15 Bad Superhero Movies That Are Actually Good

It's hard to explain why Blade wasn't critically well received. Maybe America just wasn't ready for a cool, Black vampire hunter in the late '90s. Aside from having one of the first Black superheroes, Blade jumpstarted the MCU.  It more than doubled its box office and proved that there was an audience for genre blending superhero movies.

There's no reason that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles origin story should be so well made. In spite of its low critical score, this movie is genuinely fascinating to watch. It's technically a children's film, but it's tonally very dark. If all you know are the one liners and karate moves, you'll be surprised with how gritty the movie is.

One of the most astounding things about this movie is how good it looks. The practical effects hold up decades after its release and it just looks good to see a movie shoot on location in New York City.

Venom has the largest discrepancy between its critical and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, which shows that it delivers on what many members of the comic book audience want in a movie. It's not high art by any means but Venom is a really good time at the movies, and it's a much better representation of the character than the one audiences got in Spider-Man 3.

Alan Moore's Watchmen is thought to be one of the most unadaptable comic books ever written, but that didn't stop Zack Snyder from giving it a shot. It's not a perfect movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it's clear that Snyder loves the source material and he creates a fully formed world that feels just as lived in as Batman's Gotham City or Spider-Man's New York.

One of the things that makes this film so good is the huge swing that Snyder took by even attempting it. Comic book fans were never going to be happy with this movie, but its box office success laid the groundwork for the connected comic book cinematic universes to come.

This late '90s superhero dark-comedy spoof was ahead of it's time. It's not a perfect movie, and it's a little tonally confused, but when it's firing on all cylinders, Mystery Men is a fun superhero whodunit that's a far cry from the world destroying superhero movies of the 2010s. Mystery Men faltered at the box office, but it's garnered a positive reputation since its release.

The Rocketeer is a simple story: when a test pilot finds a jet pack he straps it on, starts wearing an art deco inspired helmet and fighting crime. It's a throw back to serials from the 1930s in the same vein as the Indiana Jones series. The film is charming in its throwback eloquence, but the best part of the film is Timothy Dalton's heel turn.