Second Opinion: Top Five Superhero Movies

I'll preface my own picks for Top Five Superhero Movies by saying that I have not seen the latest superhero movies, including Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk and Fantastic Four:Rise of the Silver Surfer.

5. Batman Begins (2005) - This movie gets the final spot simply because I felt the list would not be complete without a Batman movie and because of the disaster that was its predecessor, "Batman and Robin". This movie was good, but the distance between it and #4 is large.

4. X2: X-Men United (2003) - The appearance of Nightcrawler and Pyro, along with the cast from the first X-Men movie, made for a strong ensemble of characters with plenty of cool powers to go around, but it was a bit lacking in mutant-on-mutant action (fighting, not the other thing). Still, it was a worthy follow up and didn't fail to meet expectations like the third X-Men film did.

3. Spider-Man (2002) - The original was by far the best of the Spider-man movies. It definitely had the look and feel of a comic book, and though the Green Goblin was not among my favorite Spidey villains, it was a quality retelling of the Spider-man origin story. It was well-cast and (mostly) well acted, without too much over-the-top acting, but enough to make it feel like a comic book from the '70s. "My Spidey-sense is tingling!"

2. V for Vendetta (2006) - Not your typical superhero movie, V came close to taking the number 1 spot on my list. Though I had never read the comic, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. A frightening allegory for the increasingly secretive and heavy-handed American government in the midst of a "War on Terror", V took the idea to the extreme to examine where the sacrifice of freedom for security would lead. A brilliant cast brought the story to life, and Portman's Evey was not your typical damsel in distress, but proved to be a strong character in her own right. The action was well-paced, the gore used in moderation, and the story was strong.

1. X-Men (2000) - It was the movie that started it all, that brought about the rebirth of the comic book movie after the recent demise of the genre. Sure, the Blade movie of '98 did well enough to justify numerous sequels, but the Blade comic was not mainstream to the extent that X-Men, Spider-man, Superman, or Batman were. X-Men successfully concentrated decades of comic books down into less than two hours, with a story that both stood on its own while limiting the deviation from the comic books. Unlike X2, X-Men had plenty of mutant vs. mutant combat, and did it well. X-Men made the top spot because it set the stage for many films that were to follow, because, being the first, it was fresh and new, and because it was just a high-quality movie.