Fanboys Anonymous

While many films fall under the classification of "comic book movie" according to various outlets due to a lot of crossover audience, there were only eight true mainstream superhero flicks that came out in 2016.

Oddly enough, despite the boom of the genre, this was a year of struggles where many of them underperformed at the box office and weren't particularly critically acclaimed. There were aspects to like for just about every film on the list as even the worst movies could have gems peppered throughout, but overall, it looks like a somewhat weak group.

So how do they rank compared to each other? Let's go ahead and list them from worst to best and examine why some succeeded while others scrambled for whatever praise they could get.

#8. Max Steel

I didn't see it, so it has to go at the bottom of the list by default. Nobody seems to have anything positive to say about this movie and it looked pretty dumb as it's targeted toward a younger audience. If I were six years old, I'm sure I would have jumped at the chance to watch this, but when you add more than 20 years to that, I have better things to do with my time. Of course, if everyone had raved about it, I would have set aside the time to give it a go, but if you look around, critics hated it, audiences weren't much kinder to it, and there's been no buzz.

#7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

I was a huge fan of the turtles as a kid with the first and second films being two of the most-watched movies of my childhood. We all know the third one was awful, so when they said they were rebooting things a few years ago, I went into the Michael Bay-produced flick with high hopes which were sadly deflated. I didn't absolutely hate everything about it, but it just wasn't as well-crafted as I was hoping it would be.

Still, when a sequel was announced, I knew I would be interested in checking it out, so I went ahead and did just that. There were elements that I think they improved on, while other parts of the sequel showed that there was still a lot of tweaking necessary to get a better product out. Since this underperformed, I'm not expecting a third one to happen any time soon. Check out my Reviewpoint and Minute Man Review for more.

#6. X-Men: Apocalypse

While slightly better than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, good lord was this a disappointment compared to expectations. X-Men: Days of Future Past was so damn good and I love the character of Apocalypse, so I was really hoping this would be the best film of the franchise to date, but it was just okay with some questionable decisions that really hurt the overall movie. It was as if they had a checklist of things they needed to do and they tried to formulate as basic of a plot surrounding those elements, so when they patched everything together, it just felt hollow. Check out my Reviewpoint and Minute Man Review for more.

#5. Suicide Squad

This movie has so, so many problems...so many, in fact, that I wrote up a Fanboys Fix It article showcasing them and I had to lump tons of little things together into bigger issues just so I didn't make the post too big.

There were tons of stuff I actually enjoyed, like the cameo from Batman and the world-building, but holy shit was this movie hacked to pieces in the editing room or just poorly structured out to begin with. What could have been DC's Guardians of the Galaxy in that it would be a surprise to see such low-key characters outshining the more popular ones ended up instead being a movie that killed a lot of enthusiasm about the future of the film franchise. For all the flaws Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice have, people looked at Suicide Squad as the one that could save things, and it didn't. Now, all eyes are on Wonder Woman to undo the bad mojo from three films, not one or two.

Check out my Reviewpoint and Minute Man Review for more.

#4. Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange is one of my least favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe films, but that's not to say that it's a bad one. Lots of people seem to love it because it has some elements that are slightly different yet they ignore the things that are the same. For the record, I never tend to like something solely on it being "a refreshing change of pace"—good is good, bad is bad, change can be either. In this case, the differences were okay, but nothing to make me disregard the parts that I didn't enjoy.

For example, the love interest and the villain are very lackluster with almost no dimension to them (no pun intended) and the origin story is incredibly rushed. Is it fun at times? Sure. But I think the longer we separate ourselves from this movie, the less it's going to hold up as a favorite for people. Years after its release, everybody still agrees the first Iron Man and Captain America: The Winter Soldier are among the two best of the series, but I don't think we'll be hearing many fans talk about Doctor Strange being one of their go-to films to rewatch on a regular basis like they do with The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy.
 Check out my Reviewpoint and Minute Man Review for more.

#3. Deadpool

Innovative? Check. Funny? Check. Cool action? Check. Do you get a lot of bang for your buck? Check. Does it stay faithful to the character? Check.

The marketing campaign for this film alone was amazing but who would have thought it would end up making so much money while simultaneously being praised by critics? It's Deadpool, for God's sake! This movie spent a decade on the shelf as a film that would never be made, and not only did it accomplish just that, it shattered so many of the expectations put upon it.

This isn't my favorite movie of the year by any means (hence why it's #3 on this list, even) but I think it deserves all the credit in the world and if you think it should be at the top, I could definitely see the argument.

Check out my Reviewpoint, Making the Grade and Minute Man Review for more. 

#2. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

I'm somewhat of an apologist for this movie in a lot of ways. When the credits came up, I asked everybody I had seen it with and most people were hating on it or they didn't know quite what to think, but I loved it outside of Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor, Batman killing people and a couple other things. The extended cut is even better and fixes about 60% of the problems I had with the movie. Sure, it leaves 40% (like Eisenberg's casting and Batman killing people) but the amount of hate this film gets is preposterous.

I felt more enthusiastic about the future of the DCEU after seeing Batman v Superman than I did going into it, which may be a minority vote, but at least I'm one person out there who doesn't grimace when hearing the title of this movie. I've since seen it a handful of times (always the ultimate edition, never the theatrical) and there are more and more little idiosyncrasies that I enjoy with each viewing. Just the same, there are some black marks that bug me every time, but I'm still very high on this movie.

Check out my Reviewpoint, Making the Grade and Minute Man Review for more.

#1. Captain America: Civil War

Oddly enough, I like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice more than the average person and I don't like Captain America: Civil War as much as the average person, but I still have to admit that fundamentally, it's the better film between the two as far as fitting within their respective series. More than anything, I was disappointed that Civil War didn't have the gravitas that The Winter Soldier was able to pull off, but look at everything that was fantastic about it: Black Panther, a new Spider-Man, the airport sequence, The Raft, an implosion between a group that actually makes more sense than what Batman and Superman are doing, etc.

The MCU is simply fantastic and the worst parts of this franchise are always outmatched by all of the great things. For everything in Civil War that makes me wish they had gone a different route, they do ten that make me geek out.

Check out my Reviewpoint, Making the Grade and Minute Man Review for more.