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15 Comic Book Movies That Wasted Great Concepts

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Ignacio Weil

Entertainment - July 29th 2026, 19:00 GMT+2

Cropped Iron Man 2 — 15. Iron Man 2 (2010)

Tony Stark is dying from the technology keeping him alive, the government wants his armor, and a rival family has returned to expose the uglier side of the Stark legacy. That is plenty for one sequel before Nick Fury, Black Widow, S.H.I.E.L.D., and future franchise obligations begin crowding the workshop. Tony’s drunken birthday collapse briefly hints at a darker portrait of addiction and self-destruction, only to be tidied away rather quickly. The MCU machine was already assembling itself, with its leading man inconveniently trapped underneath it. | © Marvel Studios

Watchmen 2009 — 14. Watchmen (2009)

Calling *Watchmen* a total failure would be unfair; its casting, production design, and alternate-history atmosphere remain impressive. The problem is that Zack Snyder reproduces the graphic novel’s panels more faithfully than its skepticism, turning compromised vigilantes into slow-motion icons who look undeniably cool while doing horrifying things. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons used a murder mystery to interrogate power, fascism, celebrity, and superhero fantasy itself. The film preserves the evidence, yet somehow reaches a more admiring verdict. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

The New Mutants 2020 — 13. The New Mutants (2020)

Five traumatized teenagers are imprisoned in a suspicious psychiatric facility, where their deepest fears begin taking physical form. That setup practically writes the superhero horror movie itself, especially with the Demon Bear waiting in the shadows. *The New Mutants* finds some genuine tenderness in Dani and Rahne’s relationship, but it never commits fully to psychological terror, adolescent drama, or comic-book spectacle. Once the generic climax arrives, these damaged young people still feel like character sketches being hurried toward a franchise that was already dead. | © 20th Century Studios

Cropped Black Widow — 12. Black Widow (2021)

Natasha Romanoff’s long-overdue solo movie had the ideal foundation for a bruising espionage thriller about stolen childhoods, institutional abuse, and women conditioned to become weapons. Its unsettling opening credits point directly toward that story, while Florence Pugh and Scarlett Johansson give the fractured surrogate family real emotional bite. Then subtlety boards a helicopter and leaves. Taskmaster becomes more twist than character, mind control is reduced to a convenient chemical problem, and the supposedly invisible Red Room turns out to be a massive airborne fortress built for another collapsing CGI finale. | © Marvel Studios

11. Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

The Dreamstone can grant anyone their deepest desire while quietly taking something essential in return—a terrific device for examining greed, loneliness, and the lies people tell themselves. Diana, Barbara Minerva, and Maxwell Lord each want something painfully understandable, giving the story three different paths toward self-destruction. Unfortunately, the rules grow murkier with every wish, Steve Trevor’s return through another man’s body creates an ethical problem the film barely notices, and the global climax becomes pure narrative fog. An elegant moral fable gets talked into the ground. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

X Men Apocalypse 2016 — 10. X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Following the time-bending triumph of *Days of Future Past*, the arrival of an ancient mutant worshipped as a god sounded like the next logical escalation. Apocalypse has watched civilizations rise and fall, can enhance other mutants, and believes humanity deserves extinction; Oscar Isaac should have had a banquet. Instead, he spends much of the movie recruiting underwritten Horsemen and delivering exposition beneath suffocating prosthetics. Magneto repeats his familiar tragedy, while young Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, and Nightcrawler compete for scraps in an overstuffed disaster movie with remarkably little sense of apocalypse. | © 20th Century Fox

Cropped Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — 9. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Give Sam Raimi the keys to infinite realities, add Scarlet Witch at her most dangerous, and the result should be too strange for the MCU assembly line to contain. Raimi does smuggle in zombie sorcery, demonic imagery, and a wonderfully ridiculous duel fought with musical notes. Still, most alternate worlds flash past during a montage, while Earth-838 functions largely as a showroom for cameos waiting to be slaughtered. America Chavez is treated more like a portable doorway than a person, leaving the promised multiverse considerably smaller than its title suggests. | © Marvel Studios

Cropped Thor Love and Thunder — 8. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Jane Foster becoming the Mighty Thor while privately battling cancer could have carried an emotionally devastating film on its own. Pairing her with Gorr, a grieving father who turns against indifferent gods, creates a powerful argument about mortality, faith, and what people do when the universe ignores their pain. Christian Bale appears ready to inhabit that tragedy, but the movie keeps dragging him back toward screaming goats, jealous weapons, and jokes that arrive before any feeling can settle. Gorr the God Butcher barely butchers any gods, which rather defeats the sales pitch. | © Marvel Studios

Ant Man and the Wasp Quantumania — 7. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

The Quantum Realm gave Marvel an unrestricted canvas for bizarre creatures, impossible physics, and a family adventure unlike anything happening on Earth. Kang, meanwhile, was introduced as a conqueror frightening enough to anchor the MCU’s next era. *Quantumania* converts both ideas into murky digital scenery, endless rebellion exposition, and actors who rarely appear to occupy the same physical space. MODOK becomes an extended punchline, Kang loses much of his menace, and hyper-evolved ants help settle the conflict. Ant-Man went microscopic, but the studio expectations crushing him were painfully visible. | © Marvel Studios

Cropped Joker Folie à Deux — 6. Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)

A courtroom musical pairing Arthur Fleck with Lee Quinzel was such a reckless proposition that failure almost sounded more interesting than safety. Songs could have exposed their competing fantasies, while Arthur’s trial examined how the public transformed a mentally ill murderer into a marketable revolutionary. Instead, the musical numbers mostly restate emotions the audience already understands, Lee remains frustratingly thin, and the courtroom spends too long revisiting the previous film. Rejecting the Joker mythology was a provocative choice; replacing it with a deliberately airless epilogue made that rejection feel more punitive than illuminating. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

Dark Phoenix cropped processed by imagy — 5. Dark Phoenix (2019)

The Dark Phoenix Saga is built from enormous ingredients: cosmic power, psychological manipulation, fractured identity, and Jean Grey’s terrifying realization that love may not be enough to save her. Simon Kinberg had already co-written one compressed adaptation in *X-Men: The Last Stand*, then received another opportunity as both writer and director. The opening space rescue briefly promises the scale this material deserves, but the film soon retreats into gloomy arguments, disposable aliens, and a train battle. Jean’s transformation feels rushed precisely when it should be intimate, gradual, and unbearable. | © 20th Century Fox

Suicide Squad 2016 — 4. Suicide Squad (2016)

Task Force X works because Amanda Waller sends expendable criminals on deniable operations that respectable heroes cannot be seen performing. The movie instead dispatches Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, and their colleagues to stop an ancient witch from destroying a city with a glowing supernatural machine. Why this mission requires a man skilled with boomerangs is a question best left outside the theater. Hyperactive character cards, competing tones, and constant pop-song introductions make the first act feel repeatedly restarted, burying a cynical black-ops premise beneath the world’s most expensive playlist. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

Fantastic Four 2015 — 3. Fantastic Four (2015)

The early stretch of *Fantastic Four* suggests an unusually disturbing approach: gifted young scientists cross into another dimension and return with bodies they can no longer control. Its transformation scenes flirt with genuine body horror, making superpowers resemble permanent injuries rather than colorful gifts. Then a one-year jump skips nearly everything required to turn Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben into friends, family, or even a functioning team. Reshoots and tonal fractures are visible onscreen as Victor von Doom appears, the plot sprints toward its finale, and scientific wonder gets buried beneath obvious franchise panic. | © 20th Century Fox

Justice League 2017 — 2. Justice League (2017)

The first theatrical live-action union of Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg should have felt like comic-book history unfolding in real time. Instead, half the team arrives without prior films, forcing introductions, Mother Boxes, Superman’s resurrection, Steppenwolf, and an apocalyptic invasion into a strangely hurried package. Cyborg’s connection to the central technology receives little room, while the moral implications of reviving Superman barely survive the next joke. The collision between Zack Snyder’s material and Joss Whedon’s reshoots leaves these legendary heroes sharing a frame without ever building a convincing bond. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

Cropped Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice — 1. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Cinema waited decades to place Batman and Superman opposite each other, and their ideological conflict offered more than enough material: human fear against impossible power, vengeance against hope, and the question of who holds gods accountable. The film piles that confrontation together with *The Dark Knight Returns*, the death of Superman, Doomsday, Wonder Woman’s debut, Knightmare visions, political hearings, and trailers for the Justice League. Lex Luthor manipulates the central battle before a shared maternal name abruptly ends it. An encounter that deserved patience became a congested launch event for several movies that had not yet been made. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

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A brilliant comic book premise can survive decades of questionable decisions, but a bad adaptation can squander it in two hours. These movies arrived armed with iconic characters, ambitious ideas, and enough promotional hype to make failure seem impossible. Instead, they buried their potential beneath studio interference, rushed storytelling, tonal confusion, or the usual wall of weightless CGI. The most frustrating part is that somewhere inside each disappointment, you can still see the far better movie it might have been.

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A brilliant comic book premise can survive decades of questionable decisions, but a bad adaptation can squander it in two hours. These movies arrived armed with iconic characters, ambitious ideas, and enough promotional hype to make failure seem impossible. Instead, they buried their potential beneath studio interference, rushed storytelling, tonal confusion, or the usual wall of weightless CGI. The most frustrating part is that somewhere inside each disappointment, you can still see the far better movie it might have been.