Great Superhero Movies That Aren't Marvel Or DC

In many ways, Darkman owes more to the Universal Pictures monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s than it does to comic book superheroes — and that's entirely by design. Director Sam Raimi was inspired by those classic monster films to create something a little more pulpy than your average tights-clad vigilante, and the result is a quirky, darkly funny instant classic. Liam Neeson stars as Dr. Peyton Westlake, a scientist working to create artificial skin for burn victims. Disaster strikes when he gets mixed up in underhanded dealings and is brutally burned and beaten by gangsters. Subjected to a radical procedure that severs his spinothalamic tract, Westlake is utterly transformed. Unrecognizable, unable to feel pain, and granted enormous strength by adrenal overload, he is out for revenge.

Visually, Raimi is keen to play up various comic book elements of the story. Darkman's costume riffs off Will Eisner's The Spirit and the works of Frank Miller. His gruesome disfigurement borrows from a variety of heroes: It's a little bit Two-Face, a little bit The Thing, and a whole lot of comic book-y "science," what with the mask he makes of his own face with his experimental synthetic skin. In other ways, though, the film plays like a cross between Claude Rains in The Invisible Man and a Road Runner cartoon. It has a tone all its own, and it still works 30 years after its release. No wonder Raimi was given Spider-Man to play with, a decade after Darkman.

Based on the comic by James O'Barr, itself inspired by his own personal tragedies, The Crow tells the story of a musician named Eric who returns from the dead to seek revenge on the criminals who murdered him. From its love of black leather to its chart-topping soundtrack, it was every 1990s goth kid's dream superhero movie.

The Crow's plot is a fairly straightforward revenge tale, but director Alex Proyas' visuals transform it into a cryptically magical fever dream. From the dark, half-ruined streets of the film's version of Detroit to the swooping first-person crow's-eye views, it's full of shots you won't soon forget.

Then there's Brandon Lee, who plays Eric Draven with an unforgettable vulnerability. His performance surely would have made him a massive star, had he not died in an on-set accident just days before shooting was completed. Lee's death adds a layer of infamy to The Crow, but even beyond that, it stands as a compelling, surprisingly hopeful take on superheroes. Efforts to produce a remake have stumbled repeatedly — that's just how tough of an act The Crow is to follow.

You hear the word "grounded" thrown around a lot when filmmakers are trying to drum up buzz for their superhero stories. In some cases, it's code for "we took this typical superhero story and dimmed the lights a bit," while in others it frustratingly translates to "we took a superhero story and made it boring under the guise of realism." It's rare that a truly grounded superhero tale comes along, and even more rare that it works. Unbreakable is one of those rare cases, and still one of director M. Night Shyamalan's best films.

Bruce Willis stars as a seemingly ordinary man who, after a catastrophic train accident, realizes that he is invulnerable to just about any form of injury or illness. His own tests on himself, combined with his son's encouragement and the wisdom of a mysterious comic book expert with brittle bone disease, leads him to believe that superheroes might just be real.

The way Shyamalan's characters quietly wrestle with the strange truth of their lives makes Unbreakable a realistic take on superheroes that actually works. Rather than weigh it down with grim dialogue and grinding music, Shyamalan lets his actors speak for themselves, rooting the superhero tale in family and personal struggle. Add in a striking visual sensibility, and you've got a classic on your hands. 

Director Brad Bird's Pixar classic is often described as the best Fantastic Four movie ever made, but in some ways, that's doing it a disservice. Yes, The Incredibles owes quite a lot to Marvel Comics' iconic super-team in that the Four defined stories of families with superpowers negotiating the realities of fighting crime and raising children. But Bird isn't just doing a riff on the FF here. No, The Incredibles succeeds because it takes that core concept and uses it to build something altogether new.

Almost everyone going to the movies is at least vaguely superhero literate, whether they realize it or not. Bird uses that to build a world all his own, in which superheroes were once a glorious part of society, but have since been relegated to outsider status. That tension lurking underneath the main plot establishes the sense of a wider universe, and the whip-smart storytelling takes off from there like a hyperactive kid with super-speed. The Incredibles is both a witty commentary on superheroes and a heartfelt story of a family trying to do good, and that makes it something special all its own.

Judge Dredd, a character rooted in long-running British comics anthology 2000 AD, is the idea of the machismo-laden supercop who takes the law into his own hands taken to its logical extreme. As judge, jury, and executioner of his dystopian super-city, he is brutal, effective, and disturbing. That is very much by design — but put him in the right story and he makes a decent enough superhero. Just, you know, not one you like very much, or particularly want to be represented by.

The 2012 Dredd film was the second major film adaptation of the character, and while the first felt far too removed from the source material, the second successfully leans into the outsize circumstances of Dredd's life and work. The world of the film, inhabited by a sterling Karl Urban in the title role, is perfectly bizarre, while the extended, close-quarters fight that defines the plot feels like a super-sized version of Assault on Precinct 13. It's a film that deserves more attention than it got, and a superhero story of uncommon style.