* This post was updated as of December 2024 to correct a very incorrect opinion.
Spoilers for all movies discussed in this ranking. Not that most of the public would care at this point. This has been a rocky year for comic book adaptations and superhero media and a good few of the ones on this list were financial and critical failures. A bunch of shows that were meant to come out this year were delayed because of the strike and probably other dubious reasons. The superhero genre is beginning to be written off as a tired and bland genre of film because Marvel and DC both put out some truly bottom rung shit this year. I think it’s been proven time and again that, like any other movie genre, if you allow people with a vision to make an original and creative story without studio interference and give VFX artists time to perfect the visuals these movies can be special and amazing. The top movies on this list are shining examples of that, except for the animators on Spider-Verse who were treated terrible and worked tirelessly when they shouldn’t have had to. The problem is that Marvel hasn’t learned this, they’ve grown stagnant, and DC never knew what they were doing to begin with.
Maybe James Gunn’s takeover of DC will lead to some really good stuff (I really think it will) because he’s generally very good at what he does. Or maybe they could even pay their digital effects artists and actors and writers and crew correctly. Of course, all of that is contingent on Bob Iger and David Zaslav and all the other moronic and terrible studio heads actually respecting their employees and treating them like human beings. Anyway, we’ll get into all of that as I discuss the best and worst comic book movies and shows of the year! Only half of Invincible season two is out, so I won’t be reviewing that. And the reviews for the things I have yet to review will be a bit longer than the ones I have, obviously.

14. The Flash
This would be the worst movie no matter what year it came out in. This movie is worse than any recent comic book movie. Worse than Morbius, worse than Black Adam, worse than Suicide Squad (2016). Because I don’t care if those movies are good. I know that those characters can be interesting and well-written if handled properly, even Morbius. But this one really really hurt. There are two superheroes that I love more than any other fictional characters in this world. Daredevil, AKA Matt Murdock, the blind Catholic ninja lawyer, and the Flash, AKA Wally West, the former sidekick and loving husband, father, and wise-cracking lovable legacy hero. I also occasionally enjoy reading comic books about Barry Allen, the lesser Flash, when writers understand that at his core, he is a forensic scientist, a nerd, an uncle, and kind of boring. Grant Gustin’s The Flash got that wrong because they just took all the Wally-isms and gave them to Barry. Ezra Miller’s The Flash got it wrong because they cast Ezra Miller and told them to play Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. Also because of all the other negative things I said about this movie in my review and in real life.
You can say what you want about this movie. “You’re being too harsh just because you’re biased. I liked it. It’s just a dumb movie.” No, you didn’t. You didn’t see it. Nobody did. This movie made so little money and did so badly at the box office that it made less money than the #9 movie on this list, which is hard to do. And now it’s the worst performing superhero movie of all time. Hee hee hee. I hope that Hollywood doesn’t take the wrong lesson from this and stop casting Ron Livingston in things. I like that guy. Anyway, I reviewed this already, so if you want lengthier criticisms, head there.

13. Secret Invasion
This television show is the cinematic equivalent of a wet croissant. “What does that mean?” you ask. Well, imagine that you have a croissant. It’s crispy and flaky and it looks delicious and it’s absolutely perfect. Conceptually, this croissant has the potential to be richly layered and beautiful on the inside, once you bite in. This could be the best croissant you’ve ever eaten if nothing happens to fuck it up. Because let’s say that in addition to the croissant you also get to watch a TV show featuring the talents of Samuel L Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Cobie Smulders, Martin Freeman, Don Cheadle, Olivia Colman, Emilia Clarke, Kingsley Ben-Adir, and Dermot Mulroney. And you think, “These are good actors, they’re all playing espionage characters in the Marvel universe that have to handle a covert alien invasion but nobody knows who to trust. The Winter Soldier is a great spy/espionage movie. Andor was on Disney Plus and that was good. This croissant should be delicious!”
And then, before the baker hands you your croissant, he accidentally lights it on fire with a blowtorch and throws water on it. Then he hands it to you and you take a bite and think to yourself “Wait a goddamn second. This whole show has been leading to a weird CGI Skrull showdown where two gray blobs of people get too many similar powers and fight while Don Cheadle realizes he’s been asleep in alien prison since 2016? And Ben Mendelsohn is dead for no real reason? This watery burnt croissant is disgusting! And there’s no dough or chocolate in the center, only rat droppings! Which means a tiny rat had to have gnawed a hole in the croissant and eaten through without leaving a trace! I mean, it’s still conceptually layered in that I now have multiple reasons not to eat it, but conceptually layered in a bad way, like why would anyone think this is okay to offer someone?”
Now, I didn’t ask for this particular croissant, so I’m not entirely disappointed that it got ruined by reshoots and a lack of availability for Samuel L Jackson, the lead actor. I don’t mind that they killed Cobie Smulders off after years of doing nothing with that character. I do mind that they wasted Ben Mendelsohn and Olivia Colman and $200 million on a show that didn’t look that good or expensive. It’s not my money, sure, but this shouldn’t have cost that much. I just think if you’re going to take the time to make a croissant, make sure it is interesting and fulfilling and has some substance to it, instead of overly rewriting the croissant, spending $200 million, and allowing it to be set on fire, showered in water, and desecrated by a rat. Did that metaphor work? The show is boring and there’s nothing to it. That’s the point I’m making. Also, one more time: OLIVIA COLMAN IS MAYBE THE BEST ACTRESS WORKING CURRENTLY, SHE’S FABULOUS AND AMAZING AND FUNNY AND MENACING AND INCREDIBLE. WHAT ARE YOU DOING WASTING HER ON THIS SHITTY SHITTY SHOW?! I LOVE OLIVIA COLMAN AND I HATE THIS!!!

12. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
I literally just reviewed this so I’ll keep it fairly brief and mind-numbingly simple. Movie okay. Me like little bit. More Amber Heard than expected. Patrick Wilson good. Jason Momoa good actor and bad Aquaman. Black Manta cool, Randall Park funny, Temuera Morrison not die like I thought. Time pass, movie end, life continue. DCEU done now. Yay.

11. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Again, like The Flash, I previously reviewed this back in Ruddtrospective #25, and the better part of a year had passed since then, so most of my inflammatory comments and notions about this movie have drifted away with the wind. Because I have not rewatched this one. I remember it well enough. I don’t need to. But perhaps I should, for journalistic integrity. Is that what this is, what I am? Hmmmm.
Well, just in case I do somehow qualify as a journalist somehow, I rewatched the movie. It’s… still what I remember it as being. There are some interesting elements. I like the freedom fighter lady, kind of, but everyone is in a different movie. The effects aren’t as bad as I remember. They’re honestly fine, for the most part, the CGI buildings and people and environments. It’s just that some of the compositing doesn’t always work. And the size ratio is way off. When Scott and Hope hug as giant-sized people, they just look like normal people hugging. I don’t know. They misused William Jackson Harper from The Good Place, the new Cassie Lang is annoying and I don’t like her. The Star Wars vibe they’re going for kind of works, but why? Why go for this? I still think they should have made literally any other movie at all than how they made this one.
But I do unapologetically like M.O.D.O.K., I think they nailed that. At least up until his reconciliation with Cassie and death. They shouldn’t have made him a good guy and killed him. He looks appropriately weird and gross and I like Corey Stoll. That’s the bit I loved. Paul Rudd is kind of underused in his own movie. I like the sequence where there’s a bunch of probable versions of him and they work together like ants. It’s the only interesting use of his powers, and it has nothing to do with his powers. Also this is my least favorite version of his costume, and my favorite version of Hope’s. So yeah. I guess this is above Aquaman because I liked the characters and the universe that was set up in the previous two movies enough to sit through this one. I did not want to see another Aquaman movie, Jason Momoa and Patrick Wilson or no. Ugh.

10. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
I think I did a min-review of this one back when I reviewed Guardians maybe? It’s hard to say. I didn’t love or hate this one. There were parts of it I really disliked. I was not a fan of Zachary Levi’s performance in this, or the weird CGI dragon shots, and I don’t think this one needed to be made. The question is, do there need to be sequels? Is there another story that needs to be told? This one is tricky in that the cast members are largely children and grow up quickly. So why not just have the first one be a one-off? And when we talk about movies trying to be something they’re not, Peyton Reed shouldn’t have made Quantumania a big sci-fi adventure vague Star Wars, that was a day one mistake. He should’ve stuck to what worked or had someone else do it. With this, either the Rock should have let Black Adam be in it, or David F. Sandberg (Who I think is a good director and did his best with this) and DC should have sat down and come up with more interesting villains from the comics instead of making up an excuse to cast three good actresses. If you want Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren and Rachel Zegler, find comics characters to have them play. Right? I don’t know. I think they stayed truer to what made the first one good than Quantumania did, even with that weird Djimon Hounsou Wonder Woman thing. It’s fine.

9. Blue Beetle
While I think action and world building wise the concepts in Shazam are more interesting than the ones in this admittedly very grounded origin movie that is much the same as 37 of the other superhero movies I’ve seen, I enjoyed the character interactions and the dialogue and the regular interpersonal part of this movie much more than any of the movies on this list. I really liked the family, so I found myself not hating as much the stupid bit where the giant beetle (Awesome) emits gas and makes a farting noise, and I didn’t cringe when Jaime’s grandma picked up a giant gun and killed a bunch of guys. It was a fun movie. George Lopez is great in this as the crazy uncle whose presence makes the whole affair feel slightly more Spy Kidsish. I got really sad when his dad died and they revealed the backstory of the villain, even though they did that in a thirty second montage at the end of the movie and that was weird. Susan Sarandon was a villain and it was cool. I liked this one enough. I didn’t enjoy the action sequences. But I loved the backstory world building they did with Ted Kord and how he used to be goofy Batman in this universe. I love Ted Kord. He’s my favorite Blue Beetle in the comics. I also liked the look of the city itself. It’s a solid movie.

8. The Marvels
This is another one I’ve already reviewed. “The worst Marvel movie yet”, yes? No no no. Not even this year. I don’t even think any of the Marvel movies are fully terrible, which is something that DC and Warner Brothers cannot say. Anyway, it’s good fun. The three main actresses are great together, the movie is missing some movie. It’s a good okay Marvel movie. People don’t need to complain about everything. Ignore all the complaints I’ve made in this post already.

7. What If…? (Season Two)
I didn’t dislike the last season overall but it wasn’t my favorite. There were good episodes and bad episodes, and this season there were good episodes and bad episodes. But I thought the good ones in this were overall better and it was smart that they released them daily nine days in a row because I was eager to watch the new one every morning. Also I’ve read some reviews where people say that this is alright, but it’s emblematic of a genericism and decline in quality that’s been happening for a bit now. And I disagree. First of all, these aren’t masterpieces and they don’t need to be, the What If comics aren’t. Most of them suck. If there’s anything in the MCU that is just fine how it is, it’s this show. Each episode is pretty good and sometimes there’s one you’d want to see a lot more of, but they move on after thirty minutes anyway. This season’s adventures consisted of Nebula joining the Nova Corps and going on a Blade Runner style adventure, young Peter Quill trying to destroy Earth in the 80’s and having to fight a ragtag 80’s Avengers, Happy Hogan saving Christmas from a delightfully devilish Sam Rockwell attacking Avenger’s Tower in a Die Hard parody, Iron Man being stranded on Sakaar and facing Jeff Goldblum in a demolition derby, Captain Carter finding out her Steve is alive in a weird mashup of The Winter Soldier and Black Widow, the space stone landing in a Native American tribe and changing the world, Hela being abandoned on Earth and meeting Wenwu and the ten rings, Captain Carter having to save a bunch of Marvel characters stranded in the year 1602, and the wrap-up episode that clumsily brings it all together. Overall, I liked it. Those were the episodes in order, and if I had to rank them off the top of my head I wouldn’t, but it’d probably be from worst to best, 9, 6, 1, 5, 7, 8, 4, 3, 2. But yeah, like I said, they’re all pretty good, and, more than that, they’re all half an hour. It’s like reading a pretty good comic book with actors I like voicing the characters, and sometimes it gets a bit quippy and a bit contrived and samey, but for the most part it’s fun reimaginings of what we’ve seen. And Paul Rudd is in episode 8, and that counts for a whole lot.

6. Gen V (Season One)
I don’t have tons to say about this, it’s just a good addition to The Boys universe, it’s really well cast, the story is compelling, all the characters have powers that act as metaphors for teen issues in very on the nose ways, but that’s how this universe works, so it works. I tried reading the comics this year and Ennis’s writing is too intense for me. I don’t usually like things that are too crass and body humor based for the sake of it, but the writers seem to have managed the perfect balance in that these elements are mostly included amidst great character-based writing and they serve to escalate the stakes and consequences and insanity of everything. Also, after three seasons of telling audiences that most of the superheroes in this universe are terrible and shouldn’t be allowed personal freedom, this show flips that narrative. Suddenly we’re watching teenagers with powers being oppressed by humans who fear what they created and resent their inferiority (Kids unwillingly receiving superpowers that irrevocably screw up their lives because their parents wanted them to have them is a great metaphor for inherited trauma) and rooting for them to get their way, all the while knowing that the main characters of the show this is spun off of probably wouldn’t care about them at all. At least Butcher definitely wouldn’t. And I think that’s all really clever.

5. Loki (Season Two)
So this one is interesting. I liked season one a lot even though in retrospect, not all that much happened over the course of the six episodes, but I still think it was a satisfying narrative with an interesting end that was basically just a discussion about how the universe should or shouldn’t be run. This season is also interesting, though they just keep doing the same discussion over and over. Both seasons look fantastic and have a great retro feel and find time here and there to tell some really weird jokes.
This season introduces some new elements right off the bat, including some other employees at the TVA that were blatantly evil from the moment they were introduced, a fantastically cast and incredibly charismatic employee that clearly was cast just so he could spout tech gobbledigook for six episodes, and a giant mechanism that apparently powers the home of the Time Variance Authority. This mechanism is called the Temporal Loom. I don’t remember them mentioning it in season one, but they can’t stop talking about it now, because the entire season is centered around the temporal loom and how each and every character in the series feels about said loom’s imminent shutdown and the lives on the timeline that can’t be “pruned” anymore. I guess I just have to buy into it, but it’s really hard not to look at my computer and see beloved actors Ke Huy Quan, Tom Hiddleston, and Owen Wilson in a wig with very clear lining, standing around on a set and talking to each other very dramatically about “pruning” and “temporal auras” and “looms” and “branches on the sacred timeline”.
The new elements are not introduced seamlessly. I haven’t rewatched season one recently, but I don’t buy that the Scottish judge Dox, the lady from Good Omens, and that asshole X-5 or Brad or whatever his name was, wouldn’t have featured into season one based on how nosy they all are. I absolutely believe that Ke Huy Quan could be an insane tech guy just left alone to his own devices for thousands of years, fixing time travel devices for a faceless army. What an excellent piece of casting. That guy is great, I’ve mentioned how much I love him before. If you want someone to just rattle off boring exposition until the sun dies out, there’s nobody more charming. That’s why I love Everything Everywhere. They explain the plot like seven different times, and he does most of those, and I love each explanation.
So, quick plot breakdown so we’re on the same page: Last season Loki got arrested by time travel police, enlisted to help arrest himself, met a lot of hims, fell in love with one of them, met the man at the end of time, and bonded with Owen Wilson. In season two, Loki is disconnected from time and has to retether himself, which he does. Then he has to track down X-5, a TVA agent that goes rogue and takes on his life as an actor on the sacred timeline (All TVA agents are variants of real people with their memories erased) while his boss, Dox, and her crew, try to bomb all the branched timelines that the TVA is now allowing to grow. They used to prune these timelines, which killed billions in the process. But the Temporal Loom is not built for branches to keep growing, and Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) has to fix this so the TVA doesn’t explode. In order to do this he needs to open the blast shields, and to do that he needs the “Temporal Aura” of the man who invented the TVA, He Who Remains. So Loki and Owen Wilson track down Renslayer, who ran things last season, and that dastardly orange clock Miss Minutes, who are both in the 1800’s and separately trying to seduce Victor Timely, a stuttering variant of He Who Remains with Einstein-level intelligence. He gets brought back to the TVA and turns to spaghetti trying to fix everything, while Renslayer and the clock crush Dox and her crew in an orange energy box because they’ve decided to be good people at the last second. Then those two both die right before the Temporal Loom explodes and launches everyone into episode five, where time is different and Owen Wilson sells jet skies. Weird show? You bet, but there’s more. Fun? Yeah, kinda. I liked it. Anyway, more plot.
So Loki assembles all the sacred timeline versions of his friends, who are all exploring fun activities like being a doctor in 2012, selling jet skies in 2022, or being an author or breaking out of Alcatraz in I can’t remember, to help him get back to the TVA when he starts time slipping again. It doesn’t work. He time slips back to when everyone died, spends centuries learning science to get the loom fixed. It doesn’t work. Eventually he makes his way back to He Who Remains and learns that the loom is a failsafe that will only keep the sacred timeline safe, and Loki’s only time slipping because He Who Remains counted on him to stop Sylvie from killing him and breaking time. Instead Loki destroys the loom and takes all the strands of time spaghetti and manifests a new fancy green outfit and goes to the center of time and brings life back to the multiverse spaghetti. And now Loki sits at the center of his multiverse spaghetti tree, finally having found his purpose, and everyone else is going to go about their lives and maybe if you’re Kang, get recast or replaced by Doctor Doom.
Anyway it ended pretty good. I’ll say it’s definitely good they’re going to make their shows like shows now. The sudden new stuff between seasons and the fact that all twelve episodes are one story that should’ve been a full season make it feel a bit more jarring and abrupt, but overall I liked it. Fun stuff.

4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Did I do a review for this one? I did, didn’t I? It’s alright, isn’t it? I haven’t rewatched it, and I already rewatched Quantumania, so now that my journalistic integrity is secure I’ll go back to putting in less effort. My thoughts on this one have not changed. I thought it was too long, I’m sick of Star Lord and how James Gunn and Chris Pratt unite to make him the particular way he is, and even though it was sad and tragic, I thought Rocket’s depressed animal friends that get killed were weird to look at. It may be the point, but I didn’t like them. Overall it’s a solid movie. Not my favorite comic book movie of all time, but a story I enjoyed much more than the second one. I think it did get a little obvious to me as I was writing that review that James Gunn has been using the same “escape a big exploding thing” third act sequence in all of his superhero movies. Oh, and the villain is excellent in this. Great stuff. Adam Warlock wasn’t bad either. I liked that he just came in and out whenever and was just kind of there and unaffected by plot until he had to be. It’s an alright movie, but not my favorite, and not as good as The Suicide Squad by a country kilometer.
UPDATE: Everything above that I said I no longer agree with, except for the unsettling look of Rocket’s weird friends. Technically I shouldn’t be changing my opinion so drastically a year later, I’m supposed to rank the year at the end and look back and disagree with myself. But boy, I just rewatched it and I fucking love it man. I think it may be the best of the trilogy. I don’t mind the Chris Prattness as much. I think Gunn managed to perfectly stick the landing with the Gamora thing after she fell in love with Quill a bit too quickly and died. And I’m biased because I love the song, but the ending with “Dog Days Are Over” still makes me tear up. I can’t believe James Gunn was able to make a movie so weird and gross and beautiful and inventive. It feels super unique, even within the trilogy. And maybe I’m just in love with him right now because the Superman trailer just dropped. Hard to say. But I knew I needed to correct my mistake here.

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
I reviewed this one already in a Ruddtrospective. Which one? #26, I think. So if you want more in depth thoughts, go there. But holy cow, what a fantastic movie. Never did I think a TMNT movie would be one of my favorite comic book movies of a year. Not because I dislike the characters, but because I’d only seen the Michael Bay produced ones and assumed that had killed the franchise. But it has not! Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have once again brought an excellent superhero property out into the world, except this time it’s not fucked up like The Boys. Or it is, but in a PG way. It’s a great movie. The animation is great, the soundtrack is great, the cast is great, I loved it all. Funny and fantastic and just such a great great great great time. Watch this if you haven’t. I don’t have a lot more to say. It’s infinitely better than Mario, which definitely made way more money, but who cares? This movie rules.

2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
I mean, come on. What other movie would be my favorite on this list? Though it’s closer than you’d think. Like I said, this is a weird year in terms of scaling between the rankings. There’s a vast difference in quality between The Flash and Secret Invasion, which is the bottom, and TMNT and Spider-Verse, the top. I did not do a full review of Across the Spider-Verse when it came out because I had just moved into my new house and was super exhausted when I initially saw it and wanted to sit on my thoughts a bit more. I have since seen it many more times. Just like the first one, it is excellent. I like it as much, if not more than the first, but I want to watch them back to back and see how that changes my opinion. I’ve seen them both so many times, and the visuals are just so drop-dead gorgeously painstakingly animated.
I fall more in love with the different animation styles each time, as well as the way they use Spider-Man’s strict editorial edicts that keep his stories all going a certain way as a universal rule for Miles to fight against to save his dad. I think that’s super interesting. There’s a scene in the Spider-Citadel on Spider-Man 2099’s Earth where a bunch of different spider-people make a bunch of quips at once and you see all their dumb jokes in word bubbles above them. This felt so much like a comic book, and a very Spider-Man one at that. I loved seeing Donald Glover show up in live action just because. I think my favorite new Spider-Man variant in this, though I love most of them (Spider-Woman, 2099, Spider-Punk, Spider-Man India, Ben Reilly, all great) might be Spider-Byte, the VR spider-person voiced by Amandla Stenberg. She’s cool.
I know a lot of people didn’t like that this ended on a cliffhanger. I loved it. I knew going in that this would be a part two and I wasn’t thrown off, so maybe that’s why. I am bummed to hear that all the animators on this got worked so hard and worried that the third one won’t be as good or they’ll continue to mistreat their employees. This is a fantastic movie, but so was TMNT and Seth Rogen went out of his way to make sure everyone was treated fairly.
Anyway, I love the villain. The Spot! What a perfect choice from the comics, I love to see a C-list villain be given an A-tier story or at least be highlighted and given the respect they haven’t been in the past. My favorite Spider-Man movies highlight the villains we never see. Homecoming, Far From Home, Morbius, this one. Into the Spider-Verse‘s two main villains are Doc-Ock and Kingpin, but also highlights the Prowler, an underused villain. So yeah. And Jason Schwartzman was also an excellent choice to voice the Spot. I liked the Da Vinci era Vulture too, and really enjoyed seeing the return of Mahershala Ali. What a fantastic movie. I wish John Mulaney and Nick Cage had been in this one, but it looks like they may be in the next one.

1. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off
As long as I can remember, I’ve been deeply and intensely in love with the six book graphic novel series, Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness, Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, Scott Pilgrim vs the Universe, and Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour. They’re excellent books about Canadians in their 20’s, some of whom have Vegan superpowers and ninja abilities. Everyone can also do fun insane video game fights in real life. It’s an excellent encapsulation of everything I love about comic books and stories in general. The movie is also pretty good too. When this was announced, I was overjoyed. I was expecting they would just include all the elements from the books that I loved and wanted to see adapted. Instead, they flipped the story on its head and really changed the narrative, using what we already know to craft a new story. Spoilers for this, it’s brilliant.
In the original story, Scott Pilgrim is dating a high schooler named Knives Chao when he meets the girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers. He cheats on Knives and then breaks up with her and learns that in order to be with Ramona, he has to defeat her seven evil exes. He does this, but almost loses Ramona, though they do stay together in the end. In this, the first episode adapts beat for beat the story of the first book. Then everything changes. Scott Pilgrim goes to fight Matthew Patel, the first evil ex, and is immediately killed and turned into coins. And the second episode is Scott’s funeral. Suddenly, the main character, and the man who was always an idiot and unlikable in his own story (In a lovable way, in my opinion) has been taken out of his own story. He’s not really dead. He was taken into a portal by an older version of Scott that doesn’t want him to date Ramona. And Ramona is left to solve the mystery of Scott’s disappearance and investigate and take on her own evil exes, one by one. It’s a fascinating reversal of the story I knew and loved, and one that takes things in a whole new direction. I loved it. Every single second.
And the anime style so perfectly suits the style of universe this is. My favorite thing about the books is Bryan Lee O’Malley’s excellent art style, and the animation does a good job not only presenting that in a new style, but also building on the universe we knew with more opportunities for the excellent cast of the movie to do their thing and be amazing. There are so many great bits in this series that perfectly work with everything we’ve had up to this point. The Lucas Lee/Gideon Graves montage of becoming besties, the in-universe Scott Pilgrim movie written by Young Neil that is the story of the books and leads Todd to leave Envy Adams for Wallace Wells after falling deeply in love, the fact that all the paparazzi in this universe are ninjas, the cameo from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the fact that the Scott Pilgrim movie they’re making is directed by “Edgar Wrong” and that whole episode is a mockumentary. Every bit of this show, I love. I don’t even mind that there’s not much Scott Pilgrim in it, because the show isn’t any less interesting or funny without him. And then the movie dies and gets reworked as a musical, which is possibly a joke about how many adaptations of this story there’ve been.
Also because Scott “dies” in the first episode, Matthew Patel doesn’t, and he goes back to the League of Evil Exes and usurps Gideon as the leader, which leads Gideon to go to the only person he has left for help, his high school girlfriend, Julie Powers. All great fun ideas and wonderful additions. What an unbelievably magnificent piece of television.

If you read all of this and you’ve seen some to none of these movies, odds are you were confused. Sorry if I was vague and didn’t say much in terms of context for some things and gave too much context for others; this is how I write. Anyway, that was your 2023 guide for all things superheroes. The end of year general movie rankings post is on its way. Thanks for reading. Merry Holidays.