Could Superhero Films Become Hollywood's Highest-Earning Genre of All Time?

Right now, the superhero movie is the top grosser of the year (Captain America: Civil War’s $377.5 million domestically just passed Deadpool’s $363 million) and the reigning champ for Memorial Day weekend (X-Men: Apocalypse, $80 million). The genre has been on a roll for 14 years — or three big-screen Spider-Mans ago. The only thing standing in its way of being the most dominant genre in history is history.

We crunched the numbers for roughly the past 100 years to figure out how the superhero movie stacks up among Hollywood’s all-time top genres. Here’s what we discovered.

If only Hulk could sing…

After examining box-office stats over the movie century, we learned that the costumed, crime-busting set has topped the year-ending rankings five times, in 1989 (Batman), 2002 (Spider-Man), 2007 (Spider-Man 3), 2008 (The Dark Knight), and 2012 (The Avengers). This puts the superhero film in the league of the biblical epic (four annual No. 1 champs), and right behind the likes of the war movie (six) and the musical (10).

Hulk and his fellow Avengers account for two of the top 10 highest-grossing films (Photo: Disney/Marvel)

John Wayne is no Bruce Wayne

For as often as the superhero movie is compared to the Western, and for as many Westerns were produced by Hollywood through the 1960s, it was surprising to see how few Westerns were broadly popular in the way the superhero film is. Only 1923’s The Covered Wagon and 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid led their box-office years; only the 1920s, the 1940s, and the 1960s featured even one Western among their respective decades’ top 10 moneymakers.

By comparison, the superhero film accounted for three of the biggest-grossing films of the 2000s, and currently fills four of the 10 spots in the 2010s.

Additionally, the superhero film has placed at least one film in the decade top 10 in three of the last four decades. Larger than life or no, John Wayne was never like that.

‘The Dark Knight,’ which topped the box office in 2008, remains the biggest DC moneymaker of all time (Photo: Warner Bros.)

Also, some genres you may think of as big genres — like, say, the disaster movie? Nope. Never led a year. Never ranked among a decade’s biggest earners. Not a historically epic genre.

Momentum is a superpower

You’ve probably heard (maybe from Steven Spielberg) that genres, like the Western, cycle up and cycle down. But we noticed that, outside of one major exception, genres don’t really cycle back up.

The war movie, for instance, driven by World Wars I and II, Korea, and Vietnam, figured prominently in the 1920s through 1960s. But in the 43 years since the end of the military draft, it has produced only two year-end champs, Saving Private Ryan and American Sniper.

Similarly, the biblical epic hasn’t been wiped out (2004’s The Passion of the Christ remains just ahead of Deadpool as the top-grossing R-rated movie of all-time), but it’s never come close to dominating the way it did the 1950s, when The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, and The Robe told stories fit for then-expanding big screen.

With Les Misérables and the like in recent years, the musical would appear to be healthier than the war movie or the biblical epic, but in reality it hasn’t been a lights-out genre since (1) the advent of sound (when The Jazz Singer, The Singing Fool, and The Broadway Melody topped the box office for back-to-back-to-back years), or (2) the height of the 1960s roadshow movie, a time when The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, and Funny Girl were marketed as special theatrical events, complete with intermissions, programs, and inflated ticket prices. The bottom line is that the musical hasn’t produced a top-grossing movie of the year since 1978 and Grease. The lesson learned is that movie genres are like great-white sharks — they need to keep swimming, or they die.

There is one major exception

That would be the animated film.

From its introduction in 1937, the feature-length animated film has been the most reliably powerful of the Hollywood forms, save the overly generic drama and comedy designations.

The genre, which as The Incredible’s Brad Bird has reminded us is not a genre (though it’s a fine stand-alone category for our tracking purposes), has recorded a year-topping, box-office champ in seven of the nine decades since Walt Disney blew away audiences with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

After Disney’s death in 1966, the animated film faltered. The genre went from The Jungle Book (the No. 1 film of 1967) to virtually nothing — it was a box-office no-show on the year-end and decade charts in the 1970s and 1980s. It wasn’t until 1991′s Beauty and the Beast that the form regained its box-office punch. Since then, it has notched six more annual titles and averaged two movies each among the overall top moneymakers of the 1990s, 2000s, and now 2010s.

It managed a full-fledged comeback where other genres merely show the occasional sign of life perhaps because it was never meant to go away. Audiences like cartoons. Even in the 1970s and 1980s, movies such as The Fox and the Hound did well. They just didn’t do well enough, not when pitted against the hyped-up, live-action cartoon that was Star Wars.

‘Big Hero 6’ combined superheroes and animation and was the 10th highest-grossing film of 2013 (Photo: Disney)

Audiences like cartoons so much it seems unlikely the superhero movie will catch or surpass the genre. The animated film has too much of a head start, and is too broadly popular. An animated film has twice emerged as the top-grossing film of a decade (Bambi for the 1940s; Lady and the Tramp for the 1950s). The superhero movie has never done that. Yet.

The animated film was at its peak in the '40s and '50s. Now, not so much. It’s popular, but it’s not No. 1 anymore. Right now, the top-grossing animated film of the 2010s, Toy Story 3, ranks seventh among this decade’s biggest hits. That’s great, but that’s not No. 1.

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What’s No. 1 is Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and if you count the George Lucas-turned-Disney franchise as its own genre, then maybe that’s the movie that will ultimately prevent the superhero film from complete domination. (If you don’t want to count Star Wars as its own thing, then fine, put its movies under the action-adventure umbrella, and tell the superhero film that’s the one to beat.)

To date, every Star Wars live-action film released has been its year’s top-grossing movie, save 2002’s Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones, which was thwarted by Spider-Man and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and which nobody liked. Twice a Star Wars movie has led all comers in a decade: Star Wars for the 1970s, and The Force Awakens for the 2010s thus far.

There is enough Star Wars material in the works — right now, one new movie a year, starting this year and running through 2020 — to own this decade and get a jump on the next. Clearly, there is more than enough superhero material in the works, too — from both the Marvel and DC rings of the cinematic universe — to manage that feat. The difference is, Star Wars has done it, and is doing it.

‘Guardians of the Galaxy,’ which co-opted sci-fi elements to become a surprise hit, was the No. 3 movie of 2013 (Photo: Disney/Marvel)

So how can the capes keep getting it done? They could take a cue from animation by appropriating and assimilating other genres to prolong their relevance. Superhero films have begun branching out beyond the typical tropes, finding success by adopting the formulas of the political thriller (Captain America: The Winter Soldier), the heist film (Ant-Man), the R-rated gross-out comedy (Deadpool), the space opera (Guardians of the Galaxy), the buddy road-trip movie (the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok), and even animation (The Incredibles, Big Hero 6). And perhaps by 2018, the first installment of Avengers: Infinity War, which promises to bring the cosmos to Earth for a battle royale, can give that year’s Star Wars a run for its money, taking the superhero genre one step closer to Hollywood all-timer status.