Objective Ranking of Super Hero Films

[Revolution 9]

The ratings from IMDB, Metacritic, and Rotten Tomatoes were each normalized to a scale of 100. For example, if the movie with the highest IMDB score was 9.0 and the movie with the lowest IMDB score was 5.7, those scores were be re-scaled to 100 and 0 points, respectively. Then the normalized scores for IMDB, Metacritic, and Rotten Tomatoes were simply averaged together. With this method, a score of 50 would be the literal "average". Therefore any movie that scores lower than 50 would be considered below average.

Rankings for all super hero films since 2000:

99 - The Dark Knight
86 - Iron Man
85 - X-Men: Days of Future Past
84 - Spider-Man II
82 - The Dark Knight Rises
80 - Marvel's The Avengers
80 - Captain America: The Winter Soldier
79 - Batman Begins
77 - Sin City
74 - Hellboy II
73 - Spider-Man
71 - X-Men: First Class
70 - X2: X-Men United
67 - Kick-Ass
64 - X-Men
63 - Hellboy
60 - Iron Man III
59 - The Amazing Spider-Man
57 - Captain America: The First Avenger
55 - Superman Returns
53 - Dredd
52 - Thor
51 - Watchmen
51 - Iron Man II
49 - The Incredible Hulk
48 - The Wolverine
46 - Thor: The Dark World
44 - Man of Steel
41 - X-Men: The Last Stand
39 - Spider-Man III
35 - The Amazing Spider-Man 2
29 - Hulk
18 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine
14 - Kick-Ass 2
11 - Daredevil
10 - Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
01 - Fantastic Four
00 - Green Lantern

Going by this list, the best year for Super Hero films was 2008. That brought us The Dark Knight, Iron-Man, and Hellboy II. The next best year is a toss-up between 2012 (The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers) and 2014 (Days of Future Past, Winter Soldier). If Guardians of the Galaxy is any good, it could entrench 2014 as the 2nd best year ever.

The worst period for Super Hero films was 2006-7. That was a two-year drought where the "best" films coming out were Superman Returns, X-Men Last Stand, and Spider-Man III. It's interesting to note that this two-year slump was immediately followed by the best year ever for Super Hero films (2008).