If You Want Superhero Movies Without the Baggage, Give the Animated Projects a Chance
Listen, if you are not a Kool-Aid guzzling comic book fan, you know all too well that it’s been a struggle to get consistently good live-action comic book movies for some time now.
For every “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” (a genuinely great superhero movie) that released last year, there were a number of films that simply failed to live up to any semblance of hype.
Both DC and Marvel struggled to find any sort of critical or commercial success for their tent pole 2023 films, and it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Here are Marvel’s 2023 live-action releases:
- “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”
- “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”
- “The Marvels”
And here are DC’s 2023 live-action releases, which were a collective swan song for the franchise before new head honcho James Gunn reboots everything:
- “Shazam! Fury of the Gods”
- “The Flash”
- “Blue Beetle”
- “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom”
Now, there’s certainly a case to be made that “superhero fatigue” has begun setting in — the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a “thing” since 2008’s “Iron Man,” after all.
But that glosses over the simple fact that “John Wick” (a franchised superhero movie by any other name) actually did great last year.
It also minimizes the good work that superhero films, just not the live-action ones, have been doing in recent times.
Here are four animated superhero projects that are worth tracking down for everyone, and two animated superhero projects worth tracking down for more adult fans.
For Everyone:
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem”: An origin-story adjacent film focused on the titular teenage reptiles, this film does a wonderful job portraying the “teenage” part of the movie title. The turtles are flawed, funny, dumb and ultimately likable.
For what it’s worth, my son loved this.
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”: An incredible Spider-Man film that does the whole “there are multiple Spider-Men”-angle much better than the live-action counterparts (though they appear in this hodgepodge movie as well). The animation is great, chatter about “trans representation” in the film largely appears to be fans seeing what they want (nothing remotely LGBT plays a role in the film’s plot) and the film expertly vacillates between laugh-out-loud humor and more somber moments.
One major negative, though still not enough to not recommend this: The movie is very painfully part one of two films and ends with virtually no prominent plot threads wrapped up.
“Batman: Ninja”: Easily the most comic booky movie of all these projects, this brilliantly animated film sees Batman and his allies/enemies transported to feudal Japan.
It’s outlandish and nonsensical and a total barrage of the senses, but it’s still a classic Batman tale at its heart.
“Big Hero 6”: Don’t let the happy family and Disney trappings fool you. This is as classic of a superhero team origin story as you will find.
Again, for what it’s worth, this is another personal favorite of my son’s.
For Those 18 And Up:
“Justice League Dark: Apokolips War”: This one genuinely surprised me when I watched it. Despite looking like every other classic DC animated film, it’s anything but.
First, the movie is dark (pun intended). The opening of the movie basically begins with a totally failed assault on a supervillain by Earth’s superheroes. A number of familiar heroes meet dark and grisly fates after the bad guys win, and it’s an uphill battle the whole way.
Second, there’s no pandering here. To put it bluntly, things are awful in the world during this film and that bleakness adds a gravity to the film that’s paid off with an ultimately hopeful ending.
This is one of just a handful of DC animated projects to be Rated R.
“Invincible”: This is the most difficult recommendation on this list because — while it is high quality — this is easily the most disturbing, gory and bloody interpretation of superheroism on this list.
If you are able to stomach that, you will be treated to one of the best deconstructions of “superhero culture” you will find.
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