For fans of superheroes, we live in a Golden Age. Our favorite characters have bounded out of the four-color page and reached heights we could never have imagined. From video games to cartoons, to live-action TV shows and movies, the costumed characters we love are taking over pop culture, one billion dollar movie at a time.
And while we cheer on every attempt to bring our favorites to the silver screen, not all movies are created equal. For every Avengers: Infinity War, there... well, there are movies that aren't so good. These days, as we come close to having 60 movies based on Marvel properties, it can be hard to know which ones are worth watching because they're good, and which ones aren't worth watching. But fret not, to help you know which movies to keep away from, unless you like bad movies, here are the 10 worst Marvel movies according to IMDb!
10 Captain America (1990): 3.2
If you're old enough to remember the late 1980s and early 1990s, you may have a vague memory of seeing a movie poster showcasing Captain America's shield at some movie theaters. Intended for release in 1990, Captain America ended up getting a limited theatrical release internationally, but here in the United States, it went straight to video.
The story follows the basics of Captain America; the WWII super-soldier who fights the Red Skull and gets frozen in ice only to awaken in the current day. The problem lies in how they tell the story.
9 The Fantastic Four (1994): 3.8
It feels a little wrong to include the 1994 Fantastic Four on this list. The movie, produced by Bernd Eichinger to ensure that he could hold onto the film rights of the characters, was never actually meant to be released. Sadly, the people who worked on the movie didn't know that, and they really did the best they could with a measly one million dollar budget.
The overall movie isn't that different from the 2005 version that starred Chris Evans and Jessica Alba. With an honest budget to build actual sets and create good special effects, this movie could have been a lot better, and the people who worked on it deserve to be applauded for how hard they tried.
8 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance: 4.3
Usually, when a movie is poorly reviewed but does OK at the box office, studios are less likely to make a sequel. When it comes to Marvel's most famous character with a burning skull for a head, that logic didn't play out. A sequel to the 2007 film, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance saw Nicolas Cage take on the role of Johnny Blaze for the second time. Much like the first time, critics and audiences just weren't into it.
In theory, this movie should be a beloved cult classic. Cage is doing some of his wildest acting of his career in the movie, and it was directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the two men behind the insanely fun action movie Crank. Somehow, all the wild energy just didn't come together to make a bonkers Ghost Rider movie.
7 Fantastic Four (2015): 4.3
Twenty-one years after the movie that was never meant to be seen, Marvel's first family got their fourth movie and second reboot. Starring Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, and Jamie Bell as the Fantastic Four, this movie is better known for the drama behind the scenes than the actual story it tells. Director Josh Trank, along with writers Jeremy Slater and Simon Kinberg, set out to make a Fantastic Four movie that was darker than the previous versions, with Trank claiming that David Cronenberg was a major influence on his version of the movie.
Trank's take on the usually light-hearted Fantastic Four was to make it more of a body-horror movie, and for a time 20h Century Fox was OK with this. That all changed at some point, leading to Trank being taken off the film and the movie itself having a third act that feels very different from the first two acts.
6 Howard the Duck: 4.7
Marvel's first movie should be a classic. It was written and directed by Willard Huyck, with Gloria Katz co-writing. These are the same two people who wrote American Graffiti and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Howard the Duck stars Lea Thompson, coming off the success of Back to the Future, and Tim Robbins, who starred in Top Gun the same year this was released. The costume for Howard is amazing, even for today. And on top of all that, George Lucas was the executive producer.
But somehow, this collaboration between Lucas and Marvel created an uneven and rather unenjoyable family movie filled with jokes and scenes that are not in any way appropriate for kids.
5 Elektra: 4.7
Not unlike Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Elektra is a sequel to a movie, in this case, Daredevil, that did OK at the box office, but didn't seem worthy of getting a sequel. At least with this one, the studio chose to change the focus to a different character, but that only seemed to make things worse.
Elektra is a messy movie that is both confusing and not very exciting. Those two elements brought together lead to poor reviews and an even poorer box office. When everything was said and done, Elektra, starring Jennifer Garner, made less than a third of what Daredevil brought in.
4 Ghost Rider: 5.2
On paper, Ghost Rider should be a big old hit. You have Nicholas Cage as Johnny Blaze going up against Peter Fonda as Mephistopheles. The fx for Ghost Rider looked great and the movie hit a year before Iron Man and Dark Knight kicked the superhero genre into the stratosphere.
Sadly, the movie just didn't work. There's no one thing to point to that explains why Ghost Rider didn't connect with fans, it is a movie best explained using the old saying, "death by a thousand cuts". As we know, things didn't improve with the sequel.
3 Daredevil: 5.3
Ben Affleck's first foray into superheroes was taking on the role of Marvel's Man Without Fear himself, Daredevil. Released in 2003, Daredevil comes early in the current era of superhero movies, and it suffers from the mistakes that so many of those movies had.
Well before audiences had become accustomed to the basics of the superhero genre, Daredevil does a great job of giving its main character a comics accurate costume, but it shied away from fully engaging in what makes the comics work. Bullseye, played by Colin Farrell, feels like one of the biggest missteps of this period in superhero movies. While the director's cut of the movie is better than the theatrical version, neither one would qualify as "good".
2 Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer: 5.6
It's pretty impressive that three of the lowest-rated Marvel movies come from their very first superhero team. All four Fantastic Four movies almost made it onto this list, but the 2005 film is rated 0.1 points better than our final movie.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer's biggest failure is that, like the other Fantastic Four movies, it never quite captures what makes the FF so iconic. Of the four movies that have starred Marvel's First Family, this one comes closest to succeeding in that area, but it never quite gets there. Chris Evans, who would go on to have far more superhero success playing Captain America, stands out as the highlight of the movie.
1 Hulk: 5.6
It's hard to describe just how excited people were for Hulk in 2003. The Incredible Hulk TV series from that ran from 1977-1982 was still loved by comic fans and was always in syndication being watched by impressionable kids. Now, technology had finally reached a point where the Hulk wouldn't just be a man painted green, but an actual CGI goliath.
In the end, all that CGI power was used to have Hulk fight a cloud that was actually his father. Director Ang Lee did try some very inventive editing for the movie, creating comic panels on the screen and showing multiple angles and reaction shots at the same time, but overall the movie just doesn't quite work.