So far, 53 movies have grossed in excess of $1 billion at the box office (without taking inflation into account). While all 50 are considered successes by their respective studios, the same can't be said for moviegoers with discriminating tastes and a fondness for high-quality entertainment. In fact, quite a bit of the films that racked up seven figures in ticket sales are surprisingly horrendous. So we decided to focus on the cream of the diamond-plated crop. From superheroes to dinosaurs to Jedi, the gang's all here.
12. Joker
Amazingly enough, after three previous powerhouse and unforgettable takes on the infamous villain, Joaquin Phoenix managed to come up with a fresh new spin for movie houses. The 2019 version, the first not to share the screen with the Bat-Man, provides more insight into what drives the arch-criminal but, impressively enough, without completely doing away with the air of mystery that surrounds him. However, it's worth noting that he does do away with the character's signature color: purple.
Unlike his predecessors, this Joker is a chain-smoking loner, with neither henchmen nor a love interest. He's also sorely lacking in both charisma and aggressive tendencies -- at least, initially. But when he finally "finds himself" a truly chilling monster is born.
Though Phoenix has yet to win an Oscar, he's been nominated three times and is the early favorite to take home the Best Actor award in February, which would make him the second actor (after Heath Ledger) to snag an Academy Award trophy for the role.
The R-rated Joker bagged plenty of critical acclaim -- and controversy -- to go with its $619 million in global earnings -- after only two weeks in theaters. Joker received an eight-minute standing ovation following its screening at the Venice Film Festival, copping the event's top prize, the Golden Lion award, in the process.
At $1.062 billion and counting, the villain's origin story has since become the top-grossing R-rated film of all time and the first to gross ten figures at the box-office. It's also the third-highest grossing DC movie of all time, surpassing all but billion-selling PG-13 hits The Dark Knight Rises and Aquaman. Joker has even outsold all of the previous movies featuring the title character (including the Oscar-winning and billion-grossing The Dark Knight). Amazingly enough, Joker has also out-grossed The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey; former highest-grossing movie of all time, Jurassic Park; The Phantom Menace; animated franchise-starter Despicable Me; and Disney hits, Zootopia, Finding Dory, On Stranger Tides and the live-action versions of both Aladdin and Alice in Wonderland -- and it did so without a 3-D release or screenings in China.
11. Maverick
More than three decades after losing both his best friend and the title of Top Gun at the US Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor Program, Lt. Pete Mitchell is ordered to return to the vaunted school in order to prepare a group of flyboys (and girls) for what will likely prove to be a suicide mission. Worse, is the fact that Mitchell's aforementioned friend's son is one of the pilots.
10. Jurassic World
9. The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight's importance cannot be overestimated. I'm not referring to the film's impact on Acadamy Awards policy, wherein it's failure to receive an Oscar nomination resulted in the immediate expansion of the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten. Knight's most significant contribution to not only comic book films, but to comic books themselves, is the explanation it provides for the existence of Gotham City's many flamboyant supervillains. Though only the Joker, Two-Face and the Scarecrow make their presences known (and never use those names, thankfully), the film suggests that the members of the Caped Crusader's infamous Rogue's Gallery were inspired by one thing: the Batman himself.
The Dark Knight embraces the precedent set by Batman Begins in respecting the fact that some moviegoers and comics readers have brains.
8. The Dark Knight Rises
I don't know how Batman Returns scored an 80% on Rotten Tomatoes. What's even more unbelievable is the fact that The Dark Knight Rises features a lot of the same elements of that bum-fight (after having sucked all of the silliness out of them). Think about it: They are the only two Batman movies to showcase Catwoman; both also spotlight a villain who attempts a public takeover of Gotham City -- the Penguin ran for mayor while Bane hijacked the town with a nuclear bomb; and each criminal mastermind also makes his home in the Gotham sewer system. It's funny -- Batman Returns, the beginning of the end for Batman movie greatness, inspired the best film ever about the Caped Crusader.
The Dark Knight Rises is so good that it's easier to complain about the things that bug me than to list everything that went right. Not even "went right". Because this film is so more than you could imagine to ask for. If you'd written a wish list of all of the things that you'd like to see in an action/comic book/fantasy/adventure film in 2011, you'd never have dreamed this up.
It sucked that Bane was cheated out of his origin. The fact that he grew up in prison in the midst of bigger, stronger, vicious psychos is a big part of what made him so impressive. Was that just to surprise people who already knew the story?? You just robbed Peter to pay Paul.
Rises builds on the realism of the first two Dark Knight installments and combines it with an impressive amount of re-watchability. It's possible to make a better comic book film. But in the four years since its release it hasn't happened.
Inspired by the 1993 "Knightfall" storyline, the final chapter of The Dark Knight trilogy explores Batman's greatest trial. Retired for seven years, an older and battered Bruce Wayne is forced to hit the streets again when a stronger, smarter criminal launches a hostile takeover of his beloved Gotham, killing several citizens and hospitalizing the Batman's longtime ally, James Gordon, in the process. A mysterious, hulking criminal-genius known only as Bane shows up in Gotham and promptly empties Bruce Wayne's bank accounts. Not satisfied with merely crippling him financially, Bane faces off against Wayne, whose true identity he'd deduced, in physical combat which culminates in him snapping the latter's back. He also commandeers much of the Bat's equipment and locks him in the brutal prison in which he himself was an inmate before heading back to Gotham to empty its jails (and Blackgate prison), trap the GCPD underground and cordon the city off from the outside world.
As if things weren't bad enough, Wayne's oldest ally and most loyal friend, Alfred Pennyworth, quits in protest over what he views as his employer's suicidal life-mission.
7. Skyfall
Skyfall is the first, and only, James Bond film to gross $1 billion at the box office, and to date, the last worth watching. It marks the onscreen 50th anniversary of the character that Sean Connery made legendary and appropriately, takes a look back. While the filmmakers knew better than to deliver an origin story, we get more information about Bond's past than ever. Goldeneye revealed that Bond was an orphan and Skyfall shows off his family home in Scotland -- replete with his parents' grave markers and a games keeper who knew him as a boy.
Skyfall bears many similarities to Bond's first real cinematic challenger, 1996's Mission: Impossible: Several intelligence agents are killed by one of their own, a former comrade, who plans to sell a classified list of undercover operatives on the black market; the hero gets the girl -- a bad girl -- temporarily, but she's eventually shot to death by her real man; and the hero has a fight on top of a speeding train.
There's a moment in which Bond approaches a metaphorical fork in the road. His choice between continuing his new life and reverting back to what he knows parallels the filmmakers' opportunity to proceed with relatively newfound artistic integrity or to devolve into the same old, moronic Austin Powers-styled dishwater they'd embraced for decades. They chose to make Spectre. Smh
6. The Age of Ultron
The Age of Ultron is only a disappointing follow-up to The Avengers because The Avengers set the bar ridiculously high.
Ultron isn't necessarily profound but AI researchers would do well to view it as the latest in a long line of cautionary tales.
5. Black Panther
Infinity War was the biggest money-maker of 2018. But unlike Infinity War, Black Panther wasn't just a movie -- it was an event. And a cultural touchstone. And a watershed moment for big-budget filmmaking. It's no fluke that it's the only comic book film to nab a Best Picture nomination (And it actually went home with three statuettes!).
Black Panther, even more than The Dark Knight, elevates the comic book movie to a genre that's capable of actually saying something. The film's complex social commentary far exceeds any other installment in the wildly successful MCU while still managing to become the third highest-grossing movie of all time in North America (fourth ever since Endgame strong-armed the movie business in 2019) and rack up $1.34 billion at the global box office.
T'Challa, who protects his people under the guise of the legendary Black Panther, finally returns home to the seemingly third-world African nation Wakanda as the heir apparent following the death of his father, King T'Chaka, in Civil War.
Meanwhile, T'Challa's American-born cousin, Erik Stevens, is on a collision course with the new monarch, steadily inching his way to his ancestral home with single-minded determination. After becoming a Navy SEAL and graduating from MIT, Stevens honed his skills as a warrior in Afghanistan and other hot spots around the globe, picking up the nickname "Killmonger" (a reference to his considerable body count) along the way. His military career also includes black-ops missions in which he helped to destabilize governments.
With assistance from black market arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (first seen in The Age of Ultron) and Tilda Johnson, Stevens uses his skills to steal (or liberate) two Wakanda artifacts from a London museum. One of the items, a weapon, is revealed to be made of vibranium - the same Wakandan material that comprises Black Panther's suit and Captain America's shield.
After murdering both of his accomplices, Stevens makes his way to Wakanda, where he reveals his native name (N'Jadaka) and the fact that he's of royal blood (as the son of King T'Chaka's brother) and thereby eligible to challenge T'Challa's claim to the throne. Following his defeat of T'Challa in ritual combat, N'Jadaka does indeed assume the Wakandan throne and announces his intention to distribute the country's advanced technology and weaponry (based mainly on vibranium) to the African diaspora across the globe so that the world's Black population can rise up against white regimes. T'Challa, beaten to within an inch of his life and presumed dead, and his loyal supporters initiate a Wakandan civil war in order to stop the new king from inciting an international race war.
The central conflict in Black Panther stems from the ideological differences between T'Challa and Stevens. The former is a staunch isolationist who continues Wakanda's previous rulers' policy of disguising the advanced nation as a third-world country, in part so as not to share their priceless reserves of vibranium that not only powers Wakandan technology but also bestows enhanced abilities upon the Black Panther. Stevens, on the other hand, not only wants to reveal Wakanda's true nature, his lifelong dream has been to expand the kingdom into an empire that dominates the rest of the world as insurance against the subjugation of Black people. T'Challa also acts as a stand-in for Black Africans while Stevens represents African-Americans, whom he views as being abandoned, historically, by the former.
Fittingly for a story about Native Africans, the cast is almost entirely comprised of Black actors.
Black Panther marks the third collaboration (all critical and commercial smashes) between writer/director Ryan Coogler and co-star Michael B. Jordan, placing them among the ranks of legendary cinematic teams such as Martin Scorcese/Robert DeNiro, Spike Lee/Denzel Washington and Tim Burton/Johnny Depp. And with his scene-stealing turn in BP, Jordan proves that he's just as adept at portraying villains as he is heroes.
4. Infinity War
"They" say that the book is always better than the movie. Well, I read the comic book series that inspired Infinity War years ago and I'm telling you straight -- that theory doesn't apply here. I more or less knew what would happen beforehand and my eyes were still glued to the screen. I say more or less because some story changes were made between comic and movie. Doctor Strange is much, much better in the comics but it's Thanos' story and his screen incarnation is miles above the version in the source material. He's more than anybody could ever reasonably hope for. It's fitting that Thanos killed Loki with his bare hands in the beginning of the story and hopefully it symbolizes the new era of MCU villains obliterating the old. Seeing the Mad Titan enforce his will on the universe made me wonder why we had to put up with Thor's lame brother for four whole movies when villains like this (and Killmonger) were possible.
I've seen Infinity War plenty of times already and I like it even more than I did the first time I watched it. There was some question as to whether a live-action Thanos would or even could do the original comics version justice. And the fact is that the iteration of the character that we see in Infinity surpasses all the ones that came before. But there are standouts on the other side of the war as well.
The pressure was on for the MCU's 18th feature to deliver on 10 years worth of build-up. And Infinity War certainly met the challenge. The Guardians of the Galaxy have never been better -- not even in their own movies. Quill and Rocket outshone the vast majority of the other characters onscreen. The two of them really did have the best lines. Infinity also provides the greatest showcase for Thor. It's a huge step up from the Thor trilogy, in particular. He really does emerge as the hero, albeit an unsuccessful one.
3. Civil War
2. The Avengers
While the Dark Knight trilogy made comic books realistic, The Avengers is the best example of comics brought to life.
Black Widow, Hawkeye, Loki, Colonel Fury, Thor and Captain America all don absolutely ridiculous costumes, but Iron Man and the Hulk steal the show and make up for it. When those two let loose in New York City, it's hard to believe your eyes.
1. Rogue One
The movie was marketed as a "stand-alone Star Wars story". But that's not really true. In reality, Rogue is a prequel and is key to the events that follow. There is also a small acknowledgement of what came before. But fortunately, it's nothing like those pre-Empire movies. Rogue has more in common with The Empire Strikes Back than those things.
If we're lucky and if Lucasfilm is smart, this is a sign of things to come and not a stand-alone great story.
Rogue One isn't just good. It's so well done that it's ALL the prequel that the Star Wars saga needs. It renders Episodes I, II and III completely unnecessary.
Originally Posted 12/27/19
Updated 12/29/22
Updated 8/7/23
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