The Academy Award-winning Marvel outing, Black Panther, has been voted the greatest superhero movie of all time. And fans of Zack Snyder are not happy. In what’s sure to be a controversial list of the top 50 superhero movies ever made put together by Rolling Stone, Black Panther was found to be number one, while Zack Snyder’s Justice League has been put at number fifty. But this isn’t the reason why fans have been left shaking their heads. No, when the list was first shared Zack Snyder’s Justice League was at the tippy top, with the publication having shared the list in reverse. By mistake, presumably.
While Zack Snyder's Justice League now has a very dedicated fanbase, the first ‘Top 10’ included such...questionable comic book movie efforts as 2007’s Ghost Rider, 1975’s Infra-Man, the first Thor, and 2010’s Megamind. Now that the list has been put the right way around, the actual top ten makes a lot more sense, with Black Panther leading a pack that includes the likes of Spider-Man 2, the first Superman from 1978, and Christopher Nolan’s seminal Batman movie The Dark Knight.
The top ten in its entirety now reads; Black Panther (2018), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Logan (2017), Avengers: Endgame (2019), Superman (1978), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), The Dark Knight (2008), Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Wonder Woman (2017), and finally The Incredibles (2004).
While there are arguably still some peculiar choices and placements here, these movies being placed at the top of the superhero mountain certainly makes more sense than that had been there originally. Overall, at least.
The Batman, The Suicide Squad, Iron Man & More Make up the Rest of the List
The rest of the list includes such superhero outings as Iron Man (2008), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Deadpool (2016), the animated movie Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993), as well as the likes of Hellboy (2004), The Crow (1994), V for Vendetta (2005), Unbreakable (2000), and even Robocop (1987). Not sure that last one really counts as a superhero, but there it is.
As for the wider world of DC and its cinematic universe, only the likes of The Suicide Squad (2021) features alongside Wonder Woman, with the other DC movies featured being Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and last year’s The Batman, among others. No doubt those who rank such DC outings as Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice highly will be disappointed.
As for the number one superhero movie of all time, Black Panther, the MCU offering remains the highest rated movie in the long-running franchise. Directed by Ryan Coogler, who co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Robert Cole, and starring the late Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis, Black Panther takes audiences to the African nation of Wakanda, where king T’Challa is drawn into a conflict that puts the fate of Wakanda and the entire world at risk.
Met with critical acclaim and nominated for seven awards at the 91st Academy Awards, winning three, Black Panther is ranked at the tippy top of the MCU rankings on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes with a score of 96%. A sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, was released last year.