The best superhero movies of all time

There is an argument to be made that Joker doesn’t belong anywhere on a list of superhero movies. Even director Todd Phillips told Empire Magazine that he didn’t see his film as a comic book movie. But the story unfolds in Gotham City, Bruce Wayne and his parents are in it, and the protagonist evolves into perhaps the most iconic supervillain in all pop culture. So, you know, we feel pretty confident including it. There are plenty of valid criticisms of Joker, including its depictions of mental illness and race, plus the cinematic conversation it has with films like The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver, which some argue misses the mark of homage and simply steals unapologetically. And when it was released, many questioned the timing, as it came in the wake of several mass shootings committed in the U.S. — some feel that perhaps that wasn’t the time to glorify an antihero like Arthur Fleck.But in terms of a movie that does find itself in the superhero neighborhood whether Phillips likes it or not, what Joker does better than any other film is show us exactly how someone could shed their humanity to become a supervillain. Sure, we’ve had plenty of sympathetic supervillains before, like Tom Hiddleston’s Loki and Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger, but in Joker, we see the process unfold. We see Fleck transform into a monster, and we see it in a world just like our own that has nothing to do with rainbow bridges or vibranium meteorites.