The superhero genre has come a long way. “Wonder Woman” has claimed the title of one of the best reviewed superhero films ever. But critics haven’t always been kind to caped crusaders. Based on their Rotten Tomatoes score, these are the worst superhero movies according to critics.
“X-Men Origins – Wolverine” – 38 percent
“Fox, no doubt casting a jealous eye on Warner Bros’ rebooting of Batman, have opted to make this ’70s-set prequel a fairly glum tale of revenge and betrayal.” — Nick De Semlyen, Empire
“Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer” – 37 percent
“Given that the finest special effects in this crashing bore are Jessica Alba’s pillowy lips, which look as if they could save lives in a 175-mile-an-hour car crash, it’s no wonder some viewers might find themselves wishing that the promised end of the world might happen a bit sooner.” — Manohla Dargis, New York Times
“Kick-Ass 2” (2013) – percent
“For those with horrid taste in cinema, questionable politics, and terribly short attention spans, i.e. the target audience of this movie, I feel it is my duty to say: Don’t see this film.” — Ali Arikan, RogerEbert.com
“The Fantastic Four” (1994) – 29 percent
“This movie is if Andy Warhol made a Fantastic Four movie, filled with camp and shtick that makes you question if it was intentional or not. Everyone’s costumes are so plastic and unmoving that it comes off as a Robot Chicken sketch.” — Dane Sager, Under The Gun Review
“The Punisher” (2004) – 29 percent
“There’s so much that’s well-done here that you sense a good movie slipping away … This one loses control of its mood and doesn’t know what level of credibility it exists on. At the end, we feel battered down and depressed, emotions we probably don’t seek from comic book heroes.” — Roger Ebert
“Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” – 28 percent
“The corporations that produce movies like this one, and the ambitious hacks who sign up to make them, have no evident motive beyond their own aggrandizement. Entertainment is less the goal than the byproduct, and as the commercial reach of superpower franchises grows, their creative exhaustion becomes ever more apparent.” — A.O. Scott, NYT
“Fantastic Four” (2005) – 27 percent
“It’s certainly not a movie made for critics … but it does assume an arrogant level of idiocy in its audience. It emerges as a studio accountant’s dream of product placement with a lazy eye on the early teen market, providing just enough effects shots to make a good trailer and sell some baseball caps.” — Olly Richards, Empire
“Punisher: War Zone” (2008) – 27 percent
“At one point, the Punisher is asked who punishes him. The better question for those who made this inane bloodfest is: Why punish us?” — Claudia Puig, USA Today
“Ghost Rider” (2007) – 26 percent
“Director Mark Steven Johnson previously botched an adaptation of ‘Daredevil’ by being unable to decide what kind of movie he wanted to make. Here, that isn’t a problem, assuming he set out solely to make the kind that fills moviegoers with buyers’ remorse.” — Keith Phipps, A.V. Club
“Superman III” (1983) – 26 percent
“What’s amazing is that the first two Superman movies avoided that description, creating a fantasy with a certain charm. They could have been manipulative special-effects movies, but they were a great deal more. With this third one, maybe they’ve finally run out of inspiration.” — Ebert
“Green Lantern” (2011) – 26 percent
“Without a good script as a safety net, and a competent director providing a tightrope, the performances of the actors plummet into the aimless and campy depths of a Joel Schumacher Batman film.” — Kofi Outlaw, Screen Rant
“Blade: Trinity” (2004) – 25 percent
“Unless you watch this film with the cloudiest of blinders on, it can make a cynic out of anyone. It’s filled with too much comedy, not enough action and a poor excuse for horror.” — Scott W. Davis, Horror Express
“Suicide Squad” (2016) – 25 percent
“It is a flailing, obnoxious, pointless, ugly, dreary disaster that swings wildly back and forth between incoherent and boring and most of the time looks like it was shot through a solid wall of rot-clouded urine.” — Bob Chipman
“Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” (2012) – 17 percent
“Whether Nicolas Cage is still paying off castles, appeasing the IRS, or rebuilding his comic book collection, it’s clear he’s decided to trade his talent for cold, hard cash.” Elizabeth Weitzman, NY Daily News
“The League of Extraordinary Gentleman” (2003) – 17 percent
“… assembles a splendid team of heroes to battle a plan for world domination, and then, just when it seems about to become a real corker of an adventure movie, plunges into incomprehensible action, idiotic dialogue, inexplicable motivations, causes without effects, effects without causes, and general lunacy. What a mess.” — Ebert
“Howard the Duck” (1986) – percent
“The movie is too scuzzy to beguile children, too infantile to appeal to adults.” – Richard Corliss, Time
“The Spirit” (2008) – 14 percent
“There is not a trace of human emotion in it. To call the characters cardboard is to insult a useful packing material.” – Ebert
“Superman IV: The Quest for Peace” (1987) – 12 percent
“The overall effect is of a story atomized and dying before our eyes, collapsing into smashed pulp, ground down into big-budget Kryptonite ash.” – Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times
“Jonah Hex” (2010) – 12 percent
“[Brolin] is done in by the deathless mediocrity of the production, an assemblage of random camera shots, messy editing, redundant scenes, and witless dialogue as haphazardly stitched together as the flesh on Jonah Hex’s face.” – Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
“Batman & Robin” (1997) – 11 percent
A sniggering, exhausting, overproduced extravaganza that has virtually all of the humanity pounded out of it in the name of an endless parade of stunt sequences.” – Gene Siskel
“Elektra” (2005) – 10 percent
The latest Hollywood movie to give comic books a bad name, ‘Elektra’ stars Jennifer Garner as a superheroine who dons fetish-wear the color of blood before laying waste to every man in sight.” – Dargis
“Fantastic Four” (2015) – 9 percent
“If you would like to admire the awfulness of ‘Fantastic Four’ without actually having to sit through it — or if you’ve already seen the movie and are still reeling from the experience — read on.” – Christopher Orr, The Atlantic
“Catwoman” (2004) – 9 percent
Relentlessly gaudy and in love with its PG-13 approximation of kink, Catwoman is essentially an excuse to pose Berry in ever-skimpier outfits. It’s all too pre-fab to register as sexy, though, and even the fight scenes look like fashion shoots.” – Phipps
“Supergirl” (1984) – 7 percent
“Why even go to the trouble of making a movie that feels like it’s laughing at itself?” – Ebert
“Max Steel” (2016) – 0 percent
“A movie based on a toy should be a lot more fun than this.” – Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com
