The Most Epic Superhero Movie Scene, Every Year Since 1999

Here at Looper, we believe in preparing for every possible scenario, even when it makes us look crazy. For instance, what if a purple bodybuilder from outer space teleports to Earth, checks into a Vegas hotel, and announces that when he wakes up in the morning, he's going to snap his fingers and make half of the superhero movies released since 1999 disappear forever? 

In case this wildly unlikely turn of events comes to fruition, we've made arrangements to avert mass panic: Humanity can simply focus on this list of the most epic scenes of every superhero movie released since 1999. This way, since the aforementioned situation doesn't leave anyone with the time to watch each film in its entirety, we can soak in the most exciting moments before they're snapped out of existence forever. Until they mysteriously blip back in a few years, of course.

What if that oddball apocalypse doesn't come to pass? Well, we'll have created an enjoyable list regardless. Without further ado, let us present the most jaw-dropping, breath-taking, and eye-popping superhero movie scenes from every year since 1999. 

Caution: What follows is positively loaded with massive spoilers for every movie mentioned. The very next thing we're about to do is talk about the ending of a classic, so don't say we didn't warn you.

These days, we expect to see every major comic book character appear in live-action media with the special effects necessary to make their scientifically impossible powers appear utterly and immediately possible. But within the larger scheme of pop culture history, our current status quo is an anomaly. If Superman and Batman's movies proved comic book characters could translate to box office success as long as 50 years of cultural visibility preceded their films, X-Men showed the potential of comparatively untested properties. This was unprecedented, and many moviegoers were still pretty skeptical — especially regarding the portrayal of X-Men characters with particularly weird powersets.

The X-Men originally ranked among Marvel's least popular characters until the team rebooted with a new roster (including the Canadian ruffian Wolverine) in 1975. By the 1990s, only Spider-Man held a candle to the X-Men's popularity and bankability. So by the time the millennium rolled around, the sight of Hugh Jackman menacing bigoted thugs with his shiny hand razors elicited quite a bit of enthusiasm, and Hollywood learned they can definitely make truckloads of money off movies that mainly appeal to comic book nerds.

Nobody would be crazy enough to write a character who breaks into a major Washington D.C. government building and attacks a prominent public official today. Of course, terrorism was still a loaded topic in 2003. But at the time, it was easier to ignore the real-world implications of a presidential assassination attempt when the perpetrator is an ostensibly magical blue imp. These days, a dude who looks like a circus performer threatening Congress doesn't seem so far-fetched. 

At the start of the second X-Men movie, Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) tumbles and teleports across the West Wing, dispatches a score of Secret Service agents, and inadvertently makes a prescient statement about the future of superheroes in film. By the mid-'90s, Nightcrawler had moved on from the X-Men in the comics. He mostly appeared in that era's lower-profile Excalibur series, and only showed up in a handful of episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series, the foundational text for a generation of X-fans. But his provisional B-lister status didn't keep him out of X2, nor did it prevent his visually complicated powers from appearing in their fullest-possible glory. 

In some respects, Nightcrawler in X2 predicts Guardians of the Galaxy, WandaVision, and plenty of other current Marvel and DC projects that push secondary characters to the forefront. If X-Men didn't entirely drive the point home, X2 demonstrates that Batman and Spider-Man's brand-recognition is not essential for a sufficiently awesome superhero film.   

Much has already been written regarding Christopher Nolan's rehabilitation of the Batman film franchise. But this sequence goes especially far towards that goal, separating the Nolan trilogy from every previous on-screen iteration of Batman with genuine panache.

As Carmine Falcone's minions move concealed drugs by the Gotham City docks, Bruce Wayne doesn't approach them head-on with a flashy, tech-based assault, like he might in a Tim Burton film. He doesn't give them a warning and remind them of the difference between right and wrong, like Adam West's Batman would do. Instead, he stalks and brutalizes them as if they were helpless, half-naked teenagers in a slasher film.

Batman Begins emphatically declares the previous era of a stoic, aloof Batman and his empire of merchandizing has come to a close. Going forward, the Caped Crusader feels more in line with the spirit of Frank Miller and Chuck Dixon's comics, and less like a guy in a rubber suit, easily outshined by flamboyant, gimmicky villains played by better actors. In this scene, Christian Bale officially becomes the first post-Adam West Batman who doesn't wind up playing second banana to the bad guys in his own movie. 

Hollywood botched multiple Marvel adaptions in 2007. The year was part of an awkward period, when superheroes were a hot Hollywood commodity but the MCU hadn't yet come to fruition. Rather than dwell upon unpleasant experiences like Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, the final entry in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, or the first Nicolas Cage Ghost Rider, let's take a gander at a movie that didn't bum us out: TMNT, one of the better feature-length Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles adventures. 

TNMT takes place years after Leonardo embarks upon a leave of absence to soul-search and hone his craft. Meanwhile, his three brothers are forced to figure out what to do with themselves during their involuntary hiatus from crimefighting. Michelangelo finds work performing at children's birthday parties, Donatello operates an IT helpline, and Raphael decides to screw it, and continues his crimefighting career under an alias. When Leo gets back to town, he's not pleased to see another, apparently less-restrained vigilante hopping around, and so commences the long-time-coming match between the two most highly-skilled Ninja Turtles.

If The Dark Knight took grimdark superhero media to new heights in 2008, Watchmen inadvertently gestured at its flaws and shouted, "Hey everyone! Look at these flaws!" the following year. The Zack Snyder-directed adaptation slavishly follows Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' touchstone work panel by panel, to the point of calling the necessity of its own existence into question. This goes on right up until the compromised ending, which misses the point of the original story entirely. 

Snyder went to become a fairly prolific director of DC films, and a media personality closely associated with a specific segment of film fandom. Meanwhile, the Watchmen timeline only reemerged in live-action several years later — this time as an acclaimed HBO limited series overseen by Damon Lindelof.   

Not everybody likes Snyder's Watchmen, but nobody knocks Jackie Earle Haley's performance as Walter Kovacs, the original Rorschach. Regardless of how you feel about his  politics, Kovacs kicks off Watchmen with a tirade for the ages, promising to deny politicians and sex workers help, should they ask for it at any point in the foreseeable future. In so doing, he lets us know early that he is actually kind of terrible at being a superhero, even if his one-liner game is utterly top-notch.

In the comics version of Captain America's origin, Steve Rogers begins the tale as a scrawny dweeb who desperately wants to serve his country and punch Hitler in the face. So he undergoes the super soldier treatment, instantly gains a bunch of muscle, and suddenly, everyone considers him a wildly inspiring guy. But Captain America: The First Avenger does not suppose that other military recruits would instantly accept Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) as an admirable superhuman mascot. Instead, they principally consider Cap a walking punchline who siphons stage time away from the dancing girls at USO shows. 

While he does become a super soldier and puts on the signature red, white, and blue outfit earlier in the film, Cap only gains the respect of his peers once he successfully rescues Bucky, and quite a few other prisoners, from a HYDRA base. The First Avenger takes comics mythology a few steps further, and recognizes that symbols do not inspire people in real life: Selfless actions do that. In other words, there's more to being Captain America than science-y muscles and star-spangled spandex.

Robert Downey Jr. appears as Tony Stark in a whole lot of MCU movies. But the Shane Black-directed Iron Man 3 feels like the only film of the lot that focuses more on Tony Stark, billionaire inventor with emotional problems, than it does on Iron Man, the red and yellow suit of armor that shoots lasers. If the end of the Iron Man trilogy diminishes the armor's average screen time, it certainly makes the suit-oriented sequences count.  

Modern superhero movies — especially the MCU — take their fair share of flak for presenting us with loads of mayhem and city-destroying chaos without much evidence to suggest superheroes are actually helping people. Here, Black and company demonstrate how a daring, improbable mid-air rescue can provide just as many thrills as, let's say, a punching contest with General Zod that reduces Metropolis to a smoldering heap of rubble.   

While it was a solid financial success, Avengers: Age Of Ultron also received conflicting reactions from critics and fans. But everyone can agree that this movie gave us the immortal sight of the Avengers all knocking back a few drinks, exchanging quippy observations about life and love, and playfully attempting to prove that their friend and teammate is an insane fraud. Y'know, BFF stuff.

Snappy dialogue and distinctive characterizations are on full display here, reminding the viewer that it is these performances and relationships that give meaning to the MCU's explosive fight scenes, laser battles, and dance-offs. Here, we have a gathering of pop cultural icons and virtually unstoppable ass-kicking machines, just goofing around and being pals. Without humanizing segments like this hammer-lifting contest, these films are just celebrities dressed like action figures standing in front of greenscreens trying to look stressed out.

Fox's X-Men series would release three more movies after 2017. But even if we think The New Mutants took a bigger critical beating than it deserved, we can comfortably state that the earnest, non-Deadpool wing of the franchise should've ended with director James Mangold's masterful Logan. Now that they've reabsorbed his film licensing rights, Marvel Studios essentially has to reboot Wolverine at some point. To do otherwise would be financially irresponsible. But if Hugh Jackman's version of James Howlett had to bite the dust, X-fans can take much solace knowing his last hurrah stands as simultaneously the most brutal and heart-wrenching sequence of any X-Men film, and perhaps any superhero movie ever.

Logan contextualizes superhero movies as part of a cinematic tradition that includes westerns and samurai films. But while its themes border on meta-textual, the story itself resonates as a focused and personal road movie about a telepathic nonagenarian and two folks with razor-blade hands. Frankly, if the kid holding the action figure at the funeral scene doesn't make you cry, we question the existence of your soul.

After Thanos snaps his fingers in Avengers: Infinity War and half the life in the universe — including Spider-Man, Black Panther, Nick Fury, and Doctor  Strange — vanishes, moviegoers mostly understood the provisional nature of the intergalactic purple brute's victory. A major movie studio like Disney wouldn't kill off a whole bunch of its most popular and bankable characters — in fact, a sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) had already been announced. So we knew the good guys would find a way to reverse the snap, leaving it up to directors Anthony and Joe Russo to bring half the universe back from nothingness in a way that felt unexpected and miraculous, even when we all knew it was coming. 

Critics accuse Endgame of convoluted time-travel plot shenanigans, but the Russos really do manage to effectively reverse the Avengers' defeat in Infinity War in what might be the simplest and most direct manner possible. Hulk undoes the snap, Hawkeye's phone rings, a whole bunch of stuff blows up, and once enough time and mayhem has gone by to make us forget about Hawkeye's phone ringing, only then, in an unmatched instance of bonkers fan service, do the erstwhile disappeared heroes portal in to show Thanos what a beating feels like.