Top 10 Favorite Animated Superhero Movies

Hello interweb, Nate here.  So DC and Marvel are no strangers to animation.  While I haven’t seen every one of these, I have seen quite a few that I’ve really enjoyed.  So today, I’m counting down the 10 I liked the best and the ones I would recommend to anyone.

To see my other Top 10s (or 5s) click here.

 

Rulez

• Fully animated superhero movies only
  • While I usually have the “Marvel and DC Only” rule, I’m not going to use that rule for this list
• My personal favorites
• Not counting any of the DC Showcases and must be at least an hour long

 

Honorable Mentions

#15 – Planet Hulk: Based on the comic book story arc of the same name, Planet Hulk features Hulk being sent to an outer space planet due to the Avengers fearing his uncontrollable power.  While on said planet, Hulk becomes a gladiator and eventually manages to concur the world.  It was a really cool film and features Hulk, whose one of my favorite Marvel superheroes (barley making it onto my favorite superheroes list).  The only problem I really had for the film is the voice for Hulk as it doesn’t sound like what you’d expect Hulk to sound like.  I also like Hulk best when you see Bruce Banner struggling to keep the monster down but in the end you see him get angry and smash stuff.  Either way, Planet Hulk was still an entertaining movie and I really did enjoy it.

#14 – Ultimate Avengers: Loosely based off of Mark Millar’s The Ultimates, Ultimate Avengers is a retelling of the Avengers forming into a team.  Oddly enough, I liked Hulk better in this movie than in his actual solo movie.  Other than Ant-man, cause he’s just a jerk, I liked the portrayal of all these characters and the movie itself was a fun watch.

#13 – Batman Vs Dracula:  Before there was Batman V Superman, there was Batman Vs Dracula.  Now despite the stupid name, the movie itself was really cool and it brings us exactly what the title would imply.  It’s part of underrated The Batman cartoon series and as such I don’t think a lot of people knows about this movie.  It’s a bit more mature than you’d expect as there’s a lot of blood (although ironically no one bled) but it was an interesting fight and it was nice to see how Batman defeats Dracula (ah c’mon!  Is it really a spoiler if you know it’s gonna happen?)

#12 – Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo:  This is the series finally to the 2000s Teen Titans cartoon and it was really fun to watch.  Just like the series, there was a lot of humor but it also took itself seriously.  If you loved the Titans, you’ll love thee movie.

#11 – Wonder Woman:  This is how you make a good Wonder Woman movie, DCCU take Notes!  This movie stared Wonder Woman, obviously, and it gives Wonder Woman’s origin in a nice modern way.  Wonder Woman is an Amazon and as such she grew up on an island of all women, no men.  As a result, the first part of the movie she sees men as mostly pigs and the fact that Steve Trevor, whose the other main character, himself is presented as a womanizer doesn’t help.  But of course in the end, Steve learns to treat woman as people and Wonder Woman learns that not all men are sexist.  Although this movie isn’t just all about feminism and how far it goes as it also shows Wonder Woman’s Amazon warrior side with all her fights throughout the film.  If you know little about Wonder Woman, I would suggest checking out this film.

 

#10 – Superman/Batman: Apocalypse

Despite the fact that this focuses on Supergirl than it does on Superman or Batman, it is a really good movie.  However, this is because it’s based off of the Superman/Batman comic book storyline: Superman/Batman: The Supergirl from Krypton.  The story focuses on Supergirl crashing down to Earth and is basically on one of her origin stories from the comics (the comic book history of Supergirl is actually a lot more confusing than it should be, lol).  Now Darkseid want’s Supergirl for himself while Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman (yes, she’s also in this movie) is trying to protect Supergirl.  Really good adaption with a lot of awesome moment.

 

#9 – Justice League: Flashpoint Paradox

Probably the last good DC Animated Movie (Justice League: War was meh and Justice League: Throne of Atlantis was terrible) but still a good one, and we finally got a Flash movie!  The movie is based off of Geoff John’s Flashpoint comics and quite well actually.  Barry Allen wakes up in an alternate universe and finds that he has lost his super speed.  On top of that several of the characters are different and darker: Batman’s Bruce Wayne’s father and is willing to kill, Wonder Woman and Aquaman are villains and their civilizations are at war, Superman was found by the government rather than the Kents, etc.  The universe they recreated from the comics was really interesting and the story itself was fascinating as we saw how Flash manages to get his powers back and then get back to his universe.  I especially love how they animated Flash’s super speed scenes and Flash himself is a really awesome character to do a movie about.

 

#8 – Green Lantern: First Flight

Green Lantern: First Flight focuses on Hal Jordan’s origin story on becoming a Green Lantern and that’s pretty much it.  However they do it so well and this is the kind of Green Lantern movie I hope they do for the upcoming live-action movie a few years down the line.  It has fun with the mythos that the comics have created and the constructs were fun to watch.  I really liked this one scene where Hal creates a metal chair and slams an alien with it.  Hal himself is also really well done here, he’s an inexperience GL as he only recently gained the ring, however he still is fearless and want’s to do the right thing and even has the devil-may-care attitude that most Hal Jordan fans has come to expect from Hal Jordan.  If you love Green Lantern, or you know little about them and want to get into them than I would suggest checking out this film.

 

#7 – The Incredibles

I have a love-hate relationship for this movie.  It’s a brilliant superhero movie that juggles being a superhero parody and commentator, having a message about embracing what makes you special, and being original.  However, I feel like it’s like Frozen where it’s a really good movie, but it’s so overrated that I kinda don’t like it as much as I used to.  But like I said, it’s a brilliant movie.  The team is similar to the Fantastic Four with Mr. Incredible having super strength like the Thing, Mrs. Incredible having stretching powers like Mr. Fantastic, Violet having Invisible Woman’s power of invisibility, and Dash having Human Torch’s personality but has super speed instead.  The movie has a lot of cool references to superhero comics and the commentary are also fun as it shows that being superheroes isn’t as fun as comics makes it look (although to be fair that sentence would be more accurate if it was that golden age or silver age comics makes being superheroes look fun as modern heroes always makes superheroes seem rather tortured and angsty).  Honestly, my only big complaints are to haw popular this film is (heck, WatchMojo.com even put it at #2…#2!)

 

#6 – World’s Finest

World’s Finest is in the same continuity as the DCAU so this is the same Batman from Batman: TAS and the same Superman from Superman: TAS.  The story focuses on Joker and Harley Quinn getting a statue made of Kryptonite and attempting to get Lex Luthor to pay them to kill Superman.  This leads a team up between Superman and Batman and that turns out exactly as you’d expect.  At first the two hate each other, but than they come to respect each other.  This would eventually lead them to form the Justice League, so this movie is a really awesome watch for fans of both characters.

 

#5 – Ben 10: Secrets of the Omnitrix

Ben 10: Secrets of the Omnitrix was originally going to be the finally to the original Ben 10 series, but I think I don’t need to tell you guys how that turned out.  You can tell that the creators were putting a lot of effort into making a really good finally to such an awesome series.  The story?  Ben is fighting Dr. Animo (one of Ben’s A-listers) whose machine accidentally starts the Omnitix’s self-destruct mode that is powerful enough to destroy the universe.  Now Tetrax (an alien bounty hunter, friend of Ben’s, whose made and can alter crystals) needs to help Ben find the creator of the Omnitrix to turn off the self-destruct mode.  On top of that, every time Ben turns into one of his aliens, he accelerates the countdown.  So this becomes a race against time to power off the watch.  The movie itself is brilliantly done and all the characters are portrayed very nicely and if this did end the franchise, I honestly would have been satisfied.

 

#4 – Turtles Forever

I love the Ninja Turtles and while many would say that the 80s cartoon was the best incarnation, my favorite is the 2003 grittier reboot version.  That may mostly be due to it being the version I grew up with, but I honestly love it the best…at least before they went into the future that is, the show went downhill from there.  Turtles Forever has the original 80s turtles get teleported to the universe of the 2003 turtles along with the 80s Shredder and Krang.  All the jokes you can imagine are in here and it’s really cool and funny to see the 80s turtles, who are mostly light hearted and can’t take anything seriously, interact with the 2003 versions who are a bit darker and grittier.  I also really liked the interactions between the 80s whiny Shredder and the 2003’s sinister Shredder.  The plot has the 80s Shredder revive the 2003’s Shredder (I haven’t seen the series in a long time, I have no idea why he was missing nor why he is some weird alien-head thing) and the 2003’s Shredder discovers that there’s an entire Turtles multiverse with the main universe being Turtle Prime.  Turtle Prime is hilariously the original Mirage Comics universe where they’re even grittier and darker than the 2003’s version.  If your a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and want to see a movie not produced or directed by Michael Bay, than I suggest this one (seriously, the new movie sucks).

 

#3 – Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths

If you know anything has the word “crisis” in its title, it’s going to be some type of story that deals with the multiverse.  Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths is based off of Grant Morrison’s JLA: Earth 2 graphic novel where the Justice League faces off against their evil counterpart from an alter dimension.  Instead of Superman they have Ultraman, our Wonder Woman is their Super Woman, instead of Flash they have Johnny Quick, etc.  On top of that, their Lex Luthor and Joker are superheroes.  Similarly with Turtles Forever, the plot to this story is that Owlamn, Earth 2’s evil Batman, wants to destroy the DC multiverse by destroying Earth Prime.  This obviously doesn’t bode well with the Justice League, and the go cross-dimensions to save the multiverse and everyone in it.  There are a lot of cool cameos, Earth 2 is interesting to look at, and the movie as a whole is fun to watch.  Also, Deathstroke is president of the USA!  Just pointing that out there.

 

#2 – Batman: Under the Red Hood

This movie was awesome.  And awesome is the wrong word to use here, it was that good.  The movie starts out as an adaption of Death in the Family where Joker’s killing Jason Todd (Hey, I did a bio on that guy 🙂 ). Then a mysterious vigilante comes around calling himself the Red Hood whose goals are to not stop crime, but control it.  For example, he tells a bunch of drug dealers that he’ll allow them to continue selling drugs and he’ll even give them more protection, but under the condition that they stay away from kids (something like that, I don’t remember the exact details).  Of course Batman doesn’t like this and goes after the Red Hood. The movie faithfully adapted the storyline from the comics and raised quite a few questions (granted, those questions where raised first in the comics).  Very mature, was a bit more realistic than most films, and it was very well done.

 

#1 – Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker

Just like World’s Finest, Return of the Joker takes place in the DCAU timeline but in the future.  Batman Beyond takes place about 20 years after the rest of the DCAU takes place where Bruce Wayne is too old to continue being Batman and allows a teenager named Terry McGinnis to be the new and im…uh…the new Batman.  However, the Joker returns and he’s just as young as he was 20 years ago.  How could this be?  How is Joker still alive?  How is he still that young?  These questions float around throughout the film and since Batman Beyond was created specifically for the DCAU and isn’t an adaptation of a comic, not even people who reads comics could figure out how this is.  Of course I dare not spoil the ending for you, but the ending is done quite nicely and it doesn’t feel like a cop out or too convoluted.  I also really liked how they gave some stories about the older days of Batman where Bruce Wayne was the Dark Knight.  Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker is my absolute favorite superhero film, and I suggest anybody should check it out.

 

End Poll

So my Comixplanations are still a fairly new segment of mine that I created so I can talk about things in the world of comics that my other segments wouldn’t allow me to.  So there’s a few things I want to talk about for Comixplanations and I’m wondering if you guys have anything you want me to talk about.  Maybe their something that you heard before that you want to understand better?  Or maybe there’s an event that you want to learn about but not actually go searching for and read.  I have a few suggestions below but if you have one than please don’t hesitate to comment below, on my Facebook page, or email me at sablikid626@gmail.com.