“Supergirl,” the new DC film starring Milly Alcock as Superman’s rebellious younger cousin, isn’t flying high with critics.
So far, the film has a 58% critics’ score on RottenTomatoes — not a total turkey, but not soaring with the eagles, either. It’s about on par with 2020’s “Wonder Woman 1984,” a barely passable sequel, and 2013’s “Man of Steel,” which introduced Henry Cavill as an oddly downbeat Superman. The tepid reception raises an important question: Can James Gunn, as the new co-honcho of DC Studios (alongside Peter Safran), inject new life into its often mopey movies?
It wasn’t long ago that the superhero genre overall seemed in trouble. During the 2010s and into the early 2020s, both Marvel and DC delivered several clunkers and misfires that tested the faith of even diehard fans. Here, in order of sheer turkey-ness, are the seven worst movies of the modern superhero era:
7. KRAVEN THE HUNTER (2024) Aaron Taylor-Johnson packed on 35 pounds of muscle to play the title role — a bestial human who preys on bad guys — but there’s less beef in this movie than ham. The star poses, preens and snarls (sometimes on all fours), while Russell Crowe masticates the scenery as Kraven’s ultra-macho dad. The camp value is almost worth the ticket price.
6. SUICIDE SQUAD (2016)
A star-studded cast couldn’t save “Suicide Squad.” Credit: Warner Bros/Everett Collection/Clay Enos
This story about supervillains who team up to save the world was supposed to be an edgy mix of comedy, nihilism and action. Instead, director David Ayers forgets that his stars (Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Jared Leto) aren’t playing heroes — and now come the speeches and pep talks. Not to be confused with Gunn’s well-reviewed sequel, “The Suicide Squad.”
5. BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (2016) DC Studios’ relentless campaign to bummerize your favorite superheroes culminated in this turgid battle between a misguided Batman (Ben Affleck) and a self-flagellating Superman (Cavill). But we also get Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), because there’s a Justice League franchise that needs launching. Confused, confusing, boring.
4. FANTASTIC FOUR (2015) Talk about a fine cast wasted! A too-youthful Miles Teller plays Mister Fantastic, Kate Mara underwhelms as Sue Storm and Jamie Bell barely registers as Ben “The Thing” Grimm. Something is very wrong when a movie can drain the charisma out of Michael B. Jordan (as the Human Torch). Todd McCarthy of the Hollywood Reporter called it “maddeningly lame.”
3. CAPTAIN MARVEL (2019) How about a superhero who is all-powerful and has no weak spots? Wouldn’t that mean a story with no suspense or even drama? What if this Godlike character were played by a sensitive, natural actress like Brie Larson? Finally, what if this superhero had a corny, generic name? They made the movie anyway.
2. DARK PHOENIX (2019) The mysterious mutant Jean Grey finally gets her stand-alone origin story. Twelve movies into the franchise, though, it’s all so familiar: first an orphan, then rescued by Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), then welcomed into the X-Men despite her emotional volatility. (Sophie Turner, in the title role, has two settings: simmer and boil.) The plot is so scattered that even director Simon Kinberg seems lost, and he wrote it.
1. THE MARVELS (2023)
“The Marvels” tops (or perhaps bottoms) our list. Credit: Marvel/Walt Disney Co./Everett Collection/Laura Radford
It arrived following a deluge of streaming Marvel content, only to find that audiences were drowning. The movie boasted Marvel’s first Black female director (Nia DaCosta) and a commendably diverse cast (Iman Vellani, Teyonah Parris), but superhero fatigue was setting in and audiences wanted more than smug jokes from characters they barely knew. Convinced of its own cuteness, “The Marvels” went down as a bomb; its $206 million global haul still ranks as the lowest in the MCU. And did we mention that we gave it zero stars?
