Superman the most hated superhero franchise with critics, study shows

April 6th 2021, 10:09am

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

This is going to bring about some strong opinions from fans of comic books and superhero movies but a recent study, which looked at the average critical response to every entry in major franchises, shows that the Superman movie franchise ranks as the lowest for superhero-inspired films.

The new study looked at the average Rotten Tomatoes scores for various entries in a franchise and Superman comes in with an average rating of 48%. The reason for the low average is that the franchise does have a few entries that were clunkers in terms of critical response with Superman III coming in at 30% and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace coming in at 11%. It should be pointed out that the study does include 2017's, Justice League, which comes in at 40& but doesn't take Zack Snyder's Justice League into account which comes in higher at 71%. Here is the criteria that the study looked into when coming up with their figures:

"For movies, we looked at all films which fall under each franchise, including subseries within a larger franchise (for example the likes of The Avengers, Iron Man and Captain America within the Marvel Cinematic Universe) and reboots of series (for example we took all the Spider-Man movies as one franchise, including those played by Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland)."

Superman: The Movie comes in at 94% which makes it one of the best-reviewed superhero films of all time. That is a feat that shouldn't be ignored as it still stands as a signature film for the genre. As far as other superhero franchises are concerned, Batman came in just behind Superman due in large part to poor reviews for Batman & Robin, despite the high critical praise for Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy. Actually, the DC Extended Universe as a whole took the third spot due to poor reviews for films like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad. Keeping the DCEU from being a total bomb were films like Wonder Woman and Shazam! Rounding out the top five was a tie from the same Marvel family with Wolverine and X-Men coming in at 67%.

Disney and Pixar's The Incredibles came out on top for the best list with an average of 96%, although the series benefits from only having two movies under its belt. Deadpool also ranked pretty high with 85% but keep in mind, unlike Superman that had to contend with decades worth of entries that come in at various degrees of quality, Deadpool is also only rocking two movies at this point.

The study is merely looking at Rotten Tomatoes percentages here so this really doesn't represent what the fans think but it is a good conversation starter to decide which superhero franchise actually does represent the best of the best and the worst of the worst for the genre. Some might also think it's unfair how this study was even put together. For instance, Supergirl, which comes in at 9%, was counted for Superman's average, and Catwoman, also at 9%, was factored in for the Batman franchise average. I'm sure some fans will want to demand a recount.

Do YOU agree with the results? You can check out the full top five lists below!