Here's Why 2018 Will Be The Biggest Year For Superhero Movies

Superhero movies were a bigger part of the cinematic landscape than ever in 2017 — from Logan early in the year through Wonder Woman in the summer and Thor: Ragnarok in the fall, some of comics' best-loved characters had critically acclaimed blockbuster adventures. But all that action was just a prelude to 2018, and a huge slate of superhero movies all flexed and ready to keep fans cheering in the aisles all year long. Whether you're into DC or Marvel, whether you prefer the Avengers, Spider-Man, the members of the Justice League, or even Pixar Animation, the studios have lined up at least one superhero movie for you (and quite possibly more than one). We've looked over the release schedule for the year, broken it all down, and rounded up a group of movies coming out that should excite any comic book fan. Here's why 2018 will be the biggest year for superhero movies.

Directed by Ryan Coogler, Black Panther follows the pattern of Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor: Ragnarok in allowing a visionary director to put his own spin on a Marvel movie rather than adhering to a house style. Its combination of high-octane action and African-inspired visual splendor is like nothing else we've seen on screen before. Coogler is responsible for the critically acclaimed Fruitvale Station and the successful Rocky franchise revival Creed, both of which star Michael B. Jordan, who plays the main villain in Black Panther, the strikingly named Erik Killmonger. Jordan is only one piece of an impressive (and almost entirely black) cast that includes veterans Angela Bassett and Forest Whitaker, alongside popular up-and-comers including Lupita N'yongo and Daniel Kaluuya. Basically, everything about this movie is amazing — including the stellar reviews and massive box office.

This is it: The event every Marvel movie has been building to since 2012. The Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and even Ant-Man join forces to take on the ultimate threat to the universe in Avengers: Infinity War. Thanos, who first appeared in the mid-credits scene of The Avengers, has been working in the background in the five years since, gathering the Infinity Stones that will give him ultimate power over space and time. Now all of the heroes (and most likely some former villains like Loki and Nebula) must unite to stop him from ruling the universe—or destroying it. This is going to be an epic like no superhero movie before has been, and it's in the capable hands of the Russo Brothers, who directed one of the MCU's best films, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and handled a large cast of superheroes surprisingly well in Captain America: Civil War.

The Incredibles, Pixar's 2004 superhero comedy, is always worth a revisit. It might be the best comic book movie not based on a comic book, instead mixing the tone and visual style from classic superhero comics with the tropes (and even some aspects of the score) of the classic James Bond films and incorporating all of that seamlessly into a comedy about family and the value of being different. At the time of its release, a sequel seemed likely, but so many years passed that fans had given up. Now it's finally happening, and the cool thing about animation is that you can make a sequel 14 years later, set it immediately after the original, and still bring back the same cast. Director Brad Bird is also returning, and everything's lining up for Incredibles 2 to recapture the magic of the original.

Not many details have emerged about this adaptation of the popular Spider-Man villain, and occasional anti-hero, Venom. However, we know that Tom Hardy is playing the part, and he's a great actor, so that speaks well of the film. Also, director Ruben Fleischer first proved he could effectively mix humor and violence in 2009's Zombieland, so if that's the direction this film takes, it could be the Deadpool of the Sony Spider-Man universe. It's hard to imagine how you can introduce Venom in a film that doesn't include Spider-Man, but hopefully they can divert attention from that problem with a deft script and plenty of action. Regardless, a film about a more violent character with Spider-Man's powers and minimal moral code and even less of a grip on reality certainly has the potential to be very entertaining.

Aquaman (Jason Momoa) is one of the more appealing characters in Justice League, and in just over a year he gets his own movie to swim around in. We don't have a lot of details about the story, but the rest of the cast is pretty much everything you could want from an Aquaman movie. Amber Heard will return as Mera, a character she played in a brief cameo in Justice League. Patrick Wilson will play Aquaman's evil half-brother the Ocean Master, while Yahya Abdul-Mateen II appears as co-villain Black Manta. Willem Dafoe plays the wise Atlantean Vulko, with Nicole Kidman and Temuera "Jango Fett" Morrison as Aquaman's parents. On top of all that, the movie's directed by James Wan, who launched three popular horror franchises (Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring) and more than proved his action-directing mettle on Furious 7.

It seems strange here in the wake of Justice League that more than a year will pass before we get another DC Comics movie, but with the landscape of superhero movies as impressive as it is in 2018, there will be plenty to distract even the biggest DC fans along the way.

Now that the DC Universe Animated Original Movies are more than a decade old, they've decided to return to their first subject. 2007's Superman: Doomsday was the first release in that line, and condensed the 1992-93 comics storyline of Superman's death and return into a single 75-minute feature. Now the time has come to give it a fuller, two-part treatment, starting with Death of Superman in late 2018. This animated feature will tell the story of Superman's battle with Doomsday and how he sacrifices his life to save Metropolis, and the following year will see the story completed in Reign of the Supermen, which will feature the various pretenders who popped up in Superman's absence and presumably lead up to the return of the real deal.