I’ve run a nearly year-long poll on my blog asking, “what is the best comic book movie of 2016?” Unsurprisingly, the critically-acclaimed (90% Tomatometer) and high-grossing ($1.15 billion worldwide) Captain America: Civil War is the unanimous choice, receiving 100% of the votes! The movie is flat-out excellent and feels like a combination of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Marvel’s The Avengers. What surprised me is that no other movie garnered any votes. One of my personal favorites, Doctor Strange, didn’t even receive any.
Here’s how I rank the other films after Civil War:
#2 Deadpool is the surprise superhero movie hit of the year, if not of all-time. Yes, I said it, all-time. It had all of the ingredients of a box office bomb. Ryan Reynolds had a history of misses (Blade Trinity, Green Lantern and X-Men Origins: Wolverine) in the genre. Tim Miller was an inexperienced director. And Deadpool is a fringe character who isn’t exactly kid-friendly. Despite all of these knocks, Reynolds’ irreverent depiction of the “Merc with the Mouth,” redefines the superhero movie genre in a way that hadn’t been seen since 1998’s Blade – another R-rated hit.
#3 Doctor Strange is sneaky good. I say sneaky because I never thought it would be as entertaining and funny as it turned out to be. It is an atypical Marvel Studios film, which is a great thing, as I began worrying if the MCU would start running out of fresh ideas. Speaking of “fresh,” like the number one movie on this list, it is also certified fresh.
#4 X-Men: Apocalypse wasn’t great. It also wasn’t’ terrible. It’s what I call “watchable but forgettable.” So forgettable, that I added it to my list after I published this article. To its defense, it was the finale in series that had set a pretty high bar, given how excellent X-Men: First Class (86% RT score) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (91% RT score) were.
#5 Suicide Squad is full of flaws, but the performances of Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn and Will Smith as Deadshot resonate with me. In fact the performances of most of this motley crew of antiheroes leaves a mark. Enough of a mark, that I am cautiously optimistic that a sequel will patch the holes that its predecessor left.
#6 Batman v. Superman has few redeeming qualities to me. It was ambitious, but it felt rushed and disorganized in terms of its plot. But the titular fight scene is classic! Sure, it is a fight that could have easily been avoided by a simple conversation, and it could have been concluded better than the contrived “Martha-induced” truce, but the fight choreography is breathtaking nonetheless.
With a full slate of comic book movies in 2017, I look forward to more “geeky goodness” in the new year.
