Adapting comic books into film and television is not an easy game, it takes the right combination of old stories and new ideas to make something that is compelling, interesting, well-executed, and satisfies both comic fans and new fans alike. It's a difficult process to say the least, and something that can make it easier is adapting the comics into a cartoon. Perhaps it's because the translation from comics to animation is a bit easier than the transition into live-action, but whatever the reason, there seem to be more cases where the animated adaptation turned out better than the live-action adaptation. Of course, this isn't always the case, as you'll see in a bit, since both live-action and animated adaptations of comic books can be hit or miss.
Since there have been so many superhero adaptations, both live-action and animated, we decided to throw together a list and find out which was the better adaptation, the cartoon or the live-action. We've got a few somewhat loose rule for this list; first off, we are going to compare adaptations that came out within a few years of each other — except in the case where there is only one cartoon and one live-action adaptation. Second, we are mostly looking at films of the same character/team, so we can't compare a cartoon starring a character to a film where they only appear with an ensemble/team cast. Lastly, as expected, we'll be looking at the quality, reception and overall execution of the adaptations to find out which was the better one. With all that set, let's take a stab at figuring out which superheroes were better as cartoons, and which were better in live-action.
25 BETTER ANIMATED - TAS VS. BURTON FILMS
In 1989, the world got its first taste of what would become the model for modern superhero films in the form Tim Burton's Batman. The film was a smash hit and is still considered by many to be one of the best Batman adaptations of all time.
That said, just three years later, another adaptation would come along, an animated one, Batman: The Animated Series. The animated series is also considered to be one of the best Batman adaptations, and perhaps it's just our opinion, but we think it beats Burton's films by a landslide.
24 BETTER LIVE-ACTION - GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
When the MCU started getting a bit stale with sequels and all-too familiar faces, Guardians of the Galaxy came in and rocked the boat in just the right way. Guardians came in with characters that viewers hardly knew and introduced the cosmic branch of the MCU to bring some fresh blood and new adventures to Marvel films.
Then, on the other end of the adaptation spectrum, we have the Guardians of the Galaxy animated series, which, like Avengers Assemble, is a cartoon carbon copy of the film, making it much worse than the original.
23 BETTER ANIMATED - FANTASTIC FOUR
The Fantastic Four have not had a great track record when it comes to adaptations, the first film was such a failure that there's an entire documentary about its fall, and Fox hasn't handled its versions all that well either.
As for the world of animation, things haven't gone so well there, either. Of the four series made, only one stands with some merit -- Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes. The series still had a quite a few issues, but relative to the films, it's the lesser of multiple evils; its unique designs earn it some extra points.
22 BETTER ANIMATED - SPECTACULAR VS. AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
The gap in time between the last episode of The Spectacular Spider-Man and the first Amazing Spider-Man film is a bit bigger than most of the other comparisons on this list, but we're still going to consider them from around the same time, since Ultimate Spider-Man didn't come out until a bit later.
Regardless, it's no contest which is the better adaptation, since The Spectacular Spider-Man is praised as the best Spider-Man cartoon of all time and The Amazing Spider-Man is seen as one of the worst of all the Spider-Man films, its sequel garnering an even worse reception.
21 BETTER LIVE-ACTION - IRON MAN (MCU) VS. ARMORED ADVENTURES
Iron Man shook the superhero movie industry to its core, leading to the MCU, plenty of copycat attempt at shared universes and an overall boom of superhero films. In response to Iron Man's success, a sequel was quickly planned and a cartoon called Iron Man: Armored Adventures, was created, though it wasn't quite the same setup as the film.
This Iron Man was a teenager and his adventures surrounded his high school days. It was an interesting choice to say the least, but at the end of the day, it couldn't compete with the film that launched the MCU.
20 BETTER ANIMATED - UNDER THE RED HOOD VS. THE DARK KNIGHT
This... this was a tough choice to make. On the one hand, The Dark Knight is seen by many as not only the greatest Batman film of all time, but also as one of the best superhero movies. Then there's Batman: Under the Red Hood, another great Batman movie, perhaps the best animated film.
As for which is better, we're going with Under the Red Hood. That might be a controversial choice, but the film is so much more clear-cut and hits the dramatic points with Jason Todd so well that we have to give it the win.
19 BETTER LIVE-ACTION - THE FLASH VS. THE FLASHPOINT PARADOX
As great as The Flashpoint Paradox was, it's hard to compete with the beauty that was The Flash's first season, which brought together all the best elements of the character to make for some classic villain-of-the-week superhero storytelling. Season 1 of The Flash represents everyone great about the series, and even if it's not quite what it used to be, The Flash stands as one of the best superhero adaptations out there.
The Flashpoint Paradox was an interesting story for sure, but it was rather dark, and something that veered from the emotional core and heart of The Flash's character.
18 BETTER ANIMATED - GREEN LANTERN: THE ANIMATED SERIES VS. GREEN LANTERN
This is an interesting entry, since one of these adaptations led to the cancellation of the other. We all like to forget that the Green Lantern film happened, but it did, and it was a universally derided adaptation of the beloved superhero. Not long after, however, a not terrible adaptation came out -- Green Lantern: The Animated Series.
The series did a fantastic job of adapting the elements from the comics, but because of low toy sales due to the film's reception, the live-action movie ended up bringing the cartoon down with it, despite it being much better.
17 BETTER ANIMATED - CITY OF DEMONS VS. ARROWVERSE CONSTANTINE
There's a reason that the NBC Constantine series got cancelled, and despite Matt Ryan's version of the character making a return in the Arrowverse, we're still inclined to choose the animated version of Constantine over the live-action version. Actually, both are portrayed by Matt Ryan, since he also provided the voice for John Constantine in two animated adaptations.
The aforementioned animated adaptations (try saying that three times fast) were Justice League Dark and City of Demons, both of which are superior to the live action appearances of the character.
16 BETTER LIVE-ACTION - AVENGERS VS. AVENGERS ASSEMBLE
As soon as the MCU started really bringing in the big bucks and the great reviews, Marvel's dynamic shifted a bit. Instead of the movies being made to help sell comics, the comics changed to match aspects of the films to stand as supplementary materials to the company's real moneymakers, and the same happened with Marvel's animated series.
Like what happened with the Guardians of the Galaxy cartoon, Avengers Assemble became a carbon copy of the film following its success, making it the poorer adaptation of the two.
15 BETTER ANIMATED - DARK KNIGHT RETURNS VS. DARK KNIGHT RISES
Where The Dark Knight was a masterpiece of a superhero film, its sequel was... less so. It seemed as though Christopher Nolan couldn't do better, so he went bigger, making the stakes higher and more like a generic action movie. But while that was coming out, an animated adaptation of one of the greatest Batman comics was in the works, The Dark Knight Returns.
The animated film was divided up into two parts, and while the second part was criticized a bit more than the first, together they made for an adaptation far better than The Dark Knight Rises.
14 BETTER LIVE-ACTION - FOX'S X-MEN VS. EVOLUTION
In retrospect, first Fox X-Men film is the not greatest superhero movie ever made, but it, along with Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man movie, helped lay the groundwork for modern superhero films. Around the same time of the first film, we also got an animated series called X-Men Evolution, which aged down the core X-Men cast, exploring their trials as teenage mutants.
So which of these was better? That's actually a bit of a tough choice, since Evolution was actually a pretty great cartoon, but we're going to have to give it to the film that helped start the superhero film industry.
13 BETTER ANIMATED - TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (1987) VS. FIRST FILM SERIES
When it came time to adapt the Ninja Turtles into an animated series, a lot of things were changed from the much darker comic source material, but what came out of it quickly embedded itself into the minds of '80s kids as a staple of their childhood and the decade as a whole.
It's for this reason that we're picking the original cartoon above the first live-action films as the better adaptation. Both are lovably goofy adaptations with a good amount of heart, but the live-action movie doesn't quite hold up to the cartoon in retrospect.
12 BETTER ANIMATED - BEN 10
Ben 10 is one of the two entries on this list that wasn't adapted from comics, but we wanted to include it since the original continuity ended up getting two live-action TV movies, one based on the first series, and one based on Alien Force.
Interesting enough, both films are canon within the original series' and its sequels, characters that debuted in the films eventually making their way into the cartoons. Regardless of continuity, it's safe to say that the films don't work quite as well as the cartoon does, so we're going with the cartoon on this one.
11 BETTER LIVE-ACTION - RAIMI'S TRILOGY VS. NEW ANIMATED SERIES
Not everyone remembers the animated Spider-Man series that MTV produced; it starred Neil Patrick Harris as Spider-Man and took place in the continuity of the Sam Raimi films; or rather, after the events of the first film. The series had its merits, but the poor CGI animation negated most of them.
The film that spawned it, however, was one of the superhero films that laid the groundwork for modern comic book movies, and it's not half bad either. It's not as great as the sequel, of course, but it still beats Spider-Man: The New Animated Series.
10 BETTER ANIMATED - RETURN OF THE CAPED CRUSADERS VS. BVS
This is one of the few entires that breaks the rules we set up, since the cartoon was a Batman film, while Batman V. Superman was a Batman and Superman film, but we're counting it since Batman also shares the screen with Robin in Return of the Caped Crusaders.
These two adaptations couldn't be more different. Caped Crusaders is fun and wacky and BvS is dark and gritty to the max. As for which is better, we're going to go with Caped Crusaders, since it was just a lot more fun and made way more sense than Dawn of Justice.
9 BETTER LIVE-ACTION - SUPERMAN VS. THE NEW ADVENTURES
Alas, there were no live-action Superman films going on during the time of Superman: The Animated Series, so the only other comparison we have is the first Richard Donner Superman film and the Filmation cartoon, The New Adventures of Superman, a series of six-minute Superman shorts.
Of course, between these two, there's no comparison, the first Superman film wins without a doubt, based solely on the fact that when people walked out of the theatre of Donner's movie, they truly believed a man could fly, and that is a powerful effect.
8 BETTER ANIMATED - TRANSFORMERS PRIME VS. THE BAY FILMS
Let's be blunt: the live-action Transformers films are pretty ridiculous. The first one is okay, but it's a popcorn movie at best, and all of them might have some neat special effects, but at the end of the day, they're not a great adaptation of the source material, nor are they good films in general.
But, as these films were rolling into theaters, there was a much better adaptation hitting Transformers fans, Transformers Prime, a CGI animated series that took the franchise to new, interesting, deeply dramatic and compelling places, standing above the films in quality and adaptation.
7 BETTER ANIMATED - WONDER WOMAN
Since there was no Wonder Woman cartoon around the time of the Lynda Carter series, and no live-action adaptation (aside from the failed pilot) that came out around the time of the animated film, we're going to measure it side-by-side with the live-action film and see how they stack up.
This was another difficult decision to come to, but we ultimately went with the animated film, since the live-action film falls apart in its third act and we prefer the art direction of the animation to the somewhat grey-toned film.
6 BETTER LIVE-ACTION - BATMAN BEGINS VS. THE BATMAN
The decision was pretty clear between The Batman and Batman Begins, but the animated series was not without its merits, since the character designs were a nice veer from the usual Batman fodder, especially The Joker's unusual design. All that said, we obviously went with Batman Begins, as it was the gritty superhero movie that the superhero film industry needed.
Additionally, Batman Begins earns a lot of points for setting up a realistic Batman universe, since it gave us a feasible explanations for his secret identity, real-world technology in his suit and gadgets and a cool take on Scarecrow.