The superhero movie genre had a hugely important year in 2016. All three major franchises – that’s Fox’s X-Men series, Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe and Warner Bros.’s DC Extended Universe – released multiple movies that saw them carve out exciting new directions. Some of those films made some big mistakes along the way, but others did a lot of things right.
Now that there are several superhero movie franchises out there in rude health, we should look forward to seeing even more comic book heroes and villains brought to life on the big screen in the near future. This year alone we have – in order of release date – Logan, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2., Wonder Woman, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok and Justice League. Oh, and The LEGO Batman Movie, if you want to count that.
Though they’ve already been produced and packaged off, let’s hope that these movies paid attention to what worked and what didn’t in 2016’s superhero films. Not every release from last year was a hit, but they did teach us several important things that studios should take to heart moving forward.