For the Fanboys and FanaticsLists of the best (and worst) times superheroes and villains took their fights off the pages of comic books and onto the big screen.
Updated December 20, 2021 3.4k votes 679 voters 36.2k views
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Vote up the meta moments that had a point about superhero cliches.
The emergence of superhero films over the last couple of decades has come with an abundance of new superhero cliches. Truthfully, superhero films have come a long way since the campy Batman and Superman films of the past, but no matter what, superhero movies will always be a little absurd in some ways. Newer superhero movies have managed to get around that by making meta jokes in their own movies, pointing out how silly some tropes and costumes still are.
Here are 13 times that serious superhero movies managed to poke fun at goofy superhero rules in their own movies.
One of the best parts of Avengers: Infinity War is watching all the superheroes finally meet each other after about 20 films of build-up. The most realistic aspect of these superheroes meeting each other is the fact that the characters realize how silly some of their names are.
When Peter Parker meets Doctor Strange for the first time, he assumes that Doctor Strange is his "made-up" name, despite Strange actually being a licensed doctor and "Strange" being his real last name. At least his name isn't Star-Lord or Drax the Destroyer.
From Victor von Doom growing up to become a supervillain to Johnny Storm happening to acquire magical flame powers as the Human Torch, Marvel has a long history of superheroes with cheeky real names that happen to overlap with their identities in unlikely ways.
In Spider-Man 2, J. Jonah Jameson makes fun of this convention when he points out one of the more hilariously on-the-nose examples: Someone named Dr. Otto Octavius just so happens to get metal limbs fused to him, so he becomes Dr. Octopus. What are the odds, indeed.
In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Hawkeye finally utters what we've all been thinking over the course of the entire franchise. Some of the Avengers have genuine, bonafide superpowers; others have high-tech weaponry or chemically induced super-strength. Hawkeye has... a bow and arrow.
To be fair, it is a pretty cool weapon - but sort of makes no sense when compared with the rest of his team. How does he even keep up?
With the plethora of superhero films that have emerged over the last decade, we've begun to see some superheroes who are fitted with powers that are kind of a stretch, if anything. In The Suicide Squad alone, you have a character that shoots polka dots and another that controls rats.
In Deadpool 2, Wade meets a woman named Domino who claims her superpower is "luck." Of course, Deadpool immediately rejects the idea that luck is a superpower.
Other than fashion and symbolism, there's no practical reason for superheroes to wear capes. Yet, some of the most iconic superheroes are caped crusaders - such as the likes of Batman, Superman, and even Thor.
According to an article by Inverse, scientists have found capes ineffective from a physics standpoint alone, meaning Edna was right when she famously said, "No capes!" in The Incredibles, explaining why one shouldn't create a super-suit with the useless piece of fabric attached to it.
Superhero landings were only cool when Spider-Man was doing it back in the 2000s. Now, there's nothing tackier than doing a pose after landing from an impossibly high distance.
In Deadpool, Angel Dust mistakenly tries to do a superhero landing right in front of Deadpool - who immediately calls her out on her predictable entrance.
