The Definitive Superhero Power Ranking: Hollywood’s 67 Most Valuable Characters

Think staying on top is hard? Try being a superhero in Hollywood.

By the end of the last decade, Iron Man and Captain America commanded the biggest franchise in Hollywood. Wonder Woman had shattered the blockbuster glass ceiling. Black Panther was a cultural phenomenon. And soon, seemingly every comic-book character with a cape, mask or tragic origin story was being handed a movie or TV show (see: Blue Beetle, Morbius and Ms. Marvel).

Today? Tony Stark is dead. Steve Rogers surrendered his shield. Wonder Woman has been grounded. Harley Quinn is in limbo. The Fantastic Four needed their third reboot just to get back in the game.

And yet, there’s Spider-Man, who just swung past Han Solo and Star Wars to the biggest domestic box office of all time. Yes, spandex springs eternal.

After the one-two punch of Iron Man and The Dark Knight in 2008, studios reached deep into their inventories of comic-book properties to feed a seemingly insatiable desire for superheroes on screens big and small, no matter how obscene the amounts of money it took to bring them to life (remember the $200 million spent on Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern?). Then the pandemic hit. The world turned inward as the economics of the industry shifted, and outsized beings of immense strength and ability lost their bulletproof luster.

Today, superheroes are as susceptible to the pitfalls of hubris and ego as any other entertainment property — which makes them even more interesting to examine as an economic and cultural force in Hollywood. 

Case in point: This week, Disney is re-releasing the peak film of the superhero era, 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, with roughly five minutes of new footage — which director Joe Russo has said is “required viewing” to understand the events of the next Avengers movie, December’s gargantuan Avengers: Doomsday. It’s at once a savvy marketing gambit and a blatant attempt to reassert the primacy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s also a reminder of how many of the faces in Endgame have since left the board.

To borrow an overworked expression from The Rock (see No. 59), the hierarchy of power in the superhero universe has changed. Characters who used to sit at the top have receded into retirement, others that appeared moribund just a few years ago seem to be on the rise, and some that showed great promise failed to fly — with or without a cape.

Which leaves one very Hollywood question: Who actually has the (super)power now?

We ranked 67 characters by box office, long-term audience affinity, streaming bona fides, cultural footprint and Hollywood’s willingness to keep betting on them. (You can read about our methodology below the list.) Some of the results are obvious. Quite a few are not.

Let the fights begin.

Be warned: Spoilers follow.

---