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2010-2019: Best Comic Book Movies Countdown.


The Natural

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Comic book movies are my favourite film genre because I’m a huge fan of the comics. This decade’s brought a lot of comic book movies so I posed myself and you the following question on the last day of the decade,  which are the best with cinema releases?

Here’s my 20 to 1 Top of the Pops countdown for comic book movies shown on the silver screen...

 

20. X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

19. Doctor Strange (2016)

18. Black Panther (2018)

17. Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

16. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

15. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

14. Dredd (2012)

13. X-Men: First Class (2011)

12. Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

11. Avengers: Endgame (2019)

10. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

9. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

8. Deadpool (2016)

7. Logan (2017)

6. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

5. Captain America: Civil War (2016)

4. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

3. Avengers Assemble (2012)

2. Joker (2019)

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

Edited by The Natural
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Explanations behind choices:

A difficult choice between Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Joker for top spot. In the end, I went for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The movie got the essential qualities you find in the best Spider-Man books: story, heart, humour and the visual. The visuals made for one of the best visual experiences I’ve had at the cinema.

I’m still thinking about Joker after seeing it for its commentary on mental illness, society, Phoenix’s performance, the score and cinematography. The film deserved to be the first Rated R movie to make a billion at the box office.

I bet only a few at best would agree with me that Avengers Assemble remains the top Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. Kevin Feige and Joss Whedon worked wonders bringing Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America franchises assembling them with Black Widow and Hawkeye.

I’m all too aware I’m in the minority who doesn’t rate the Guardians of the Galaxy movies as the majority of people do. I liked Black Panther enough to make my top twenty but there’s comic book movies I enjoy more. Deadpool 2 didn’t have a shot of making my list. I felt the original told a better story, it was leaner and funnier.

You don’t have to do a top twenty or top ten, feel free to say what your favourites are and agree/disagree with my list. Agreed is the preferred option ;).

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  1. Infinity War / Endgame
  2. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
  3. The Winter Soldier
  4. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
  5. The Dark Knight Rises
  6. Dredd
  7. Logan
  8. X-Men: Days Of Future Past
  9. Thor: Ragnarok
  10. Kick-Ass

I'm only doing 10 because I limited it to movies I really, really enjoyed. Can I go back and watch almost every MCU movie and enjoy myself? Yeah, absolutely. But the ones in my top 10 are either really good (to me), changed the genre, told a compelling story, pulled at my heartstrings, etc. I toyed with doing a Top 20, but then it would have stuff like Age of Ultron in it - a movie I really like, but parts of it I want to skip as well.

I also cheated with my top pick, because it's my list and I'll do what I want. In my opinion, you can't really watch those two movies without having seen the other. I mean, you can, I guess, but it's not as enjoyable - especially Endgame, which is basically 3 hours worth of Marvel Studios doing callbacks, wrapping up stories, etc. For me, both have to be #1, even outside of a pure fan standpoint, because of the scale and weight of those movies and what it took to get to the point where you can do a movie like those two.

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I don't think in top tens, so I'm not making a list. Whatever thing some people have that makes them want to list things in orders (and I know some people, that's a massive part of who they are and how they see things), I don't have that. But, if I was to list my bottom 5 comic book movies, most of them would be DC/ Snyderverse with X-Men: Apocalypse thrown in there. And I've not seen Dark Phoenix. But Man o'Steel, BvS, Suicide Squad and Justice League, taken as a whole... DC, you have good characters, you have decades of good storylines to pull from, why would you allow yourselves to go on this legendarily terrible run of form? Your competition is out there being unprecedentedly successful both commercially and critically, even a bad Marvel movie is still a C+/B- level thing, and here you are topping out at a D grade. If hiring Zack Snyder was a moronically stupid move (and it was), not firing him sooner was fucking worse. Grow a brain, lads, and grow it quickly.

Apologies to anyone who liked them. But still, I say release the Snyder cut... into a deep pit, full of molten lava.

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16 hours ago, The Natural said:

Thank you, @Niners Fan in CT. Interesting seeing where we're in agreement and those we differ on. Four films feature in both our top tens. We've the same #1-2 but in a different order.

I think Logan should be in there somewhere, there's a few more I'm batting around that are deserving.. 

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  • Avengers: Infinity War
  • Avengers: Endgame
  • Thor: Ragnarok
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier
  • Avengers
  • Captain America: First Avenger
  • Deadpool
  • Deadpool 2
  • The Dark Knight Rises

This a rough top ten in no order and probably 2-3 that could be switched out with others that didn't make it. Extended to 20 would have seen more non-Marvel movies. Not based purely on cinema releases would have seen me put in a few DC animated films. Some things are purely not there because I haven't seen them in years despite knowing I dug the hell out of them like when they came out like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Kick Ass.

Edited by Eivion
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Cheers, @Eivion. My original thank you post didn't go through so I've typed up a new one. Again, we find common ground and discrepancies. I hold the minority view when it comes to the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise and Deadpool 2 left me very disappointed. Nice seeing Captain America: The First Avenger making the cut. No Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse?

Batman: Under the Red Hood and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns would have made my list if it wasn't just based on cinema releases.

Edited by The Natural
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23 minutes ago, The Natural said:

Cheers, @Eivion. My original thank you post didn't go through so I've typed up a new one. Again, we find common ground and discrepancies. I hold the minority view when it comes to the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise and Deadpool 2 left me very disappointed. Nice seeing Captain America: The First Avenger making the cut. No Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse?

Its one of the ones that could have been switched in so its just outside of it. I don't quite love the films as much as others.

24 minutes ago, The Natural said:

Batman: Under the Red Hood and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns would have made my list if it wasn't just based on cinema releases.

Two of the exact ones I was thinking of when mentioning animated films.

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My list would go like:

Spoiler
  1. Black Panther
  2. Thor Ragnarok
  3. Captain America The Winter Soldier
  4. Spider-man Into the Spider Verse
  5. Wonder Woman
  6. Deadpool
  7. Logan
  8. Avengers
  9. Guardians of the Galaxy
  10. Infinity War
  11. Ant-man and The Wasp
  12. Guardians of the Galaxy 2 
  13. Captain America The First Avenger
  14. Spider-man Homecoming
  15. Avengers Endgame

I did 15 didn't want to go up to 20 cause I felt like the drop off from here one out would be further. Truthfully I probably could have stopped at 10 the top 6 are ones I can watch almost any time. I need to rewatch Logan since I've only seen it once but it's easily as good as Deadpool as far as best X-Men movies go. If I combined Inifity War and Endgame together it would probably be around 5 or 6 but I kept the separate which lowered their ratings especially Endgame which has some of my favorite moments of the MCU but is a bit long and there are some plot holes that I don't feel were properly addressed. If I kept going at least Dr Strange, Joker and Antman would have shown up on the list 

 

 

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While I'm not a list person, I've found myself thinking of films in clusters.  I can think of what clearly groups together for me and why they do so.

Haven't seen: Joker, Aquaman, Shazam!, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.  I watched half of Spidey, and, based on that half, it would make it way up into the higher tiers, but, I just never actually finished it.  Maybe later today (getting dismissed from work due to bad weather). 

Best of the Best:

Logan.

I don't care that this is basically Superhero Shane.  Don't care that it won't necessarily get wrapped well into larger canon or build the way the other Marvel movies did.  It hits every note right.  It's Patrick Stewart's best turn as Xavier by a mile and his best anything since the early days of playing Picard.  The villains aren't monolithic and awesome; they're not preening and monologuing; they're none of those things because they've already won, and even when they get their comeuppance, you're left with a real sense of dread, of this awful world left behind.  Dafne Keen is great, and Hugh Jackman will probably always be The Wolverine for getting the balance of Wolverine right: the rage, the toughness, the single-minded purpose, the dismissal of fear, but that all of that springs from multiple lifetimes of pain, pain that's far more psychological than physical.  He managed to inhabit this character every bit as much as Chris Evans has with Steve Rogers (even if his movies are all over the place with respect to quality), but this was his best job.  The only reason I don't think about this film more or tout it to people more is just that it's such a huge damn gut punch to get through the whole thing.

 

Heart, Mind, and Soul

Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Thor: Ragnarok

Others have said enough about what works with these three, but they'll always be the things I think of when I think of Marvel films.  Infinity War might be a strictly better film than any of these three, but only because these three movies did so much work to set up why something like Infinity War can be better.  But I always tell people GotG has my heart, Winter Soldier my mind, and Ragnarok my soul, because that's what comes through each of them so well.

 

Why didn't you watch this?!? Are we actually friends? I'm not sure anymore.

Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool, Captain America: The First Avenger, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far from Home.

I think what I love the most about all of these movies is that, going into each of them (except FFH), I felt so certain that the central characters wouldn't be portrayed correctly.  I was wrong in each case.  Thanos as complicated eco-terrorist is probably every bit as good as megalomaniac in love with Death.  Just as I was happy that Ragnarok finally made a good Thor movie, I was really, really pleased with Thor's arc in Infinity War, as, over the course of 2 movies, he goes from being the Boring Avenger to the most interesting member of the team.  Spider-Man feels like the first time the live-action stuff did both parts of the character real justice. Maguire was good as Peter, terrible as Spidey, while Garfield was a fairly good, quippy, snarky Spidey in movies that were a waste of space.  Holland gets both halves equally right.  I don't need to tell anyone what perfect casting decisions Ryan Reynolds & Chris Evans were. 

 

Maybe don't quite love, but really enjoy & will defend.

Wonder Woman, Dr. Strange, Black Panther, Avengers, Captain America: Civil War, Captain Marvel, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2.

All of these have their flaws.  Apparently Cap 1 was so good, DC stole it and made Wonder Woman. Dr. Strange and Ant-Man/Wasp don't quite have the heaviness/stakes that some of the others do.  Civil War feels too busy.  Black Panther has that terrible third act, or it would be the best film Marvel's done.  GotG 2 has too many jokes that fall flat.  Avengers had a lot to set up, so their ceiling was just lower.  Captain Marvel felt a little telegraphed in terms of the plot and probably should have come out earlier in sequence.  But all of these work for me and I'd stick up for them if people say they're garbage.

Everything else is pretty much not worth mentioning except to say, "Yep, I saw that."

(Duh, Iron Man was 2008.  Blah to things that feel like such a continuum...)

Edited by Contentious C
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GotG 1

Thor Ragnarok 

Avengers 1

Avengers: Infinity War

Winter Soldier

Iron Man 1

Spiderman Homecoming 

Dredd

Deadpool 1 

 

All I got. The Nolan Batman movies did nothing for me and to this day I believe Bale was a great Batman but a TERRIBLE Bruce Wayne. 

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