Ranking Superhero Movies

Many movies were watched this year, even among one of the biggest strikes in entertainment industry history. That said not all of them did well at the box office. We know by now that box office numbers mean absolutely nothing to me and they are no indication of quality. We also know that I am the indication of quality for superhero movies so here we go we are ranking the superhero movies of 2023 from worst to best.

The worst is pretty obvious, we’ve got The Flash in last place. Didn’t need to see it. Don’t want to see it. Not gonna see it. Ezra Miller sucks, end of discussion.

Not too far up from that we’ve got Ant-Man and Wasp: Quantumania. I am so sorry but it felt like they really wanted Janet to be a main driver of the plot but she just wasn’t. They wasted Michelle Pfipher. The CGI was migraine inducing and there was nothing grounded or real about the setting the entire movie. And the Cassie recast proved to be a horrendous decision as she was flat and there was no emotion, depth or range reflected her performance at all.

Probably tied down here at the bottom is Shazam. It wasn’t awesome but at the very least it was more fun than the other two. I know Zachary Levi is questionable but he’s still perfectly cast as Billy and no one can tell me otherwise. That said, the Shazam family has been around in the world of comments for decades and I don’t think they handled their involvement on screen as well as they could have.

Smack in the middle we have Blue Beetle. This was actually not a bad movie. This is a radical increase in quality from Shazam, we jumped like 20 spots. Blue Beetle was a really solid introduction into Gunn’s DC universe and I am really glad it's canon to the future of DC. It wasn’t anything spectacular but it was a decent, watchable (and re-watchable) movie.

Jumping another 30 notches in quality we have The Marvels. Iman Vellani absolutely carried this movie, and the interactions between all three women were amazing. The haters can suck it because this movie was great and definitely upper-mid tier Marvel, anyone saying otherwise is delusional. In a franchise with Thor 2, Hulk, Iron Man 2, and Iron Man 3 The Marvels is a freaking masterpiece.

Of course in the top 2 we have Guardians of the Galaxy 3. This was one of the most emotional movies I’ve seen in a long time. Pretty sure I was crying for the entirety of this movie. I was about to have personal beef with James Gunn for making me believe he was really gonna kill off Rocket. My only complaint is that the stakes were sort of lowered by no one dying. I know they wanted to keep their options open for the future of the MCU. However I think that killing off one of the Guardians would have solidified the emotional intensity of the overall film.

And in first place we of course have Across the Spiderverse. Into the Spiderverse is still the best Spiderman movie of all time but its sequel was really freaking emotional. It furthered the lore as well as the development of all established characters while bringing in new characters from the comics. It stood alone well while also perfectly setting up the next movie. The Spiderverse franchise will obviously prove to be the best superhero franchise.

Overall it was not an awesome year for superhero movies but we did have some gems in the mix. Next year is going to be a little thin for movies in general due to this year's strikes. But there are going to be a lot of Marvel and DC movies in the next few years.