The best and worst Superman movies according to IMDb

It is difficult to overstate the influence of Richard Donner’s 1978 film Superman. Much has been written about how… Without Donner and Christopher Reeve’s Superman, we wouldn’t have this modern blockbuster -And all of this is true. But beyond the film’s influence on Hollywood and the rise of blockbuster filmmaking, “Superman” was a truly special film for many other reasons.

Its innovative special effects actually fulfilled the film’s promise of making viewers “believe a man can fly,” while Donner’s respectful treatment of the source material seemed to go beyond the comic book foundations of the film itself, resulting in a work that embodies the very values ​​that Supes himself stood for: hope Justice, truth. “Superman” also proved all the naysayers wrong, showing that comic book material could be a hit in Hollywood.

In the years since the original film and its three sequels, we’ve had several cinematic iterations of Man of Steel. After Christopher Reeve hung up the red cape for good, it was Bryan Singer’s turn to put his spin on the Man of Steel in 2006’s “Superman Returns.” The film, which may have been highly praised in its Reeve years, has been largely forgotten since its debut, but this Not entirely justified as he was not without his charm and then-newcomer Brandon Routh did a great job in the tournament. role. Then Zack Snyder introduced us to Henry Cavill’s Superman, a version of the character who, in the wake of Christopher Nolan’s success with Batman, was given a good old-fashioned reboot with 2013’s “Man of Steel” and several subsequent entries in the film franchise. It no longer exists now. DCEU. General consensus on Cavill’s movies were that he was a great Superman and he never got a great Superman movieAnd it seems late Richard Donner would agree, though the director has some strong opinions about the DCU Superman.

Whether you agree that Reeve remains the quintessential Superman will likely go back to the era you grew up in and the on-screen version of the character you saw first. Fortunately, we now have an objective and unbiased way to say for sure which is the best live-action Superman movie ever made. Or at least we have IMDb…

Between every cinematic run of Superman there have been several small-screen Supermans, but for our purposes and ours IMDb Users, we only focus on live action movies. So, which of the many films managed to take first place in the site’s ranking of the best Superman films? Keep in mind that we’re talking about a website that still ranks “The Shawshank Redemption” as the greatest movie ever made. Fortunately, IMDb users clearly saw this particular theme, and ranked 1978’s “Superman” as the best film of the bunch, earning a 7.4 rating based on 192,000 individual votes. (Technically, “Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut” actually had the highest rating, with a 7.6 a result Based on only 20 thousand votes. But since this is a director’s cut so Donner himself didn’t even edit directly(It doesn’t really matter.)

So, if “Superman” is the best Man of Steel movie, what’s the worst? This unenviable title belongs to the 1987 film “Superman IV: The Quest For Peace,” which received a score of 3.7 based on 54,000 votes. By this point, Donner was long gone and Christopher Reeve had basically left, so I’m sure that if either of them were alive today, they’d have no problem with that rating.

Meanwhile, Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel” came in second place with a score of 7.1 based on 854,000 votes, while 1980s film “Superman II” came in third place with a score of 6.8 and 117,000 votes. “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” came in fourth place, with 6.5 out of 764,000 votes, and “Superman Returns” came in fifth, with 6.1 and 294,000 votes. Slightly higher than “Superman IV: The Quest For Peace,” “Superman III” was just as bad, with a score of 5.0 based on 76,000 votes.

Christopher Reeve himself is also shown saying in The emotional and inspiring documentary “Superman: The Christopher Reeve Story” “Hollywood has a really bad disease called syntitis.” This is more true than ever today, as Reeve would have self-exploded had he been around to witness his computer-generated debut in 2023. A box office disaster of super-heroic proportions, “The Flash.” But that’s been the way the movie industry has operated for decades, and Reeve was well aware of it when he was forced to fulfill his contractual obligations as the Man of Steel in the third and fourth “Superman” films. At the time, he was trying hard to break away from the role that launched and defined his career, though perhaps not surprisingly, the actor would never see anywhere near the commercial success he achieved as Superman anywhere else. Needless to say, “Superman III” and “Superman IV” were not his best films.

But somehow, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because Reeve has not only acted in and directed many great films following his run as Supes, but because if all he did was play Superman, that would be enough. Of course, today, when “Sequelitis” has reached gigantic proportions, modern audiences have become accustomed to the idea of ​​studios duplicating their own IP, and the idea of ​​having multiple Superman actors has become the norm. But it’s hard to convey how much Donner and Reeve’s eventual take on the DC hero felt in a time before all these versions of the character populated the pop culture landscape.

Growing up in the 1990s, Reeve’s Superman was still very popular the Superman. Watching Donner’s original film on VHS wasn’t like watching a slice of comic book material, it felt like it was the source material itself. The same applies to John Williams’ truly famous score, which James Gunn should definitely use in his next “Superman” movie.. Hearing it wasn’t just hearing the “Superman Theme” from the official soundtrack to Superman (1978), it was the vocal embodiment of the hero, as symbolic as any national anthem. Everything about that original film (and to some extent its direct sequel) seemed unquestionably defined, and everything that has come since, while worthwhile in its own way, hasn’t quite managed to match it. In other words, it’s nice to see that IMDb users got this right.