In the last two parts, we discussed my top 50 science fiction films of the decade… except I got a bit stuck on the franchises. So I left out any films which were part of a film series with two or more entries this decade.
In this post, we’ll walk through all those franchises for which at least some entries were seriously considered for a best-of-decade list.
And so we will talk at length about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but not discuss the DC analogue.
No particular order.
The Franchises
World of Tomorrow
This almost seems out of place with all the blockbusters, but there were two films this decade, and I like a foolish consistency. In World of Tomorrow, a small child is visited by a clone of herself from the far future. The clone has many philosophical things to discuss. The child is fascinated by pretty lights. It’s a brilliant film with an equally brilliant sequel, Episode Two: The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts.
Marvel Cinematic Universe
This blog is mostly dedicated to reading through the Marvel Universe comics, so it should not be that surprising that I also love their cinematic adaptation.
There are 23 films in this series, 21 from this decade. But we may as well peek back a couple years. I’ll try to get through them all quickly.
Iron Man was a great film. And the secret ingredient to building a successful universe. Start with a good movie with a lead actor strong enough to anchor your franchise and go from there. It’s a step most of the other universe attempts would forget. I’m not sure any moment in the cinema has excited me more than the ending of Iron Man, when Nick Fury showed up to talk about the Avengers.
Incredible Hulk came out the same year, but is best forgotten. The other 22 films are all really good.
Iron Man 2 is a film I like for all the good stuff in it, but a film I shake my head at for all the other stuff crammed in. It tries to set up coming films at the expense of the story it’s trying to tell. A mistake this franchise will learn from, but that other franchises will repeat.
The real heroes of the Marvel films are in casting. A new A-list was formed out of these movies. Chris Hemsworth as Thor nailed it. So did Sif and the Warriors Three. The movie suffered from two things: a seeming parcity of Asgardian sets– they seemed to just jump between the Rainbow Bridge and the palace, and never gave any sense that Asgard is a real, breathing place; and, that they crammed the story into a single weekend. The basic beats are there: Thor is condemned to live as a mortal to learn humility. It would just be more impressive if the lesson took longer than 36 hours.
Like many on the internet, I am inclined to opine on casting choices for these superhero movies when they are announced. My initial opinion has been wrong once. I had been very unimpressed by Chris Evans as Human Torch and was not enthusiastic about his casting as Captain America. He has spent 8 years proving me very wrong.
The Avengers looked like a comic book brought to life more than any superhero film before it. And the big battle was just a fun rollercoaster, the type Michael Bay had been trying and failing at for years. But it wasn’t quite the Avengers film I wanted. The Avengers film I had dreamed of for years was bigger than this one… that would come.
Iron Man 3 is less beloved than some of the others, but I thought it was really good.
Thor: Dark World is often maligned, but it was the first of the films to go bigger, and I appreciate that. It created a better sense of Asgard and the 9 realms than the first film, venturing into the cosmic. I appreciated the film, despite some imperfections.
Captain America: Winter Soldier gives hints of how the franchise can avoid getting too repetitive: by mixing in other genres. This mixes a superhero film with an espionage thriller and is quite effective at it.
Guardians of the Galaxy. If I liked the hints of the larger universe on display in Dark World, I was of course ecstatic about this. This idea of a big universe with lots of alien races interacting and flying world to world on spaceships… it’s one I love, but one cinema has shown us very little of. We’ve had Flash Gordon, Star Wars, Star Trek, Battle Beyond the Stars, a couple animated films… and now this. I love that it’s big. I think the music idea worked. And I think the characters were all really well done; recognizable personalities of people with social difficulties, who find each other. The previous films set a high bar, but the new ones are able to keep clearing that bar.
Avengers: Age of Ultron. A movie I bewilderingly often see low on people’s lists. I thought it was just as good as the first film, while offering even stronger character moments, more thematic richness, showing us a bigger world… and, making me really happy, showing a new team of Avengers form at the end à la Avengers #16, which is the issue of the comic series where Avengers starts to become what it is… not a story about a few heroes that came together, but a legacy handed down from team to team.
Ant-Man leans into the comedy and brings in the heist film genre.
Captain America: Civil War gives us the best superhero battle thus far at the airport, and then ends with a dramatically intense showdown between Captain America and Iron Man. I felt every blow and thought this was the best movie of the franchise yet. I often feel they are just getting better and better.
Doctor Strange nailed it.
Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2… this time I knew what to expect, so I was less awed than with the first one, but it still delivered. And it featured Kurt Russell, an actor some people like.
Spider-Man is my favorite superhero, and Spider-Man 2 was my favorite superhero movie ever until 2017, when Spider-Man: Homecoming surpassed it. I thought Tobey Maguire had been great, but Tom Holland perfected it, largely beating Tobey by looking more like a child. The school and its kids and teachers also just felt more real.
Thor: Ragnarok is beloved by many, but leaned too far into comedy for my tastes. I would prefer they held onto a bit more pathos.
Black Panther created a vibrant world of Wakanda that was simply dazzling to behold, joining Homecoming right at the top of the list of best superhero movies ever.
When I was a child aged 10, my favorite comic was Infinity Gauntlet. Thanos snapping his fingers to kill half the universe blew my young mind. Seeing it blow the minds of adults 30 years later gave me a smug satisfaction. I absolutely loved Avengers: Infinity War. Once again, I had a new “best superhero film ever”.
Ant-Man and the Wasp is a good film, though not as strong as the rest. My favorite scene involves Ant-Man’s daughter revealing she wants to be his partner.
Captain Marvel was another good one. Only took 20 movies to let a female headline.
Avengers: Endgame is the best superhero movie ever.
And Spider-Man: Far From Home is right up there.
X-Men
The X-Men franchise is much more all over the place than the MCU. That’s both good and bad. The original X-Men film ushered in the wave of modern superhero films. X2: X-Men United captured everything the first film did right and fixed what was wrong; it would be a perfect superhero movie if not for the stupid title. Then the franchise faded with a poor third film and an awful Wolverine spinoff. I thought it was done.
Then came the reboot. X-Men: First Class. Set in the 1960s, telling the story of a young Xavier and Magneto. I thought they had found two perfect actors for the older versions, but they found even better actors for their young selves.
Then they made a better Wolverine movie, titled The Wolverine. Still flawed. Needed better villains. But better.
And then Brian Singer returned to the franchise for the magnificent X-Men: Days of Future Past, adapted from what may be the best X-Men comic story, and uniting the original cast with the new cast via time travel.
Then came Deadpool. Wow. I had been really sick of Ryan Reynolds trying to play superheroes. Having failed so miserably at playing Hannibal King, Green Lantern and Deadpool, I was sure he would be a bad Deadpool. But he was, in the truest sense of the word, phenomenal. The movie was obviously funny, but also featured the single best romance within superhero films, the aspect most superhero movies had failed miserably at.
I was suddenly very excited for the future of the X-Men franchise. I went into X-Men: Apocalypse very optimistic and to this day don’t understand why it was so awful.
But Deadpool had given a roadmap. Don’t worry about what had come before. Do something new and different. Go off in your own direction. Logan was a western-tinged road race, featuring an Old Man Logan who had long since given up the fight.
Deadpool 2. Also cool. They got Thanos to play Cable.
And let’s never speak of Dark Phoenix again.
DC Universe Animated Original Movies
There are so many of these. I try to watch them all but am so far behind. Most are decent but not great, though still better than a lot of their live action counterparts. They mostly bear a PG-13 rating, and often needlessly so. Usually a bit of completely gratuitous bad language and blood splatter. Like a criminal sees Batman and yells, “Shit”, when really, he could have said anything else. They seem to reach for the PG-13 rating in what should be youth-aimed stories.
I’ll mention a few great ones and some awful ones and just note there are a lot more where those came from.
The best, and the only one I had considered for my top 50 list for the decade, is All-Star Superman, an abridged but faithful adaptation of one of the all-time great Superman stories by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths is loosely inspired by the Earth 2 graphic novel by the same creative team and also pretty solid.
They made a pretty solid adaptation of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns in two parts. In contrast, the adaptation of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One was largely faithful but still unwatchably bad.
Green Lantern: Emerald Knights is an anthology of Green Lantern Corp stories, including two based on Alan Moore stories. Alan Moore wouldn’t approve of them. He describes DC as “raccoons going through his trash”. But they’re pretty good adaptations. Unlike the adaptation of his Batman: Killing Joke, which you should avoid watching at all costs.
Teen Titans: Judas Contract adapts the famous New Teen Titans story arc by Marv Wolfman and George Perez sufficiently competently.
Not technically under the same brand, but this seems a good time to mention one of the few animated films DC released into theaters: Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, which is a lot of fun and better than most of these films.
I quite liked Justice League: Dark, an assembly of DC’s more supernatural and magical heroes.
Justice League: Doom was inspired by the Mark Waid JLA story, Tower of Babel.
Batman and Harley Quinn is a pretty poor film notable mainly for Harley Quinn and Nightwing having sex onscreen.
Batman: Gotham by Gaslight is a fair adaptation of the original Elseworlds story. It changes the identity of Jack the Ripper from the comic, so there’s still some mystery left for comics fans.
Also technically not in the same brand, but it seems a good place to mention Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders. Before his passing, Adam West teamed with Burt Ward to don the cape and cowl again, just in animated fashion.
Anyways, there are a lot more of these. Also a bunch of attached short films that are pretty cool.
Star Wars
Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a high quality film, with a great new cast and visual flair. But I really feel like sequels (and movies, generally) should justify their existence by having a story to tell. And this one just didn’t. It had the characters, but no ideas what to do with them.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is a mixed bag of a film. I would love to see a director’s cut, as it was apparently massively reworked into a bit of a mess by the studio. But, even in the final product, a great lead with a good crew and melodramatic final battle make for one of the better Star Wars films.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a revelation. It’s at once a masterpiece of a Star Wars movie and a critique of Star Wars films. It’s a challenge to other filmmakers to make better Star Wars movies, a challenge Rise of Skywalker declined.
Also, they made a Solo film.
Star Trek
J.J. Abrams is just a mediocre director and I don’t know why they keep giving him these big franchise films. Last decade saw Star Trek, which had some great actors and some good moments, particularly from Chris Hemsworth, Bruce Greenwood and Karl Urban. Karl Urban does a great DeForest Kelley impression, but I don’t know if that’s what I need to see an actor of his talent spend a whole movie doing.
Star Trek: Into Darkness is awful.
Justin Lin takes the helm for Star Trek: Beyond, a pretty good space action flick, the best of the three films.
Planet of the Apes
I was quite surprised that Rise of the Planet of the Apes was as good as it was. The friendship between a man and his intelligent ape… and how it all goes downhill.
But even more surprised to find Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was transcendentally good. A story of two tribes, most of whom want peace… but the actions of a few within each tribe seem to bring them inevitably into conflict. And incredible special effects bringing those apes to life.
War for the Planet of the Apes was also a fine film, but not as good as its predecessors.
Pacific Rim
A genre usually found in Japanese films, particularly animation, from Gojira to Evangelion— In Pacific Rim, Del Toro brings giant monsters and the giant mech suits we built to fight them to life. He’s one of the decade’s most imaginative filmmakers, and is able to elevate what seems to me like a pretty bad idea for a movie. He’s got the right cast, and a passion for the genre that shines through, and sweeps you along as giant robots battle monsters. The sequel was not by Del Toro, so I have not yet watched. it.
The Purge
The Purge is mostly a horror/thriller, but rooted in a sci/fi premise, a change to the laws to make crime legal for a single night. I’ve only seen the first of them.
Bumblebee
Michael Bay’s original Transfomers film is the worst film I’ve ever seen, so I skipped all his sequels. Since it had a different director and seemed to be a fresh start, I did give Bumblebee a go, and it was quite enjoyable, going with the girl-and-her-robot genre of storytelling.
