I hate superhero movies. This wasn’t always the case. Since Iron Man 2, I’ve actively avoided them. But from time to time I will go see one to see if my view needs to be changed or not. Nope. Shit hate & still shit. I figured I’ll make a post about this for no reason other than to share my view. You can have your own view too.
The reasons for the hate are:
- They are always too damn long. 2 hours average for anything DC and 1h55m for Marvel. Why cant you tell a story in 90 minutes?
- Every movie these days seems like a gangbang of 10 or so characters. Why do you have to put all your stars in every movie?
- Why does every movie have to have some bullshit origin story? These movies are being cranked out so fast that it doesn’t matter any more. If you have a talking raccoon, I don’t give a fuck about his origin. Just let him do his thing. It wouldn’t matter if he had a humble beginning or fell from grace or whatever.
- The McGuffins are really stupid. I get that its plot device but sometimes the rules of the McGuffin are stupid. I think Guardians of the Galaxy was the prime example. The orb is the single most important thing in the universe, but no one was guarding it. Then no one should touch it, but many touch it.
- The villains are the dumbest motherfuckers out there. They have all this power & can directly influence events, but instead they make a guy do it and then the guy fucks it up and then the boss needs another guy to do the thing.
- Everyone is a cartoon character. I know that they are from a cartoon. The story needs to be more compelling now that you can’t develop the characters.
Ok, I’m done with my stupid rant. Let’s go figure out if movies are getting shittier. First, I got the list of Marvel movies from their website & DC had a list on Wiki. I then searched on IMDB for the rating and length of the movie. I tried to make sure I had all the movies and removed any games or series’. Only movies. As a benchmark of ‘what rating to good movies get’, I looked at the top 250 movies on IMDB and they have an average rating of 8.2572 out of 10. So any movie that gets this score or higher is a damn good movie. Anything less is an average movie. I would probably have 5.0 as a cut off for bad movies.
Lets start with Marvel. Starting in 1986 with the amazing Howard the Duck, they have made 44 movies with 20 being in the last 6 years. No movies are really good and 5 are bad. The 5 are Man-Thing, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Howard The Duck, Marvel’s Iron Man & Hulk: Heroes United and Elektra.
Then DC had Superman and the Mole Men as their first one in 1951 and made 29 movies since. There are three good ones. The Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy scored high ratings. However, they did have more bad movies scoring less than 5. Steel, Catwoman, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Batman & Robin, Supergirl, The Return of Swamp Thing, Jonah Hex and Superman III.
How close is the relationship between length and score? I will try to correlate the ratings with the length of the movies. A value of 1 means that a longer movie will give you a higher rating. A value of 0 means that there is no relationship at all. DC and Marvel. DC has a correlation of 0.62 and Marvel has 0.56. This is neither strong nor non-existent.
And what about length? These damn movies keep getting longer.
Well its true, the trend is to get longer and longer. But there is more variation in the length. They are all not over 2 hours. More and more are 90 minutes. The last one below 90 minutes was in 2013.
Ok. So are they getting shittier?
It doesn’t look like it. The trend is that newer movies are getting higher scores. The 80’s movies would have scored a 5 and the recent ones are above 7.
Before I started writing this post or gathering data, I hoped that the data would tell me that its getting shit. But I have to concede that maybe I’m the only one that doesn’t like these movies & that the human race has accurately rated these movies.
DC movies from Wikipedia
Name | Year | Rating | Minutes |
Superman and the Mole Men | 1951 | 6 | 58 |
Batman | 1966 | 6.5 | 105 |
Superman | 1978 | 7.3 | 143 |
Superman II | 1980 | 6.8 | 127 |
Swamp Thing | 1982 | 5.4 | 91 |
Superman III | 1983 | 4.9 | 125 |
Supergirl | 1984 | 4.3 | 105 |
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace | 1987 | 3.6 | 90 |
The Return of Swamp Thing | 1989 | 4.4 | 88 |
Batman | 1989 | 7.6 | 126 |
Batman Returns | 1992 | 7 | 126 |
Batman Forever | 1995 | 5.4 | 121 |
Batman & Robin | 1997 | 3.7 | 125 |
Steel | 1997 | 2.8 | 97 |
Catwoman | 2004 | 3.3 | 104 |
Constantine | 2005 | 6.9 | 121 |
Batman Begins | 2005 | 8.3 | 140 |
V for Vendetta | 2006 | 8.2 | 132 |
Superman Returns | 2006 | 6.1 | 154 |
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut | 2006 | 7.8 | 115 |
The Dark Knight | 2008 | 9 | 152 |
Watchmen | 2009 | 7.7 | 162 |
The Losers | 2010 | 6.4 | 97 |
Jonah Hex | 2010 | 4.7 | 81 |
Green Lantern | 2011 | 5.6 | 114 |
The Dark Knight Rises | 2012 | 8.5 | 164 |
Man of Steel | 2013 | 7.2 | 143 |
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice | 2016 | 6.9 | 151 |
Suicide Squad | 2016 | 7.1 | 123 |
Marvel Movies from their site:
Name | Year | Rating | Minutes |
Howard The Duck | 1986 | 4.6 | 110 |
Blade | 1998 | 7.1 | 120 |
X-Men | 2000 | 7.4 | 104 |
Blade II | 2002 | 6.7 | 117 |
Spider-Man | 2002 | 7.3 | 121 |
Daredevil | 2003 | 5.3 | 103 |
Hulk | 2003 | 5.7 | 138 |
X2: X-Men United | 2003 | 7.5 | 134 |
Blade: Trinity | 2004 | 5.9 | 113 |
Spider-Man 2 | 2004 | 7.3 | 127 |
The Punisher | 2004 | 6.5 | 124 |
Elektra | 2005 | 4.8 | 97 |
Fantastic Four | 2005 | 5.7 | 106 |
Man-Thing | 2005 | 4.1 | 97 |
X3: The Last Stand | 2006 | 6.8 | 104 |
Doctor Strange | 2007 | 6.8 | 76 |
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer | 2007 | 5.6 | 92 |
Ghost Rider | 2007 | 5.2 | 114 |
Spider-Man 3 | 2007 | 6.2 | 139 |
Iron Man | 2008 | 7.9 | 126 |
Punisher: War Zone | 2008 | 6 | 103 |
The Incredible Hulk | 2008 | 6.8 | 112 |
Hulk Vs. | 2009 | 7.1 | 82 |
X-Men Origins: Wolverine | 2009 | 6.7 | 107 |
Iron Man 2 | 2010 | 7 | 124 |
Planet Hulk | 2010 | 6.9 | 81 |
Captain America: The First Avenger | 2011 | 6.9 | 124 |
Thor | 2011 | 7 | 115 |
X-Men: First Class | 2011 | 7.8 | 132 |
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance | 2012 | 4.3 | 96 |
Marvel’s The Avengers | 2012 | 8.1 | 143 |
The Amazing Spider-Man | 2012 | 7 | 136 |
Iron Man 3 | 2013 | 7.2 | 130 |
Iron Man: Rise of Technovore | 2013 | 5.3 | 88 |
Marvel’s Iron Man & Hulk: Heroes United | 2013 | 4.7 | 71 |
The Wolverine | 2013 | 6.7 | 126 |
Thor: The Dark World | 2013 | 7.1 | 112 |
Captain America: The Winter Soldier | 2014 | 7.8 | 136 |
Guardians of the Galaxy | 2014 | 8.1 | 121 |
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 | 2014 | 6.7 | 142 |
X-Men: Days of Future Past | 2014 | 8 | 132 |
Ant-Man | 2015 | 7.4 | 117 |
Avengers: Age of Ultron | 2015 | 7.5 | 141 |
Captain America: Civil War | 2016 | 8.2 | 147 |