2021 has been a big year for superhero films - and here's our ranking of every Marvel and DC blockbuster and a wildcard from Netflix's original movie catalog. The coronavirus pandemic essentially shut down Hollywood for much of 2020, with even the biggest film studios affected. But, while the pandemic still hasn't come to an end, the film industry has come back swinging in 2021. At times studios have attempted different distribution methods - Zack Snyder's Justice League released on HBO Max, while Black Widow had a controversial hybrid release - and these have made it very difficult to get a measure of how these different movies compare. Still, the year has ended with a bang, courtesy of Spider-Man: No Way Home - which achieved the third-highest box office opening in history.
Marvel Studios' Phase 4 launched in style, introducing a swathe of new superheroes, and taking advantage of the multiverse to give viewers their ultimate nostalgia buzz. Sony finally released its Venom sequel, unleashing Carnage. HBO Max finally made the Snyder Cut a reality, while James Gunn reinvented the Suicide Squad to spectacular effect - even siring a spinoff TV series starring Peacemaker. Unfortunately, many of these films shared the same problem; too many ideas tossed together, leaving them overstuffed and mismatched. The superhero genre has been booming for well over a decade now, but in purely qualitative terms it's at risk of becoming a victim of its own success, thrall to nostalgia, and excessive attempts to build shared universes that don't allow individual movies the chance to breathe.
That isn't to say any of 2021's superhero movies were bad, of course; just that they were flawed, and curiously enough tended to share the same kind of flaws. The best superhero blockbusters of the year were the ones that either triumphed over these flaws due to superb scripting or else avoided them outright. Given that's the case, here's our ranking of the year's superhero films.
8. Thunder Force
While 2020's We Can Be Heroes was an excellent original superhero movie that Netflix could be proud of - and could probably hang franchise aspirations on - this year's superpowered offering, Thunder Force, was vastly inferior. From the creative partnership of Melissa McCarthy and husband Ben Falcone, this superhero comedy never quite delivers either on the action or the laughs, failing on both sides of its category. There are sparse laughs, but it's all just too dull and wastes the otherwise obvious talents of McCarthy and Octavia Spencer rather unforgivably.
7. Venom: Let There Be Carnage
Few will be surprised to see Venom: Let There Be Carnage in seventh place on this list, given it perfectly exemplifies the problems of 2021's superhero blockbusters - there are far too many plots and characters for the 97-minute runtime, with the character arcs often feeling quite artificial; the conflict between Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock and Venom just doesn't quite work, and hence is poorly resolved. That said, for all this is far from the movie of the year, Venom: Let There Be Carnage is exactly what it's supposed to be - a popcorn movie, lightweight and inconsequential, and simply fun. It's telling that the only thing discussed after this sequel's release was the post-credits scene that brought Venom into the MCU.
6. Zack Snyder's Justice League
The Snyder Cut movement achieved its goal at last, with HBO Max greenlighting Zack Snyder's Justice League - an opportunity for auteur director Zack Snyder to make the film he wanted to put out, rather than the Frankenstein's Monster of a theatrical cut released by Warner Bros. back in 2017. Zack Snyder's Justice League is undeniably better than that, with a much more consistent style and tone, as well as some phenomenal character arcs - most notably for Ray Fisher's Cyborg. Unfortunately it's still flawed, in part because it seems to have been made with a view that editing is an enemy; any writer knows there are times when you have to "kill your darlings" to make a story work, and Snyder's refusal to edit anything out means the Snyder Cut feels frankly overwhelming, with extraneous scenes and cameos dragging narrative momentum down to a crawl. It's great to see a version of Justice League that actually works, but unfortunately, it doesn't work terribly well.
5. Eternals
Inspired by Jack Kirby's Eternals comics, Chloe Zhao's movie takes an unusual approach for Marvel - introducing an entire team of thematically linked superheroes. Zhao is a remarkable filmmaker, and her love of natural light gives Eternals a truly unique feel in the MCU; it's delightful to see Marvel willing to allow a director to make their mark on a film, resulting in some tremendous character-work. Unfortunately the third act devolves into a fairly traditional end of the world scenario that feels at odds with the intimate characterization of the first and second act, and as a result Eternals feels like it's two different films stitched together. The film is a bold step forward for Marvel, especially in terms of diversity, and it does have some tremendously enjoyable character moments - unexpected stand-outs being Lauren Ridloff's Makkari and Barry Keoghan's Druig - but it's sadly still flawed.
4. Black Widow
Black Widow is a strange movie, with Marvel choosing to launch Phase 4 with a film that really should have come out in the MCU's Phase 2 or 3 - and that suffers because it serves as a flashback starring a character who'd literally just been killed off. Scarlett Johansson puts in a tremendous performance as Natasha Romanoff, and her dynamic with Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova is absolutely spectacular; meanwhile, the overarching themes of Black Widow are explored with a consistency that earlier films in this ranking haven't demonstrated. Still, for all that's the case, this feels like a step back rather than a step forward, and Marvel has done the spy thriller genre better in the past - with the classic Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Black Widow is unlikely to be high on anyone's rewatch list.
3. Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings
Black Widow may have felt ill-timed, but the world was most definitely ready for Destin Daniel Cretton's Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings. This movie is well aware it inhabits a shared universe - it features countless riffs on previous Marvel movies, and a post-credits scene tying its titular hero to the wider MCU - and yet tonally it feels unlike anything in the MCU to date. Simu Liu is perfectly cast as Shang-Chi, somehow both an everyman hero and the son of an ancient crime lord - essentially the MCU's version of Luke Skywalker. The supporting cast are perfectly chosen, with Tony Leung's Wenwu standing as one of the most soulful villains in the MCU to date, while Awkwafina's Katy is a welcome breath of fresh air. Visually so much of Shang-Chi is absolutely breathtaking, with some beautifully choreographed action sequences. Unfortunately, that makes the third-act CGI battle all the more jarring, because the film loses its visual distinctiveness as Shang-Chi battles the demonic Dweller In Darkness. Shang-Chi's strengths dramatically outweigh its weaknesses - but it has weaknesses nonetheless.
2. Spider-Man: No Way Home
Many of 2021's superhero films have felt overstuffed, and on paper Spider-Man: No Way Home should be the worst of the lot - this is a film in which Tom Holland's Spider-Man crosses teams up with Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange, gets Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock as a lawyer, faces off against multiple villains from previous iterations of Spider-Man, and finally allies with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's Spider-Men. It really shouldn't work - and yet somehow it does, because the entire narrative hangs on the idea of a teenager making a mistake that threatens to destroy his world. Spider-Man: No Way Home plays the nostalgia card, but it does it well, in an action-packed plot that feels like a heartfelt love-letter to the entire Spider-Man franchise. Undoubtedly the most ambitious superhero film of 2021, Spider-Man: No Way Home is also one of the best.
1. The Suicide Squad
But, in purely qualitative terms, the top superhero film of 2021 is surely James Gunn's The Suicide Squad. The year's other superhero movies all feel burdened by the weight of the shared universes they inhabit, but Gunn essentially carried out a soft reboot of his franchise, bringing back some of the most popular cast from David Ayer's Suicide Squad and tossing aside the rest. There's a thematic and tonal consistency to The Suicide Squad, which earns its R-rating in its opening scenes, and capitalizes upon it to explore themes and ideas rarely explored in superhero blockbusters. The Suicide Squad was never going to be a hit, with the franchise too badly damaged after 2016, but frankly that's a real shame - because it deserved to be. In a year of tremendous superhero films, The Suicide Squad is the pick of the crop.