Joker: Folie à Deux sure made history over the weekend — it just wasn’t the kind of history that Warner Bros. wanted it to make. It not only had the lowest audience score — D+ on CinemaScore — of any modern superhero movie, it also opened to $37 million, which is disastrous for film that cost $190 million to 200 million.
We could go on and on about where Joker: Folie à Deux went wrong — and we have! Some observers have even declared it to be the worst comic book movie ever made … which is just ridiculous. It’s definitely a horrible movie, but comic book cinema has already given us unforgettable schlock like Howard the Duck, Batman & Robin, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, and the first two Punisher flicks. Good films in this genre were a relative rarity until around the turn of the century.
Rather than rehashing all of the incredibly awful superhero movies of the 20th century, we can provide far more modern examples of the five comic book movies that are worse than Joker 2. And trust us, this list could have been a lot longer if we had added several recent DC movies.
5. The Flash (2023)
In The Flash, Ezra Miller played a dual role as a slightly younger Barry Allen who managed to be even more annoying than the primary Barry Allen. In the months before its release, Warner Bros. and DC Studios pretended that The Flash was going to be one of the all-time great comic book movies. The hype placed on it would have been difficult for any movie to live up to.
Any fantasies about the film’s quality were quickly dispelled once anyone actually saw The Flash, and its loosely plotted time travel shenanigans that were a flimsy excuse to bring back Michael Keaton as Batman. At least Keaton was good in the role, and it has to be said that Sasha Calle was also fun as Supergirl. The two Flashes were simply a chore to watch, however, and the cameo-filled finale is a complete letdown that borders on ghoulishness due to the way it resurrects dead actors with unconvincing CGI performances.
4. The Marvels (2023)
Marvel is not immune from making bad movies. In fact, Thor: Love and Thunder just barely missed the cut. But The Marvels earned its place on this list by serving as a prime example of Marvel Studios’ belief that it can do no wrong. The entire reason this film exists is to contrive a reason to bring Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers together with her biggest fan, Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), as well as Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), a woman who considered Carol to be an honorary member of her family when she was young.
The script can’t figure out a way to convincingly let this trio bond, so it skips the big steps of Carol and Monica’s reconciliation by tossing them one of the most inane villains in MCU history: Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton). She makes Thor: The Dark World‘s Malekith the Accursed seem charismatic by comparison. This tedious story had few consequences for the heroes and villains, and any heroics mean nothing because even the most impossible feat doesn’t cause Carol to break a sweat. The only thrilling thing about this movie is the mid-credits scene.
3. Morbius (2022)
That’s right, it’s Morbin’ time! You can tell that a film is in trouble when its memes are more entertaining than the movie itself. Morbius is part of Sony’s deluded attempt to turn Spider-Man’s villains and supporting characters into movie stars in a shared universe akin to the MCU. Ironically, the primary cast is very talented. Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, and Jared Harris have all had much better roles than Morbius had to offer them.
Out of all of the non-Venom Spider-Man-less movies that Sony has planned or previously released, Morbius had real potential. The title character is a “living vampire” who gained his bloodlust while trying to cure himself from a disease. Unfortunately, the script is lackluster and even boring at times. Smith rises above the material with a fun performance as the villain, but the final nail in this vampire’s coffin is the clumsy attempt to cross over with Marvel’s Spider-Man movies during the post-credits scenes.
2. Madame Web (2024)
If you thought Morbius was bad, see Madame Web. Ordinarily, we give actors in these movies the benefit of the doubt. In this case, Dakota Johnson deserves a lot of blame for her utterly lifeless and disinterested performance as Cassandra Webb, a paramedic whose near-death experience grants her prophetic visions. But director and co-writer S. J. Clarkson, as well as the four other credited screenwriters, deserve their fair shame of the blame for this mess as well. This movie tries so hard to be relevant to Spider-Man that it even shoehorns in a friendship between Cassandra and her colleague, Ben Parker (Adam Scott), before shamelessly including the birth of Spider-Man’s alter ego, Peter Parker.
Meanwhile, Dollar Store Spider-Man knockoff Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) tries to murder three future Spider-Women, as played by rising stars Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor. The only time this movie shows any life are the brief moments where this trio are shown in their superhero costumes. This would have been a lot more tolerable if they could have actually had powers from the start.
1. The Crow (2024)
There’s an inherent tragedy in The Crow‘s original movie, in terms of both the comic book story created by James O’Barr and the accidental death of star Brandon Lee during the film’s production. That gave the original movie added gravitas and it’s become a cult classic. This year’s remake of The Crow squanders a talented leading man Bill Skarsgård with a misguided update that doesn’t seem to really understand why the first film worked at all.
In a year where both Madame Web and Joker: Folie à Deux were released in theaters, The Crow still manages to be worse than both of them. It’s uninspired on every level, the action is bad, and the story inexplicably screeches to a halt because the movie needs to build up a romance between Eric Draven (Skarsgård) and his girlfriend, Shelly (FKA Twigs), right before she’s murdered and consigned to Hell by a demonic crime lord, Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston). It’s so poorly executed that this might even cure Hollywood from making any future Crow remakes. Maybe.
