim Gordon, and Peter Sarsgaard as the mysterious “Gotham D.A. Gil Colson.” The film is slated for an October 21, 2021 release, followed by a spin-off series intended for HBO Max helmed by Reeves, Boardwalk Empire’s Terence Winter, and Battinson producer Dylan Clark.

Check out the Mad Max-esque new Batmobile, as well as a camera test featuring the Caped Crusader’s new costume.

Ezra Miller’s The Flash is getting another Batman. Deadline reports that Ben Affleck will reprise his version of the character in the 2022 film in a cameo appearance, along with Michael Keaton, who’s also joining the film as his version of the caped crusader.

The news comes ahead of DC’s upcoming virtual fan convention, DC Fandome, in which we’re expecting to get some updates on a number of forthcoming DC projects, like Wonder Woman 1984 and The Batman. According to Deadline, Affleck’s appearance will be a cameo, whereas Keaton’s role will be a bit more substantial.

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Affleck first starred as Batman in the 2016 film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and subsequently appeared briefly Suicide Squad and as a central character in the team-up film Justice League. Affleck was then scheduled to reprise is role in a solo Batman film that he would direct, but later stepped down from the project, saying that he couldn’t “crack” the story and problems with alcoholism. Since then, Matt Reeves has taken over the project with next year’s The Batman, with Robert Pattinson set to play the titular character.

The Flash will be tackling a comic storyline called Flashpoint, in which the character Barry Allen tries to undo the past, and ends up messing with multiple realities. Keaton reportedly came onboard the film earlier this summer as a way to explain that multiverse concept as the character encounters different versions of the people he knows.

This isn’t too unfamiliar to DC audiences: Last year’s Arrowverse crossover event Crisis on Infinite Earths saw Miller pop up to encounter that franchise’s version of Barry Allen. Affleck’s appearance makes sense, given that he’s already in the same continuity as Miller’s character, but it does beg the question: Will DC also bring in Val Kilmer, George Clooney, or Christian Bale for cameo appearances as well?

I’m a huge fan of the Dark Knight, so I was ready to throw hands a few weeks ago when someone told me they considered Batman to be a terrible superhero.

“You can’t just say that. You have to give reasons,” I demanded.

Well, she did: “Bruce Wayne has wealth and access and power, and he uses it all on himself—building armor and weapons and going out in the night to beat up bad guys just because he can’t get over his parents’ murder. When, instead, he could be using all his wealth to save Gotham City by improving schools, getting homeless people off the streets, and providing opportunities for young people who would otherwise turn to a life of crime.”

I had to admit she made a good point. And that point has stuck with me.

Superheroes have done us a disservice

Why do we need superheroes? Why are we attracted to them? Why are comic books and superhero movie franchises the mythology of the modern age?

More importantly: why has our collective fascination with mega-powerful men (and sometimes aliens) remained steadfast even as their closest real-life equivalents—the “leader of the free world” and “commander-in-chief” of the world’s greatest armed force, along with the exceedingly wealthy heads of giant tech organizations and retail companies—repeatedly prove incapable of (or unwilling to) effectively address the vast and complex issues facing swathes of the global population? Poverty, lack of healthcare, injustice, and lack of access to education and life-transforming information affect millions daily, and it seems that those with great power shun the great responsibility that comes with that power.

Despite this, there is a cult-like dedication to the superhero genre. Hundreds of millions have flocked to theaters, resulting in three of Marvel’s Avengers movies being in the top-ten highest-grossing films of all time. Every year—well, every year except the current one—tens of thousands make pilgrimages to comic book conventions dressed up as the demigods and vigilantes they most admire—and, often, as the villains they’ve come to love too. Fans become emotionally invested in TV series featuring characters who have power and latitude beyond anything we’d dare hope to obtain in our own lives. (I know Arrow is over, but I’ve stanned Olicity since day one and grew increasingly frustrated when the show insisted on using every occasion possible to drive Oliver and Felicity apart. And you will never not find me talking about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., my heart and home among all comic book television adaptations.)

But, as a recent TIME article suggested, maybe it’s time we reassess how we relate to superheroes in the midst of our present social crises. We look up to them because they are symbols of that which we wish to do and be, but cannot and are not. And that is where superheroes (and our dedication to them) have done us a disservice. Over the past decade, racial tensions have flared in the United States, bringing to light the ugly reality that racism, prejudice, and bigotry are not a thing of the past. The protests and riots of recent memory (some still ongoing) have forced the national discussion again and again to the topics of systemic injustice, economic inequality, and lack of opportunity for minorities. The #MeToo movement and a steadier, sustained spotlight on feminist causes has highlighted the lengths to which we still need to go for the respect and dignity of women in the workplace and public life. Global poverty and refugee crises continue, seemingly unabated, despite repeated recommitments to action. Politicians and para-politicians lie, bully, demean, and engage in blatant hypocrisy at the turn of every news cycle, and sometimes more frequently than that.

I often feel like Digory in The Magician’s Nephew, where the little boy says to the misguided magician who is his Uncle Andrew (who has just sent a little girl into the mysterious and dangerous Other Place with no way to return), “Don’t I just wish I was big enough to punch your head!”

Digory is all of us in these times. Digory is what superheroes have made us into: children, helpless and scared, feeling powerless and wishing we could deal a tangible blow to the villains of our day. Despite a commitment to non-violent protest, we fantasize about punching the heads of the fascists and neo-Nazis,, the racists and bigots, the hypocrites and politicians who care only about holding onto their power as long as possible.

And this is where superheroes have let us down. While we long to have their power and free rein, they have failed to exemplify how we can use the power we do have to effect the change we seek.

The heroics we need

Comic books and superhero movies have long been viewed as a channel by which social issues are litigated. The heroes, such as the X-Men—persecuted and misunderstood vigilantes—and other powered individuals are often seen as stand-ins for the oppressed and downtrodden who deserve justice. The costumed characters usually end up kicking the villains’ asses, shaming the system, saving the day, and carrying on to the next adventure. But what’s rarely seen in the pages of comic books and on the big screen is heroes doing the steady, day-to-day work of justice—investing their time, capabilities, and resources. Everyone pays lip service, but few (if any) get their hands dirty on the lowest levels if it doesn’t involve punching or blasting the enemy.

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All this makes me wonder what superhero-based entertainment would look like if our most popular “heroes” weren’t just the eye-in-the-sky type. What if Superman was on the ground, in the trenches, serving in soup kitchens, establishing programs to help prevent the creation of the villains he will otherwise have to eventually defeat—and prevent young people from joining the ranks of the villains that already exist? What if Bruce Wayne funded non-profit paralegal organizations working to reverse the negative impact of the justice system on black and brown communities? What if Wonder Woman spent her time visiting the heads of major corporations, convincing them to hire more women in leadership positions and pay them the same as men? What if the Avengers visited Capitol Hill once in a while to testify for reforms in the education system instead of testifying only when their latest solution to protect the planet from hostile aliens has caused irreparable damage to New York City?

Ironically, in Batman Begins (which preceded the MCU by three years), Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes) asked Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) to be more grounded and practical in his desire to wage war against injustice in Gotham.

Justice is about harmony… You care about justice? Look beyond your own pain, Bruce. This city is rotting. They talk about the Depression as if it’s history, but it’s not. Things are worse than ever down here. Falcone floods our streets with crime and drugs, preying on the desperate, creating new Joe Chills every day.

She identifies the factors that keep Gotham in the grip of injustice—fear, misplaced wealth, and the undeserving in power:

…as long as [Falcone] keeps the bad people rich and the good people scared no one will touch him. Good people like your parents who will stand against injustice: they’re gone. What chance does Gotham have when the good people do nothing?

What would Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy have looked like if Bruce had taken Rachel’s advice? Perhaps Gotham would have never succumbed to the likes of the Joker and Bane. (Perhaps, too, the superhero screen adaptations that have come since would have taken a different cue.)

Just as superhero entertainment has quietly influenced society to adopt a fairer and more just mentality, it can be used to inspire the steady, unglamorous, behind-the-scenes work that needs to be done to bring about consistent, long-term change. It can be used to inspire the ordinary person to wield the power they have—their physical, spiritual, financial, and emotional capacity to influence persons and systems.

We have accepted the call to be more like superheroes. We look up to them and admire them. We praise their courage and strength. But we need superheroes to be more like us—to show us what it means to use our power to bring about the change we desire. We have looked up to Thor and Wonder Woman, Star-Lord and Ghost Rider—gods and the offspring of gods. It is time the gods come down to our level and work with us, showing how much can be achieved through dedication and perseverance.

The gods become us

The Christian Scriptures speak of the Son of God in the way that we need to be able to speak of our superheroes. In what C.S. Lewis, the author of the aforementioned Magician’s Nephew, called a “true myth,” Jesus “set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a servant. Having become human, he stayed human… he lived a selfless life…” (Philippians 2:6-7) The Gospels speak of Jesus as a man who, while never rescinding his claim to divinity, led an exemplary life—loving his friends, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, ministering to those who were hurting, and standing up to the establishment that preyed on those who were weak and poor and who had no influence in a society that was stacked against them.

The time is ripe for our gods to be reborn as men. Comic book adaptations such as Netflix’s Umbrella Academy, Amazon’s The Boys, and HBO’s Watchmen have proven that the public is ready for heroes who do more than suit up and punch and blast. We are ready for more than idealism, air-brushed morality, and superficial platitudes. We are ready to see those who have power we can only dream of struggle with realistic emotional dilemmas, mental health, and interpersonal conflicts. We are ready to embrace the butchering of established power structures and arrogant, pandering para-politicians who appear to be above the law they claim to defend. (And for those who missed the pun: No, I am not advocating violence.) We are ready for the voices of black and brown communities, seemingly recognized only in deaths, protests, and riots, to no longer be held up as some kind of Rorschach test for political factions but to be a test of whether we will be our brothers’ keeper as their blood cries out from the ground.

I’m ready to argue that Rachel Dawes is the real hero of Batman Begins. Sure, the Batman stops Ra’s al Ghul’s plot to cause Gotham’s citizens to tear their city apart through panic and fear. But if the city had more people like Dawes, more people in the trenches dedicated to doing good and using the access, influence, and power at their fingertips to fight the forces that held the city hostage, the Batman might never have been necessary. Perhaps, unintentionally, the movie is sending us this message—little nods throughout inform us that what Bruce Wayne is turning himself into is not exactly what Gotham needs. When Bruce takes Alfred down to his new lair for the first time, Alfred tells him that his great-great-grandfather used the tunnels under Wayne Manor to smuggle slaves to freedom as part of the Underground Railroad. Bruce’s father “nearly bankrupted” his own company fighting poverty in his city, hoping to inspire the rest of the city’s wealthy to put their resources on the line. Bruce never engages with this information; he’s intent on becoming an incorruptible, everlasting, elemental, and terrifying symbol.

Iron Man, Captain America, the Green Arrow, Supergirl. They’re all symbols, somewhat incorruptible (at least to us) and everlasting in the way that good characters are. They represent something we can aspire to but can’t achieve. Maybe such symbols are not what we need right now; maybe we need to see our heroes doing things that we can see ourselves doing. Science has proven that observational learning—learning by watching others, even on TV—can change the way we behave. According to psychiatrist Steven Gans, we are more likely to imitate people we admire, people in authoritative positions, and people we perceive as personable and warm. Superheroes, for instance.

The TIME article I mentioned earlier pointed out that 2018’s Black Panther made a move toward showing a more boots-on-the-ground application of a superhero’s influence and what that could look like:

T’Challa opens a community center in Killmonger’s hometown, Oakland. He asks his girlfriend to run a social-outreach program for Black communities and his tech-savvy sister to head up an education program—the same sorts of community investment that activists calling to redistribute police budgets into social support systems are now calling for.

While the crushing and untimely passing of Chadwick Boseman will likely change things for the planned Black Panther sequel, I hope that Marvel allows movie-goers to see that what T’Challa started is being carried out.

Black Panther and creations like him have inspired millions to dress up in real life and to role-play in video games. It might sound simplistic, childish even—but what if millions witnessed the latest comic book movie or TV adaptation and it depicted costumed superheroes working side-by-side with mere mortals, investing their time and money and resources in practical, efficient ways that created change at the lowest levels? What if our “supes” left their dark lairs and glass towers and Batmobiles and Quinjets behind, and manned the streets of low-income neighborhoods, speaking to high school students and college kids, inspiring them to live worthy lives in a rotten world?

Seeing our heroes in this light might inspire us to be less like Bruce Wayne, dark and angsty and bitter, and more like Rachel Dawes, hopeful and committed in the face of tremendous darkness. It might make more people willing to rattle the cages—and lead to more people doing the little they can as capably and consistently and compassionately as they can.

What if our gods came down to our level and showed us how to live as men?

Daniel Whyte IV is a writer and former web designer and podcast producer. He’s a sci-fi/fantasy nerd who pretends to be serious by writing about culture and faith. When he’s not writing about superheroes, time travel, fantasy, or Narnia, he’s tweeting about those things @dmarkwiv.

We’re about two decades into an era that history will remember as That Time Humans Demanded At Least Four Comic Book Movies A Year. (I’m guessing this era will be remembered for other things, too, but I’m trying to stay positive for once.) My colleagues and I talk about comics characters pretty much every day, and those conversations lead me to mull a specific type of comic book movie: the Superhero Origin Story.

Before I even knew what was happening, I found myself drawn, inexorably, as if by some force powerful destiny, to rank those stories. In reverse order from worst to best.

Here I compile my results. And allow me to be clear: This is purely a personal list. With great ranking list posts must come great responsibility, and I take all of it on my shoulders, as these choices in no way represent the opinions of my colleagues at Tor.com, Tordotcom Publishing, Tor Books, my alma mater, any company I have ever worked for, or even my own family.

With that in mind, have some Ranking Criteria!

• Catalytic Trauma? Most superheroes are born from a cataclysmic event of some kind. People don’t just wake up one day and decide to beat criminals up while dressed as a bat. Part of a good origin story is making sense of the catalytic trauma, and showing the audience how it forms the hero.
• Moment of Truth? Most origin stories have a moment when the main character has to decide to become a hero, and often, usually, the success of the story hinges on it.
• Even Rocky had a montage: What’s an origin story without a montage of training/making the supersuit/testing the gadgets?
• What’s your name, kid? Did the hero name themselves? Or did the press or a nefarious nemesis give them a moniker that stuck?
• Quotes? Some heroes have catchphrases, and some superhero origin movies have indelible quotes that we here at Tor.com yell at each other wayyyy too much. This is where those go.

And finally, a note on what I included versus what I did not: A movie like Spider-Man: Homecoming isn’t an origin story, as Tom Holland’s take on Peter Parker has already been Spider-Manning for a while when we meet him in Civil War, before we even get to his stand alone story. Or maybe you’re looking for Mystery Men? But no! Like Justice League, that’s an “origin of the team” movie, not a superhero origin story. What about, say, X-Men? A classic film, but that’s more of a “We join our heroes, already in progress” movie. It is possible, however, that I have forgotten some individual super-origins! If so, please let me know in the comments.

29. Joker (2019)

Screenshot: Warner Bros. Pictures/DC Films

Catalytic Trauma? Crime Alley, pearls, we all know the drill when it comes to Batman.
Moment of Truth? N/A
Even Rocky had a montage: N/A
What’s your name, kid? N/A
Quotes? Ummm, N/A? Bruce and Arthur talk a little bit at the Gates of Stately Wayne Manor, but I don’t think Bruce says anything that counts for this.

I’m putting this at the bottom because, come on, after the vacillation of whether or not Arthur is Thomas Wayne’s son, and then that weird, tense scene between Arthur and Bruce at the gates of Stately Wayne Manor? And just generally how much this movie positioned itself as a BOLD NEW TAKE on, like, everything, man? To just shoehorn the Crime Alley Murder Scene into that last few minutes felt really lazy to me. We’ve all seen this moment so many times—if you’re going to reinvent, go all out and reinvent.

28. The Incredible Hulk (2008)

Screenshot: Marvel Studios

Catalytic Trauma? Something something Gamma Radiation
Moment of Truth? NA
Even Rocky had a montage: NA
What’s your name, kid? NA
Quotes? “Don’t make me… hungry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m… hungry.”

2008’s The Incredible Hulk (the Ed Norton one) is at the bottom because it’s not really an origin story, but instead of dropping us into Hulk’s life, already in progress, and trusting us to figure it out, it packs Bruce Banner’s iconic origin into the opening montage of film, which felt like such a weird half-measure that I’m putting it here.

27. Wonder Woman (2017)

Screenshot: DC Films/Warner Bros. Films

Catalytic Trauma? The Great War comes to Themyscira; Antiope dies in battle.
Moment of Truth? Diana decides to defy her mother’s wishes and leave with Steve Trevor; Diana walks out into No Man’s Land alone.
Even Rocky had a montage: The first 20 minutes of the film shows us the Amazon’s training regimen as Diana grows up.
What’s your name, kid? “Wonder Woman” isn’t used, but Steve Trevor names Diana “Diana Prince” when she attempts to introduce herself as “Diana, Princess of Themyscira” to a bunch of congealed old generals.
Quotes? “You’re wrong about [humanity]. They’re everything you say—but so much more.”

Diana is born superpowered and raised on Themyscira among a bunch of superpowered women. We see her growing up there and being trained as a fighter. When she comes to the, I don’t know, regular part of Earth, on one hand, all she’s doing is using her natural abilities to help people who aren’t Themysciran. She also doesn’t change or grow even a little bit, because she doesn’t need to: she starts out awesome, kind, brave, and highly intelligent, and she’s still all those things at the end, just a little bit sadder.

The thing the film does beautifully, though, is show us Diana making the choice to help humanity despite strong opposition from her family. She chooses to hear Steve Trevor out and treat him with compassion, which leads to her learning about the war raging outside her hidden homeland. And, of course, she chooses to keep fighting for humanity rather than joining Ares to rule over it, despite humanity’s clear shortcomings. So while there’s not much of a traditional origin story arc here, I still wanted to include it.

26. Blade (1998)

Screenshot: Marvel Enterprises/New Line Cinema

Catalytic Trauma? Learning the truth about his mom’s tragic fate; being a Daywalker trapped for ever between two worlds yet truly at home in neither, in general.
Moment of Truth: N/A
Even Rocky had a montage: N/A
What’s your name, kid? He’s so fucking cool his name is just Blade.
Quotes: “Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill.”

We see Blade’s origin in the opening moments, when his mother is attacked by a vampire while she’s pregnant with him. He’s saved, but is now a Dhampir, and his mother dies. However, when we cut to Wesley Snipes as Adult Blade, he’s already a seasoned vampire hunter and has a father-figure/assistant named Whistler. The film picks the story up as he goes to war against a group of vampire elders who are trying to raise the blood god La Magra. While this is cool as shit, it’s not so much an “origin story” as an in media res story—but it does touch on Blade’s mother’s tragic fate a few times, which is why I wanted to include it on this list. If you go into Blade with no idea who he is, you’ll get a sense of his literal origin.

Plus, tl;dr: Go watch Blade. The success of his movie is the reason you have your precious MCU and fifteen different goddamn cinematic X-Men timelines. And hopefully, someday, when things are back to the state that passes for normal, we’ll get to see Mahershala Ali take up the mantle.

25. Darkman (1990)

Screenshot: Renaissance Pictures/Universal Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Scientist Peyton Westlake is attacked, burned with acid, blown up, experimented on while he’s unconscious… actually, this whole movie is him being traumatized.
Moment of Truth: He doesn’t really have a defining moment, he works to get his faces as stable as possible, and then starts using them to exact vengeance.
Even Rocky had a montage: We get several experiment montages, but never the sense that he’s testing himself or gaining new skills
What’s your name, kid? He names himself in a final voiceover, having disguised himself as Bruce Campbell: “I’m everyone, and no one. Everywhere…nowhere. Call me…Darkman.”
Quotes: “Take the fucking elephant!”

Darkman was Sam Raimi’s first try at a superhero movie. He tried to get the rights to The Shadow and Batman, but when that didn’t work out he wrote his own superhero, making him more an homage to Universal Horror characters than a typical costumed hero. Peyton Westlake is a scientist, working on a highly experimental form of synthetic skin. He finally develops a form of the skin that lasts for exactly 90 minutes before disintegrating, just in time for a gang to break into his lab, burn him with acid, and blow him up. He survives long enough to be subjected to a different (and utterly non-consensual) experimental treatment that kills most of the nerves in his skin, but also makes him extremely strong and mentally unstable. Although to be fair, being burned with acid and blown up probably doesn’t help his mental state.

The only sense we get of Peyton’s character is that he’s a dedicated, nigh-obsessive scientist, who’s also happy to suggest blowing off work to stay in bed with his girlfriend. After he gains his powers, he fixates on getting revenge on the man who blew him up, which slowly turns into saving his girlfriend from Louis Strack, the boss of the guy who blew him up. I remembered liking this when I was a kid but I have to admit that while it’s super stylish, it doesn’t work too well as an origin. (There’s also a lengthy helicopter chase [???] that does not work on any level.) Since we don’t know Peyton too well before the attack, we can’t get a handle on how he’s changed aside from “he really wants to kill the guys who blew him up, and now he really wants to kill the guy who’s attempting to murder his girlfriend.” So, solid motives, but “vengeance” really isn’t enough to hang a film on. We never get the sense that he’s using his strength for the greater good—and obviously the evil developer Strack is horrifically murderous and corrupt as a person, but there’s only a tiny tiny hint that his plan for the riverfront is hurting the people of Unnamed City, and we never see anything to disprove that he’s providing a lot of jobs? This is also a case where the movie’s divorce from reality hurts it a bit. We know that Peyton’s false faces will only last 90 minutes, which is a perfect source of tension, but beyond that we never really know how strong he is, or if he has any other powers. When he fights, his main move seems to be jumping on people from above, but it’s not like he’s Spider-Man, with powers that allow him to scale walls, he just somehow manages to climb up to catwalks and mezzanines with no indication of how he does that without anyone seeing him. Hiding in shadows is not, itself, a viable superpower.

24. Green Lantern (2011)

Screenshot: DC Entertainment/Warner Bros. Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Young Hal Jordan watches his dad explode.
Moment of Truth: Hal finally communes with the Lantern and it recites the Oath through him; he decides to stop running away and defend Earth.
Even Rocky had a montage: We get a few far-too-brief moments of Hal ecstatically flying, and then a weirdly aggro training montage on Oa that’s so mean-spirited it doesn’t accomplish what this montage should do, namely show us a hero coming into their own.
What’s your name, kid? The Green Lantern Corps. was named eons ago, and Hal is just taking up the mantle.
Quotes: “I know that humans aren’t as strong as other species, or the smartest. We’re young, we have a lot to learn. But we’re worth saving.”; “I, Hal Jordan, do solemnly swear to pledge allegiance… to a lantern, that I got from a dying purple alien in a swamp.”

Let the record show that I love Ryan Reynolds. I’m a huge fan of his gin, he was fantastic in Buried, and one of my greatest wishes in life is that I could have been the one who leaked the Deadpool footage. But Green Lantern refuses to work. Every time it starts to work, it’s like a studio exec noticed and yanked the leash to make it behave. We get multiple moments where “the love interest” is actually a competent pilot and business manager who calls our callow hero on his shit—but then she has to go back to being doe-eyed and damsel-y. We get a potentially twisted father figure arc, where the nerdy character turns to villainy to take revenge on the father who always treated him like crap—but instead our comic book movie gives us a science professor who becomes a villain because being a nerd made him sad. Also, he’s in a wheelchair? And hates Ryan Reynolds’ character for being handsome? Read the room, movie.

I watched the Extended Edition, which I think specifically beefed up the origin story aspect. Our hero Hal Jordan is the son of a test pilot. Elder Jordan tells his son that part of a test pilot’s job is “not to be afraid”, so we know the poor bastard’s doomed. But the movie chooses to gun the engine and shoot straight down the tarmac into a scene of young Hal Jordan watching his dad die in a fiery explosion. Then we cut to Present Day where Hal Jordan is dashing out of a rumpled bed and away from his latest one-night stand because he’s late for his job—as a test pilot. And yes he has flashbacks to his dad’s fiery demise during the test, why do you ask?

Also Taika Waititi is in this movie? Though he and Reynolds both refuse to admit it.

We’re all set up for when the Ring chooses Hal, for him to transform his life and become a better person and be mentored by Sinestro. But no! Hal mostly stays the same, Sinestro tells him not worthy to be in the Lantern Corps., Hal agrees, and goes back to Earth but keeps the ring and all the superpowers??? He obviously loves flying when he’s not backflashing to his dad’s fiery death, but the movie spends almost no energy on the fact that he can fucking fly now, sans plane. When he has to defend some partygoers from a maverick helicopter he does this by creating an enormous, green, Hot Wheels track, instead of just throwing a net over the helicopter blades or something. Finally, he spends so much time fighting his old childhood friend (who, again, is now a deformed, wheelchair-using villain [?!?!? WTF, MOVIE]) that he barely has time to fight Parallax, the actual supervillain, and when he does fight him he just keeps using the Ring to make big green machine guns and fists and shit instead of literally anything in the universe since the whole point of Green Lantern’s powers is that you can create anything you can imagine which is cool as SHIT and why he’s kind of the best hero (other than Nightcrawler) and you have that CGI budget why don’t you use it to make some cool shit??? Did Lockheed Martin produce this movie? Was it funded by Grumman? There are more things in Heaven and Earth than guns and fucking fists.

23. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Screenshot: Columbia Pictures/Marvel Entertainment/Sony Pictures Releasing

Catalytic Trauma? Peter Parker’s parents’ death; THE TRAGIC DEATH OF UNCLE BEN
Moment of Truth: Peter rescues a kid on the Williamsburg Bridge, and finally stops pursuing vengeance and starts acting like a hero.
Even Rocky had a montage: The first spiderpower-testing-montage comes as Peter is skating, and gradually notices how strong he is. Unfortunately, the rest of the montages are all framed as Peter hunting Ben’s murderer, so any sense of Peter’s growing powers and skills are balanced by the very real fear that he’s going to do something drastic.
What’s your name, kid? He names himself, seemingly out of nowhere, during the rescue on the bridge.
Quotes: “No one seems to grasp the concept of the mask.”

Once again, I need to be clear about a few things. I liked Marc Webb’s debut film, 500 Days of Summer, enormously. Andrew Garfield is one of my favorite actors. (Has there been a modern run of performances to match his in Silence, Hacksaw Ridge, Angels in America, and Breathe?) I love Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy and I think her chemistry with Garfield is remarkable, Martin Sheen and Sally Field are fantastic as Uncle Ben and Aunt May, respectively, and Rhys Ifans is good as Dr. Connors. It’s cool that Peter and Flash Thompson have an actual relationship arc. Making Peter an engineering nerd who can immediately diagnose the problem with May’s chest freezer and rig up a bolt for his bedroom door is a nice way to show us his intelligence. The rescue on the Williamsburg Bridge? Good. New York City’s crane operators working together to help Spider-Man save the city? VERY good.

However. This movie, as a Spider-Man movie, just doesn’t work. The film sets up a few innovations that could be great: a bodega robbery leads to Uncle Ben’s murder; Peter clashes with Captain Stacy rather than J. Jonah Jameson over Spider-Man’s motives; Peter’s kind of a dirtbag who uses his spiderpowers to enhance his skating; Peter is a believably traumatized, orphaned teen. But in each case the movie goes way over the top. As many, many people have stated before me, this take on Peter Parker strays too far from the spirit of the character. He’s way too cool—and almost a bully himself at a few points in the film. The fact that his father was a scientist who was murdered for his top-secret research undercuts the working-class underdog aspect that makes Peter so special among superheroes. He doesn’t start using his powers for good because with them must come great responsibility—he starts off by using his powers to hunt Uncle Ben’s murderer down like he’s a teenage Punisher. He doesn’t start acting like a hero until an hour and fifteen minutes into the movie, and even then he only saves a few people before he’s so busy trying to stop Dr. Connors that we never get to see him be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. We don’t come to Spider-Man for vengeance, we come to him to see the best New Yorker ever, and this movie falls short of that.

22. Hulk (2003)

Screenshot: Universal Pictures/Marvel Studios

Catalytic Trauma? Good god, where to begin? Scientist David Banner torments his infant son to trigger Hulk responses, then tries to murder him for being dangerous; Bruce’s mother’s intervention means that baby Bruce lives, but he watches his father stab his mother to death—or, excuse me, as David Banner himself puts it, Bruce sees when “she..and the knife…merged”; Adult Bruce is repeatedly prodded and triggered by both General Ross and his father.
Moment of Truth: Bruce/Hulk’s true nature is revealed when he goes to protect Betty Ross from David Banner’s evil mutant dogs. (Did I mention you get to watch the Hulk kill evil mutant dogs in this movie?)
Even Rocky had a montage: Any time DNA appears in this film, you can bet your life someone’s about to sequence the shit out of it. We also get a few fun scenes of Hulk leaping across the desert before General Ross tries to nuke him. God! THIS MOVIE!
What’s your name, kid? I don’t think anyone quite calls the Hulk the Hulk?
Quotes: “Puny human!”

UGH THIS FUCKING MOVIE.

I’m a huge fan of Ang Lee, and I remember going into this movie years ago wanting to like it, and being impressed with some of the stylistic choices. When I rewatched I thought it would probably rank pretty high on this list, since it delves into how Bruce Banner becomes Hulk as a result of his father’s experiments, and becomes a deeply-nested origin story. I will say that between Eric Bana and a young Daniel Dae Kim, this film has the best cheekbones on this list. But! Cheekbones aren’t everything, and I found rewatching Hulk to be a very frustrating exercise. It it so overburdened with daddy issues, and so divorced from reality, that it feels like an extended family therapy session rather than the opening salvo of an iconic hero.

David Banner runs through a series of tests on cell regeneration, in what appears to be a concerted effort to transform humans into every Spider-Man villain simultaneously. (Except Vulture—I didn’t see any vultures.). Obviously he tests his volatile serums on himself with no oversight.

This does not go well.

What goes even worse is that his wife gets pregnant and he discovers that their child has anomalous DNA. When the military cuts his funding he responds in the only rational way: blowing up the lab up and attempting to murder his child. We cut to Bruce Banner, now Bruce Krenzler, heading off to college, then we cut again to him as a scientist, working with his ex Betty Ross on an experiment that is almost exactly the same as his dad’s. He has no idea about this. He exposes himself to severe Gamma Radiation to save a fellow lab worker (who, having served his purpose, is never spoken of again) and he starts blacking out and becoming the Hulk. The Hulk is a giant green rage monster, but he seems to recognize Betty, and only Betty. The rest of the movie veers between Bruce’s crazy-ass dad (played with full crazy-ass-ness by Nick Nolte) trying to force Bruce to be the Hulk full time, and Betty’s equally shitty dad (played with full Old West gruffness by Sam Elliot) trying to imprison or explode the Hulk. The whole psychodrama culminates in General Ross shackling Bruce to a chair so he has to sit still and listen to his father berate him, and inform him that the Hulk is his true son. (I’m not sure what this is supposed to achieve?) The Hulk smashes, Banner père transforms into a fellow monster and leeches a bunch of power from him, both of them seemingly explode, General Ross bugs Betty’s phone in case Bruce is still alive. It’s all very gross. Only in the last scene do we learn that Bruce has fled to Central America, where he is working as a traveling medic, and he finally tells a soldier “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” This movie is far more a psychological drama that’s using the story of the Hulk as a platform rather than a true superhero film—which could have been great if it was a bit shorter, and if it focused a bit more on Bruce and Betty rather than their uniquely awful dads.

21. Green Hornet (2011)

Screenshot: Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Releasing

Catalytic Trauma? Britt Reid’s mother’s offscreen death; Britt being systematically emotionally abused by his jerk dad.
Moment of Truth: When Britt witnesses a mugging, he decides to intervene despite being titanically incompetent as a fighter. Luckily, Kato helps.
Even Rocky had a montage: As Britt never trains, and Kato seemingly doesn’t need to, the montages here are all Kato working on cars and weapons.
What’s your name, kid? Britt tries to make his newspaper name him “The Green Bee” (in a weird homage to the thing he thinks killed his dad? But then it turns out that’s not what happened?) but Kato changes it to the marginally better “Green Hornet”, and the editors run with it.
Quotes: “I have two questions for you Kato, and then you can go home. Why is it that my dad’s mechanic makes the coffee, and why is it that without you, the coffee tastes like crap?”

Full disclosure: I honestly forgot this movie existed until I started research for this post. You there, out in Readerland—do you like this film? Is there a fanbase? I’d love to hear from people who liked this one in the comments, because I feel like no one talks about it at all.

As far as origin stories go, this one starts off pretty strong. We open on Britt Reid, who looks to be about 8, being chauffeured to his dad’s office. He’s clutching an action figure of a masked hero. His dad, a mega-rich newspaper mogul, berates him for getting sent home from school, and yells at him that of course they miss Britt’s mother, but they both have to move on with their lives. (Normal thing to scream at a child.) Britt protests that he only got in trouble for defending another kid from a bully. The dad scoffs at him, grabs the action figure, and rips its head off. Then he chucks the head into a trashcan, and shoves the decapitated body back at a weeping Britt.

Couple things.

We immediately see that Britt and his dad are cartoon rich. We see why. We see that Britt loves superheroes, that his mom is dead, that he has a fraught relationship with his emotionally abusive dad, and that his instinct is to do the right thing despite fear of punishment.

Honestly this might be the most elegant opening scene on this entire list. This thing is a fucking mathematical proof for a superhero. Unfortunately it’s all downhill from here. There are some fantastic touches. Since Britt inherits his dad’s paper he can print articles on “The Green Hornet” until he makes himself famous. Jay Chou is great as Kato, and the movie has fun with the fact that Britt knows he’s the lesser hero of the two. There’s a long sequence about the importance of a good cappuccino which almost justifies the whole movie for me. But the movie itself is such a bumpy ride. We get Christoph Waltz as an underworld figure named Chudnofsky, who is sometimes campy, sometimes scary—but never enough of either—who only transforms into a real “villain” at the end of the film. Britt himself barely changes. He and Kato both spend almost all of their shared screentime with Cameron Diaz sexually harassing her, and it’s gross. The tech montages of Kato building cars and weapons are fantastic, and there’s a beautiful split-screen sequence when Chudnofsky sends a bunch of henchpeople out after the Hornet, but each time the movie builds up some steam it bogs down again a few minutes later. There’s also the fact that apparently Kato is a legit superhero who can move almost faster than light, which is never explained—but sometimes, maybe, Britt has this superpower, too? But since there’s no arc to those abilities they just seem like plot conveniences, and we never learn why or how either of them are capable of becoming heroes, which makes the whole film fall flat.

20. The Fantastic Four (20o5)

Screenshot: Marvel Enterprises/20th Century Fox

Catalytic trauma? Ex-lovers/scientists Reed Richards and Sue Storm, Sue’s brother Johnny, and astronaut Ben Grimm are working on scientist/entrepreneur Viktor von Doom’s space station when a “space storm” irradiates all of them.
Moment of Truth: The Four work together to save people from an accident on the Brooklyn Bridge. Fellow New Yorkers begin cheering for Ben Grimm, and shout the cops down when they try to arrest him for being made of rocks.
Even Rocky had a montage: Most of the montages are dedicated to Reed and Sue researching ‘cures’ for their powers.
What’s your name, kid? The press names them the Fantastic Four after the Brooklyn Bridge Incident, and Johnny runs with it, declaring himself the leader of the group, and dubbing Ben Grimm “The Thing”. This does not go over well.
Quotes: Ben Grimm, to some random children: “Don’t do drugs!”

While watching Fantastic Four I had to keep reminding myself that this movie came out after Spider-Man and X-Men—it’s so cheesy and glossy that it feels like it came from a different era of superheroic moviemaking, and obviously looking back at it from the post-Nolan, post-MCU, post-other–Fantastic Four world it feels even more like an anomaly. I don’t know, like the kind of once-in-a-lifetime event that could irradiate five space travelers and give them mutant powers or something.

The way this movie shows us Johnny Storm’s new powers is that he breaks quarantine to go snowboarding with his nurse, who looks like she walked onto set directly from a Blink-182 album cover photo shoot. Since Johnny keeps accidentally FLAMING ON he melts the snow as he boards, crashes into a snowbank, and makes his own hot spring! The nurse finds him nude in a steaming pool. He then invites her to join him—and it’s heavily implied that she does so. (There’s also a running gag of Sue getting naked so she can be invisible and escape people? It’s, um, grating.) The film does a good job of showing each character’s trajectory: Reed and Sue want to test their abilities, and possibly cure them, but their drama is woven into their feelings for each other; Johnny wants to show off and use his powers to become famous; Ben Grimm loses his wife, wallows in self-pity, and just wants a cure; Viktor Von Doom wants power over all the FOOLS he lives among. (Fair enough.) The issue I have is that when we see the Four come together as a team, it’s only to fix a problem that Ben inadvertently caused—his attempt to help a potential suicide on the Brooklyn Bridge results in a massive pile-up, and each team member has to use their powers to save people. But instead of learning about their powers and being heroes, the Four then spend most of the movie trying to get rid of their powers and fighting with each other—a nice realistic touch in a series of comics, but annoying as the main plot of a single film. We finally see them live up to some of their promise when Doom tries to destroy them, as Sue uses her invisibility to rescue Reed, Johnny finally uses his powers as part of the team rather than just to show off, and a cured Ben has to make the decision to re-irradiate himself so he can be strong enough to save his friends. But they only spend about 15 minutes of the total runtime being the Fantastic Four.

19. Fantastic Four (2015)

Screenshot: Marvel Entertainment/20th Century Fox

Catalytic Trauma? Reed and Ben both have crappy childhoods; the trip to Planet Zero, um, does not go as planned?; Reed, Ben, and Johnny watch in horror as Planet Zero eats Viktor Von Doom.
Moment of Truth: Reed runs away to research a cure for his friends rather than working for the military, but the film hints that this is a moral failing? Later, the four of them stand up for themselves as a team and refuse to work with the military anymore.
Even Rocky had a montage: We cut from the terrified kids not knowing how to control their powers to months later, when Reed has developed a super suit, and the others have trained in military labs.
What’s your name, kid? In the final moments of the movie Reed goads them into coming up with a team name.
Quotes: Johnny Storm initially suggests “How about two guys, a girl, and the thing that nobody wanted?” as a name for the group.

For the first forty minutes or so, the 2015 Fantastic Four is a fascinating—if flawed—origin story. We’re introduced to Reed Richards and Ben Grimm as misunderstood kids (maybe even abused, in Ben’s case) and the good thing here is that Reed is simply a smart kid. He seems to be the only child in a lower-middle-class family, he’s not a mutant or a chosen one or anything, he’s just intelligent and willing to ignore the jeering classmates and obtuse teachers. He’s a great portrait of a smart kid in the circumstances a lot of smart kids end up in—not tortured or abused, just ignored. He doesn’t have a nemesis to test himself against, or the “I’ll show you all, someday!” tone that a lot of movies about geniuses give us. His ideas are dismissed by people who don’t understand them, and since he’s a kid, he can’t do anything about it. Ben Grimm seems to be a rung lower on the class ladder—he lives in a home where his brother slaps the shit out of him for no reason (whilst yelling “It’s clobberin’ time!” I might add) and then that brother gets the shit slapped out of him by their mother (we don’t meet dad, but I think I get the picture). It’s refreshing that Ben, rather than being a bully himself, is nice and thoughtful, and the audience is expected to realize that he must be tremendously strong to stay nice and thoughtful in a home like that.

When Reed is whisked away to Baxter Foundation we get to see that initial excitement of being around people he can really talk to. But this is also where the movie falters, because it doesn’t give us enough of that. It also doesn’t dig into how it feels for Ben to be left behind; we never get a sense of young Sue Storm beyond the fact that she “likes patterns”; Johnny  Storm is a drift racer who reluctantly works for the Baxter Foundation so he can pay for repairs on his car, which I love; young Viktor Von Doom is the stereotypical tortured genius who hates rules and tries to stay outside the rigid structures of government and military. Since the movie doesn’t do enough with this foundation, though, we never get a sense of the kids as a team, which means that there’s no heft to the emotions when Reed and Ben fight later on, or when the Four have to face off with Doom.

Rather than being mutated in space, the four boys travel to Planet Zero in teleporters. Reed takes the time to invite Ben, which is sweet, but then no one invites Sue even though she’s been working on the Planet Zero project longer than anyone aside from Viktor. Once they arrive, Viktor basically pokes the planet until it gets pissed off and eats him. Sue gets hit with a blast of radiation when she teleports them all back to save them, and the ensuing explosion causes Reed, Ben, and Johnny to fuse with elements from Planet Zero, Brundlefly-style. The problem is that what should be the Catalytic Trauma is so delayed, and the powers the kids end up with so random, that it feels like this was a kitchen sink YA drama that had superpowers shoved into at the last minute, and that characters don’t grow or change as a result of their powers. Reed is smart and nice as a child, then as a teen, and then as a mutated superhero. Johnny Storm likes to go FAST, and later he likes to go FAST while on fire. Sue worries about the boys and can see patterns, and later she’s even more worried. Ben Grimm is nice, thoughtful, and severely mistreated by his family, and later he’s severely mistreated by the government, and seems extremely gruff and angry, but we don’t know if he’s mad because of the accident, or if, after years of being slapped around, he enjoys being able to throw a tank like a baseball.

I’m still ranking this one higher than the other Fantastic Four, though, for one simple reason: no one orders Sue Storm to strip in front of her brother.

18. Man of Steel (2013)

Screenshot: DC Entertainment/Warner Bros. Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Kal’s planet is destroyed; he grows up a bullied alien; when he finally meets his bio-dad he’s a semi-sentient hologram; and when he finally meets the last members of his race they immediately try to murder him and his human mom.
Moment of Truth: Young Clark puts his classmates’ lives ahead of his own needs during a school bus crash (much to Pa Kent’s chagrin); Adult Kal turns himself in to the U.S. government in an attempt to to appease Zod.
Even Rocky had a montage: We get an all-too-brief sequence of Kal learning to fly in the Arctic and zipping around the world before Zack Snyder drags us back to Gloomtown.
What’s your name, kid? Lois calls Clark “Superman” after he turns himself in to the military, but an intercom in the interrogation room crackles and obscures the name.
Quotes: “You’re not my dad! You’re just some guy who found me in a field!”

Oooof, this movie. Look. I like what it’s trying to do. I have some issues with Richard Donner’s classic take on Superman, and I always find myself drawn to the flame of deconstruction.

BUT.

This movie spends the first 20 minutes on Russell Crowe and Michael Shannon fighting, jams a whole bunch of worldbuilding about Krypton’s collapsing empire and rejection of natural childbirth, rather than focusing on little Kal being sent off in his pod, we focus on Jor-El being stabbed to death, while Lara El throws herself on her husband’s corpse and screams in anguish. This sets a certain tone?

We rejoin Clark as an adult on a fishing boat, and the film cuts back and forth between his current life, working his way north to learn the truth about his alien parentage, and various traumatic incidents from his past as he navigates childhood on Earth with his adoptive parents MAAARRRTHAAAA and Jonathan “fuck them kids” Kent. The first half of the film is very much an origin story, as it draws direct lines between everything adult Clark encounters on his journey and memories from his past, including his dad’s death, which he feels lots of guilt about even though it was really blatantly suicide-by-tornado. Clark’s reunion with his holo-dad is interrupted by Lois Lane’s investigations, which lead to her being attacked by alien tech, which in turn lead to a scene where Clark cauterizes her wounds with his heat vision while she screams in agony.

Again, Snyder made some choices.

The second half of the film is about Clark wrestling with how to respond to Zod, then physically wrestling Zod, while various humans try to stop Zod’s henchpeople. We never really see Superman save anyone other than Martha and Lois—even the family who are trapped by Zod in the end of the film just sort of vanish as soon as Kal snaps Zod’s neck. While Snyder’s attempt at creating a realistic story of an alien living on Earth, and the Earth’s response to him, is noble, and has some stunning imagery, it also focuses so much on the problems and pain of being an alien that Clark’s loving nature barely comes through. Plus the film is so busy wallowing in 9/11 porn that the human stakes never feel real.

17. Captain Marvel (2019)

Screenshot: Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios

Catalytic Trauma? As a human, Carol Danvers is treated like crap by her family; sexually harassed/possibly assaulted in the Army; attempts and fails to save Mar-Vell/Dr. Lawson. As Vers she learns that she’s been brainwashed by trusted mentor Yon-Rogg.
Moment of Truth: Listening to Talos; declining to fight with one arm metaphorically tied behind her back.
Even Rocky had a montage: We get flashbacks to her military training, plus training sessions with Yon-Rogg that are rigged against her.
What’s your name, kid? Carol is Captain Marvel in honor of Mar-Vell, her true mentor. Another significant naming happens when Nick Fury names his new superhero initiative in honor of Carol’s callsign, “Avenger”.
Quotes: “I have nothing to prove to you.”

Rather than being a “human gets a special ability and learns how to use it” story or even an “alien comes to Earth, where their powers are extraordinary” story, Captain Marvel is a “hero recovers their memories of their origin story” story.

When we meet “Vers” she’s a member of the Kree Starforce, competent but not considered especially gifted as a fighter or tactician, and often nagged by her boss Yon-Rogg to be more disciplined. However, when Vers is stranded on Earth, she discovers that she’s actually Carol Danvers, a human member of the U.S. Air Force who was mentored by Dr. Wendy Lawson—and she’s super powerful on Earth. Then Carol learns that Dr. Lawson was actually a Kree scientist named Mar-Vell, who was murdered by Yon-Rogg, who then took Danvers back home with him after she was infused with the powers of the Tesseract. So, she is a superhero, even by Kree standards, but she’s even more of a superhero by Terran standards. If that makes sense?

But as with a few of the other films at this end of the list, Danvers is already an adult, with a past and a moral code, before she gains the powers of the Tesseract. I would argue that her heroism lies in her attempt to save Dr. Lawson/Mar-Vell—which is why she ends up infused with the Tesseract’s powers—and then in her later decision to side with the oppressed Skrulls despite years of Kree brainwashing. But the film’s structure still makes for more of a complicated riff on the idea of an origin story.

Also the film’s true hero is obviously Goose, whose origin we never see.

16. Rocketeer (1991)

Screenshot: Walt Disney Pictures

Catalytic trauma? Maybe the collective trauma of WWI?
Moment of Truth: When stunt pilot Cliff Secord is late for the big airshow, his WWI-veteran buddy, who hasn’t flown since the War, borrows his plane to save Cliff’s ass. Obviously he almost crashes, so Cliff throws the rocket pack on and risks his life to save him.
Even Rocky had a montage: We get a fun montage of Cliff and and his mechanic friend, Peevey, testing the rocket with a stolen statue of Charles Lindberg (which, cool, cause fuck Charles Lindberg); Cliff goes on a joyride immediately after rescuing his veteran friend.
What’s your name, kid? Airshow manager Otis Bigelow names Cliff “The Rocketeer” when newspaper reporters ask for the mysterious rocket man’s identity. Cliff sees the name in the paper and goes with it, even though he doesn’t do as much Rocketeering as you’d expect.
Quotes: Jenny, to Cliff: “The Rocke-who?”

The Rocketeer isn’t just a weird movie, it’s a weird moment in cinema history. The movie attempts to capitalize on an odd combination of 1930s nostalgia (and the adventure style re-popularized by Indiana Jones) and superhero/comic book narratives, but for a family-friendly PG-audience—think Batman or Dick Tracy but explicitly for kids. It does a few things very well, but never quite finds its own tone.

The year is 1938, the Nazis are still claiming they’re nice once you get to know them, and to prove that they’ve sent a dirigible on a peacemaking mission across the U.S. Billy Campbell is Cliff Secord, a test pilot who is 68% stubbled jaw. He lives with a mechanic named Peevey, and he’s dating a swell girl named Jenny who was a nude artist’s model in the original comic, but has been transformed into a much more Disney-friendly starlet for the film. When Cliff finds Howard Hughes’ rocket jetpack, he gets tangled up in a battle between the mob, the FBI, and swashbuckling actor Neville Chambers, a secret Hollywood Nazi. This premise sounds amazing, but The Rocketeer stalls out at the middle of the list because Cliff only uses the rocket to save his girlfriend and escape from the mob, and even the final fistfight/shootout/flaregun battle on the previously-mentioned Nazi dirigible is more about getting rescuing Jenny from Neville than defeating Hitler. In the end, Cliff and Jenny haven’t changed a bit (except the big lug is willing to tell her how he feels about her) but since she pilfered Peevey’s rocket pack designs from Neville, perhaps the Rocketeer will fly again?

15. Ant-Man (2015)

Screenshot: Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios

Catalytic Trauma? I think the closest thing we get is Scott Lang realizing that even though he served his time (and even though his crime served the greater good), he can’t get a decent job as an ex-con.
Moment of Truth: Risking arrest to return the suit to Hank Pym’s house.
Even Rocky had a montage: Scott is pummeled by Hope as she attempts to train him, and we see him getting better at commanding the ants.
What’s your name, kid? Hank Pym asks Scott to be “the Ant-Man” and Scott asks if they can change the name; he introduces himself to Falcon as “Scott”; when main villain Yellowjacket tells him he’s “just a thief” he replies with, “No, I’m the Ant-Man!… I know, it wasn’t my idea.”
Quotes: “Look, man, I got a master’s in electrical engineering, all right? I’m gonna be fine.”

Ant-Man works more as a riff on an origin story than as a classic story on its own. Despite Paul Rudd’s agelessness, Scott Lang is seemingly an early-middle-aged dad when he’s put in prison, and when he’s released his daughter is about 7. Not that age matters particularly to a hero, but simply to mention that Lang’s morals and personality are already formed by the time he meets Hank Pym. The only reason he was in prison was because he used his tech knowledge to hurt an evil corporation, and the only reason he decides to go back to a life of crime is that his criminal record makes it impossible for him to earn the money for his child support payments. He’s already a good dude. So what we’re seeing once he gets the suit is a person who is taking the opportunity to be a larger-scale hero, rather than a kid learning how to wield their new powers in a superheroic bildungsroman.

Scott Lang’s heroic Moment of Truth is pretty clear: after he realizes that the Ant-Man suit is experimental tech, he risks his freedom to break back into Hank Pym’s home to return it. This shows Pym that Scott is willing to bend the law, but also that he still has a moral core Pym can rely on. The rest of the film unfurls along the typical beats: Lang is trained to use the suit, to fight, and to command his ant army…OK that one’s not a typical beat. The movie weaves Lang’s first superhero outing into a heist tale. One thread is about fighting corporate greed and keeping tech out of the wrong hands, which allows him to fights the bad guy and foil HYDRA. But in the other thread, he rescues his daughter and earns the respect and trust of his ex and her new husband, who begin to treat him as a co-parent again. This gives the movie a more mature arc than most of the films on this list—it’s really more about becoming a better dad than becoming a great hero, which, the more I thought about it, the higher it went until it landed here.

14. Orgazmo (1997)

Screenshot: Universal Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Not exactly? Although Joe Young is a little startled by his first day on a porn set.
Moment of Truth: Joe decides to help Ben Chapleski’s friends when they’re threatened by thugs.
Even Rocky had a montage: The morally-questionable scene of Joe and Ben non-consensually zapping people with the Orgazmorator.
What’s your name, kid? Maxxx Orbison names the character and his porn film “Orgazmo”; Joe later (reluctantly) adopts the name for his alter ego.
Quotes: “Use your hamster style!”; “Jesus and I love you.”

Orgazmo actually tracks pretty closely with Ant-Man? Like Scott Lang, Joe Young is already an adult with a fully-formed personality at the start of the film. By the time we meet him he’s already a skilled enough fighter to defend himself from porn producer Maxxx Orbison’s security, the defining moment that leads to Orbison asking Joe to play “Orgazmo”—a porn star who uses an “Orgazmorator” to fight crime. Joe agrees, but as a devout Mormon missionary he stipulates that a stunt man come in to do the pornier parts of a porn star’s job. He gains a Q/sidekick in Ben Chapleski, who is, also like Scott Lang, an MIT graduate who’s ended up working in corner of society that isn’t considered mainstream. (Where Scott uses his skills for a career of morally pure but illegal heists, Ben has created a unique path in the porn industry as an outlet for his overactive libido.) Ben creates a real working version of the Orgazmorator, and after nefarious underworld goons try to put a friend out of business, the two men head out into the night, as Orgazmo and Choda Boy, respectively, to… fight crime… kind of? And eventually rescue Joe’s fiancee after she’s kidnapped by Orbison.

Here again, this has some strong elements: Orgazmo and Choda Boy have excellent themed costumes, they lead double lives, Ben has a dark past, they have great gadgets, they have an Orgazmobile (Ben’s Buick Century), they have well-developed moral compasses. But the story is a bit too insular. Rather than rescuing random people they only start superheroing to help a friend of Ben’s, and then of course the people who are harassing Ben’s friends are connected to Maxxx Orbison, so there isn’t quite the feeling of leveling up that the stronger entries on this list have. And then, well, they do zap random people with the Orgazmorator, which could lead to a whole-ass conversation about consent that I don’t want to have? And I’m also knocking it down a few slots because the film’s climax focuses on a rape threat against Joe’s fiancee Lisa—that has nothing to do with the origin story aspect, but nothing ruins a sex comedy faster than even a hint of rape, so the film as a whole suffers for it.

13. Batman (1989)

Screenshot: Warner Bros. Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Pearls, popcorn, pale moonlight.
Moment of Truth: In the context of this movie it’s Batman genuinely trying to save Jack Napier, and seeming upset that he fails.
Even Rocky had a montage: At the 1:34 mark we finally get a suiting-up montage, but this Batman is already trained, and does all of his research off-screen.
What’s your name, kid? Michael Keaton growls, “I’m Batman” in reply to a mugger’s whisper-screamed “WHO ARE YOU???” and lo, many, many Warner Bros. execs had to take cold showers as they imagined the trailers they would unleash upon the world.
Quotes: “You wanna get NUTS? Let’s get NUTS!”

Burton’s Batman is much more a movie about the myth of Batman than an origin story in which Bruce Wayne becomes The Bat. The film opens on an eerie reenactment of Wayne’s childhood, when a tourist family is attacked by muggers in an alley. The muggers then discuss “The Bat” with one of them saying that he drains his victims’ blood to set a fairly horrific tone. Batman doesn’t save the family, and when he catches up with the criminals he doesn’t even deliver them to the cops. Instead he tells one of them to spread his legend through the underworld.

The first way we see the Actual Tragic Events of Crime Alley (which is just called the “alley at Pearl and Phillips Streets” in this version) is via microfiche, as Vicki Vale and Knox research Bruce Wayne’s past. And Vicki is only researching Wayne because she’s falling in love with him—if she suspects that he’s also the Batman she came to Gotham to investigate, she gives no sign of it. Only after we watch them muse on Bruce’s tragedy do we get a flashback that gives us his point of view—a flashback triggered by the movie’s biggest change to the source material.

In this version the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne wasn’t exactly a random act of violence or desperation. The man who killed the Waynes was a young mob goon named Jack Napier, who, a few decades later, falls into a vat of acid when his hand slips out of Batman’s. Napier’s intentional act of violence creates Batman, and Batman’s failure to save Napier creates The Joker, and we only see Bruce’s memory of that night in the alley as he connects all the dots and realizes the truth. While this is interesting, it also turns Batman’s quest for justice into a much more self-centered story—a goth therapy session/LARP that, almost accidentally, results in a lower crime rate for Gotham as Bruce Wayne works out his trauma.

12. Aquaman (2018)

Screenshot: Warner Bros. Pictures/DC Entertainment

Catalytic Trauma? Being left by his mother; learning of her execution.
Moment of Truth: There are a few options here, but I think the best one is when he communicates with the Leviathan rather than simply fighting her.
Even Rocky had a montage: Arthur’s training sessions with Nuidis Vulko are shown as flashbacks throughout the film, so when he fights Orm we can see the results of the training.
What’s your name, kid? Pundits talk about the mysterious “Aquaman” in the same bemused tones they use for the existence of Atlantis, even though both Aquaman and Atlantis clearly exist?
Quotes: “Permission to come aboard?” obviously, with a special nod to “YOU CAN CALL ME…OCEAN MASTER” because come on.

Like Man of Steel, Aquaman scatters its origin story across a “Present Day” narrative of Arthur Curry claiming his identity as an Atlantean despite a lot of negging by a bunch of underwater eugenics enthusiasts. This movie ranks higher than MoS because this movie is, I mean, it’s…

Look. There’s a scene where Willem Defoe and Ghost-Hunter Ed Warren face off with Dolph Lundgren, and they’re on battle sharks? And Lundgren is on a giant armored seahorse? (And the animals glower at each other because obviously seahorses are the natural enemies of sharks, we all know this.) And at some point my brain shorted out? This movie is FUN. Extremely fun. Especially when it makes no sense, which is most of its runtime. Hence, it’s higher.

Like Man of Steel and 2003’s Hulk, Aquaman frames Arthur’s journey with the story of his parents. The romance of Atlanna, Queen of Atlantis, and Thomas Curry, lighthouse keeper of, um, somewhere in the Northeast U.S., is told over the course of a few vibrant scenes that play like a fairytale. (Or a Splash parody, to complement the Big riff in Shazam.) Arthur begins his superheroic journey during a field trip to an aquarium, when he’s bullied for talking to fish. A shark rams itself into the glass to defend him, and his eyes glow as all the fish in the tank collect behind him like an army.

We get a classic training montage dotted through the film, as Nuidis Vulko, Vizier of Atlantis, gives Arthur secret swimming and combat lessons. Vulko is played by Willem Defoe, who at various points in the movie uses the same accent he did as Karl in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, but, unfortunately, never discusses the finer points of lighthouse-keeping with Thomas. He’s also the one who eventually breaks the news that Arthur’s mother was sacrificed to the Trench for loving his father, thus giving Arthur a second Catalytic Trauma. The rest of the film becomes the origin of Arthur-as-King, as works to stop his half-brother, Ghost-Hunter Ed Warren, from waging war on the land-dwellers, and searches for the Magical Trident of Atlan.

I have to mention, the movie starts out as a Splash parody, but then it turns into an aquatic Blade Runner, with jellyfish and coral instead of holographic advertisements (all the promise of seapunk, fulfilled at last!) it briefly riffs on Top Gun, and in a final nod to the cinema of the ‘80s the writers have former tempted-Christ Willem Defoe say “The king is risen” when Arthur comes back with the Trident. All of these things filled me with joy, but the reason this movie ranks so improbably high is that Arthur is a demonstrably different person and hero by the end. He realizes that he created an enemies during his journey, and learns from that. He chooses to speak with the Leviathan rather than fighting her. He doesn’t just spare Ghost-Hunter Ed Warren’s life, but also gives him time to have a touching reunion with their mother, and seems to want to repair their relationship. He’s thinking more like a ruler of people—the bridge between Surf and Turf his mother hoped he would become.

11. Ghost Rider (2007)

Screenshot: Columbia Pictures/Marvel Entertainment/Sony Pictures Releasing

Catalytic Trauma? Johnny Blaze gets totally hosed by Satan; his dad dies in a Devil-related bike accident, forcing him to abandon his One True Love.
Moment of Truth: When Satan’s kid, Blackheart, kidnaps Johnny’s One True Love, he enlists help from the previous Ghost Rider, Sam Elliot, to face off with the minions of Hell.
Even Rocky had a montage: Since Ghost Rider is more of a possession than a superhero transformation, we don’t get a traditional montage? But we do see Johnny practicing with his fireballs.
What’s your name, kid? Ghost Rider is a spirit that possess people who are in contract to Satan, then moves on when those people die. There have been many Ghost Riders.
Quotes: “You can’t live in fear.”

Young Johnny Blaze is fed up with his dad and wants to run away with his girl, but when he learns that his dad has been hiding a terminal cancer diagnosis, he’s so heartbroken that he sells his soul in exchange for his dad’s life. That’s one hell of a start to a story. Of course the Devil’s a huge jerk about it, kills his dad in an “accident”, and thus we cut to  Nicolas Cage as adult Johnny doing increasingly crazy stunts to try to prove that he has no fear. This leads nicely into his stint as Ghost Rider. At first the Rider is a spirit possessing Johnny rather than a true alter ego. The Rider hunts down soul contracts—people who sold their souls to the Devil—and along the way punishes any random criminal who strays across his path. The Rider’s powers are cool as shit. He makes criminals stare into his eyes, forcing them to experience the pain they’ve caused others until said pain kills them. Johnny slowly learns to control his powers, which allows him to defeat the Devil’s kid, defy the Devil, and make amends to the girl whose heart he broke. ALSO there’s a scene where Johnny gets locked up in a jail cell, and when the Rider takes over he destroys everyone in the cell with him except for a lone Black teen (the only one who tried to defend Johnny in his human form) and this ridiculous over-the-top movie makes a point of showing the Rider pointing at the kid and saying “Innocent.”

I’ll admit, to my shame, that I had not watched Ghost Rider until I was researching this list, and am now mourning my many Ghost Rider-less years. This film posits that a stunt bike rider would be, seemingly, among the most famous men in America? Nicolas Cage goes full Elvis for Johnny Blaze, surrounds himself with towers of occult books, and eats jelly beans out of a martini glass? Eva Mendes consults a Magic 8 ball while she waits for Johnny Blaze at a restaurant, then gets blitzed on white wine and begs the waiter to tell her she’s pretty? Donal Logue says “I got a hunting dog named Lucky. He’s got one eye and no nuts” and “You’re reading this comparative exponential religiosity crap and it’s getting into your brain!”—both of those lines are in this movie?? Sam Elliot plays a previous Ghost Rider who now works as a cemetery caretaker, but who should have died years ago but just…didn’t??? Sam Elliot tells Johnny: “You sold your soul for the right reason. That puts God on your side.”

I think this movie should be the U.S. national anthem.

10. Superman: The Movie (1978)

Screenshot: Warner Bros.

Catalytic Trauma? Explosion of Krypton; not being able to save his (human) dad.
Moment of Truth (and Justice, and the American Way): I’m going to say it’s when he doesn’t act like Superman, and instead defies his (space) dad’s instructions and Time Itself to save Lois’ life. (I think somewhere between that scene and Snyder’s blue steel gloomfest there is a perfect Superman movie.)
Even Rocky had a montage: When teenage Clark retires to the Fortress of Solitude, we hear Jor-El’s instructions as the camera pans through space, implying that Clark is learning his origins and going on an interior journey of understanding. Thirteen years pass this way, and then we see Superman fly out of the Fortress to rejoin life on Earth.
What’s your name, kid? A twitterpated Lois murmurs “Superman” to herself, and then just names him that in the Daily Planet the next day. Let’s hope she spelled it correctly.
Quotes: “I am here to fight for Truth, and Justice, and The American Way!”

This is one of those movies that I saw in the fog of early childhood and didn’t return to until, well, I think until this post actually? As a superhero movie it doesn’t completely hold up for me—the humans in the story don’t react to a superhuman in a realistic way, and the attempted comic relief hasn’t aged well. As an origin story, however, Superman still does some amazing stuff, especially when compared with Man of Steel.

The movie’s opening scenes are economical and earn their serious tone, as Marlon Brando’s Jor-El bestows a quasi-Biblical blessing on bb Kal. Krypton itself is a beautiful alien world full of crystal, and Kal’s pod looks like a star falling to Earth—to my mind far more magical than the H.R. Giger look of Snyder’s Krypton. We’re shown Clark’s teenage years in a few quick scenes that sketch in his loneliness, the deep love he feels for the Kents, and the morality they’ve instilled in him. For me the misstep comes when Clark moves to Metropolis and his work as a superhero brings him up against Lex Luthor’s plot to nuke California. Lex’s plan is catastrophic, but it clashes badly with Ned Beatty’s turn as the bumbling Otis and Valerie Perrine’s Miss Teschmacher (and it doesn’t help that she tells us that he abuses her). Even worse, we never get a sense of Superman and Luthor as real nemeses—when Lex traps Supes, it feels like another plot device rather than the culmination of a plan, and then the film doesn’t sit long enough with either Superman’s panic, or Miss Teschmacher’s change of heart, for the dire stakes of the situation to land. Superman saving Miss Teschmacher’s mom leads directly to him not being able to save Lois, which in turn leads to him reliving the memory of Pa Kent’s death, and deciding to defy Jor-El’s biggest rule, which is all rich, heady stuff! The alien raised as man has to choose love and find a new path for himself, knowing that at least one of his dads would be furious! But his decision is so surrounded in fluff that the emotion doesn’t come through—and then we’re dropped right back into a bit of comic relief between Lois and Jimmy Olsen.

Speaking of, and I’m probably alone here, but if Jimmy Olson was going to insist on being rock-stupid enough to clamber out onto a cliff to get a photo of a national landmark that has already been comprehensively photographed, he deserved to drown at The Hoover Dam. Superman should have left him dead, and I’m not afraid to say it.

9. Deadpool (2016)

Screenshot: 20th Century Fox/Marvel Entertainment

Catalytic Trauma? While he’s still a regular human, a cancer diagnosis knocks Wade Wilson into a new life. But once he’s in the program that is never quite named as Weapon X, and learns that the higher-ups are turning him into a mindless super soldier, he has another decisive moment in a hyperbaric chamber, choosing to set himself on fire and blow the facility up for a chance at death/freedom. This is what transforms him into Deadpool.
Moment of Truth: As Wade, it’s probably his decision to leave Vanessa to try to spare her—misguided though it is, it does at least come from a well-meaning place; as Deadpool his Moment of Truth comes in the bathroom of the strip club, psyching himself up to reveal himself to Vanessa and apologize for his earlier Moment of Truth.
Even Rocky had a montage: At the one-hour mark we get a riotous montage of DP butchering his enemies, and upgrading his suit after each fight.
What’s your name, kid? Wade names himself after the Sister Margaret’s Home for Wayward Girls’ “dead pool”—an ongoing bet on which merc is most likely to bite it each week. For a brief shining moment he is Captain Deadpool, before he thinks better of it.
Quotes: “Maximum effort!”; “A fourth wall break inside a fourth wall break. That’s, like, sixteen walls!”

I know, I know, Deadpool’s not exactly a hero. But his movie incarnation acts pretty heroically, and I wanted an excuse to rewatch the movie, and I wanted to give Ryan Reynolds another spot on this list to make up for the poor showing of Green Lantern, so: my list, my rules, my coffee.

For maximum fourth wall breakage, Deadpool intercuts DP’s current quest (finding and murdering the shit out of Francis) with the story of mercenary Wade Wilson’s relationship with Vanessa Carlysle, his battle with cancer, and his subsequent desperate stint in the Weapon X meat grinder facility. This works extremely well, as we meet quippy, un-killable Deadpool before flashing back to Wade, who was already 70% snark, but also a human—the kind of human who will take a pro bono gig to protect a teen girl, give up sex for Lent, woo his girlfriend with a ring pop, and be as scared and vulnerable as anyone would be in the face of a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis. This shows us his growth as a superhero who can take on teams of bad guys (and Colossus, sort of) but more important it shows us that the man who had a well-hidden heart of gold a few years ago is now an obsessive and mentally unstable antihero. Grounding us in Wade’s pre-DP reality is a wise choice given how wacky Deadpool’s world can get, especially once Cable and time travel shenanigans are introduced in the sequel.

8. Shazam (2019)

Screenshot: DC Films/Warner Bros. Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Being abandoned by his mom and bounced through the foster care system.
Moment of Truth: Defending his new foster sibling from bullies; going home to face the nefarious Dr. Sivana and save his family rather than wallowing in his mom’s continued rejection.
Even Rocky had a montage: Billy Batson tests himself for every superpower his foster brother Freddie can think of, while Freddie records the results and uploads them on Youtube. (I should also mention that the two kids celebrate Billy’s new superpowers on the Rocky steps.)
What’s your name, kid? Shazam is actually an acronym for the powers the hero wields: the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury; it’s also what Billy has to say to activate and deactivate these powers.
Quotes: “Shazam!”

I’m just going to say this upfront: I don’t think I actually like Shazam as a film. While I think there’s good stuff in it, the wild tone shifts, violence, and multiple abusive parental figures really didn’t work for me. However, as an origin story it’s pretty strong—it’s the rare SEXTUPLE ORIGIN—so I bumped it up a bit despite my own misgivings.

Billy Batson’s arc follows most of the typical origin beats: in his first 14 years he’s separated from his mother, has a hardscrabble upbringing in various foster homes, and runs away repeatedly to search for his mom. We pick up his story when he’s sent to live with the Vasquez family, parents Rosa and Victor (both former foster kids themselves) and their kids, Freddy Freeman, a superhero fan who is closest to Billy in age, Mary Bromfield, the eldest, who’s applying for early admission to colleges, Pedro Peña, the shy one, Eugene Choi, the obsessive gamer, and Darla Dudley, the youngest—and possibly the most adorable child ever put on film. The genuine love shared by the family challenges  his “always look out for #1” philosophy, and leads straight to his call to be a superhero. When he defends Freddie from bullies, he’s whisked away to the Rock of Eternity and given the powers of Shazam—not because he’s worthy, but because Shazam is dying, and he has to give them to somebody. Billy initially uses his new “adult” body to buy beer and hit a strip club, and his electro powers to hijack ATMs. When Freddie posts Billy’s superpower tests on YouTube, Billy suddenly become very famous, very fast, and the validation goes straight to his emotionally-malnourished head. Even after he causes a serious accident by showing off, he still focuses on the fact that he saved the people in the end, so, everything’s cool, right? Hey, he can catch a bus now!

Since Billy hasn’t really trained, has no mentor aside from Freddie, and is a terrified teenage boy, he spends the middle chunk of the film running away from his first supervillain, failed Shazam Dr. Thaddeus Sivana. His foster siblings find his birth mother for him, and for a moment he clearly thinks he might be able to return to normal life, and wants nothing more than to put superhero-ing behind him—but she rejects him. The last third of the movie is devoted to Billy learning to Use His Powers For Good and Realizing That His True Family Has Been Here All Along. This leads us into the other five origin stories—by far the most interesting in the film. Billy retrieves Shazam’s staff, and uses it to share the power with his siblings, who each discover their own strengths as they battle Dr. Sivana together. Basically the last half hour gives us a micro version of the movie, with each kid getting a moment in the spotlight.

Now, why is it at #8? I would argue by opening the movie on Sivana’s origin the writers undercut Billy’s story. We see that Sivana was also an abused kid, he had a shot at being Shazam, failed because of a total lack of mentorship, and finally became evil because it was the only way he could wield any power in his life. Billy doesn’t seem to be any better, at heart, than young Sivana. If the movie had wrestled with that it would have worked a lot better. Instead, the overall tone is so dark and mean-spirited that, despite wanting to give Darla the world, I cant bump it up any higher than this.

7. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Screenshot: Marvel Studios/Paramount Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Steve Rogers doesn’t really have one defining trauma. He’s a chronically-sick orphan who gets his ass kicked a lot—we’re dealing with a slow trauma build-up here.
Moment of Truth: I don’t care that it’s cheesy, I don’t care how often I see it, that grenade scene, man. I could watch it all day.
Even Rocky had a montage: We see Steve struggle through Basic Training; immediately after the serum takes effect he has to chase down Dr. Erskine’s murderer and we learn, along with him, that his body is now impossibly fast and strong.
What’s your name, kid? The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan is declared “Captain America” by the marketing team who use him to sell war bonds through stage shows and movies. Later, in his one moment of successful flirting with anyone other than Bucky, he jokes that he outranks Agent Carter.
Quotes: “I could do this all day.”

On the one hand, this is a great, inspiring origin story about a kid from Brooklyn who becomes a hero. On the other, this is the first of the MCU films to show some of the strain of having to link into the giant, decades-spanning, multidimensional Marvel Cinematic Universe, which leads to the origin story getting a little buried.

Steve Rogers is short, thin, and riddled with chronic health problems. His dad died from mustard gas and his mom from TB. Now, some people might view this as a convenient loophole during wartime—the Army literally won’t let him join, and he could help with scrap metal drives or work in a factory and still do important work against the Nazis. But for him, the idea that he might live through the war while other men are risking their lives is unacceptable.

But here is both the great strength of First Avenger as an origin story, and the major ding against it: Steve Rogers is a hero from the minute we see him fighting in an alley, using a garbage can lid as a shield. He’s a hero when he jumps on the grenade, when he chases the Nazi who kills Dr. Erskine, when he leads a seemingly hopeless fight against the Red Skull, and when he chooses death by plane crash rather than allowing the Red Skull to destroy New York. Steve Rogers doesn’t change: he is “No, you move” personified. But in the context of this particular story, where Nazis are plotting to use occult weaponry against the rest of humanity, his basic heroism works, and the fact that once again, given the chance to spend the war as a poster boy for bonds, he instead throws himself into a dangerous mission, and then also offers himself up for court martial immediately afterwards, shows that his pre-serum sense of justice and duty are still the core of his being, no matter what he looks like.

6. Doctor Strange (2016)

Screenshot: Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Probably when the selfish dope drives himself off a cliff.
Moment of Truth: After The Ancient One shows Dr. Stephen Strange the secrets of the universe, and then throws him out for being a selfish dope, Strange abases himself and sits outside the door begging to be her student, no longer caring about money or status or his own ego.
Even Rocky had a montage: I have a soft spot for this one because we get a montage of him reading books in addition to some magical practice.
What’s your name, kid? His name is Stephen Strange, and he is a medical doctor.
Quotes: “Dormammu! I have come to bargain.”

The reason Doctor Strange is at #6 is that it gives us one of the most dramatic arcs of change on the entire list. We see a man who is ridiculously successful in his chosen field, arrogant, self-absorbed, who enjoys humiliating his colleagues and thinks that inviting an ex to watch him win an award counts as a date. There are a few points when he declaims about having taken an oath to save lives, but he also only chooses difficult cases so he can build his reputation. We see him turn several down because either they won’t bring him fame, or because he’s afraid they’ll smudge his track record. He wrecks his car, destroys his hands, and endangers other people through his own thoughtlessness, then lashes out at everyone who tries to help him.

So when he finally gets to Kamar-Taj and meets The Ancient One, it’s really gratifying to see him beg for help, then lash out at her, and then, after she knocks him out of his body, upend all of his beliefs and preconceived notions to create a new life. In some ways, Doctor Strange is a derivative MCU film, and obviously the casting/whitewashing could have been dealt with better, and there are moments in the early scenes when it turns into a Very Special Episode of House. BUT, it does make for an excellent origin story because our hero genuinely grows and changes during his journey. The Stephen Strange who watches the snow with the Ancient One as she dies is not the same man who berated Christine Palmer, or the one who wrecked his car. By the time he condemns himself to a (potentially endless) cycle of agony to stop Dormammu, Stephen Strange has become a believable superhero. He earns that final shot as Doctor Strange in the New York Sanctum, with the cape, goatee, and dramatic white highlights.

5. Venom (2018)

Screenshot: Columbia Pictures/Marvel Entertainment/Sony Pictures Releasing

Catalytic Trauma? Eddie Brock gets fired and dumped as a direct consequence of his own bullshit, which is GREAT; his body is colonized by an alien symbiote, which turns out to be GREAT… once he gets used to it.
Moment of Truth: For Eddie: standing on the Golden Gate Bridge looking for all the world like he wants to jump, but then deciding to investigate the nefarious Carlton Drake; his shockingly sincere apology to Anne. For Venom: choosing to work with Eddie to prevent the invasion of Earth, even though it might mean their collective death.
Even Rocky had a montage: We get several action sequences of Eddie learning what Venom can do; multiple eating montages as Eddie tries to figure out how to feed his new BFF. (RIP lobsters.)
What’s your name, kid? Venom is the Symbiote’s name, and there are a few arguments over the uses of “we” and “I”, but I believe these two crazy kids are gonna work it out.
Quotes: “Ah, fuck it. Let’s go save the planet.”

Ah, Venom. I debated including it, but I decided given the turn toward the end of the film it definitely rated a place, and then the more movies I watched and the more I pondered the further up it crept until it landed here in the top five. A controversial choice? Sure. BUT SOME OF US STILL BELIEVE IN LOVE.

Eddie Brock is an edgelord investigative journalist who steals confidential info from his fiancee, lawyer Anne Weyring, in order to expose the nefarious deeds of scientist/Elon Musk-parody Carlton Drake. In short order he’s fired, Anne is fired, Anne dumps Eddie, Eddie spirals, and there’s no one to stop Drake when he starts trying to get alien symbiotes to fuse with not-exactly-willing human subjects. Eddie finally removes is head from his ass and tries to investigate Drake, only to be symbioted himself. His symbiote, a charming fellow by the name of Venom, decides he likes Eddie, works with him to keep both of them alive, thwarts an alien invasion, and concocts a scheme to win Anne back.

Is it more of an antihero movie than a superhero movie? Of course. But is it also about an antihero who objectively does more good for humanity than, say, Darkman? Resoundingly yes. And honestly this is all moot cause this movie’s a romcom. Venom kisses Eddie during one of their rare moments apart! Their love literally saves the world!

Symbrock is OTP 5-ever.

4. Batman Begins (2005)

Screenshot: Warner Bros. Pictures/DC Comics

Catalytic Trauma? …stop me if you’ve heard this one before. (Sorry.) Nolan’s innovation here is to stress young Bruce Wayne’s bat-phobia, which was triggered when he fell into a bat-infested well, right before the TRAGIC EVENTS OF CRIME ALLEY. No wonder this version of Bruce is a mess.
Moment of Truth: Adult Bruce decides not to execute a man without trial, and instead… allows that man to burn to death without trial, along with all non-Liam-Neeson members of The League of Shadows. Hm.
Even Rocky had a montage: The training sessions with Liam Neeson are brutal and beautifully show his transformation from scrappy underworld imposter to warrior; Bruce, Alfred, and Lucius Fox upgrade his armor after each night out as The Bat.
What’s your name, kid? There’s a lot of talk about becoming a symbol, being more than a man, becoming what men fear, and becoming The Bat. But after all that, it’s Dr. Crane who calls him “The Bat…man” in a voice charged with fear, excitement, and a nigh-sensual longing that made me want a whole other movie.
Quotes: “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”

Let’s begin by acknowledging that the true hero of this film is Cillian Murphy’s bone structure. Or maybe his haunting blue eyes.

Nolan’s take on Batman is committed to tying all the threads and themes of the character together into a… let’s just call it a bat king? We open with smol Bruce and his friend Rachel playing until Bruce falls into a well. He’s obviously hurt, but even worse than that: the well is connected to an underground cave full of bats, who swarm the poor kid and terrify him. His dad comforts him by saying that “we only fall so we can learn to stand back up”, and cheers him up further by showing him a gift he’s gotten for his mom, a beautiful string of pearls. Those pearls. Thomas Wayne asks for smol Bruce’s opinion, and shores his confidence up by including him in the surprise for his mother—two guys who want to make the woman in their life happy. It’s sweet. Which of course makes it all the more brutal when Bruce has a panic attack during the opera they’re attending (Die Fledermaus), begs to leave early, and then the family is attacked in the alley.

Is this the only version of the story where the murder of the Wayne’s is a direct result of Bruce’s needs? The rest of the film turns tightly, obsessively on the question of guilt and responsibility, weakness and strength. Bruce learns a kind of strength in the underworld, and then from Ra’s Al Ghul, but ultimately rejects it in favor of his father’s kind of strength. This is a great engine for an origin story, as Bruce has to find a balance between his playboy persona and his Batmanning, ricochet between two different father figures, Alfred and Lucius, and his Walking Conscience, Rachel (setting us up brilliantly for The Dark Knight), and finally defend his home. The only problem here is that Nolan’s typical dourness makes the Billionaire Playboy aspect perfunctory, where it might have been fun to see Christian Bale contrast his growly vigilante persona with a slightly lighter take on a callow rich preppy man—Patrick Batman, if I may?

3. Iron Man (2008) 

Screenshot: Marvel Studios/Paramount Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Tony Stark gets blown up and held hostage in a CAVE; then he has to recreate his Arc Reactor on the fly and build his first Iron Man suit FROM A BOX OF SCRAPS.
Moment of Truth: When Stark learns that his weapons are being used against terrified refugees in Afghanistan, he hops into his barely-tested Iron Man suit and flies to the rescue.
Even Rocky had a montage: This movie is at least 60% montage, and it’s great. After he escapes the Ten Rings, Tony builds and tests a new suit, flies around Malibu and Venice, and tries to go into space like a dumbass.
What’s your name, kid? The papers name him, then he defies Agent Coulson’s strongly-worded notecards and runs with it.
Quotes: “I am Iron Man.”

I’m always fascinated by the decision to hang the MCU on Iron Man. Like of all the heroes to choose as your launching point, your leader, why did Marvel choose Tony Stark out of the ridiculous stable of heroes at their disposal? And why does it work so well? Some of it is timing—Iron Man came out just as the U.S. was at the tail end of the second Bush Era, and the movie was able to pull off an amazing tap dance critiquing the idea of the U.S. as warmongers, condemning terrorism, giving us a military hero while saying that weapons manufacturing is bad, and blowing enough stuff up to distract everyone from how the movie simultaneously celebrates military might and condemns it.

But the other reason is that this is one of the best origin stories ever.

Unlike most of the other MCU films here, Iron Man doesn’t have the burden of tying into the giant mythology around it. There’s no tesseract, no Thanos, no HYDRA, no war between Kree and Skrulls—we get a couple appearances from Coulson and the final post-credits intro of Nick Fury (still to this day the single greatest audience reaction I’ve ever witnessed in a movie theater), but other than that this is purely about Tony becoming not just a superhero, but a better man—but also not changing too much from the witty, charming, billionaire playboy we meet in the opening.

This movie is goddamn efficient. I watched a lot of superhero movies to write this, and Iron Man gets its story across in perfect little packets that don’t feel like packets, because the writing is sharp and the characters are so fun that you don’t realize how carefully the info dumps are being doles out. The movie pulls a great trick with timing to frame the origin story in the most arresting way. We begin in media res, but we don’t even realize that at first. Tony Stark is supposed to be coming to the end of the last day of his life—not that he knows that. He’s drinking whiskey and taking selfies with soldiers in a military caravan in Afghanistan, the caravan is attacked, Stark escapes the truck, he sees a missile with the Stark Industries logo but can’t get away and is hit with shrapnel. We watch blood blooming out of his chest. Smash cut to Tony, a hostage on video, surrounded by terrorists who are clearly demanding ransom. Smash cut to the movie’s title. Smash cut to “36 Hours Earlier.”

The Tony Stark that we meet 36 hours earlier is callow and glib in public, flirting with women (and trying to flirt with Rhodey, who keeps shooting him down), and trotting out justifications for his war profiteering. In private he’s a giant nerd (losing hours to rebuilding engines), but still pretty callow (forgetting Pepper’s birthday, not giving a single shit that he’s three hours late for an appointment). But the great thing is that after being attacked, nearly dying, and being held hostage, he’s still snarky and glib, and he’s still a huge nerd. It’s just that now that he realizes how much damage he’s done, he wants to work to be a better person, and use his wealth to help people instead of generating more wealth. He’s capable of dropping his wall of snark to tell Pepper that he believes he lived for a reason, but he wants the fame and awesomeness fo being a public superhero.  Of course the best aspect of this is that the narrative arc of him becoming a hero unfolds over the following decade of the MCU, but every single issue is seeded in this movie.

2. Spider-Man (2002)

Screenshot: Columbia Pictures/Marvel Enterprises/Sony Pictures Releasing

Catalytic Trauma? THE TRAGIC DEATH OF UNCLE BEN
Moment of Truth: Realizing he’s the one who let Ben’s murderer get away, and deciding to actively use his powers for good rather than to make money or be famous as part of becoming “responsible”; turning down the Green Goblin’s partnership, even though he knows Gobby might kill him.
Even Rocky had a montage: He practices wall-crawling and web-shooting a bit on his own, but he really learns how to swing when he’s pursuing Ben’s murderer.
What’s your name, kid? A wrestling announcer overrules his idea of “The Human Spider” and dubs him “The Amazing Spider-Man”!
Quotes: “Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: “With great power comes great responsibility.” This is my gift, my curse. Who am I? I’m Spider-Man.”

This movie, more even than Bryan Singer’s X-Men, is the one that set the template for almost every film on this list. Here you have the perfect dance between personal stakes (Ben’s death, keeping MJ and Aunt May safe, juggling college, day job, superheroing, and bills) and BIG stakes (Green Goblin attacking New York, saving people from catastrophe, honoring Ben’s memory) in a movie that’s also fun from the first scene to the last. While of course some moments have aged poorly, and Sam Raimi’s idea of how teens speak and behave is a little outdated for 2001, overall the movie is still as exhilarating and heartwarming now as when it was released.

Best of all though is how Raimi makes this Peter’s story, but never forgets to show us the larger story unfolding around him. After all these years, this is still the superhero origin that does the best job of showing how a regular human adapts to his powers, while also reminding us that there’s still a human under the suit. Peter’s a teenage boy: after his mutation he admires his new physique in the mirror, and, yes, looks into his underwear to see how he’s changed; he tells Aunt May she can’t come into his room because he “exercising” and “not dressed” and then turns to face a bedroom that is festooned with webbing. When he’s not in his suit he’s awkward with MJ and Betty Brant, and nervous around J. Jonah Jameson. The movie gives entire scenes to him mourning Ben. Just as important, it shows him saving people from muggings and housefires before it shows him facing off with the Green Goblin, to hammer home the idea that this is the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, just trying to make the world a better place even though it complicates the heck out of his life.

1. Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Screenshot: Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Animation/Marvel Entertainment

Catalytic Trauma? THE TRAGIC DEATH OF PETER PARKER. Then, later, THE TRAGIC DEATH OF UNCLE AARON.
Moment of Truth: Miles takes his leap of faith.
Even Rocky had a montage: Peter B. Parker teaches Miles how to swing as Octavia chases them, because according to Peter, the best way to learn is when you’re being pursued by a supervillain. Later, Miles customizes his own Spidey suit.
What’s your name, kid? Miles is stepping into a name and an identity and making them his own, just like each of the other Spider-People-and-Pigs.
Quotes: “Anyone can wear the mask.”

Let me be clear: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is the best comic book movie of all time. If we ever get a movie that tops this one I will go down on one knee and PROPOSE to it. But even so, when I watched it for this post there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as I debated where to put it as an origin story. Because while Miles’ story is beautiful, it also, at times, becomes a commentary on origin stories (e.g.: Spider-Man Noir literally saying “This is a pretty hardcore origin story” to Miles) which made me debate whether it gets a little too clever at some points. Does the repetition of each Spider-Person’s story detract from Miles’ story, or add to it? Does the fact that his story is woven into the story of Peter Parker’s death and, maybe, Peter B. Parker’s rebirth, overshadow Miles?

But then I rewatched it again (yes, again) and I still cried like a child watching Peter Parker’s funeral, and I had to pause the movie when Stan Lee says “It always fits… eventually” because it still somehow feels like a punch and a hug at the same time, and when Miles takes his leap of faith my mouth fell open like it always does, and that was when it hit me. Yes, this is the greatest origin story. But not even because it’s Miles’ (though it is) and not just because Miles stepping up means that a lot of kids see someone who looks like them become a hero (though that is vitally fucking important) but also because: at the end of the movie, with Brooklyn saved and his friends back home, Miles tells us himself: “Anyone can wear the mask.” This is the story of a wildly diverse group of characters who found themselves with a choice: become heroes, or turn your back on a city that needs you—and each of them chose to be heroes. As this movie makes explicit, no matter who we are, that’s the choice all of us have to make every day.

Put your mask on—it’ll fit eventually—and get to work on your origin story. This world isn’t going to save itself.

Going forward, Leah Schnelbach is only eating their jellybeans from martini glasses. Come tell them why this list is wrong about everything on Twitter!

Serial Box has added two more superheroes to its stable of characters, Variety reports: the serialized-story publisher will release Wonder Woman: Heartless and Batman: The Blind Cut next spring.

Wonder Woman: Heartless will arrive first from the writing team of Natalie C. Parker (Seafire), Tessa Gratton (Lady Hotspur), Alaya Dawn Johnson (Trouble the Saints), and Heidi Heilig (For a Muse of Fire). Here’s the synopsis:

Wonder Woman: Heartless pits Diana Prince, Jill Carlyle (Crimson Avenger), and British archeologist Dr. Barbara Minerva against two sisters—one a serial killer who is terrorizing Washington, D.C. by magically seizing the hearts of her victims, and the other whose powers might potentially be used to stop the killing streak.

Catherynne M. Valente leads the writing team for Batman: The Blind Cut, working with K Arsenault Rivera (The Tiger’s Daughter) and Martin Cahill to tell a story in which Batman teams up with Zatanna against “a terrifying adversary who enacts a bold plan to bring Gotham City to its knees,” which could be, well, any number of Batman villains. According to Variety, Batman also “grapples with the fact that he is actually part of the 1%.” Valente is clearly excited:

BOOM! POW!

It can finally be told!

One of my big secret projects for the last many months has been as showrunner for Batman: The Blind Cut, working with the amazing @ArsenaultRivera & @McFlyCahill90 to create a crazy 8-ep Batman saga for @serialboxpub!

YES, I AM DOING A BATMAN https://t.co/d7pcmUE79N

— Catherynne M. Valente (@catvalente) October 13, 2020

Serial Box’s format means that all their series are released episodically as both audio and ebooks. These two new series will premiere sometime in the spring of 2021 and are currently available to preorder.

Serial Box has quite a few Marvel-related projects on its lists, including Jessica Jones and Black Widow stories, and the upcoming Black Panther: Sins of the King, which will be narrated by William Jackson Harper. But these two new works may be their first published DC Comics collaborations. Last fall, audio dramas based on Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl were announced, but there’s no sign of any of those projects on the Serial Box website.

If your first Batman is always your one true Batman, Michael Keaton is that Bat for a lot of us. On Jimmy Kimmel Live last night, Keaton neither confirmed nor denied that he might appear in the upcoming The Flash as Batman. “We’re having discussions,” was all he would say, joking with Kimmel that “all 127” Batmans (Batsmen?) would appear. Keaton also correctly identified himself as the best Batman.

But does he ever slip into something a little less comfortable, you know, wear the Batsuit around the house? Put on Prince’s Batman soundtrack and do a little Bat-dance?

Or, as Kimmel asked, “Do you keep the suit at home for, like, sex play, or whatever, or anything?”

Nah. Keaton has a better use for the ol’ getup:

“No. But I will slip into it now and then, you know, if I’m just feeling insecure enough, I’ll just slip into the suit. It makes me feel a whole lot better. I’ll walk around the neighborhood a little bit. When things around here get a little nervous-making? I just put the suit on. And boy, things straighten the fuck up.”

Is he kidding? Or is that random guy in the Bat-costume roaming the streets of Los Angeles actually Michael Keaton, in need of a little emotional pick-me-up and happily terrorizing his neighbors? Only the Batsuit knows for sure.

Listen to their whole conversation below; they get into the Bat-talk at about the 4:20 mark.

Buy Remote Control from:

The Bat has some stuff on his mind. “It’s time to make this right,” he says in the latest teaser for Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the four-hour director’s cut that arrives on HBO Max later this month.

There’s a lot less going on here than in the full trailer, but it’s focused on Batman’s need to bring people together (and a bit of skepticism from Jeremy Irons’ Alfred). Batman appears to have some guilt about that time he and Superman got into a big fight, but they’re playing nice now! Superman helps him up! BROS!

Heard but not seen characters include Harry Lennix’s Martian Manhunter (“I have a stake in this world, and it’s time I started fighting for it”), Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor, just a soupçon of Jared Leto’s Joker cackle, and an ominous threat from Darkseid. The trailer offers one little tiny bit of fun, and it’s the Flash’s ever-so-slightly saucy cocked-knee pose. Ezra Miller knows this movie is taking itself very seriously. Ezra Miller knows this movie plays everything very straight. Ezra Miller is here to mess that up just a little.

Batman also gets his own poster.

#Batman pic.twitter.com/46Nevekt6y

— Zack Snyder (@ZackSnyder) March 4, 2021

Yesterday, the Twitter account for the film revealed the six “chapter titles” within the movie:

The Chapters. Part 1: “Don’t Count On It, Batman” #SnyderCut pic.twitter.com/WoLjV5DxiF

— Zack Snyder's Justice League (@snydercut) March 3, 2021

The other five chapters are:

2. The Age of Heroes
3. Beloved Mother, Beloved Son
4. “Change Machine”
5. All the King’s Horses
6. “Something Darker”

Zack Snyder’s Justice League premieres on HBO Max on March 18th. It seems a reasonable guess that we may get more character-focused teasers and posters in the coming days.

WarnerMedia is expanding its slate of animated DC projects with two new shows for HBO Max: a Batman series from Bruce Timm called Caped Crusader, and a Superman show called My Adventures With Superman, which will star Jack Quaid.

Cartoon Network and HBO Max have greenlit Caped Crusader directly to a series, and describe it as a “reimagining of the Batman mythology.” It will be produced by J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions and Matt Reeves’ 6th & Idaho, as well as Warner Bros. Animation. Timm is one of the show’s creators, which is notable—he’s had a hand in some of the best-known DC animated shows from the network, starting with 1992’s Batman: The Animated Series (pictured above), Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Teen Titans, Justice League Unlimited, and others.

Timm, Abrams, and Reeves said in a joint statement that they’re excited to bring the character back “to tell engrossing new stories in Gotham City. The series will be thrilling, cinematic and evocative of Batman’s noir roots, while diving deeper into the psychology of these iconic characters.”

Reeves, of course, is the director of the upcoming film The Batman (which is slated to hit theaters in March 2022), as well as a spinoff series for HBO Max about the Gotham City Police Department.

The series will debut on HBO Max, but there’s no word on a premiere date, or who will voice the iconic central character.

HBO Max My Adventures With Superman, handing out a two-season order for the network. The series will follow Superman (Quaid) and Lois Lane (Alice Lee) as twenty-somethings “as they begin to discover who they are and everything they can accomplish together as an investigative reporting team at the Daily Planet.” It also has no release date attached to it.

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Starting in August 2017, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic in the weekly “4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch.” He caught up to real time, as it were, in January 2020, but is revisiting the feature every six months or so to look back at the new releases in the previous half-year. Last week, we looked at Wonder Woman 1984, and this week is Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

The lengthy and expensive rewrites and reshoots of Justice League done by Joss Whedon after Zack Snyder departed the project following the tragic suicide of his daughter Autumn did not result in a successful film, from an artistic or commercial standpoint. There was a vocal contingent of the fan base who wanted to see Snyder’s original cut of the film. The newly-purchased-by-AT&T Warner Bros. was going to launch a shiny new streaming service, HBO Max, that was going to need content. The ability to provide that content was kneecapped by the spring 2020 pandemic lockdown.

These factors combined to bring Zack Snyder’s Justice League into being.

Another factor that aided in the decision to take Snyder’s original cut for the movie and turn it into a release-able film was the complaint made by Ray Fisher about how he was treated by Whedon on set, which led to a later revelation that Gal Gadot had been equally mistreated (and soon thereafter to more revelations about awful behavior by Whedon going back to his days on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel). Gadot resolved her issues privately to her own satisfaction, but went public when Fisher went public with his, as his issues were not resolved to his satisfaction.

The pandemic was also a major factor, as Warner had a mess of post-production folks with literally nothing better to do. And once things opened up a bit more in the late summer and early fall of 2020, Snyder was able to film some new material, though the vast majority of the four-hour ZSJL is material already filmed for what Snyder intended to be the original cut.

As with the theatrical release, ZSJL features Ben Affleck as Batman, Henry Cavill as Superman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ray Fisher as Cyborg, and Ezra Miller as the Flash, as well as Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Diane Lane as Martha Kent, Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth, J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon, Amber Heard as Mera, Connie Nielsen as Hippolyta, Ciarán Hinds as Steppenwolf, Joe Morton as Silas Stone, Robin Wright as Antiope, David Thewlis as Ares, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor, Billy Crudup as Henry Allen, and Joe Manganiello as Deathstroke. Also appearing are Harry Lennix as Calvin Swanwick (last seen in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice), revealed in this version to be the Martian Manhunter in disguise, Willem Dafoe as Vulko (last seen in Aquaman), Ryan Zheng as Ryan Choi, Jared Leto as the Joker (last seen in Suicide Squad, and sorta kinda in Birds of Prey), Kiersey Clemons as Iris West, Ray Porter as Darkseid, and Peter Guinness as DeSaad. In addition, archived recordings from Man of Steel of Kevin Costner as Jonathan Kent and Russell Crowe as Jor-El are used.

This apparently closes the door on Snyder’s vision of the DC Extended Universe, as there are no plans for a sequel to either version of Justice League, the next Batman movie will have a totally different dark knight detective, and nobody knows what’s happening with Superman in movie form. There are Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Flash movies in various stages of production, at least. Then again, it was stated emphatically by Warner once that the Snyder Cut would never be released, so who the hell knows?

“If you can’t bring down the charging bull, then don’t wave the red cape at it”

Zack Snyder’s Justice League
Written by Zack Snyder & Chris Terrio and Will Beall
Directed by Zack Snyder
Produced by Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder
Original release date: March 18, 2021

Screenshot: DC Entertainment

We open with the death of Superman at the hands of Doomsday, while Batman and Wonder Woman watch. At the same time, we see the three Mother Boxes, all activating. One is in the Stone apartment, where the Cyborg-ized Victor Stone is brooding. One is in Atlantis. One is on Themyscira.

Bruce Wayne travels on horseback over mountains to get to a village in Iceland where he’s heard stories of an “Aquaman” who helps the village by bringing them fish to eat in winter time. Arthur Curry pretends not to know what he’s talking about, but when Wayne makes it clear that he knows who he is, Curry throws him into a wall and says no to his request to join the team of superheroes he’s forming.

A boom tube forms in the stronghold in Themyscira that holds the Mother Box. Steppenwolf and his parademons come through it and massacre many Amazons, taking the Mother Box with him. Hippolyta shoots an arrow to the world of men to warn them, though she knows that, thousands of years later, the only one who will know what it means is her daughter Diana.

Wonder Woman foils a terrorist attack in London, saving the lives of a bunch of schoolchildren, but apparently murdering the terrorist leader in cold blood. She then hears a news story about the flaming arrow that hit a temple of Artemis in Greece, where the fire won’t go out.

Steppenwolf contacts DeSaad, Darkseid’s lieutenant, and says he will find the Mother Boxes and bring about the Unity, and then maybe he can come home to Apokalips. DeSaad doesn’t get his hopes up, but encourages him to continue trying to find the Mother Boxes.

Diana arrives in Greece and takes the arrow, and then finds an underground cavern that tells the story of an ancient battle: Darkseid came to Earth to find the Anti-Life Equation, which would give him dominion over all life. Humans, Atlanteans, Amazons, Greek gods, and a Green Lantern all teamed up to fight back. Darkseid was wounded and retreated, leaving the Mother Boxes behind. One each was kept with the Atlanteans, the Amazons, and the humans, the former two leaving them in strongholds that remained guarded, the latter burying theirs in what is now Italy.

Martha Kent visits Lois Lane, who has not been working, and who goes every day to visit the shrine to Superman, bringing coffee to the cops who guard it. Martha has lost the farm to foreclosure, but she insists she’s okay with it. She urges Lane to go back to work, as that’s what her son would have wanted. When she leaves, though, she is revealed to be the Martian Manhunter in disguise, who has also been posing as Secretary of Defense Swanwick.

Barry Allen visits his father in jail—he was imprisoned for killing his wife, though Allen doesn’t believe his father did it—and then applies for a job as a dog walker. A truck runs down a hot dog cart and almost runs over a woman driving a car, but Allen is able to save her using his super-speed, moving so fast that the woman he’s applying for the job from doesn’t even realize he left the room (though she’s confused as to how the window broke).

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Diana goes to Wayne and tells him that the threat is coming. He goes to recruit Allen, who joins up eagerly, while Diana goes after Stone, who tells her to pound sand.

After that, there’s an attack on STAR Labs by parademons, where Silas Stone works on alien technology. Several people are kidnapped, including Silas, and the one witness provides a sketch to police of the parademons. Steppenwolf is frustrated, as the people at STAR have the scent of the Mother Boxes, but they couldn’t find the thing itself.

Commissioner James Gordon hits the Bat-Signal to inform Batman of sightings of weird creatures, including the one at STAR. Batman brings Wonder Woman and the Flash with him, and Cyborg shows up as well, informing them that his father was one of the ones kidnapped. The Mother Box they’re looking for was buried with Cyborg’s mother.

We learn that Victor Stone was an honors student and the captain of the football team. He also helps other students, even if it means breaking the rules. His mother has to defend his actions to the principal. Driving home from a game that his father missed because he was working late at the lab, a truck hits them, killing his mother and leaving Stone badly injured and near death. Desperate, Silas uses the Mother Box—which was dug up by the Axis Powers during World War II, captured by the Allies, and left in a warehouse in D.C. for years until after Superman’s arrival, at which point Silas dug it out to see if it might hold the key to doping out the Kryptonian technology—to keep his son alive, replacing the destroyed parts of his organic body with Mother Box tech.

In Atlantis, parademons come for the Mother Box and take it, despite Aquaman’s efforts to stop them. Both Vulko and Mera have urged Aquaman to claim his birthright as king of Atlantis, but he has refused. However, he does accept Mera’s charge to go after the parademons and stop them from getting the other Mother Boxes.

The team traces the kidnapped scientists to the tunnels under Striker’s Island Prison. Batman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, and the Flash go there to fight Steppenwolf and the parademons. They rescue the scientists and drive Steppenwolf off, but the parademons shatter the wall, which brings the ocean in—however, Aquaman arrives in time to save them, then he informs them that the bad guys have the Atlantean Mother Box.

They return to Wayne Manor. Wonder Woman and Cyborg explain that the Mother Boxes are able to rearrange matter in any way: if you burn a house down, it’s all the same matter, the wood and metal just turn to smoke and dust. But the Mother Boxes can turn the smoke and dust back into a house.

Wayne realizes that this means they can use the Mother Box they have to resurrect Superman. Aquaman objects vociferously, and Diana points out that if they do this, Steppenwolf will sense the activated Mother Box and come for it, but they all (except for Aquaman) agree that it’s worth the risk to have Superman back.

They exhume the body from Kent’s grave, then bring it to STAR Labs (with Cyborg hacking into the system to create an emergency that requires evacuation). Silas thinks the evac is a false alarm until he sees that his son is part of the group breaking in, and then he helps sell the evac.

Flash runs at the speed of light to generate the energy to light up the Mother Box, and they succeed in resurrecting Superman. But he doesn’t entirely know who he is, and he fights them all, beating the crap out of them. He only stops when he sees Lane, and then flies off with her.

Steppenwolf then shows up. Silas has secreted the Mother Box in STAR Labs and hides in a sealed compartment with it, seemingly trying to destroy it. Instead, it vaporizes him, and the parademons take it. However, Cyborg figures out that Silas irradiated the Mother Box so they could trace it. They detect it in an abandoned nuclear power plant in a ghost town that isn’t actually Chernobyl but may as well be. They head off there to try to stop Steppenwolf. Wayne insists to Alfred that Superman will show up eventually to help.

Steppenwolf has not only found all the Mother Boxes, he has also determined that Earth has the Anti-Life Equation. Apparently, Darkseid didn’t remember which world it was that drove him off and had the ALE, and Steppenwolf reveals to DeSaad, and then directly to Darkseid, that the Equation has been rediscovered.

Cyborg plans to get inside the Mother Boxes and split them apart, with help from a power jolt from Flash. The others fight the parademons and Steppenwolf.

Superman flies Lane to Smallville and finally starts to remember who he is. He is reunited with his mother, and then he flies off to Wayne Manor to find out why he was resurrected. He arrives to find Alfred, who had not expected him to arrive, and he tells Kent where to go.

Flash is running around in circles very fast to build up enough power to get Cyborg the jolt he needs, but he needs to hack into the Mother Boxes first. Flash is shot by a parademon, which forces him to stop running. Cyborg is about to be killed by Steppenwolf, but that’s when Superman shows up and destroys Steppenwolf’s axe. Flash heals up from his wound, but then the Mother Box explodes, killing everyone. But Flash runs fast enough to go back in time to before the Mother Box explodes, giving Cyborg the jolt he needs, and he separates the Mother Boxes.

A boom tube opens to Apokalips. Darkseid and DeSaad watch as Steppenwolf is defeated (Wonder Woman delivers the killing blow, beheading him). The boom tube then closes, and Darkseid announces that he will have to invade Earth the old fashioned way and to prepare the armada.

Wayne purchases an old mansion that he plans to convert to a headquarters for the never-actually-called-that Justice League. He also buys the bank that foreclosed on the Kent farm and restores it to Martha. Aquaman tells Vulko and Mera that he’s going to visit his father in his own movie. Allen visits his father in jail and says he got a job working at a crime lab. Cyborg listens to the message his father left for him, where he says he was proud of him. And we find out that Lex Luthor has escaped from prison, and from his yacht, he recruits Slade Wilson to his own little Injustice League.

Wayne has a dream of an apocalyptic future where Darkseid has invaded Earth and turned Superman because Batman let Lane die. Superman has apparently killed Aquaman, and Batman leads a rebellion that includes Flash, Mera, Wilson, and the Joker. When Wayne wakes up, he’s confronted by the Martian Manhunter, who offers himself as an ally in the coming fight against Darkseid’s invasion.

“Not impressed”

Screenshot: DC Entertainment

First off, there is absolutely no reason, none, why this movie had to be four hours. Every scene took about twice as long as it needed to, several scenes were utterly pointless and/or repetitive, and the movie is chock-full of unnecessary slow-motion scenes, usually accompanied by some dirge-y rock song or other. Mind you, there are also necessary slow-motion scenes, those being when the Flash is moving very fast, so the rest of the world is in slo-mo to show his perceptions. But the effect of that is severely diluted because half the fucking movie has been in slo-mo up to the point that Barry Allen first shows up.

That first scene where Allen applies for a job and then rescues a woman from being hit by a truck (the credits identify her as Iris West, but there’s nothing in the movie to indicate that it’s her, especially given that she doesn’t get any dialogue or personality) also sets up one of the movie’s more troubling aspects, which is male characters spending time ogling women when they should be in the middle of a fight. Allen does it with the woman in the car (for a very long time, too, though it’s only a microsecond in real time), and Aquaman does it later with Mera when he should be fighting parademons. As with the slo-mo, this dilutes this tendency for when it’s really needed, which is Superman seeing Lane. It should be a powerful romantic moment, but it’s instead yet another dude macking on a woman in the middle of a superhero fight.

A lot of this movie is a good reminder of why it needed reshoots. The Whedon reshoots had their own problems (including a big one that we’ll get to), but that version managed to do several important things right that this endless slog of a movie botched.

For starters, Aquaman is a much more enjoyable character in the theatrical version, with the joy and lust for life that we also saw in his eponymous film the following year. In ZSJL, Arthur Curry is a dour cynic who complains about everything and only occasionally shows the glee that characterized him in his other appearances.

The bits with the Russian family that Flash and Superman rescue in the theatrical release has been called out as a stupid addition, and I couldn’t possibly disagree more for two reasons. One, as I felt at the time in 2017 (and again when I rewatched it for this site in 2019), was that it showed our heroes actually saving people, a vanishingly rare occurrence in a Zack Snyder superhero movie. Two, as I learned watching this version, it gives Flash something to do during the climactic fight scene besides endlessly run around in circles waiting for Cyborg to tell him to touch him and charge him up.

Whedon also did some wonderful things with Ben Affleck as an older Batman. Some of my favorite bits in the theatrical release were Affleck’s Wayne struggling against the one foe he can’t defeat: the aging process. (“You can’t do this forever.” “I can barely do it now.”) That was a fascinating new take on Batman, and I was massively disappointed to find none of it in Snyder’s version, as that’s by far the most interesting aspect of this version of Batman.

As was true in his other two movies starring the character, Snyder continues to totally not get Superman. He never even wears his trademark blue-and-red suit in the main part of the movie. While it’s true that he was a bit overused in the theatrical release, it’s to make up for the fact that—for all that the team risked everything to resurrect him because they needed him—he’s also barely a factor in the climactic fight, providing, at best, one important moment (saving Cyborg from Steppenwolf’s axe). And then there’s the flash-forward—but I’ll get to that in a bit.

The biggest change Whedon made that was for the better, though, was the treatment of Diana of Themyscira. Wonder Woman is barely even a factor in this movie beyond providing exposition. The reshoots made her the Justice League’s field general, but she’s hardly even in most of the fight scenes in ZSJL, with Batman acting more like the field leader. Also Whedon reedited the fight against the terrorists so that Diana wasn’t a murderer, as she’s seen to be killing the terrorist leader. This is awful on several levels. For starters, it makes Diana out to be horribly bloodthirsty. On top of that, it makes everyone who was watching just as bloodthirsty, as the schoolkids’ response to Diana murdering a man in front of them is to giggle and smile and say they want to be like her. And finally, even if you ignore that Diana and all the people in the bank are sociopaths, it’s spectacularly stupid from a tactical perspective: this is a terrorist who was about to commit suicide and multiple murders for his cause of bringing Europe back to the Middle Ages—the absolute last thing you should do is kill him, because you’ve just given his cause a martyr.

Then again, this movie is simply chock-full of bloodshed and nasty, vicious violence. This proclivity of Snyder’s worked in 300 (which was about a brutal war fought with nasty edged weapons) and Watchmen (which was a deconstruction of superheroes), and even in parts of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (since this version of Batman was pretty unhinged), but it’s just tiresome here when we’re supposed to be seeing a new age of heroes. It doesn’t help that he includes every nanosecond of every fight scene, so that each one seems to take several dozen ice ages, with lots more slo-mo thrown in just to make it take even longer.

The worst part of this movie is the awful, self-indulgent ending, setting up movies that we will probably never see—and I gotta say that if we do get these movies by some miracle, I do not want to watch them. Wayne dreams of a future where Darkseid has taken over the Earth and suborned Superman to his side. We’re supposed to believe that Superman would stop being a hero—going so far as to kill Aquaman—because Lane died and Batman didn’t save her. That’s, well, ridiculous and a typically Snyder-esque misreading of the world’s greatest hero who has performed very few heroic acts in any of Snyder’s movies. He can destroy a city, he can snap Zod’s neck, he can stand with his thumb up his ass while the Capitol is blown up, he can beat up the rest of the Justice League, and he can apparently be brainwashed by Darkseid. But he can’t hardly ever be seen to actually be a fucking hero. And yet, as with the theatrical version, we’re supposed to believe that Superman’s death in BvS:DoJ was enough to get the Mother Boxes excited, because the world lost a hero. Sure.

And then we have the final bit, where Snyder asks us to believe that Swanwick has been the Martian Manhunter all along, and I’m sorry, but that cuts off the air supply to my disbelief. Snyder has insisted that that was his intention all along with Swanwick, and I call bullshit. I don’t buy that he has been staying behind the scenes and not getting involved in Zod’s invasion or Doomsday’s attack. That’s not the Martian Manhunter I’ve been reading about most of my life—that’s not a hero.

Screenshot: DC Entertainment

Okay, having spent eleven paragraphs trashing this bloated mess of a movie, let me at least say what I unreservedly loved about it, and it was a major cause of why Whedon has (justifiably) been vilified: Victor Stone is the absolute heart and soul of this movie. We actually see his mother, and she’s a person (a damn cool one, in fact), not just an unseen figure who was fridged. And Stone’s journey through the film, and his relationship with his father, is much stronger and more powerful here than it was in the theatrical release, in which Cyborg was barely a character. Whedon’s history with characters of color is not great, and we have it writ large here, as he completely trashed the Black guy’s story arc for no compellingly good reason. (Leaving it in would have made the theatrical version so much better…)

The performances are all excellent. J.K. Simmons gets great additional stuff as Gordon (I’m really sorry we won’t see more of his commissioner), Joe Morton is as well served as Ray Fisher by the greater role for the Stone family, and Jeremy Irons remains a superlative Alfred. (My favorite line in the movie is when Wayne introduces the team to Alfred, joking, “I work for him.”)

And the villain is way more effective. I don’t much care one way or the other about the character design, which is different in this version than it was in the theatrical cut, but I like the fact that Steppenwolf isn’t just a bland lieutenant to the more interesting background big bad, but instead is established as a disgraced former lieutenant of Darkseid’s who is desperately trying to get back in his good graces. And we actually see Darkseid in this film, very menacingly voiced by Ray Porter. (I’m less impressed with Peter Guinness’s DeSaad, who should be much more of a toady.)

I find myself reminded of when, after Robert A. Heinlein’s death, an expanded version of his novel Stranger in a Strange Land was published, billed has having “10,000 words restored!” I read it, and found it to be about 10,000 words too long. Edits are often there for a reason, and while Warner may have over-corrected with Whedon’s version, the original Snyder version as seen here is bloated, overblown, horribly paced, and a slog to get through. It’s about two hours too long. And the stuff he added (the flash-forward, adding the Martian Manhunter) is all just awful.

That’s all we’ve got for this six-month period, but we will more than make up for it at the end of this year, as the reopening of theatres means that we will get several delayed 2020 films, as well as a few that were always intended for 2021. The current plan is to spend the month of December 2021 looking back at Black Widow, Eternals, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, The Suicide Squad, and Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

Keith R.A. DeCandido has, with his wife Wrenn Simms, formed the very-small-press publisher Whysper Wude. Their first project is the anthology The Four ???? of the Apocalypse, which features alternate takes on the apocalyptic equestrians of yore. Among the authors are David Gerrold, Jonathan Maberry, Peter David, Jody Lynn Nye, David Mack, Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore, Michael Jan Friedman, Adam-Troy Castro, Laura Anne Gilman, Gail Z. Martin, and tons more. Read all about the four cats of the apocalypse! The four lawyers! The four opera singers! The four rock stars! The four cheerleaders! And more! The anthology is being crowdfunded on Kickstarter, and has tons of nifty bonuses and extras—check it out!

If you’ve been avoiding the discourse over on superhero Twitter lately (which I understand and applaud you for), you may have missed the latest dust up around a cut scene in the upcoming third season of the Harley Quinn animated series, and the resultant resurfacing of the age-old question: Do heroes do that?

And before we get bogged down in colorful euphemisms: Yes, we’re talking about sex.

The reason this particular thought is being brought back into the spotlight again is all due to a quote from Harley Quinn co-creator Justin Halpern in a Variety article about superhero TV and how its latest hits (WandaVision and Umbrella Academy included) subvert their own genre. When asked about how writing Harley Quinn was different from other superhero narratives, Halpern pointed out that working with villains gives them a freedom that doesn’t exist elsewhere, highlighting a place in their third season where said leeway suddenly dried up:

“[…] we had a moment where Batman was going down on Catwoman. And DC was like, ‘You can’t do that. You absolutely cannot do that.’ They’re like, ‘Heroes don’t do that.’ So, we said, ‘Are you saying heroes are just selfish lovers?’ They were like, ‘No, it’s that we sell consumer toys for heroes. It’s hard to sell a toy if Batman is also going down on someone.’”

It’s important to note that this isn’t the first time this issue has been raised when it comes to the toy-selling set (as DC would apparently put it). A couple years back, while various film auteurs where having a field day making fun of the superhero genre and its brainless dominance over box office, Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar told Vulture that he had a different beef with them entirely: “There are many, many movies about superheroes. And sexuality doesn’t exist for superheroes. They are neutered.”

Thing is, he’s got a point. Superheroes are often wildly attractive people in peak physical condition, who never seem to get laid. Or… maybe it’s a bit more sinister than that. Maybe the point is that they can never get laid while they’re busy being super. Note what Halpern said above: “Batman was going down on Catwoman.” If the same scene had existed with Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle, their daytime alter egos, would DC have cared? You know what’s weird? They probably wouldn’t.

More often than not, the only times we see evidence of superheroes engaging in sexy activities (and no, I’m not talking about banter or walking around shirtless) on film is when they’re not on “active duty” as it were. They’re on a break from being a hero, a hiatus, or maybe it’s well before they gained their super status. It’s possible that things are happening off camera, sure, but the clear suggestion of sexual activity rarely comes up. And while superhero films are typically aimed at families, that’s still an odd omission to come across time and again, particularly when there seem to be unwritten rules of engagement—and toy sales—around the subject.

There are some exceptions, of course. We get the impression that Clark Kent and Lois Lane have a sex life of sorts in Batman v Superman. Then Superman dies at the end of the film. When Batman is pulling his playboy shtick as Bruce Wayne, that gives him some wiggle room? He does definitely sleep with Vikki Vale in Batman—who doesn’t make it to the sequel. Then the Nolan version of Wayne sleeps with a woman who turns out to be Talia al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises, there to carry out her father’s plans for Gotham… so that liaison basically reads as a punishment for him choosing to have a real sex life that isn’t about creating alibis. Diana sleeps with Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman 1984, but that ended up creating some extremely squirrely consent issues, and both times it’s a precursor to her losing the guy “forever.” There’s the prolonged sequence for Silk Spectre and Nite Owl in Watchmen (as well as the attempted rape of the original Silk Spectre by the Comedian) because the film painstakingly adapted the majority of comic to screen. The results are incredibly awkward.

Screenshot: Warner Bros.

The X-Men are a little more flexible on that front, but their super status isn’t quite the same as other heroes—the actual team itself fluctuates often, and as far as the films are concerned, they’re often shown hanging around Xavier’s school and teaching kids. We can assume that Scott Summers and Jean Grey sleep together on account of being married and sharing a room… but Jean dies in X2. Wolverine sleeps with Mariko Yashida in The Wolverine, but it’s a pretty sad affair that comes directly after he saves her life, and it never happens again. Also, he’s technically not an X-Men active operative at the point in time, just an odd hermit who comes out of retirement for a friend. Erik Lensherr has two children within the confines of those films, but both encounters occur when he’s not being Magneto. Deadpool gets his very own on-screen sex marathon (because he’s rated R, kids), but that occurs before he “becomes” Deadpool. By the sequel, he and Vanessa are together again, but state at the start of the film that they’re planning to have sex specifically because they want a kid. Between him and Erik, procreation becomes one of the only situations in which the concept of sex can even be brought up. It doesn’t last for Wade Wilson, though: Immediately after their baby-making conversation, Vanessa is killed.

When we focus on the rest of the lot, especially the current MCU crews, things get even weirder. It’s almost as though there’s an edict stating that active Avengers don’t get laid. Granted, this is never spoken out loud, but it’s true based on what see. For proof of that, you only have to look at Tony Stark himself.

Wait, but Tony Stark is another playboy, like the alter ego Bruce Wayne is so desperate to cultivate, right? Actually, Stark is only shown engaging in any form of sexual activity in his first film, well before he assumes that mantle of Iron Man. Following that he starts up a relationship with Pepper Potts, but if we take the cues we’re given, it seems as though Tony and Pepper are only canoodling when he’s not on Hero Time. Pepper whispers flirty nothings in Tony’s ear at the start of The Avengers, but when Tony is called away by Coulson and he tries to bring her back to the subject of fun adult activities, she says to him: “You mean later? When you’re done?” This practically suggests that their ability to have sex is contingent on him not doing Iron Man stuff. In Iron Man 3, we see Tony and Pepper sharing a bed, but nothing saucy is going on. In fact, Tony has a nightmare that calls his prehensile suit to him in the middle of the night—which almost gets Pepper killed. She then moves to sleep on the couch, leaving him alone.

To make this even more awkward, Pepper and Tony’s daughter Morgan is born post-Snap, at a point in time when Tony is not being Iron Man. We don’t know if Morgan was conceived before the events of Avengers: Infinity War or after Tony arrives home in Endgame, but either way, it was during a period when Tony wasn’t working with the Avengers or donning his supersuit.

Screenshot: Marvel Studios

But this could just be one example, couldn’t it? Think again. Steve Rogers waits until he can travel back in time to former flame Peggy Carter before he seriously considers getting laid. Sure, he kisses Sharon Carter exactly once, but attempts by his pal Natasha to set him up with coworkers are constantly met with disinterest on his end. And what about the Black Widow? Natasha has certainly used her wiles on targets in her line of work as a Russian spy and a SHIELD agent, but (aside from being different situations entirely when it comes to sex and power dynamics) none of that occurs when she’s acting as a member of the Avengers. She flirts with Bruce Banner, but that’s even more pointed—Bruce hulks out whenever his heart rate gets too high, so sex isn’t really a thing that Natasha and Bruce could get up to. He’s literally the safest bet she can make. Clint Barton has a wife and a bunch of kids, but he’s always away from them when he’s Avengering, so nothing’s going on there.

You’d think an Asgardian would get different rules, but Thor is exactly the same: While he harbors a crush on Jane Foster for quite a while, it’s clear that nothing happens between them until after the events of Thor: The Dark World—after he tells Odin (who is actually Loki) that he doesn’t want to rule Asgard. The only evidence we get of Thor and Jane actually having sex is the post-credits sequence of Dark World, where he sweeps her into a passionate embrace. But then he goes back to working with the Avengers by Age of Ultron, and it’s clear that the relationship deteriorates from that point. T’Challa and Nakia haven’t dated in years when he becomes king and takes up the mantle of the Black Panther, and that relationship sadly cannot progress any further due to actor Chadwick Boseman’s death.

Stephen Strange is similar to Stark in that he used to be a jerk who occasionally slept with people—his relationship with Christine, which he angrily defines as “barely even lovers” certainly indicates that they used to have sex. But once Dr. Strange becomes a student of the mystic arts, all that goes right out the window. He lives on Bleecker Street with Wong, and they worry about how to get money for sandwiches. Star Lord is also introduced on the tail end of a liaison with a woman who he barely remembers, but once the Guardians of the Galaxy are a superteam, all his attention fixes on Gamora. And Gamora definitely wants their relationship to go slowly (even slower now that she’s been revived from an earlier point in her own timeline before she ever knew Quill), which means that they’re not knocking boots any time soon.

Wanda Maximoff and Vision are a prime example in this. Their entire relationship (which we can presume included sex, as they were getting together clandestinely and sharing hotel rooms) occurs after the Sokovia Accords debacle, when Wanda is a fugitive and Vision is technically available to the Avengers in theory, but doesn’t seem to be in rotation. The whole team is mostly disbanded at that point according to Tony, so they’re conducting an affair after being decommissioned as superheroes. And then Vision dies. And then Wanda recreates a life for them in Westview, giving herself the husband and children she dreamed of…  and true to her warped reality’s sitcom format, the idea of sex never comes up at all, even when her surprise pregnancy surfaces.

Screenshot: Marvel Studios

Bucky Barnes is busy recovering from PTSD and brainwashing, Sam Wilson makes mention of trying to date, but we never see anything come from it, and now he has to contend with being Captain America. Then there’s Scott Lang (Ant-Man)o, who has a child from his pre-hero days, and a burgeoning relationship with Hope Van Dyne—but again, there’s no indication as to whether or not they’ve slept together. Carol Danvers is busy saving galaxies, she’s not even thinking in that direction. James Rhodes doesn’t seem to have a significant other, or at least not one he mentions. Peter Parker is a high-schooler and definitely not ready for that sort of thing, so that’s right out.

And everywhere else, the story is much the same. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films are incredibly chaste when it comes to their iteration of Peter Parker: Mary Jane Watson runs from her own wedding, shows up at Peter’s door at the end of Spider-Man 2—and the police radio goes off, luring Peter away to Spider-duties. If there was ever a time for something to happen, that was it… and he’s waylaid by heroing. The same is true of Andrew Garfield’s version in the Amazing Spider-Man films. Peter and Gwen Stacey are clearly very into each other, but they’re also still kids. Oh, and then Gwen dies. Daredevil and Elektra spark, but we don’t see any indication of them sleeping together either. And then Elektra dies. (And then on television, she comes back and Matt Murdock actually considers sex with her as he’s dragging off his super suit and a building collapses on top of them. So, he rejects both his super persona and life while considering getting laid.) Constantine is fighting hell, and doesn’t have the time for much else. No one in the Suicide Squad seems interested, and they’re supposed to be the sort of crew DC doesn’t mind getting freaky. After all, they’re the “bad guys.”

You can make endless excuses as to why this decision gets made over and over; it prevents heroes from reacting to the plot if they’re busy thinking about sex or romance; why does everything have to be about sex anyway; avoiding the topic entirely makes movie sets a safer place for actors, and then you don’t have to hire an intimacy coordinator; think of the children (and the toy sales, won’t someone, please). And of course, not every superhero needs their very own raunchy sex scene because that would be silly. But sex is a normal and healthy part of life for plenty of people, and avoiding the topic entirely ends up reading like a moral stance—especially when you notice that the topic is completely off-limits for someone who is actively pursuing their super-life. The suggestion literally becomes “You can be a hero or you can get some, and those modes shall never intersect.”

Or, to quote DC directly, “Heroes don’t do that.”

When people knock the lack of complexity in most superhero stories, this is a part of the problem. Which isn’t to say that sex equals complexity—it doesn’t, and there are plenty of examples on film in which sex adds nothing to a story whatsoever. But there’s an issue at hand where the messier parts of life get avoided in favor of “bolder” but far simpler statements. If you can’t balance heroism with errands, with run-of-the-mill sadness, with BFF coffee dates, with ugly breakups, with aging and arthritis, with occasionally acknowledging that yes, you would like to go down on someone while wearing your highly impractical batsuit because it resembles certain fetish gear and that’s part of why you chose it… then what’s the point really?

So I’m sorry to the toy industry, and to DC and their copyrights, but they’re wrong. Heroes definitely do that. Selina Kyle wouldn’t settle for anything less.

Emmet Asher-Perrin just thinks this is pretty creepy, the longer you think about it. You can bug him on Twitter, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.

The latest trailer for Titans promises to give DC Fans the very first live-action version of Jason Todd’s Red Hood: Based on the not-so-subtle hints shown in the teaser, he’ll become the violent vigilante in a very traditional way. As Jason grapples with his new identity, the titular team will get a change of scenery.
During the teaser, Curran Walters’ Jason Todd is investigating a crime scene alone when he comes across a man who has the Joker’s classic smile plastered on his face.  We also see what looks like the outline of a man hitting someone repeatedly in the same location. When combined with the images of a crowbar in Wayne Manor and the Red Hood mask, it looks like the show is going with the classic Red Hood origin: In the comics, the Joker hit Todd’s Robin with a crowbar repeatedly before blowing him up. The sidekick is later resurrected and returns as a violent vigilante called the Red Hood. Although we don’t know if Walters will just be injured or fully brought back to life, his time in the hood is imminent.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Titans lineup will move their operation to Gotham. It looks like Superboy, Krypto, Beast Boy, and Starfire will all stay together. Since the last season ended with Starfire’s sister Blackfire arriving on Earth, the villain will likely show up to challenge the Titans. Bruce Wayne, Hawk, and Dove will make appearances at some point in the season, and according to Deadline, we’re also going to see Scarecrow and Barbara Gordon. Hopefully, Titans can balance all the members of its massive ensemble and give us the best season yet when it premieres on its new HBO Max home, August 12th.

Science fiction conceits and the cartoonist’s will to anarchic fancy accommodate each other quite well, and over the one-hundred-odd years that the two mediums have been playing together, they have managed to capture the technological preoccupations of their times, document humanity’s concerns for their present moment, and speculate on people’s hopes for the future.

So let’s step into our time machine (Science! That’s impossible to implement! ‘Cause paradoxes!) and travel through the decades to see how cartoons have used the lexicon of spaceships, robots, and electronic gizmos to tell their tales. In so doing, we may well discover a bit of reverse time travel, the past reaching out to our present—to entertain, to provoke, and most importantly, to remind us that it’s always fun ‘n games with ray guns until someone gets disintegrated…

KoKo’s Earth Control (1928)

The Fleischer brothers—Max and Dave—were inveterate gadgeteers, as obsessed with the technology of cartooning as they were with its art. They were creating sync sound cartoons before Walt Disney, and their catalog of over twenty patents included the setback camera, a system that overlaid animated, 2D characters onto physical, 3D settings, and, most significantly, the rotoscope, a process to trace footage of human performers onto cartoon cels—a technology still in use to this day.

Neither sync sound nor rotoscoping figure much in the silent cartoon KoKo’s Earth Control, but a gadget-happy atmosphere still permeates. Clown KoKo and canine companion Fritz travel to the ends of the Earth (or, more literally, the bottom, walking the perimeter of a spinning disk) to reach a room studded with knobs, dials, and levers: the legendary Earth Control. While KoKo amuses himself with toying with the elements and shifting day to night and back, Fritz battles the irresistible urge to pull a lever whose label bluntly warns that activation will result in the end of the world. Do I have to point out that temptation wins?

At a point in the century where it seemed wonderful inventions were being introduced on a daily basis—and ten years after more ominous inventions threatened to reduce civilization to ashes (and this was before Albert Einstein & Friends leapt into the mix)—the notion of humanity teetering on the brink of apocalypse at the pull of a lever must have felt both tantalizing and terrifying. Fortunately, director Dave Fleischer merely uses the end-of-all-life-as-we-know-it for some customary visual puns, including a volcano that turns into a giant dude smoking a cigar, and some live-action gimcrackery with the camera, starring, presumably, some Inkwell Studios staffers and the streets of New York, both of which are slightly worse for wear by the end. Technology could be a promise or a threat, but happily the Fleischers could make you laugh at both prospects.

Mickey Mouse in “The Worm Turns” (1937)

There’s an odd incongruity to watching happy-go-lucky Mickey doing the mad scientist bit while whipping up a batch of “Courage Builder” serum, an impression not dissipated by him spouting a cheery, “Oh, boy!” while his infernal formula brews. It’s only furthered when the syringe-wielding cartoon mouse comes to the aid of a more… um… mousy mouse under attack by a cat. The animators work hard to keep Mickey visually separated from the two combatants, but still, the question could fairly be asked, “What the hell kind of subspecies is Mickey, anyway?”

Whatever he is, the rodent who helps keep the lights on at the Disney studios is more plot engine than participant here, repeatedly deploying his serum as the repercussions of his interference keep scaling up—first, saving the mouse from the cat, then the cat from an enraged Pluto, and then Pluto from Dogcatcher Pete (with, as a coda, an emboldened fire hydrant getting the last laugh on the mutt—poor Pluto rarely catches a break in these cartoons). Anticipating noted (if fictional) mathematician Ian Malcolm’s observation that just because science can do something doesn’t mean that it should, “The Worm Turns” demonstrates the consequences of profligately bequeathing power without considering the upshot. Released a scant month before the debut of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the cartoon makes its point while Disney was at the peak of its animation prowess, a status demonstrated in every painstakingly executed frame.

Superman in “The Mechanical Monsters” (1941)

Legend has it that when the Fleischer Studios was approached by parent company Paramount to budget out a series of Superman cartoons, Max and Dave Fleischer—none too eager to tackle the caped superhero —deliberately overbid at an exorbitant cost of $100,000 per episode. They were probably not happy when the studio took one look at the price tag and said, “Cut it to $30,000 [approximately $525,000 today and still pricey for the time] and you’ve got a deal.”

However reluctant the Fleischers may have been to bring the Last Son of Krypton to the screen, they were committed enough to their craft not to waste Paramount’s largesse. The Fleischer Superman cartoons were groundbreaking both for their embrace of action and adventure in a genre that still clung closely to pratfalls and slapstick, and for their lavish, deco-inspired animation, with proto-geek director Dave investing special attention on all that gee-whiz technology.

All that tech-love is raised to near-orgasmic proportions in “The Mechanical Monsters.” In the course of ten minutes, you get the titular, towering robots (which are never referred to as such in the cartoon), complete with flame-thrower eyes and retractable propellers and wings, plus an awesome panoramic control panel (with each robot being controlled by a knob, a lever, and four whole buttons!), a menacing subterranean smelting facility (every good mad genius needs one), and crackling arcs of energy overlaid onto every electrical device presented, whether or not it makes sense. The design of the robots, with their lanky, lumbering walk, became so iconic that they crop up in the likes of Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky, and the entire opening of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, while the highlight has Supes putting the beatdown on an army of automatons. The ensuing mechanical carnage—with metal limbs, torsos, and heads flying everywhere, capped off with the control panel engulfed in flames—is not just a cool piece of animation, it might just stand as history’s ultimate teardown.

Merrie Melodies, “Duck Dodgers in the 24½ Century” (1953)

It was typically Bugs Bunny who would go up against the alien entity eventually dubbed Marvin the Martian (he was nameless in his original appearances). But when director Chuck Jones was indulging his satirical side, the vainglorious Daffy Duck—who had long stopped being officially daffy—was a more suitable foil. With a movie-going audience who as kids had reveled in the comic strip/radio/movie serial adventures of Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, et al, and who had subsequently grown up in a time that saw more than a few of them experiencing the worst of humanity in combat and its aftermath, a skewering of innocent, pulp-y science fiction adventure may have felt long overdue.

In a universe of towers that soar and platforms that project precariously out into space (in brilliant background designs by Philip De Guard), where electric eyes trigger doors opening up on even bigger electric eyes, Jones finds opportunities for customary slapstick (does Daffy get repeatedly blasted and disintegrated? Of course!), subversions of SF concepts (who knew rocket ships had reverse gears?), and a few lashings of Cold War anxiety as Daffy’s feud with Marvin over the highly coveted Planet X (last repository of Illudium Phosdex, “the shaving cream atom”) escalates eventually to planetary annihilation. In Jones’ conversion of the Looney Tunes ethos from rampant anarchy to mordant wit (but still with tons of explosions courtesy of the Acme Company), there were clear echoes of America’s post-war acceptance that the world was perhaps more complex than we had previously allowed. “Duck Dodgers” sums that realization up in a closing shot where, after Daffy has declared primacy over the pathetic patch of rock remaining after the conflagration, Porky Pig gazes into the camera and utters a curt, “B-big deal.” The future could still be swell, but the shadows—even in space—would pursue us.

Space Angel, “The Slave World” (1962)

When you’re cranking out an animated science fiction kids show on a budget, you have to accept that certain compromises will be made. Like, you can’t always put science in your science fiction. Like, you can rarely bother to actually animate the damn thing. Like, you run the risk of traumatizing an entire generation of young viewers via your other, cost-cutting innovation: Syncro-Vox, which superimposed real human mouths onto drawn characters’ faces. Weird looking to begin with, the process wasn’t helped by a lack of integrity in registering live action to cartoon, leaving many a tyke to wonder if, in the future, they too might fall victim to the scourge of Migratory Lip Syndrome.

Still, there were compensations. There was lots of lovely Alex Toth art, bringing a comic book kick to Space Angel’s visuals. And while narrative arcs could frequently be summed up as one-damn-thing-after-another—perfect for a show that was broken up into five 5-minute chunks meant to be stripped out over five after-school afternoons—occasionally adventures could rise to something close to actual narratives. Such was the case when the titular Space Angel Scott McCloud (voiced by Ned Lefebver) and his crew of communications expert/target-of-the-occasional-sexist-joke Crystal Mace (Margaret Kerry) and engineer/Scotsman (of course) Taurus (Hal Smith) visit a pair of roving worlds that drift into our solar system every thirty years. Setting aside the question of how such an advent does not wreak havoc on the planets in our own system, what Scott & co. find is one sphere filled with committed pacifists, the other populated by a warlike race with no compunction about raiding their neighbor for slave labor.

Subtlety was not Space Angel’s strong suit: The oppressed are rendered as humanoid, dignified, and quite Caucasian, while the oppressors are presented as troll-like, imperious, and vaguely Asian. Nor was producer Cambria Productions especially obsessed with concealing their myriad cost-cutting efforts. When the slaves show via video monitor how their attempts to reach out to Earth for assistance foundered because they unfortunately always attempted contact while Earth was in the midst of a world war, the point is illustrated with glimpses of actual, documentary combat footage. Nobody in the cartoon remarks upon the incongruity, but any adults watching when this cropped up could be forgiven for having to scoop their jaws up off the floor (no intervention by Syncro-Vox necessary). Slapdash as Space Angel was, it still fired young imaginations on the potential of the future, and occasionally slipped in a bit of morality about whether humanity was truly ready for it.

Star Blazers, “We Will Return!” (1979 American airing)

The Seventies were not an especially halcyon period for weekday afternoon cartoons. Animation was frequently mediocre, and stories were hampered by the intervention of well-meaning parents groups intent on guarding tender minds from the corruption of actual entertainment. Some solace could be found in the import of Japanese anime, although by the time such shows as Battle of the Planets (née Science Ninja Team Gatchaman) made it to American screens, they too had gone through an extensive laundering process. Then came Star Blazers.

Imported, as was Battle, in the wake of Star Wars’ success, this space epic—born in Japan as Space Battleship Yamato and marking the first directorial effort of the legendary Leiji Matsumoto—ventured into conceptual areas little explored on TV screens before the sun went down. The story—centering on the crew of the spaceship Argo as they travel to the distant world Iscandar to retrieve a technology that would save a ravaged Earth from the attacks of the warlike Gamilons—was serialized, with a title card flashed at the end of each episode showing the number of days left before worldwide annihilation. Because of that, there was no reset button to push, no way to restore things back to square one for the next episode. Characters learned, and grew. People died. Let me emphasize that last point: People died. And stayed dead. For a generation raised on entertainment that rarely challenged them to consider such inconvenient concepts as consequences, this was a hammer blow.

Nearly as disorienting for its young viewers were episodes that took a pause in all the action to explore the impact of the Argo’s mission on its crew. In the bittersweetly titled “We Will Return!”, as the Argo prepares to enter a space warp that will take them out of communication with Earth for the better part of a year, the crew is given one final opportunity to reach out to loved ones. Amidst all the tearful farewells, one of the lead characters, Derek Wildstar (voiced by Kenneth Meseroll)—having lost his family in Gamilon attacks—meets with Argo Captain Avatar (Gordon Ramsey), whose son similarly died in battle, to commiserate over knowledge that no one waits on the other side of a video screen for their call, and to toast the onset of their mission with a consoling glass of, ahem, spring water. (Okay, it was actually sake. You didn’t think the censorship gates had been completely thrown open, did you?)

For the show’s target audience, watching two characters share this quiet, deeply emotional moment was an unanticipated induction into meaningful, no-foolin’ drama. Not all of Space Battleship Yamato’s more mature beats made it through to American TV—among other things, an extended digression into the Yamato’s WWII history was, not surprisingly, excised—but what survived delivered a signal to its preteen audience that cartoons could present emotions far deeper than what they were accustomed to.

Heavy Metal (1981)

Not long into a viewing of this anthology film based on an American “adult” comic magazine based on a French “adult” comic magazine, audiences became aware that there were several things to be counted on from one sequence to the next. One was that if any opportunity was offered to depict gore in its splooshiest fashion, it would be eagerly embraced. Another was that by the end of the film, everyone watching would have a complete, working knowledge of metal and punk bands of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Yet another was that if a female character appeared on the screen, it would be only a matter of minutes before everyone would get a good glimpse of her tits. Things were simpler in the eighties. (No they weren’t; producers were just willing to cater to the tastes of horny teen boys to a ridiculous degree.)

HM is a decidedly mixed bag. Building their film around the framing story of an orb of pure evil and how it wields its influence across the universe, the producers—which included Ivan Reitman—recruited numerous studios to bring their own distinctive styles to each sequence. Sometimes, as with the noir-ish “Harry Canyon”—based on the work of French artist Jean “Moebius” Giraud—the result was a tight, amusing adventure that anticipates the comic likes of The Fifth Element; sometimes, as with the Frazetta-esque “Den” and “Taarna”—the former based on Richard Corben’s work, the latter, again, on Moebius—they were exercises in epic style over narrative substance; and sometimes, as in the toony “So Beautiful & So Dangerous”—Angus McKie’s tale of a secretary inadvertently abducted by drug-snorting aliens and wooed by an amorous robot—it boiled down to, “Okay. And your point is…?” Imperfect as Heavy Metal was, in a movie marketplace where Star Wars was spreading an increasingly influential shadow, the film stood out as an impertinent, raunchy counterargument. Plus it gave all those horny teen boys an excuse to tell their parents that they were just going to the movies to watch spaceships.

Batman: The Animated Series – “Heart of Steel, Parts I & II” (1992)

There may have been a half-century between the Fleischer Superman series and Warner’s successful porting of the Dark Knight to TV animation, but it’s hard to ignore the shared DNA. Save for a handful of video screens in the Batcave, Gotham is visually firmly ensconced in the Deco ‘40s, a perfect setting both for a dashing billionaire playboy to woo any available debutantes (check out Bruce Wayne’s chunky-yet-luxe limo!), and for a Dark Knight to brood amongst the towering spires. Still, the passage of fifty years is going to leave its mark: Where the Man of Steel had to battle robots whose operator’s ambitions didn’t extend far beyond bank robberies and diamond heists, by the time the Bat faced down an army of androids, their goal was nothing short of world conquest, via replacement of influential humans with their automated counterparts.

Director Kevin Altieri has expressed regret over having Wayne/Batman (voiced by the indispensable Kevin Conroy) make mention of “wetware”—a term that would subsequently fall into disuse—but, hey, he’s owed props for at least trying to bring in scientific concepts that were at the forefront of attention at the time. And this is another instance where the Fox Standards and Practices department showed uncommon lenience in the level of violence depicted, with the megalomaniacal AI H.A.R.D.A.C. (Jeff Bennett) incapacitating its inventor (William Sanderson) with a disturbingly fiery burst of electricity, and several machine-spawned surrogates “dying” on-screen (the rationale for the latter being that as long as they were robots, the fatalities didn’t count…never mind that the things were indistinguishable from humans). Featuring the series debut of Barbara Gordon (Melissa Gilbert), who was able to demonstrate her detective skills even before she officially donned her own cowl-and-cape, “Heart of Steel” brought a dash of modern-day paranoia to the world of old-school mechanical monsters.

WALL-E (2008)

How amazing was Pixar, back in 2008, back when they were still in the midst of an unprecedented run of hit films? And how profitable were they, not just in selling out theaters, but in leveraging the all-important ancillary marketplace? A decade’s-plus worth of kids had grown up in the company of Woody and Buzz action figures, cuddled Nemo and Dory plushies, steered their Lightning McQueens across imaginary finish lines, and served up perfect cassoulets in their Ratatouille casserole dishes (that last may not have actually happened, but I wouldn’t be surprised). So with all the dollars filtering in from all the Walmarts of the world, and with all the tchotchkes flowing out to all those homes, what could possibly have made more sense than for director Andrew Stanton to tell a tale centered on…the perils of malignant consumerism?

Pixar had consistently upped its production game from film to film, but WALL-E’s first act represented a quantum leap. There was an undeniable palpability to the film’s rendition of a ravaged, garbage-choked world, while its depiction of a humble robotic trash compactor courting an elegant, iPod-ish exploration probe (in other words, Lady and the Tramp with microprocessors)—enacted practically dialogue-free—was sweetly beguiling. And when the film shifted to outer space and WALL-E’s and EVE’s efforts to steer a wandering cruise liner full of comfortable, coddled, and morbidly obese humans back to Earth before they’re subsumed by their own, mass-market decadence, it managed to deliver its cautionary message with customary Pixar wit and uncommon grace. Functioning at the top of its skills, the studio demonstrated that it could make you care about both the fate of a squat, cube-shaped robot, and the destiny of humankind (literally) at large, and still leave you optimistic about the prospects for both.

World of Tomorrow (2015)

All right, calm down, Rick and Morty fans, we’ve got you covered elsewhere (but in case you want to know: “Auto Erotic Assimilation”). But while R&M was busy establishing surprisingly credible science fiction chops for a cartoon about an alcoholic super-genius and his frequently victimized nephew, maverick animator Don Hertzfeldt was delivering a glimpse into a future that was no less acidic, and dramatically more poignant.

On the eve of humanity’s extinction, a clone reaches out to the past to engage her young prototype. Teleporting the child to her time, she takes the girl on a guided tour of a personal life that features romantic dalliances with inanimate objects, a career implanting the fear of death into graceful, towering robots, and moments when the nagging sense that something is missing overwhelms all other concerns, all while humanity desperately strives for immortality, at the cost of losing track of the value the past might hold.

Hertzfeldt had long established a magical ability to invest deceptively simple line drawings with an incredible amount of soul. Casting those characters into an abstract ecology of cross-hatched structures and pulsing, all-enveloping “outernet” landscapes, the animator guided the Oscar-nominated World of Tomorrow from a standard, dystopian view of the future into something at once wryly comic, and deeply affecting. Hopefully, one hundred years hence, when the big marketing push begins to transfer human consciousness into tiny, black cubes, it will still be around to deliver a cogent warning.

So, that’s my list of ten. But, hey, I didn’t have to stop there; I can think of tons of other great examples. Like when the Terry Bears bought a robot. Or when Bugs Bunny was chased by a robot. Or when Gumby’s home was destroyed by robots. Um, I seem to be caught in a rut, here. But, you see? That’s where you come in. There has to be at least one, inspirational science fiction cartoon that grabbed your imagination, and that I didn’t bother to mention here. So go ahead, comment below—the future of humanity depends on it! (Too far? Okay, maybe it’s just a fun thing to do.)

Originally published January 2020.

Dan Persons has been knocking about the genre media beat for, oh, a good handful of years, now. He’s presently house critic for the radio show Hour of the Wolf on WBAI 99.5FM in New York, and previously was editor of Cinefantastique and Animefantastique, as well as producer of news updates for The Monster Channel. He is also founder of Anime Philadelphia, a program to encourage theatrical screenings of Japanese animation. And you should taste his One Alarm Chili! Wow!

We’re about two decades into an era that history will remember as That Time Humans Demanded At Least Four Comic Book Movies A Year. (I’m guessing this era will be remembered for other things, too, but I’m trying to stay positive for once.) My colleagues and I talk about comics characters pretty much every day, and those conversations lead me to mull a specific type of comic book movie: the Superhero Origin Story.

Before I even knew what was happening, I found myself drawn, inexorably, as if by some powerful destiny, to rank these stories.

In reverse order from worst to best.

Here I compile my results. And allow me to be clear: This is purely a personal list. With great ranking list posts must come great responsibility, and I take all of it on my shoulders, as these choices in no way represent the opinions of my colleagues at Tor.com, Tordotcom Publishing, Tor Books, my alma mater, any company I have ever worked for, or even my own family.

With that in mind, have some Ranking Criteria!

• Catalytic Trauma? Most superheroes are born from a cataclysmic event of some kind. People don’t just wake up one day and decide to beat criminals up while dressed as a bat. Part of a good origin story is making sense of the catalytic trauma, and showing the audience how it forms the hero.
• Moment of Truth? Most origin stories have a moment when the main character has to decide to become a hero, and often, usually, the success of the story hinges on it.
• Even Rocky had a montage: What’s an origin story without a montage of training/making the supersuit/testing the gadgets?
• What’s your name, kid? Did the hero name themselves? Or did the press or a nefarious nemesis give them a moniker that stuck?
• Quotes? Some heroes have catchphrases, and some superhero origin movies have indelible quotes that we here at Tor.com yell at each other wayyyy too much. This is where those go.

And finally, a note on what I included versus what I did not: A movie like Spider-Man: Homecoming isn’t an origin story, as Tom Holland’s take on Peter Parker has already been Spider-Manning for a while when we meet him in Civil War, before we even get to his stand alone story. Or maybe you’re looking for Mystery Men? But no! Like Justice League, that’s an “origin of the team” movie, not a superhero origin story. What about, say, X-Men? A classic film, but that’s more of a “We join our heroes, already in progress” movie. It is possible, however, that I have forgotten some individual super-origins, such is the nature of lists.

33. Joker (2019)

Screenshot: Warner Bros. Pictures/DC Films

Catalytic Trauma? Crime Alley, pearls, we all know the drill when it comes to Batman.
Moment of Truth? N/A
Even Rocky had a montage: N/A
What’s your name, kid? N/A
Quotes? Ummm, N/A? Bruce and Arthur talk a little bit at the Gates of Stately Wayne Manor, but I don’t think Bruce says anything that counts for this.

I’m putting this at the bottom because, come on, after the vacillation of whether or not Arthur is Thomas Wayne’s son, and then that weird, tense scene between Arthur and Bruce at the gates of Stately Wayne Manor? And just generally how much this movie positioned itself as a BOLD NEW TAKE on, like, everything, man? To just shoehorn the Crime Alley Murder Scene into that last few minutes felt really lazy to me. We’ve all seen this moment so many times—if you’re going to reinvent, go all out and reinvent.

32. The Incredible Hulk (2008)

Screenshot: Marvel Studios

Catalytic Trauma? Something something Gamma Radiation
Moment of Truth? NA
Even Rocky had a montage: NA
What’s your name, kid? NA
Quotes? “Don’t make me… hungry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m… hungry.”

2008’s The Incredible Hulk (the Ed Norton one) is at the bottom because it’s not really an origin story, but instead of dropping us into Hulk’s life, already in progress, and trusting us to figure it out, it packs Bruce Banner’s iconic origin into the opening montage of film, which felt like such a weird half-measure that I’m putting it here.

31. Wonder Woman (2017)

Screenshot: DC Films/Warner Bros. Films

Catalytic Trauma? The Great War comes to Themyscira; Antiope dies in battle.
Moment of Truth? Diana decides to defy her mother’s wishes and leave with Steve Trevor; Diana walks out into No Man’s Land alone.
Even Rocky had a montage: The first 20 minutes of the film shows us the Amazon’s training regimen as Diana grows up.
What’s your name, kid? “Wonder Woman” isn’t used, but Steve Trevor names Diana “Diana Prince” when she attempts to introduce herself as “Diana, Princess of Themyscira” to a bunch of congealed old generals.
Quotes? “You’re wrong about [humanity]. They’re everything you say—but so much more.”

Diana is born superpowered and raised on Themyscira among a bunch of superpowered women. We see her growing up there and being trained as a fighter. When she comes to the, I don’t know, regular part of Earth, on one hand, all she’s doing is using her natural abilities to help people who aren’t Themysciran. She also doesn’t change or grow even a little bit, because she doesn’t need to: she starts out awesome, kind, brave, and highly intelligent, and she’s still all those things at the end, just a little bit sadder.

The thing the film does beautifully, though, is show us Diana making the choice to help humanity despite strong opposition from her family. She chooses to hear Steve Trevor out and treat him with compassion, which leads to her learning about the war raging outside her hidden homeland. And, of course, she chooses to keep fighting for humanity rather than joining Ares to rule over it, despite humanity’s clear shortcomings. So while there’s not much of a traditional origin story arc here, I still wanted to include it.

30. Blade (1998)

Screenshot: Marvel Enterprises/New Line Cinema

Catalytic Trauma? Learning the truth about his mom’s tragic fate; being a Daywalker trapped for ever between two worlds yet truly at home in neither, in general.
Moment of Truth: N/A
Even Rocky had a montage: N/A
What’s your name, kid? He’s so fucking cool his name is just Blade.
Quotes: “Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill.”

We see Blade’s origin in the opening moments, when his mother is attacked by a vampire while she’s pregnant with him. He’s saved, but is now a Dhampir, and his mother dies. However, when we cut to Wesley Snipes as Adult Blade, he’s already a seasoned vampire hunter and has a father-figure/assistant named Whistler. The film picks the story up as he goes to war against a group of vampire elders who are trying to raise the blood god La Magra. While this is cool as shit, it’s not so much an “origin story” as an in media res story—but it does touch on Blade’s mother’s tragic fate a few times, which is why I wanted to include it on this list. If you go into Blade with no idea who he is, you’ll get a sense of his literal origin.

Plus, tl;dr: Go watch Blade. The success of his movie is the reason you have your precious MCU and fifteen different goddamn cinematic X-Men timelines. And hopefully, someday, when things are back to the state that passes for normal, we’ll get to see Mahershala Ali take up the mantle.

29. Darkman (1990)

Screenshot: Renaissance Pictures/Universal Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Scientist Peyton Westlake is attacked, burned with acid, blown up, experimented on while he’s unconscious… actually, this whole movie is him being traumatized.
Moment of Truth: He doesn’t really have a defining moment, he works to get his faces as stable as possible, and then starts using them to exact vengeance.
Even Rocky had a montage: We get several experiment montages, but never the sense that he’s testing himself or gaining new skills
What’s your name, kid? He names himself in a final voiceover, having disguised himself as Bruce Campbell: “I’m everyone, and no one. Everywhere…nowhere. Call me…Darkman.”
Quotes: “Take the fucking elephant!”

Darkman was Sam Raimi’s first try at a superhero movie. He tried to get the rights to The Shadow and Batman, but when that didn’t work out he wrote his own superhero, making him more an homage to Universal Horror characters than a typical costumed hero. Peyton Westlake is a scientist, working on a highly experimental form of synthetic skin. He finally develops a form of the skin that lasts for exactly 90 minutes before disintegrating, just in time for a gang to break into his lab, burn him with acid, and blow him up. He survives long enough to be subjected to a different (and utterly non-consensual) experimental treatment that kills most of the nerves in his skin, but also makes him extremely strong and mentally unstable. Although to be fair, being burned with acid and blown up probably doesn’t help his mental state.

The only sense we get of Peyton’s character is that he’s a dedicated, nigh-obsessive scientist, who’s also happy to suggest blowing off work to stay in bed with his girlfriend. After he gains his powers, he fixates on getting revenge on the man who blew him up, which slowly turns into saving his girlfriend from Louis Strack, the boss of the guy who blew him up. I remembered liking this when I was a kid but I have to admit that while it’s super stylish, it doesn’t work too well as an origin. (There’s also a lengthy helicopter chase [???] that does not work on any level.) Since we don’t know Peyton too well before the attack, we can’t get a handle on how he’s changed aside from “he really wants to kill the guys who blew him up, and now he really wants to kill the guy who’s attempting to murder his girlfriend.” So, solid motives, but “vengeance” really isn’t enough to hang a film on. We never get the sense that he’s using his strength for the greater good—and obviously the evil developer Strack is horrifically murderous and corrupt as a person, but there’s only a tiny tiny hint that his plan for the riverfront is hurting the people of Unnamed City, and we never see anything to disprove that he’s providing a lot of jobs? This is also a case where the movie’s divorce from reality hurts it a bit. We know that Peyton’s false faces will only last 90 minutes, which is a perfect source of tension, but beyond that we never really know how strong he is, or if he has any other powers. When he fights, his main move seems to be jumping on people from above, but it’s not like he’s Spider-Man, with powers that allow him to scale walls, he just somehow manages to climb up to catwalks and mezzanines with no indication of how he does that without anyone seeing him. Hiding in shadows is not, itself, a viable superpower.

28. Green Lantern (2011)

Screenshot: DC Entertainment/Warner Bros. Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Young Hal Jordan watches his dad explode.
Moment of Truth: Hal finally communes with the Lantern and it recites the Oath through him; he decides to stop running away and defend Earth.
Even Rocky had a montage: We get a few far-too-brief moments of Hal ecstatically flying, and then a weirdly aggro training montage on Oa that’s so mean-spirited it doesn’t accomplish what this montage should do, namely show us a hero coming into their own.
What’s your name, kid? The Green Lantern Corps. was named eons ago, and Hal is just taking up the mantle.
Quotes: “I know that humans aren’t as strong as other species, or the smartest. We’re young, we have a lot to learn. But we’re worth saving.”; “I, Hal Jordan, do solemnly swear to pledge allegiance… to a lantern, that I got from a dying purple alien in a swamp.”

Let the record show that I love Ryan Reynolds. I’m a huge fan of his gin, he was fantastic in Buried, and one of my greatest wishes in life is that I could have been the one who leaked the Deadpool footage. But Green Lantern refuses to work. Every time it starts to work, it’s like a studio exec noticed and yanked the leash to make it behave. We get multiple moments where “the love interest” is actually a competent pilot and business manager who calls our callow hero on his shit—but then she has to go back to being doe-eyed and damsel-y. We get a potentially twisted father figure arc, where the nerdy character turns to villainy to take revenge on the father who always treated him like crap—but instead our comic book movie gives us a science professor who becomes a villain because being a nerd made him sad. Also, he’s in a wheelchair? And hates Ryan Reynolds’ character for being handsome? Read the room, movie.

I watched the Extended Edition, which I think specifically beefed up the origin story aspect. Our hero Hal Jordan is the son of a test pilot. Elder Jordan tells his son that part of a test pilot’s job is “not to be afraid”, so we know the poor bastard’s doomed. But the movie chooses to gun the engine and shoot straight down the tarmac into a scene of young Hal Jordan watching his dad die in a fiery explosion. Then we cut to Present Day where Hal Jordan is dashing out of a rumpled bed and away from his latest one-night stand because he’s late for his job—as a test pilot. And yes he has flashbacks to his dad’s fiery demise during the test, why do you ask?

Also Taika Waititi is in this movie? Though he and Reynolds both refuse to admit it.

We’re all set up for when the Ring chooses Hal, for him to transform his life and become a better person and be mentored by Sinestro. But no! Hal mostly stays the same, Sinestro tells him not worthy to be in the Lantern Corps., Hal agrees, and goes back to Earth but keeps the ring and all the superpowers??? He obviously loves flying when he’s not backflashing to his dad’s fiery death, but the movie spends almost no energy on the fact that he can fucking fly now, sans plane. When he has to defend some partygoers from a maverick helicopter he does this by creating an enormous, green, Hot Wheels track, instead of just throwing a net over the helicopter blades or something. Finally, he spends so much time fighting his old childhood friend (who, again, is now a deformed, wheelchair-using villain [?!?!? WTF, MOVIE]) that he barely has time to fight Parallax, the actual supervillain, and when he does fight him he just keeps using the Ring to make big green machine guns and fists and shit instead of literally anything in the universe since the whole point of Green Lantern’s powers is that you can create anything you can imagine which is cool as SHIT and why he’s kind of the best hero (other than Nightcrawler) and you have that CGI budget why don’t you use it to make some cool shit??? Did Lockheed Martin produce this movie? Was it funded by Grumman? There are more things in Heaven and Earth than guns and fucking fists.

27. Meteor Man (1993)

Catalytic Trauma? After intervening in a mugging, Jefferson Reed is hit by a glowing green meteor, which merges with his DNA, and it looks agonizing as HECK!
Moment of Truth: Jefferson intervenes in the aforementioned mugging; he faces the Golden Lords gang despite having lost his powers.
Even Rocky had a montage: We see Meteor Man cleaning up the neighborhood and brokering peace between the Crips, Bloods, and police while his mom upgrades his supersuit.
What’s your name, kid? The community names him Meteor Man.
Quotes: (per MM’s nemesis, Simon Caine): “THIS IS WHAT I THINK OF YOUR METEOR MAN!” (throws Meteor Man through a bookmobile)

Once again we are faced with a movie that I wanted to like, made by people I was rooting for, that just does not come together. Robert Townsend made Meteor Man in 1993, long before any comic book movie boom, from an original idea that was spun into a limited comics series from Marvel. The basic idea—cowardly substitute teacher from a rough neighborhood uses superpowers to clean up the community—is great. Unlike most of the heroes on this list, hero Jefferson Reed never has a secret identity—people know he’s Meteor Man the entire time, and the community initially rallies around him. His mom sews his supersuit, and his neighbors critique his performance. The idea of an open hero is fascinating, especially given that the community turns on him pretty viciously when his work attracts the attention of a brutal gang.

Unfortunately, the movie’s execution of the idea is clumsy. Jefferson himself isn’t really defined much beyond being afraid of confrontation, so his heroic arc never snaps into focus. On top of that, the meteoric powers themselves are simply too, well, big: Jefferson has flight, x-ray and laser vision, plus superstrength, plus healing powers, AND he’s able to absorb all the contents of any book just by touching it, AND he can communicate telepathically with dogs. The only caveat is that he can exhaust himself easily (but he can “recharge” by sleeping), and the “absorbing a book’s contents” power only lasts for 30 seconds. Having so many powers and so few consequences drains a lot of the tension from the film. There are a few sequences that show the films potential—in one Jeff selflessly fends off a hail of gunfire to protect his family, only to look down at two handfuls of bullets and realize that his hands are bleeding. Not only is this a great visual but neither he nor the audience knows when or if his powers are coming back, and it’s kind of intense. In another scene, Jeff’s gone into one of his nigh-comatose recharge naps, and his dog Ellington (the true hero of the film imho) has to bury him in dirty laundry when the gang breaks into his apartment. Here again, we see a real consequence to living as a hero. Jeff’s just a man who lives in a normal studio and lets his laundry pile up in the hamper. He’s vulnerable, and thus potentially relatable, in a way that a Batman or a Superman can’t be. But rather than focusing on Jeff’s arc the movie relies too much on cartoonish gang violence and simplistic morality to become as involving as it might have been. One completely excellent aspect of the film, though? This was Black Panther costume designer Ruth E. Carter’s first superheroic outing.

26. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Screenshot: Columbia Pictures/Marvel Entertainment/Sony Pictures Releasing

Catalytic Trauma? Peter Parker’s parents’ death; THE TRAGIC DEATH OF UNCLE BEN
Moment of Truth: Peter rescues a kid on the Williamsburg Bridge, and finally stops pursuing vengeance and starts acting like a hero.
Even Rocky had a montage: The first spiderpower-testing-montage comes as Peter is skating, and gradually notices how strong he is. Unfortunately, the rest of the montages are all framed as Peter hunting Ben’s murderer, so any sense of Peter’s growing powers and skills are balanced by the very real fear that he’s going to do something drastic.
What’s your name, kid? He names himself, seemingly out of nowhere, during the rescue on the bridge.
Quotes: “No one seems to grasp the concept of the mask.”

Once again, I need to be clear about a few things. I liked Marc Webb’s debut film, 500 Days of Summer, enormously. Andrew Garfield is one of my favorite actors. (Has there been a modern run of performances to match his in Silence, Hacksaw Ridge, Angels in America, Breathe, and Tick, Tick…Boom!?) I love Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy and I think her chemistry with Garfield is remarkable, Martin Sheen and Sally Field are fantastic as Uncle Ben and Aunt May, respectively, and Rhys Ifans is good as Dr. Connors. It’s cool that Peter and Flash Thompson have an actual relationship arc. Making Peter an engineering nerd who can immediately diagnose the problem with May’s chest freezer and rig up a bolt for his bedroom door is a nice way to show us his intelligence. The rescue on the Williamsburg Bridge? Good. New York City’s crane operators working together to help Spider-Man save the city? VERY good.

However. This movie, as a Spider-Man movie, just doesn’t work. The film sets up a few innovations that could be great: a bodega robbery leads to Uncle Ben’s murder; Peter clashes with Captain Stacy rather than J. Jonah Jameson over Spider-Man’s motives; Peter’s kind of a dirtbag who uses his spiderpowers to enhance his skating; Peter is a believably traumatized, orphaned teen. But in each case the movie goes way over the top. As many, many people have stated before me, this take on Peter Parker strays too far from the spirit of the character. He’s way too cool—and almost a bully himself at a few points in the film. The fact that his father was a scientist who was murdered for his top-secret research undercuts the working-class underdog aspect that makes Peter so special among superheroes. He doesn’t start using his powers for good because with them must come great responsibility—he starts off by using his powers to hunt Uncle Ben’s murderer down like he’s a teenage Punisher. He doesn’t start acting like a hero until an hour and fifteen minutes into the movie, and even then he only saves a few people before he’s so busy trying to stop Dr. Connors that we never get to see him be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. We don’t come to Spider-Man for vengeance, we come to him to see the best New Yorker ever, and this movie falls short of that.

25. Hulk (2003)

Screenshot: Universal Pictures/Marvel Studios

Catalytic Trauma? Good god, where to begin? Scientist David Banner torments his infant son to trigger Hulk responses, then tries to murder him for being dangerous; Bruce’s mother’s intervention means that baby Bruce lives, but he watches his father stab his mother to death—or, excuse me, as David Banner himself puts it, Bruce sees when “she..and the knife…merged”; Adult Bruce is repeatedly prodded and triggered by both General Ross and his father.
Moment of Truth: Bruce/Hulk’s true nature is revealed when he goes to protect Betty Ross from David Banner’s evil mutant dogs. (Did I mention you get to watch the Hulk kill evil mutant dogs in this movie?)
Even Rocky had a montage: Any time DNA appears in this film, you can bet your life someone’s about to sequence the shit out of it. We also get a few fun scenes of Hulk leaping across the desert before General Ross tries to nuke him. God! THIS MOVIE!
What’s your name, kid? I don’t think anyone quite calls the Hulk the Hulk?
Quotes: “Puny human!”

UGH THIS FUCKING MOVIE.

I’m a huge fan of Ang Lee, and I remember going into this movie years ago wanting to like it, and being impressed with some of the stylistic choices. When I rewatched I thought it would probably rank pretty high on this list, since it delves into how Bruce Banner becomes Hulk as a result of his father’s experiments, and becomes a deeply-nested origin story. I will say that between Eric Bana and a young Daniel Dae Kim, this film has the best cheekbones on this list. But! Cheekbones aren’t everything, and I found rewatching Hulk to be a very frustrating exercise. It it so overburdened with daddy issues, and so divorced from reality, that it feels like an extended family therapy session rather than the opening salvo of an iconic hero.

David Banner runs through a series of tests on cell regeneration, in what appears to be a concerted effort to transform humans into every Spider-Man villain simultaneously. (Except Vulture—I didn’t see any vultures.). Obviously he tests his volatile serums on himself with no oversight.

This does not go well.

What goes even worse is that his wife gets pregnant and he discovers that their child has anomalous DNA. When the military cuts his funding he responds in the only rational way: blowing up the lab up and attempting to murder his child. We cut to Bruce Banner, now Bruce Krenzler, heading off to college, then we cut again to him as a scientist, working with his ex Betty Ross on an experiment that is almost exactly the same as his dad’s. He has no idea about this. He exposes himself to severe Gamma Radiation to save a fellow lab worker (who, having served his purpose, is never spoken of again) and he starts blacking out and becoming the Hulk. The Hulk is a giant green rage monster, but he seems to recognize Betty, and only Betty. The rest of the movie veers between Bruce’s crazy-ass dad (played with full crazy-ass-ness by Nick Nolte) trying to force Bruce to be the Hulk full time, and Betty’s equally shitty dad (played with full Old West gruffness by Sam Elliot) trying to imprison or explode the Hulk. The whole psychodrama culminates in General Ross shackling Bruce to a chair so he has to sit still and listen to his father berate him, and inform him that the Hulk is his true son. (I’m not sure what this is supposed to achieve?) The Hulk smashes, Banner père transforms into a fellow monster and leeches a bunch of power from him, both of them seemingly explode, General Ross bugs Betty’s phone in case Bruce is still alive. It’s all very gross. Only in the last scene do we learn that Bruce has fled to Central America, where he is working as a traveling medic, and he finally tells a soldier “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” This movie is far more a psychological drama that’s using the story of the Hulk as a platform rather than a true superhero film—which could have been great if it was a bit shorter, and if it focused a bit more on Bruce and Betty rather than their uniquely awful dads.

24. Green Hornet (2011)

Screenshot: Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Releasing

Catalytic Trauma? Britt Reid’s mother’s offscreen death; Britt being systematically emotionally abused by his jerk dad.
Moment of Truth: When Britt witnesses a mugging, he decides to intervene despite being titanically incompetent as a fighter. Luckily, Kato helps.
Even Rocky had a montage: As Britt never trains, and Kato seemingly doesn’t need to, the montages here are all Kato working on cars and weapons.
What’s your name, kid? Britt tries to make his newspaper name him “The Green Bee” (in a weird homage to the thing he thinks killed his dad? But then it turns out that’s not what happened?) but Kato changes it to the marginally better “Green Hornet”, and the editors run with it.
Quotes: “I have two questions for you Kato, and then you can go home. Why is it that my dad’s mechanic makes the coffee, and why is it that without you, the coffee tastes like crap?”

Full disclosure: I honestly forgot this movie existed until I started research for this post. You there, out in Readerland—do you like this film? Is there a fanbase? I’d love to hear from people who liked this one in the comments, because I feel like no one talks about it at all.

As far as origin stories go, this one starts off pretty strong. We open on Britt Reid, who looks to be about 8, being chauffeured to his dad’s office. He’s clutching an action figure of a masked hero. His dad, a mega-rich newspaper mogul, berates him for getting sent home from school, and yells at him that of course they miss Britt’s mother, but they both have to move on with their lives. (Normal thing to scream at a child.) Britt protests that he only got in trouble for defending another kid from a bully. The dad scoffs at him, grabs the action figure, and rips its head off. Then he chucks the head into a trashcan, and shoves the decapitated body back at a weeping Britt.

Couple things.

We immediately see that Britt and his dad are cartoon rich. We see why. We see that Britt loves superheroes, that his mom is dead, that he has a fraught relationship with his emotionally abusive dad, and that his instinct is to do the right thing despite fear of punishment.

Honestly this might be the most elegant opening scene on this entire list. This thing is a fucking mathematical proof for a superhero. Unfortunately it’s all downhill from here. There are some fantastic touches. Since Britt inherits his dad’s paper he can print articles on “The Green Hornet” until he makes himself famous. Jay Chou is great as Kato, and the movie has fun with the fact that Britt knows he’s the lesser hero of the two. There’s a long sequence about the importance of a good cappuccino which almost justifies the whole movie for me. But the movie itself is such a bumpy ride. We get Christoph Waltz as an underworld figure named Chudnofsky, who is sometimes campy, sometimes scary—but never enough of either—who only transforms into a real “villain” at the end of the film. Britt himself barely changes. He and Kato both spend almost all of their shared screentime with Cameron Diaz sexually harassing her, and it’s gross. The tech montages of Kato building cars and weapons are fantastic, and there’s a beautiful split-screen sequence when Chudnofsky sends a bunch of henchpeople out after the Hornet, but each time the movie builds up some steam it bogs down again a few minutes later. There’s also the fact that apparently Kato is a legit superhero who can move almost faster than light, which is never explained—but sometimes, maybe, Britt has this superpower, too? But since there’s no arc to those abilities they just seem like plot conveniences, and we never learn why or how either of them are capable of becoming heroes, which makes the whole film fall flat.

23. The Fantastic Four (20o5)

Screenshot: Marvel Enterprises/20th Century Fox

Catalytic trauma? Ex-lovers/scientists Reed Richards and Sue Storm, Sue’s brother Johnny, and astronaut Ben Grimm are working on scientist/entrepreneur Viktor von Doom’s space station when a “space storm” irradiates all of them.
Moment of Truth: The Four work together to save people from an accident on the Brooklyn Bridge. Fellow New Yorkers begin cheering for Ben Grimm, and shout the cops down when they try to arrest him for being made of rocks.
Even Rocky had a montage: Most of the montages are dedicated to Reed and Sue researching ‘cures’ for their powers.
What’s your name, kid? The press names them the Fantastic Four after the Brooklyn Bridge Incident, and Johnny runs with it, declaring himself the leader of the group, and dubbing Ben Grimm “The Thing”. This does not go over well.
Quotes: Ben Grimm, to some random children: “Don’t do drugs!”

While watching Fantastic Four I had to keep reminding myself that this movie came out after Spider-Man and X-Men—it’s so cheesy and glossy that it feels like it came from a different era of superheroic moviemaking, and obviously looking back at it from the post-Nolan, post-MCU, post-other–Fantastic Four world it feels even more like an anomaly. I don’t know, like the kind of once-in-a-lifetime event that could irradiate five space travelers and give them mutant powers or something.

The way this movie shows us Johnny Storm’s new powers is that he breaks quarantine to go snowboarding with his nurse, who looks like she walked onto set directly from a Blink-182 album cover photo shoot. Since Johnny keeps accidentally FLAMING ON he melts the snow as he boards, crashes into a snowbank, and makes his own hot spring! The nurse finds him nude in a steaming pool. He then invites her to join him—and it’s heavily implied that she does so. (There’s also a running gag of Sue getting naked so she can be invisible and escape people? It’s, um, grating.) The film does a good job of showing each character’s trajectory: Reed and Sue want to test their abilities, and possibly cure them, but their drama is woven into their feelings for each other; Johnny wants to show off and use his powers to become famous; Ben Grimm loses his wife, wallows in self-pity, and just wants a cure; Viktor Von Doom wants power over all the FOOLS he lives among. (Fair enough.) The issue I have is that when we see the Four come together as a team, it’s only to fix a problem that Ben inadvertently caused—his attempt to help a potential suicide on the Brooklyn Bridge results in a massive pile-up, and each team member has to use their powers to save people. But instead of learning about their powers and being heroes, the Four then spend most of the movie trying to get rid of their powers and fighting with each other—a nice realistic touch in a series of comics, but annoying as the main plot of a single film. We finally see them live up to some of their promise when Doom tries to destroy them, as Sue uses her invisibility to rescue Reed, Johnny finally uses his powers as part of the team rather than just to show off, and a cured Ben has to make the decision to re-irradiate himself so he can be strong enough to save his friends. But they only spend about 15 minutes of the total runtime being the Fantastic Four.

22. Fantastic Four (2015)

Screenshot: Marvel Entertainment/20th Century Fox

Catalytic Trauma? Reed and Ben both have crappy childhoods; the trip to Planet Zero, um, does not go as planned?; Reed, Ben, and Johnny watch in horror as Planet Zero eats Viktor Von Doom.
Moment of Truth: Reed runs away to research a cure for his friends rather than working for the military, but the film hints that this is a moral failing? Later, the four of them stand up for themselves as a team and refuse to work with the military anymore.
Even Rocky had a montage: We cut from the terrified kids not knowing how to control their powers to months later, when Reed has developed a super suit, and the others have trained in military labs.
What’s your name, kid? In the final moments of the movie Reed goads them into coming up with a team name.
Quotes: Johnny Storm initially suggests “How about two guys, a girl, and the thing that nobody wanted?” as a name for the group.

For the first forty minutes or so, the 2015 Fantastic Four is a fascinating—if flawed—origin story. We’re introduced to Reed Richards and Ben Grimm as misunderstood kids (maybe even abused, in Ben’s case) and the good thing here is that Reed is simply a smart kid. He seems to be the only child in a lower-middle-class family, he’s not a mutant or a chosen one or anything, he’s just intelligent and willing to ignore the jeering classmates and obtuse teachers. He’s a great portrait of a smart kid in the circumstances a lot of smart kids end up in—not tortured or abused, just ignored. He doesn’t have a nemesis to test himself against, or the “I’ll show you all, someday!” tone that a lot of movies about geniuses give us. His ideas are dismissed by people who don’t understand them, and since he’s a kid, he can’t do anything about it. Ben Grimm seems to be a rung lower on the class ladder—he lives in a home where his brother slaps the shit out of him for no reason (whilst yelling “It’s clobberin’ time!” I might add) and then that brother gets the shit slapped out of him by their mother (we don’t meet dad, but I think I get the picture). It’s refreshing that Ben, rather than being a bully himself, is nice and thoughtful, and the audience is expected to realize that he must be tremendously strong to stay nice and thoughtful in a home like that.

When Reed is whisked away to Baxter Foundation we get to see that initial excitement of being around people he can really talk to. But this is also where the movie falters, because it doesn’t give us enough of that. It also doesn’t dig into how it feels for Ben to be left behind; we never get a sense of young Sue Storm beyond the fact that she “likes patterns”; Johnny Storm is a drift racer who reluctantly works for the Baxter Foundation so he can pay for repairs on his car, which I love; young Viktor Von Doom is the stereotypical tortured genius who hates rules and tries to stay outside the rigid structures of government and military. Since the movie doesn’t do enough with this foundation, though, we never get a sense of the kids as a team, which means that there’s no heft to the emotions when Reed and Ben fight later on, or when the Four have to face off with Doom.

Rather than being mutated in space, the four boys travel to Planet Zero in teleporters. Reed takes the time to invite Ben, which is sweet, but then no one invites Sue even though she’s been working on the Planet Zero project longer than anyone aside from Viktor. Once they arrive, Viktor basically pokes the planet until it gets pissed off and eats him. Sue gets hit with a blast of radiation when she teleports them all back to save them, and the ensuing explosion causes Reed, Ben, and Johnny to fuse with elements from Planet Zero, Brundlefly-style. The problem is that what should be the Catalytic Trauma is so delayed, and the powers the kids end up with so random, that it feels like this was a kitchen sink YA drama that had superpowers shoved into at the last minute, and that characters don’t grow or change as a result of their powers. Reed is smart and nice as a child, then as a teen, and then as a mutated superhero. Johnny Storm likes to go FAST, and later he likes to go FAST while on fire. Sue worries about the boys and can see patterns, and later she’s even more worried. Ben Grimm is nice, thoughtful, and severely mistreated by his family, and later he’s severely mistreated by the government, and seems extremely gruff and angry, but we don’t know if he’s mad because of the accident, or if, after years of being slapped around, he enjoys being able to throw a tank like a baseball.

I’m still ranking this one higher than the other Fantastic Four, though, for one simple reason: no one orders Sue Storm to strip in front of her brother.

21. Man of Steel (2013)

Screenshot: DC Entertainment/Warner Bros. Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Kal’s planet is destroyed; he grows up a bullied alien; when he finally meets his bio-dad he’s a semi-sentient hologram; and when he finally meets the last members of his race they immediately try to murder him and his human mom.
Moment of Truth: Young Clark puts his classmates’ lives ahead of his own needs during a school bus crash (much to Pa Kent’s chagrin); Adult Kal turns himself in to the U.S. government in an attempt to to appease Zod.
Even Rocky had a montage: We get an all-too-brief sequence of Kal learning to fly in the Arctic and zipping around the world before Zack Snyder drags us back to Gloomtown.
What’s your name, kid? Lois calls Clark “Superman” after he turns himself in to the military, but an intercom in the interrogation room crackles and obscures the name.
Quotes: “You’re not my dad! You’re just some guy who found me in a field!”

Oooof, this movie. Look. I like what it’s trying to do. I have some issues with Richard Donner’s classic take on Superman, and I always find myself drawn to the flame of deconstruction.

BUT.

This movie spends the first 20 minutes on Russell Crowe and Michael Shannon fighting, jams a whole bunch of worldbuilding about Krypton’s collapsing empire and rejection of natural childbirth, rather than focusing on little Kal being sent off in his pod, we focus on Jor-El being stabbed to death, while Lara El throws herself on her husband’s corpse and screams in anguish. This sets a certain tone?

We rejoin Clark as an adult on a fishing boat, and the film cuts back and forth between his current life, working his way north to learn the truth about his alien parentage, and various traumatic incidents from his past as he navigates childhood on Earth with his adoptive parents MAAARRRTHAAAA and Jonathan “fuck them kids” Kent. The first half of the film is very much an origin story, as it draws direct lines between everything adult Clark encounters on his journey and memories from his past, including his dad’s death, which he feels lots of guilt about even though it was really blatantly suicide-by-tornado. Clark’s reunion with his holo-dad is interrupted by Lois Lane’s investigations, which lead to her being attacked by alien tech, which in turn lead to a scene where Clark cauterizes her wounds with his heat vision while she screams in agony.

Again, Snyder made some choices.

The second half of the film is about Clark wrestling with how to respond to Zod, then physically wrestling Zod, while various humans try to stop Zod’s henchpeople. We never really see Superman save anyone other than Martha and Lois—even the family who are trapped by Zod in the end of the film just sort of vanish as soon as Kal snaps Zod’s neck. While Snyder’s attempt at creating a realistic story of an alien living on Earth, and the Earth’s response to him, is noble, and has some stunning imagery, it also focuses so much on the problems and pain of being an alien that Clark’s loving nature barely comes through. Plus the film is so busy wallowing in 9/11 porn that the human stakes never feel real.

20. Captain Marvel (2019)

Screenshot: Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios

Catalytic Trauma? As a human, Carol Danvers is treated like crap by her family; sexually harassed/possibly assaulted in the Army; attempts and fails to save Mar-Vell/Dr. Lawson. As Vers she learns that she’s been brainwashed by trusted mentor Yon-Rogg.
Moment of Truth: Listening to Talos; declining to fight with one arm metaphorically tied behind her back.
Even Rocky had a montage: We get flashbacks to her military training, plus training sessions with Yon-Rogg that are rigged against her.
What’s your name, kid? Carol is Captain Marvel in honor of Mar-Vell, her true mentor. Another significant naming happens when Nick Fury names his new superhero initiative in honor of Carol’s callsign, “Avenger”.
Quotes: “I have nothing to prove to you.”

Rather than being a “human gets a special ability and learns how to use it” story or even an “alien comes to Earth, where their powers are extraordinary” story, Captain Marvel is a “hero recovers their memories of their origin story” story.

When we meet “Vers” she’s a member of the Kree Starforce, competent but not considered especially gifted as a fighter or tactician, and often nagged by her boss Yon-Rogg to be more disciplined. However, when Vers is stranded on Earth, she discovers that she’s actually Carol Danvers, a human member of the U.S. Air Force who was mentored by Dr. Wendy Lawson—and she’s super powerful on Earth. Then Carol learns that Dr. Lawson was actually a Kree scientist named Mar-Vell, who was murdered by Yon-Rogg, who then took Danvers back home with him after she was infused with the powers of the Tesseract. So, she is a superhero, even by Kree standards, but she’s even more of a superhero by Terran standards. If that makes sense?

But as with a few of the other films at this end of the list, Danvers is already an adult, with a past and a moral code, before she gains the powers of the Tesseract. I would argue that her heroism lies in her attempt to save Dr. Lawson/Mar-Vell—which is why she ends up infused with the Tesseract’s powers—and then in her later decision to side with the oppressed Skrulls despite years of Kree brainwashing. But the film’s structure still makes for more of a complicated riff on the idea of an origin story.

Also the film’s true hero is obviously Goose, whose origin we never see.

19. Rocketeer (1991)

Screenshot: Walt Disney Pictures

Catalytic trauma? Maybe the collective trauma of WWI?
Moment of Truth: When stunt pilot Cliff Secord is late for the big airshow, his WWI-veteran buddy, who hasn’t flown since the War, borrows his plane to save Cliff’s ass. Obviously he almost crashes, so Cliff throws the rocket pack on and risks his life to save him.
Even Rocky had a montage: We get a fun montage of Cliff and and his mechanic friend, Peevey, testing the rocket with a stolen statue of Charles Lindberg (which, cool, cause fuck Charles Lindberg); Cliff goes on a joyride immediately after rescuing his veteran friend.
What’s your name, kid? Airshow manager Otis Bigelow names Cliff “The Rocketeer” when newspaper reporters ask for the mysterious rocket man’s identity. Cliff sees the name in the paper and goes with it, even though he doesn’t do as much Rocketeering as you’d expect.
Quotes: Jenny, to Cliff: “The Rocke-who?”

The Rocketeer isn’t just a weird movie, it’s a weird moment in cinema history. The movie attempts to capitalize on an odd combination of 1930s nostalgia (and the adventure style re-popularized by Indiana Jones) and superhero/comic book narratives, but for a family-friendly PG-audience—think Batman or Dick Tracy but explicitly for kids. It does a few things very well, but never quite finds its own tone.

The year is 1938, the Nazis are still claiming they’re nice once you get to know them, and to prove that they’ve sent a dirigible on a peacemaking mission across the U.S. Billy Campbell is Cliff Secord, a test pilot who is 68% stubbled jaw. He lives with a mechanic named Peevey, and he’s dating a swell girl named Jenny who was a nude artist’s model in the original comic, but has been transformed into a much more Disney-friendly starlet for the film. When Cliff finds Howard Hughes’ rocket jetpack, he gets tangled up in a battle between the mob, the FBI, and swashbuckling actor Neville Chambers, a secret Hollywood Nazi. This premise sounds amazing, but The Rocketeer stalls out at the middle of the list because Cliff only uses the rocket to save his girlfriend and escape from the mob, and even the final fistfight/shootout/flaregun battle on the previously-mentioned Nazi dirigible is more about getting rescuing Jenny from Neville than defeating Hitler. In the end, Cliff and Jenny haven’t changed a bit (except the big lug is willing to tell her how he feels about her) but since she pilfered Peevey’s rocket pack designs from Neville, perhaps the Rocketeer will fly again?

18. Ant-Man (2015)

Screenshot: Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios

Catalytic Trauma? I think the closest thing we get is Scott Lang realizing that even though he served his time (and even though his crime served the greater good), he can’t get a decent job as an ex-con.
Moment of Truth: Risking arrest to return the suit to Hank Pym’s house.
Even Rocky had a montage: Scott is pummeled by Hope as she attempts to train him, and we see him getting better at commanding the ants.
What’s your name, kid? Hank Pym asks Scott to be “the Ant-Man” and Scott asks if they can change the name; he introduces himself to Falcon as “Scott”; when main villain Yellowjacket tells him he’s “just a thief” he replies with, “No, I’m the Ant-Man!… I know, it wasn’t my idea.”
Quotes: “Look, man, I got a master’s in electrical engineering, all right? I’m gonna be fine.”

Ant-Man works more as a riff on an origin story than as a classic story on its own. Despite Paul Rudd’s agelessness, Scott Lang is seemingly an early-middle-aged dad when he’s put in prison, and when he’s released his daughter is about 7. Not that age matters particularly to a hero, but simply to mention that Lang’s morals and personality are already formed by the time he meets Hank Pym. The only reason he was in prison was because he used his tech knowledge to hurt an evil corporation, and the only reason he decides to go back to a life of crime is that his criminal record makes it impossible for him to earn the money for his child support payments. He’s already a good dude. So what we’re seeing once he gets the suit is a person who is taking the opportunity to be a larger-scale hero, rather than a kid learning how to wield their new powers in a superheroic bildungsroman.

Scott Lang’s heroic Moment of Truth is pretty clear: after he realizes that the Ant-Man suit is experimental tech, he risks his freedom to break back into Hank Pym’s home to return it. This shows Pym that Scott is willing to bend the law, but also that he still has a moral core Pym can rely on. The rest of the film unfurls along the typical beats: Lang is trained to use the suit, to fight, and to command his ant army…OK that one’s not a typical beat. The movie weaves Lang’s first superhero outing into a heist tale. One thread is about fighting corporate greed and keeping tech out of the wrong hands, which allows him to fights the bad guy and foil HYDRA. But in the other thread, he rescues his daughter and earns the respect and trust of his ex and her new husband, who begin to treat him as a co-parent again. This gives the movie a more mature arc than most of the films on this list—it’s really more about becoming a better dad than becoming a great hero, which, the more I thought about it, the higher it went until it landed here.

17. Orgazmo (1997)

Screenshot: Universal Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Not exactly? Although Joe Young is a little startled by his first day on a porn set.
Moment of Truth: Joe decides to help Ben Chapleski’s friends when they’re threatened by thugs.
Even Rocky had a montage: The morally-questionable scene of Joe and Ben non-consensually zapping people with the Orgazmorator.
What’s your name, kid? Maxxx Orbison names the character and his porn film “Orgazmo”; Joe later (reluctantly) adopts the name for his alter ego.
Quotes: “Use your hamster style!”; “Jesus and I love you.”

Orgazmo actually tracks pretty closely with Ant-Man? Like Scott Lang, Joe Young is already an adult with a fully-formed personality at the start of the film. By the time we meet him he’s already a skilled enough fighter to defend himself from porn producer Maxxx Orbison’s security, the defining moment that leads to Orbison asking Joe to play “Orgazmo”—a porn star who uses an “Orgazmorator” to fight crime. Joe agrees, but as a devout Mormon missionary he stipulates that a stunt man come in to do the pornier parts of a porn star’s job. He gains a Q/sidekick in Ben Chapleski, who is, also like Scott Lang, an MIT graduate who’s ended up working in corner of society that isn’t considered mainstream. (Where Scott uses his skills for a career of morally pure but illegal heists, Ben has created a unique path in the porn industry as an outlet for his overactive libido.) Ben creates a real working version of the Orgazmorator, and after nefarious underworld goons try to put a friend out of business, the two men head out into the night, as Orgazmo and Choda Boy, respectively, to… fight crime… kind of? And eventually rescue Joe’s fiancee after she’s kidnapped by Orbison.

Here again, this has some strong elements: Orgazmo and Choda Boy have excellent themed costumes, they lead double lives, Ben has a dark past, they have great gadgets, they have an Orgazmobile (Ben’s Buick Century), they have well-developed moral compasses. But the story is a bit too insular. Rather than rescuing random people they only start superheroing to help a friend of Ben’s, and then of course the people who are harassing Ben’s friends are connected to Maxxx Orbison, so there isn’t quite the feeling of leveling up that the stronger entries on this list have. And then, well, they do zap random people with the Orgazmorator, which could lead to a whole-ass conversation about consent that I don’t want to have? And I’m also knocking it down a few slots because the film’s climax focuses on a rape threat against Joe’s fiancee Lisa—that has nothing to do with the origin story aspect, but nothing ruins a sex comedy faster than even a hint of rape, so the film as a whole suffers for it.

16. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Screenshot: Marvel Studios

Catalytic Trauma? Young Shang-Chi watches as THE ENTIRE UNDERWORLD shows up to take vengeance on his mom. Obviously, his dad blames him for not being able to fend off THE ENTIRE UNDERWORLD as a child.
Moment of Truth: Shang-Chi faces off with his dad, communes with a dragon, defeats his dad, and then reconciles with him to try to defeat A Terrifying Inter-dimensional Evil…all in the span of about ten minutes.
Even Rocky had a montage: We get a few montages! Young Shang-Chi trains relentlessly to become a warrior, while his sister Xialing trains in secret. Later, Katy montages her way into being an expert-ish archer.
What’s your name, kid? Sean reveals his given name to Katy on the plane ride to Macau, and she zings him for going from “Shang” to “Shaun”—but come on, he was under a lot of stress—and then spends part of the plane sounding out the nuances of Shang-Chi’s name. But when she meets his dad, Xu Wenwu, she’s immediately put into the diasporic hot seat about her own Chinese vs. American names.
Quotes: “You are a product of all who came before you—the legacy of your family. You are your Mother…and whether you like it or not, you are also your Father.” 

The good stuff about Shang-Chi is VERY good—a lot of the fight choreography, especially that bus scene, is excellent. The sheer breadth of references to Asian film, from Jackie Chan-style comic action to Shaw Bros training sequences to dreamy wu xia fights in the forest, is excellent. And some of the details are fun, the way “Shaun” is considered a member of Katy’s family, the easy camaraderie between the two of them that might turn romantic but doesn’t have to, and the warm, glowing flashbacks to family life with Wenwu, Li, and Xialing that make you understand how much Shang-Chi lost.

As an origin story, though, it falls into the middle of the list. We learn that Shang-Chi wants to reject his father, but also loves him. We learn that he feels guilty for abandoning his sister. We learn that he also feels guilty for not being able to save his mother—even though he realizes it would have been impossible. But that’s kind of it—just like Carol Danvers was fighting patriarchy as a concept, in a way Shang-Chi seems to be wrestling with the complexities of diasporic living as much as just living his own heroic arc. Which is kind of the point? But at the same time, I feel like I know Tony Stark in a way that I don’t know Shang-Chi yet. On the stronger side of the equation, we learn that Shang-Chi’s origin as a hero is deeply rooted in rejecting his father’s thirst for vengeance, but this is choice he’ making now, only after he hunted down and murdered his mother’s killer. And it’s a choice—Shang-Chi could have returned to his dad at any time. He could have used his training in all sorts of ways. He chooses to live a normal life, and then finally to walk a more heroic version of the path his father wanted for him, and it’s these choices that make this his origin story. On the weaker side, the monster he ultimately fights is is nebulous and ill-defined compared to the complicated villainy of Tony Leung’s Xu Wenwu, and, like a lot of our current Marvel films, the final battles devolves into CGI mush rather than focusing on the much more compelling and heartfelt Fight With Dad. It’s a good origin story, and I want to spend more time with Shang-Chi, Katy, and Xialing—especially Xialing!—but it’s not a great origin story.

15. Batman (1989)

Screenshot: Warner Bros. Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Pearls, popcorn, pale moonlight.
Moment of Truth: In the context of this movie it’s Batman genuinely trying to save Jack Napier, and seeming upset that he fails.
Even Rocky had a montage: At the 1:34 mark we finally get a suiting-up montage, but this Batman is already trained, and does all of his research off-screen.
What’s your name, kid? Michael Keaton growls, “I’m Batman” in reply to a mugger’s whisper-screamed “WHO ARE YOU???” and lo, many, many Warner Bros. execs had to take cold showers as they imagined the trailers they would unleash upon the world.
Quotes: “You wanna get NUTS? Let’s get NUTS!”

Burton’s Batman is much more a movie about the myth of Batman than an origin story in which Bruce Wayne becomes The Bat. The film opens on an eerie reenactment of Wayne’s childhood, when a tourist family is attacked by muggers in an alley. The muggers then discuss “The Bat” with one of them saying that he drains his victims’ blood to set a fairly horrific tone. Batman doesn’t save the family, and when he catches up with the criminals he doesn’t even deliver them to the cops. Instead he tells one of them to spread his legend through the underworld.

The first way we see the Actual Tragic Events of Crime Alley (which is just called the “alley at Pearl and Phillips Streets” in this version) is via microfiche, as Vicki Vale and Knox research Bruce Wayne’s past. And Vicki is only researching Wayne because she’s falling in love with him—if she suspects that he’s also the Batman she came to Gotham to investigate, she gives no sign of it. Only after we watch them muse on Bruce’s tragedy do we get a flashback that gives us his point of view—a flashback triggered by the movie’s biggest change to the source material.

In this version the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne wasn’t exactly a random act of violence or desperation. The man who killed the Waynes was a young mob goon named Jack Napier, who, a few decades later, falls into a vat of acid when his hand slips out of Batman’s. Napier’s intentional act of violence creates Batman, and Batman’s failure to save Napier creates The Joker, and we only see Bruce’s memory of that night in the alley as he connects all the dots and realizes the truth. While this is interesting, it also turns Batman’s quest for justice into a much more self-centered story—a goth therapy session/LARP that, almost accidentally, results in a lower crime rate for Gotham as Bruce Wayne works out his trauma.

14. Aquaman (2018)

Screenshot: Warner Bros. Pictures/DC Entertainment

Catalytic Trauma? Being left by his mother; learning of her execution.
Moment of Truth: There are a few options here, but I think the best one is when he communicates with the Leviathan rather than simply fighting her.
Even Rocky had a montage: Arthur’s training sessions with Nuidis Vulko are shown as flashbacks throughout the film, so when he fights Orm we can see the results of the training.
What’s your name, kid? Pundits talk about the mysterious “Aquaman” in the same bemused tones they use for the existence of Atlantis, even though both Aquaman and Atlantis clearly exist?
Quotes: “Permission to come aboard?” obviously, with a special nod to “YOU CAN CALL ME…OCEAN MASTER” because come on.

Like Man of Steel, Aquaman scatters its origin story across a “Present Day” narrative of Arthur Curry claiming his identity as an Atlantean despite a lot of negging by a bunch of underwater eugenics enthusiasts. This movie ranks higher than MoS because this movie is, I mean, it’s…

Look. There’s a scene where Willem Defoe and Ghost-Hunter Ed Warren face off with Dolph Lundgren, and they’re on battle sharks? And Lundgren is on a giant armored seahorse? (And the animals glower at each other because obviously seahorses are the natural enemies of sharks, we all know this.) And at some point my brain shorted out? This movie is FUN. Extremely fun. Especially when it makes no sense, which is most of its runtime. Hence, it’s higher.

Like Man of Steel and 2003’s Hulk, Aquaman frames Arthur’s journey with the story of his parents. The romance of Atlanna, Queen of Atlantis, and Thomas Curry, lighthouse keeper of, um, somewhere in the Northeast U.S., is told over the course of a few vibrant scenes that play like a fairytale. (Or a Splash parody, to complement the Big riff in Shazam.) Arthur begins his superheroic journey during a field trip to an aquarium, when he’s bullied for talking to fish. A shark rams itself into the glass to defend him, and his eyes glow as all the fish in the tank collect behind him like an army.

We get a classic training montage dotted through the film, as Nuidis Vulko, Vizier of Atlantis, gives Arthur secret swimming and combat lessons. Vulko is played by Willem Defoe, who at various points in the movie uses the same accent he did as Karl in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, but, unfortunately, never discusses the finer points of lighthouse-keeping with Thomas. He’s also the one who eventually breaks the news that Arthur’s mother was sacrificed to the Trench for loving his father, thus giving Arthur a second Catalytic Trauma. The rest of the film becomes the origin of Arthur-as-King, as works to stop his half-brother, Ghost-Hunter Ed Warren, from waging war on the land-dwellers, and searches for the Magical Trident of Atlan.

I have to mention, the movie starts out as a Splash parody, but then it turns into an aquatic Blade Runner, with jellyfish and coral instead of holographic advertisements (all the promise of seapunk, fulfilled at last!) it briefly riffs on Top Gun, and in a final nod to the cinema of the ‘80s the writers have former tempted-Christ Willem Defoe say “The king is risen” when Arthur comes back with the Trident. All of these things filled me with joy, but the reason this movie ranks so improbably high is that Arthur is a demonstrably different person and hero by the end. He realizes that he created an enemies during his journey, and learns from that. He chooses to speak with the Leviathan rather than fighting her. He doesn’t just spare Ghost-Hunter Ed Warren’s life, but also gives him time to have a touching reunion with their mother, and seems to want to repair their relationship. He’s thinking more like a ruler of people—the bridge between Surf and Turf his mother hoped he would become.

13. Ghost Rider (2007)

Screenshot: Columbia Pictures/Marvel Entertainment/Sony Pictures Releasing

Catalytic Trauma? Johnny Blaze gets totally hosed by Satan; his dad dies in a Devil-related bike accident, forcing him to abandon his One True Love.
Moment of Truth: When Satan’s kid, Blackheart, kidnaps Johnny’s One True Love, he enlists help from the previous Ghost Rider, Sam Elliot, to face off with the minions of Hell.
Even Rocky had a montage: Since Ghost Rider is more of a possession than a superhero transformation, we don’t get a traditional montage? But we do see Johnny practicing with his fireballs.
What’s your name, kid? Ghost Rider is a spirit that possess people who are in contract to Satan, then moves on when those people die. There have been many Ghost Riders.
Quotes: “You can’t live in fear.”

Young Johnny Blaze is fed up with his dad and wants to run away with his girl, but when he learns that his dad has been hiding a terminal cancer diagnosis, he’s so heartbroken that he sells his soul in exchange for his dad’s life. That’s one hell of a start to a story. Of course the Devil’s a huge jerk about it, kills his dad in an “accident”, and thus we cut to Nicolas Cage as adult Johnny doing increasingly crazy stunts to try to prove that he has no fear. This leads nicely into his stint as Ghost Rider. At first the Rider is a spirit possessing Johnny rather than a true alter ego. The Rider hunts down soul contracts—people who sold their souls to the Devil—and along the way punishes any random criminal who strays across his path. The Rider’s powers are cool as shit. He makes criminals stare into his eyes, forcing them to experience the pain they’ve caused others until said pain kills them. Johnny slowly learns to control his powers, which allows him to defeat the Devil’s kid, defy the Devil, and make amends to the girl whose heart he broke. ALSO there’s a scene where Johnny gets locked up in a jail cell, and when the Rider takes over he destroys everyone in the cell with him except for a lone Black teen (the only one who tried to defend Johnny in his human form) and this ridiculous over-the-top movie makes a point of showing the Rider pointing at the kid and saying “Innocent.”

I’ll admit, to my shame, that I had not watched Ghost Rider until I was researching this list, and am now mourning my many Ghost Rider-less years. This film posits that a stunt bike rider would be, seemingly, among the most famous men in America? Nicolas Cage goes full Elvis for Johnny Blaze, surrounds himself with towers of occult books, and eats jelly beans out of a martini glass? Eva Mendes consults a Magic 8 ball while she waits for Johnny Blaze at a restaurant, then gets blitzed on white wine and begs the waiter to tell her she’s pretty? Donal Logue says “I got a hunting dog named Lucky. He’s got one eye and no nuts” and “You’re reading this comparative exponential religiosity crap and it’s getting into your brain!”—both of those lines are in this movie?? Sam Elliot plays a previous Ghost Rider who now works as a cemetery caretaker, but who should have died years ago but just…didn’t??? Sam Elliot tells Johnny: “You sold your soul for the right reason. That puts God on your side.”

I think this movie should be the U.S. national anthem.

12. Superman: The Movie (1978)

Screenshot: Warner Bros.

Catalytic Trauma? Explosion of Krypton; not being able to save his (human) dad.
Moment of Truth (and Justice, and the American Way): I’m going to say it’s when he doesn’t act like Superman, and instead defies his (space) dad’s instructions and Time Itself to save Lois’ life. (I think somewhere between that scene and Snyder’s blue steel gloomfest there is a perfect Superman movie.)
Even Rocky had a montage: When teenage Clark retires to the Fortress of Solitude, we hear Jor-El’s instructions as the camera pans through space, implying that Clark is learning his origins and going on an interior journey of understanding. Thirteen years pass this way, and then we see Superman fly out of the Fortress to rejoin life on Earth.
What’s your name, kid? A twitterpated Lois murmurs “Superman” to herself, and then just names him that in the Daily Planet the next day. Let’s hope she spelled it correctly.
Quotes: “I am here to fight for Truth, and Justice, and The American Way!”

This is one of those movies that I saw in the fog of early childhood and didn’t return to until, well, I think until this post actually? As a superhero movie it doesn’t completely hold up for me—the humans in the story don’t react to a superhuman in a realistic way, and the attempted comic relief hasn’t aged well. As an origin story, however, Superman still does some amazing stuff, especially when compared with Man of Steel.

The movie’s opening scenes are economical and earn their serious tone, as Marlon Brando’s Jor-El bestows a quasi-Biblical blessing on bb Kal. Krypton itself is a beautiful alien world full of crystal, and Kal’s pod looks like a star falling to Earth—to my mind far more magical than the H.R. Giger look of Snyder’s Krypton. We’re shown Clark’s teenage years in a few quick scenes that sketch in his loneliness, the deep love he feels for the Kents, and the morality they’ve instilled in him. For me the misstep comes when Clark moves to Metropolis and his work as a superhero brings him up against Lex Luthor’s plot to nuke California. Lex’s plan is catastrophic, but it clashes badly with Ned Beatty’s turn as the bumbling Otis and Valerie Perrine’s Miss Teschmacher (and it doesn’t help that she tells us that he abuses her). Even worse, we never get a sense of Superman and Luthor as real nemeses—when Lex traps Supes, it feels like another plot device rather than the culmination of a plan, and then the film doesn’t sit long enough with either Superman’s panic, or Miss Teschmacher’s change of heart, for the dire stakes of the situation to land. Superman saving Miss Teschmacher’s mom leads directly to him not being able to save Lois, which in turn leads to him reliving the memory of Pa Kent’s death, and deciding to defy Jor-El’s biggest rule, which is all rich, heady stuff! The alien raised as man has to choose love and find a new path for himself, knowing that at least one of his dads would be furious! But his decision is so surrounded in fluff that the emotion doesn’t come through—and then we’re dropped right back into a bit of comic relief between Lois and Jimmy Olsen.

Speaking of, and I’m probably alone here, but if Jimmy Olson was going to insist on being rock-stupid enough to clamber out onto a cliff to get a photo of a national landmark that has already been comprehensively photographed, he deserved to drown at The Hoover Dam. Superman should have left him dead, and I’m not afraid to say it.

11. Deadpool (2016)

Screenshot: 20th Century Fox/Marvel Entertainment

Catalytic Trauma? While he’s still a regular human, a cancer diagnosis knocks Wade Wilson into a new life. But once he’s in the program that is never quite named as Weapon X, and learns that the higher-ups are turning him into a mindless super soldier, he has another decisive moment in a hyperbaric chamber, choosing to set himself on fire and blow the facility up for a chance at death/freedom. This is what transforms him into Deadpool.
Moment of Truth: As Wade, it’s probably his decision to leave Vanessa to try to spare her—misguided though it is, it does at least come from a well-meaning place; as Deadpool his Moment of Truth comes in the bathroom of the strip club, psyching himself up to reveal himself to Vanessa and apologize for his earlier Moment of Truth.
Even Rocky had a montage: At the one-hour mark we get a riotous montage of DP butchering his enemies, and upgrading his suit after each fight.
What’s your name, kid? Wade names himself after the Sister Margaret’s Home for Wayward Girls’ “dead pool”—an ongoing bet on which merc is most likely to bite it each week. For a brief shining moment he is Captain Deadpool, before he thinks better of it.
Quotes: “Maximum effort!”; “A fourth wall break inside a fourth wall break. That’s, like, sixteen walls!”

I know, I know, Deadpool’s not exactly a hero. But his movie incarnation acts pretty heroically, and I wanted an excuse to rewatch the movie, and I wanted to give Ryan Reynolds another spot on this list to make up for the poor showing of Green Lantern, so: my list, my rules, my coffee.

For maximum fourth wall breakage, Deadpool intercuts DP’s current quest (finding and murdering the shit out of Francis) with the story of mercenary Wade Wilson’s relationship with Vanessa Carlysle, his battle with cancer, and his subsequent desperate stint in the Weapon X meat grinder facility. This works extremely well, as we meet quippy, un-killable Deadpool before flashing back to Wade, who was already 70% snark, but also a human—the kind of human who will take a pro bono gig to protect a teen girl, give up sex for Lent, woo his girlfriend with a ring pop, and be as scared and vulnerable as anyone would be in the face of a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis. This shows us his growth as a superhero who can take on teams of bad guys (and Colossus, sort of) but more important it shows us that the man who had a well-hidden heart of gold a few years ago is now an obsessive and mentally unstable antihero. Grounding us in Wade’s pre-DP reality is a wise choice given how wacky Deadpool’s world can get, especially once Cable and time travel shenanigans are introduced in the sequel.

10. Fast Color (2018)

Catalytic Trauma? Ruth’s powers were so great they drove her to addiction to dull them; one of her earthquake/seizures nearly killed her infant daughter, leading her to hand the child over to her mother, Bo
Moment of Truth: Ruth realizes she can control her seizures, and with them, her power—once she lets herself focus on her love for Lila
Even Rocky had a montage: We see Lila demonstrate her ability, then she and Bo coach Ruth through a few training sessions to help her get back in touch with her own powers.
What’s your name, kid? Bo, Ruth, and Lila go by their given names throughout the film.
Quotes: “Our abilities can’t fix things. If something is broken, it stays broken.”

I’ll admit I missed Fast Color when it was first released—but sometimes the fun of doing a list like this means you discover a new gem. THIS MOVIE. It’s not a traditional superhero film, but it is very much a story about a people with extraordinary powers learning to use them for the good of humanity. Honestly it feels like it might have been inspired by N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy. I don’t want to give too much away in case you haven’t seen it, but I will say that it does the thing I crave most in these kinds of films: it emphasizes the wonder of having superpowers. Rather than devolving into the sort of giant, mushy battle that a lot of DC and MCU films do these days, it tries to tell a more realistic story about what it would be like to be superhuman. As an indie film, it’s reach sometimes exceeds its grasp, but holy crap is it refreshing to watch a superhero movie about people.

There are three superhumans in Fast Color, but the one with a real heroic arc is Ruth, played beautifully by Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Ruth has the classic super-problem that her powers are simply too powerful to be contained—not only do they cause her enormous pain and psychological issues, but they also make her a target for nefarious government officials who want to “study” her. But balancing the traumatic elements is a sense of hard-won hopefulness that felt like rain in a desert to this superhero-saturated movie critic. Plus the idea of heroic arc that’s all about going home and trying to repair your family, and confront your mistakes, rather than going out into the world to fight people? And the movie gives us a hero who takes their sobriety seriously? once again, the more I thought about it the further the movie bumped up the list.

9. Shazam (2019)

Screenshot: DC Films/Warner Bros. Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Being abandoned by his mom and bounced through the foster care system.
Moment of Truth: Defending his new foster sibling from bullies; going home to face the nefarious Dr. Sivana and save his family rather than wallowing in his mom’s continued rejection.
Even Rocky had a montage: Billy Batson tests himself for every superpower his foster brother Freddie can think of, while Freddie records the results and uploads them on Youtube. (I should also mention that the two kids celebrate Billy’s new superpowers on the Rocky steps.)
What’s your name, kid? Shazam is actually an acronym for the powers the hero wields: the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury; it’s also what Billy has to say to activate and deactivate these powers.
Quotes: “Shazam!”

I’m just going to say this upfront: I don’t think I actually like Shazam as a film. While I think there’s good stuff in it, the wild tone shifts, violence, and multiple abusive parental figures really didn’t work for me. However, as an origin story it’s pretty strong—it’s the rare SEXTUPLE ORIGIN—so I bumped it up a bit despite my own misgivings.

Billy Batson’s arc follows most of the typical origin beats: in his first 14 years he’s separated from his mother, has a hardscrabble upbringing in various foster homes, and runs away repeatedly to search for his mom. We pick up his story when he’s sent to live with the Vasquez family, parents Rosa and Victor (both former foster kids themselves) and their kids, Freddy Freeman, a superhero fan who is closest to Billy in age, Mary Bromfield, the eldest, who’s applying for early admission to colleges, Pedro Peña, the shy one, Eugene Choi, the obsessive gamer, and Darla Dudley, the youngest—and possibly the most adorable child ever put on film. The genuine love shared by the family challenges his “always look out for #1” philosophy, and leads straight to his call to be a superhero. When he defends Freddie from bullies, he’s whisked away to the Rock of Eternity and given the powers of Shazam—not because he’s worthy, but because Shazam is dying, and he has to give them to somebody. Billy initially uses his new “adult” body to buy beer and hit a strip club, and his electro powers to hijack ATMs. When Freddie posts Billy’s superpower tests on YouTube, Billy suddenly become very famous, very fast, and the validation goes straight to his emotionally-malnourished head. Even after he causes a serious accident by showing off, he still focuses on the fact that he saved the people in the end, so, everything’s cool, right? Hey, he can catch a bus now!

Since Billy hasn’t really trained, has no mentor aside from Freddie, and is a terrified teenage boy, he spends the middle chunk of the film running away from his first supervillain, failed Shazam Dr. Thaddeus Sivana. His foster siblings find his birth mother for him, and for a moment he clearly thinks he might be able to return to normal life, and wants nothing more than to put superhero-ing behind him—but she rejects him. The last third of the movie is devoted to Billy learning to Use His Powers For Good and Realizing That His True Family Has Been Here All Along. This leads us into the other five origin stories—by far the most interesting in the film. Billy retrieves Shazam’s staff, and uses it to share the power with his siblings, who each discover their own strengths as they battle Dr. Sivana together. Basically the last half hour gives us a micro version of the movie, with each kid getting a moment in the spotlight.

Now, why is it at #8? I would argue by opening the movie on Sivana’s origin the writers undercut Billy’s story. We see that Sivana was also an abused kid, he had a shot at being Shazam, failed because of a total lack of mentorship, and finally became evil because it was the only way he could wield any power in his life. Billy doesn’t seem to be any better, at heart, than young Sivana. If the movie had wrestled with that it would have worked a lot better. Instead, the overall tone is so dark and mean-spirited that, despite wanting to give Darla the world, I cant bump it up any higher than this.

8. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Screenshot: Marvel Studios/Paramount Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Steve Rogers doesn’t really have one defining trauma. He’s a chronically-sick orphan who gets his ass kicked a lot—we’re dealing with a slow trauma build-up here.
Moment of Truth: I don’t care that it’s cheesy, I don’t care how often I see it, that grenade scene, man. I could watch it all day.
Even Rocky had a montage: We see Steve struggle through Basic Training; immediately after the serum takes effect he has to chase down Dr. Erskine’s murderer and we learn, along with him, that his body is now impossibly fast and strong.
What’s your name, kid? The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan is declared “Captain America” by the marketing team who use him to sell war bonds through stage shows and movies. Later, in his one moment of successful flirting with anyone other than Bucky, he jokes that he outranks Agent Carter.
Quotes: “I could do this all day.”

On the one hand, this is a great, inspiring origin story about a kid from Brooklyn who becomes a hero. On the other, this is the first of the MCU films to show some of the strain of having to link into the giant, decades-spanning, multidimensional Marvel Cinematic Universe, which leads to the origin story getting a little buried.

Steve Rogers is short, thin, and riddled with chronic health problems. His dad died from mustard gas and his mom from TB. Now, some people might view this as a convenient loophole during wartime—the Army literally won’t let him join, and he could help with scrap metal drives or work in a factory and still do important work against the Nazis. But for him, the idea that he might live through the war while other men are risking their lives is unacceptable.

But here is both the great strength of First Avenger as an origin story, and the major ding against it: Steve Rogers is a hero from the minute we see him fighting in an alley, using a garbage can lid as a shield. He’s a hero when he jumps on the grenade, when he chases the Nazi who kills Dr. Erskine, when he leads a seemingly hopeless fight against the Red Skull, and when he chooses death by plane crash rather than allowing the Red Skull to destroy New York. Steve Rogers doesn’t change: he is “No, you move” personified. But in the context of this particular story, where Nazis are plotting to use occult weaponry against the rest of humanity, his basic heroism works, and the fact that once again, given the chance to spend the war as a poster boy for bonds, he instead throws himself into a dangerous mission, and then also offers himself up for court martial immediately afterwards, shows that his pre-serum sense of justice and duty are still the core of his being, no matter what he looks like.

7. Doctor Strange (2016)

Screenshot: Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Probably when the selfish dope drives himself off a cliff.
Moment of Truth: After The Ancient One shows Dr. Stephen Strange the secrets of the universe, and then throws him out for being a selfish dope, Strange abases himself and sits outside the door begging to be her student, no longer caring about money or status or his own ego.
Even Rocky had a montage: I have a soft spot for this one because we get a montage of him reading books in addition to some magical practice.
What’s your name, kid? His name is Stephen Strange, and he is a medical doctor.
Quotes: “Dormammu! I have come to bargain.”

The reason Doctor Strange is at #6 is that it gives us one of the most dramatic arcs of change on the entire list. We see a man who is ridiculously successful in his chosen field, arrogant, self-absorbed, who enjoys humiliating his colleagues and thinks that inviting an ex to watch him win an award counts as a date. There are a few points when he declaims about having taken an oath to save lives, but he also only chooses difficult cases so he can build his reputation. We see him turn several down because either they won’t bring him fame, or because he’s afraid they’ll smudge his track record. He wrecks his car, destroys his hands, and endangers other people through his own thoughtlessness, then lashes out at everyone who tries to help him.

So when he finally gets to Kamar-Taj and meets The Ancient One, it’s really gratifying to see him beg for help, then lash out at her, and then, after she knocks him out of his body, upend all of his beliefs and preconceived notions to create a new life. In some ways, Doctor Strange is a derivative MCU film, and obviously the casting/whitewashing could have been dealt with better, and there are moments in the early scenes when it turns into a Very Special Episode of House. BUT, it does make for an excellent origin story because our hero genuinely grows and changes during his journey. The Stephen Strange who watches the snow with the Ancient One as she dies is not the same man who berated Christine Palmer, or the one who wrecked his car. By the time he condemns himself to a (potentially endless) cycle of agony to stop Dormammu, Stephen Strange has become a believable superhero. He earns that final shot as Doctor Strange in the New York Sanctum, with the cape, goatee, and dramatic white highlights.

6. Venom (2018)

Screenshot: Columbia Pictures/Marvel Entertainment/Sony Pictures Releasing

Catalytic Trauma? Eddie Brock gets fired and dumped as a direct consequence of his own bullshit, which is GREAT; his body is colonized by an alien symbiote, which turns out to be GREAT… once he gets used to it.
Moment of Truth: For Eddie: standing on the Golden Gate Bridge looking for all the world like he wants to jump, but then deciding to investigate the nefarious Carlton Drake; his shockingly sincere apology to Anne. For Venom: choosing to work with Eddie to prevent the invasion of Earth, even though it might mean their collective death.
Even Rocky had a montage: We get several action sequences of Eddie learning what Venom can do; multiple eating montages as Eddie tries to figure out how to feed his new BFF. (RIP lobsters.)
What’s your name, kid? Venom is the Symbiote’s name, and there are a few arguments over the uses of “we” and “I”, but I believe these two crazy kids are gonna work it out.
Quotes: “Ah, fuck it. Let’s go save the planet.”

Ah, Venom. I debated including it, but I decided given the turn toward the end of the film it definitely rated a place, and then the more movies I watched and the more I pondered the further up it crept until it landed here in the top five. A controversial choice? Sure. BUT SOME OF US STILL BELIEVE IN LOVE.

Eddie Brock is an edgelord investigative journalist who steals confidential info from his fiancee, lawyer Anne Weyring, in order to expose the nefarious deeds of scientist/Elon Musk-parody Carlton Drake. In short order he’s fired, Anne is fired, Anne dumps Eddie, Eddie spirals, and there’s no one to stop Drake when he starts trying to get alien symbiotes to fuse with not-exactly-willing human subjects. Eddie finally removes is head from his ass and tries to investigate Drake, only to be symbioted himself. His symbiote, a charming fellow by the name of Venom, decides he likes Eddie, works with him to keep both of them alive, thwarts an alien invasion, and concocts a scheme to win Anne back.

Is it more of an antihero movie than a superhero movie? Of course. But is it also about an antihero who objectively does more good for humanity than, say, Darkman? Resoundingly yes. And honestly this is all moot cause this movie’s a romcom. Venom kisses Eddie during one of their rare moments apart! Their love literally saves the world!

Symbrock is OTP 5-ever.

5. Batman Begins (2005)

Screenshot: Warner Bros. Pictures/DC Comics

Catalytic Trauma? …stop me if you’ve heard this one before. (Sorry.) Nolan’s innovation here is to stress young Bruce Wayne’s bat-phobia, which was triggered when he fell into a bat-infested well, right before the TRAGIC EVENTS OF CRIME ALLEY. No wonder this version of Bruce is a mess.
Moment of Truth: Adult Bruce decides not to execute a man without trial, and instead… allows that man to burn to death without trial, along with all non-Liam-Neeson members of The League of Shadows. Hm.
Even Rocky had a montage: The training sessions with Liam Neeson are brutal and beautifully show his transformation from scrappy underworld imposter to warrior; Bruce, Alfred, and Lucius Fox upgrade his armor after each night out as The Bat.
What’s your name, kid? There’s a lot of talk about becoming a symbol, being more than a man, becoming what men fear, and becoming The Bat. But after all that, it’s Dr. Crane who calls him “The Bat…man” in a voice charged with fear, excitement, and a nigh-sensual longing that made me want a whole other movie.
Quotes: “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”

Let’s begin by acknowledging that the true hero of this film is Cillian Murphy’s bone structure. Or maybe his haunting blue eyes.

Nolan’s take on Batman is committed to tying all the threads and themes of the character together into a… let’s just call it a bat king? We open with smol Bruce and his friend Rachel playing until Bruce falls into a well. He’s obviously hurt, but even worse than that: the well is connected to an underground cave full of bats, who swarm the poor kid and terrify him. His dad comforts him by saying that “we only fall so we can learn to stand back up”, and cheers him up further by showing him a gift he’s gotten for his mom, a beautiful string of pearls. Those pearls. Thomas Wayne asks for smol Bruce’s opinion, and shores his confidence up by including him in the surprise for his mother—two guys who want to make the woman in their life happy. It’s sweet. Which of course makes it all the more brutal when Bruce has a panic attack during the opera they’re attending (Die Fledermaus), begs to leave early, and then the family is attacked in the alley.

Is this the only version of the story where the murder of the Wayne’s is a direct result of Bruce’s needs? The rest of the film turns tightly, obsessively on the question of guilt and responsibility, weakness and strength. Bruce learns a kind of strength in the underworld, and then from Ra’s Al Ghul, but ultimately rejects it in favor of his father’s kind of strength. This is a great engine for an origin story, as Bruce has to find a balance between his playboy persona and his Batmanning, ricochet between two different father figures, Alfred and Lucius, and his Walking Conscience, Rachel (setting us up brilliantly for The Dark Knight), and finally defend his home. The only problem here is that Nolan’s typical dourness makes the Billionaire Playboy aspect perfunctory, where it might have been fun to see Christian Bale contrast his growly vigilante persona with a slightly lighter take on a callow rich preppy man—Patrick Batman, if I may?

4. Iron Man (2008)

Screenshot: Marvel Studios/Paramount Pictures

Catalytic Trauma? Tony Stark gets blown up and held hostage in a CAVE; then he has to recreate his Arc Reactor on the fly and build his first Iron Man suit FROM A BOX OF SCRAPS.
Moment of Truth: When Stark learns that his weapons are being used against terrified refugees in Afghanistan, he hops into his barely-tested Iron Man suit and flies to the rescue.
Even Rocky had a montage: This movie is at least 60% montage, and it’s great. After he escapes the Ten Rings, Tony builds and tests a new suit, flies around Malibu and Venice, and tries to go into space like a dumbass.
What’s your name, kid? The papers name him, then he defies Agent Coulson’s strongly-worded notecards and runs with it.
Quotes: “I am Iron Man.”

I’m always fascinated by the decision to hang the MCU on Iron Man. Like of all the heroes to choose as your launching point, your leader, why did Marvel choose Tony Stark out of the ridiculous stable of heroes at their disposal? And why does it work so well? Some of it is timing—Iron Man came out just as the U.S. was at the tail end of the second Bush Era, and the movie was able to pull off an amazing tap dance critiquing the idea of the U.S. as warmongers, condemning terrorism, giving us a military hero while saying that weapons manufacturing is bad, and blowing enough stuff up to distract everyone from how the movie simultaneously celebrates military might and condemns it.

But the other reason is that this is one of the best origin stories ever.

Unlike most of the other MCU films here, Iron Man doesn’t have the burden of tying into the giant mythology around it. There’s no tesseract, no Thanos, no HYDRA, no war between Kree and Skrulls—we get a couple appearances from Coulson and the final post-credits intro of Nick Fury (still to this day the single greatest audience reaction I’ve ever witnessed in a movie theater), but other than that this is purely about Tony becoming not just a superhero, but a better man—but also not changing too much from the witty, charming, billionaire playboy we meet in the opening.

This movie is goddamn efficient. I watched a lot of superhero movies to write this, and Iron Man gets its story across in perfect little packets that don’t feel like packets, because the writing is sharp and the characters are so fun that you don’t realize how carefully the info dumps are being doles out. The movie pulls a great trick with timing to frame the origin story in the most arresting way. We begin in media res, but we don’t even realize that at first. Tony Stark is supposed to be coming to the end of the last day of his life—not that he knows that. He’s drinking whiskey and taking selfies with soldiers in a military caravan in Afghanistan, the caravan is attacked, Stark escapes the truck, he sees a missile with the Stark Industries logo but can’t get away and is hit with shrapnel. We watch blood blooming out of his chest. Smash cut to Tony, a hostage on video, surrounded by terrorists who are clearly demanding ransom. Smash cut to the movie’s title. Smash cut to “36 Hours Earlier.”

The Tony Stark that we meet 36 hours earlier is callow and glib in public, flirting with women (and trying to flirt with Rhodey, who keeps shooting him down), and trotting out justifications for his war profiteering. In private he’s a giant nerd (losing hours to rebuilding engines), but still pretty callow (forgetting Pepper’s birthday, not giving a single shit that he’s three hours late for an appointment). But the great thing is that after being attacked, nearly dying, and being held hostage, he’s still snarky and glib, and he’s still a huge nerd. It’s just that now that he realizes how much damage he’s done, he wants to work to be a better person, and use his wealth to help people instead of generating more wealth. He’s capable of dropping his wall of snark to tell Pepper that he believes he lived for a reason, but he wants the fame and awesomeness fo being a public superhero. Of course the best aspect of this is that the narrative arc of him becoming a hero unfolds over the following decade of the MCU, but every single issue is seeded in this movie.

3. Unbreakable (2000)

Catalytic Trauma? David’s survives a terrible car wreck without a scratch, but it’s the trainwreck that he also survives without a scratch that finally forces his superheroic hand.
Moment of Truth: There are a few, but I think the strongest moment is when David has to face his fear of drowning, but then chooses to stay and deal with the janitor. Again, it’s complicated—he rescues the children, but they rescue him first; he frees them from a villain, but can’t save their mother. And this is no triumphant moment of coming into power. Instead the whole scene is shot through with terror and despair.
Even Rocky had a montage: David and his son spend some nice bonding time seeing how much weight David can lift.
What’s your name, kid? This is Shyamalan, so while the hero is grudging and depressed, and would prefer to just be David Dunn, thank-you-very-much, Elijah Price—who already has already an objectively cool name—stalks around in tailored purple finery calling himself “Mr. Glass.”
Quotes: “Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world, to not know why you’re here.”

Unbreakable is the dark version of Shazam.

For all that Shyamalan disguised his film’s true nature, it follows every beat: David has a several catalytic tragedies—first the car wreck that confirms his superstrength—which he hides—then the train wreck that forces him to reckon with his abilities. He and his son (a superhero superfan) test his powers, culminating in his kid pulling a gun on him because he wants to know if he’s bulletproof. David gradually comes to believe in his own powers, and tests them, he goes out on his first real Heroic Quest, he develops a relationship with a supervillain, is almost killed when said supervillain figures out his weakness, and finally faces off with the villain at the end, and, at least temporarily, triumphs over him.

It follows the beats perfectly, but it occupies an odd place since the film is so fucking bleak it saps every bit of joy from the superhero origin story. David is NOT happy to discover that he has these powers, and his heroic journey is so heavily weighted toward the “must come with great responsibility” side of the equation that the film reads almost like horror. Plus, of course, he only truly comes into being because of Mr. Glass sabotaging the train. In the same way that Aquaman “creates” Black Manta or the very existence of Batman “creates” the Joker, in this case the movie’s villain quite consciously creates a hero to test himself against. Which casts the whole “origin story” aspect of the film in a much different light—Through a Mr. Glass Darkly, basically.

2. Spider-Man (2002)

Screenshot: Columbia Pictures/Marvel Enterprises/Sony Pictures Releasing

Catalytic Trauma? THE TRAGIC DEATH OF UNCLE BEN
Moment of Truth: Realizing he’s the one who let Ben’s murderer get away, and deciding to actively use his powers for good rather than to make money or be famous as part of becoming “responsible”; turning down the Green Goblin’s partnership, even though he knows Gobby might kill him.
Even Rocky had a montage: He practices wall-crawling and web-shooting a bit on his own, but he really learns how to swing when he’s pursuing Ben’s murderer.
What’s your name, kid? A wrestling announcer overrules his idea of “The Human Spider” and dubs him “The Amazing Spider-Man”!
Quotes: “Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: “With great power comes great responsibility.” This is my gift, my curse. Who am I? I’m Spider-Man.”

This movie, more even than Bryan Singer’s X-Men, is the one that set the template for almost every film on this list. Here you have the perfect dance between personal stakes (Ben’s death, keeping MJ and Aunt May safe, juggling college, day job, superheroing, and bills) and BIG stakes (Green Goblin attacking New York, saving people from catastrophe, honoring Ben’s memory) in a movie that’s also fun from the first scene to the last. While of course some moments have aged poorly, and Sam Raimi’s idea of how teens speak and behave is a little outdated for 2001, overall the movie is still as exhilarating and heartwarming now as when it was released.

Best of all though is how Raimi makes this Peter’s story, but never forgets to show us the larger story unfolding around him. After all these years, this is still the superhero origin that does the best job of showing how a regular human adapts to his powers, while also reminding us that there’s still a human under the suit. Peter’s a teenage boy: after his mutation he admires his new physique in the mirror, and, yes, looks into his underwear to see how he’s changed; he tells Aunt May she can’t come into his room because he “exercising” and “not dressed” and then turns to face a bedroom that is festooned with webbing. When he’s not in his suit he’s awkward with MJ and Betty Brant, and nervous around J. Jonah Jameson. The movie gives entire scenes to him mourning Ben. Just as important, it shows him saving people from muggings and housefires before it shows him facing off with the Green Goblin, to hammer home the idea that this is the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, just trying to make the world a better place even though it complicates the heck out of his life.

1. Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Screenshot: Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Animation/Marvel Entertainment

Catalytic Trauma? THE TRAGIC DEATH OF PETER PARKER. Then, later, THE TRAGIC DEATH OF UNCLE AARON.
Moment of Truth: Miles takes his leap of faith.
Even Rocky had a montage: Peter B. Parker teaches Miles how to swing as Octavia chases them, because according to Peter, the best way to learn is when you’re being pursued by a supervillain. Later, Miles customizes his own Spidey suit.
What’s your name, kid? Miles is stepping into a name and an identity and making them his own, just like each of the other Spider-People-and-Pigs.
Quotes: “Anyone can wear the mask.”

Let me be clear: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is the best comic book movie of all time. If we ever get a movie that tops this one I will go down on one knee and PROPOSE to it. But even so, when I watched it for this post there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as I debated where to put it as an origin story. Because while Miles’ story is beautiful, it also, at times, becomes a commentary on origin stories (e.g.: Spider-Man Noir literally saying “This is a pretty hardcore origin story” to Miles) which made me debate whether it gets a little too clever at some points. Does the repetition of each Spider-Person’s story detract from Miles’ story, or add to it? Does the fact that his story is woven into the story of Peter Parker’s death and, maybe, Peter B. Parker’s rebirth, overshadow Miles?

But then I rewatched it again (yes, again) and I still cried like a child watching Peter Parker’s funeral, and I had to pause the movie when Stan Lee says “It always fits… eventually” because it still somehow feels like a punch and a hug at the same time, and when Miles takes his leap of faith my mouth fell open like it always does, and that was when it hit me. Yes, this is the greatest origin story. But not even because it’s Miles’ (though it is) and not just because Miles stepping up means that a lot of kids see someone who looks like them become a hero (though that is vitally fucking important) but also because: at the end of the movie, with Brooklyn saved and his friends back home, Miles tells us himself: “Anyone can wear the mask.” This is the story of a wildly diverse group of characters who found themselves with a choice: become heroes, or turn your back on a city that needs you—and each of them chose to be heroes. As this movie makes explicit, no matter who we are, that’s the choice all of us have to make every day.

Put your mask on—it’ll fit eventually—and get to work on your origin story. This world isn’t going to save itself.

Originally published in October 2020.

Going forward, Leah Schnelbach is only eating their jellybeans from martini glasses. Come tell them why this list is wrong about everything on Twitter!

Michael Keaton was the first to play Batman in cinematic form in Tim Burton’s 1989 film and reprised the role once more in Burton’s 1992’s Batman Returns. The movies were so popular that a third movie, Batman Forever, was soon in the works with Joel Schumacher at the helm.

In a recent interview, Keaton revealed that he considered starring in Batman Forever but bowed out due to creative differences with Schumacher; the new director wanted to make Bruce Wayne/Batman less dark and brooding, and Keaton wanted none of it.

In an interview on the podcast In The Envelope (via The Wrap), Keaton shared that he and Schumacher had different ideas about how emo The Dark Knight should be. “I remember one of the things that I walked away going, ‘Oh boy, I can’t do this,’” Keaton said. “[Schumacher] asked me, ‘I don’t understand why everything has to be so dark and everything so sad,’ and I went, ‘Wait a minute, do you know how this guy got to be Batman? Have you read… I mean, it’s pretty simple.’”

Schumacher didn’t budge on wanting the film to be more bright and bubbly, and Val Kilmer became the Bat instead. Schumacher then went full bubble gum goofiness in Batman & Robin with George Clooney as the caped crusader. That movie… didn’t do so well and we didn’t get to see Batman on the big screen again until Christopher Nolan rebooted the franchise in 2005.

While Keaton hasn’t been Bruce Wayne for thirty years, he’ll soon be reprising the role in the upcoming DCEU movie, The Flash. During the interview, Keaton also shared his take on portraying the part:

“It was always Bruce Wayne. It was never Batman,” he said. “To me, I know the name of the movie is Batman, and it’s hugely iconic and very cool and [a] cultural iconic and because of Tim Burton, artistically iconic. I knew from the get-go it was Bruce Wayne. That was the secret. I never talked about it. [Everyone would say,] ‘Batman, Batman, Batman does this,’ and I kept thinking to myself, ‘Y’all are thinking wrong here.’ [It’s all about] Bruce Wayne. What kind of person does that?… Who becomes that? What kind of person [does that]?”

You can check out Keaton in The Flash when the movie premieres in November 4, 2022 or give Burton’s two Batman films a rewatch at your leisure.