Top 10 Superhero Movies That Aren’t Based On Comics

#8 Sky High

Not that many people turned up for Sky High, but can you blame them? It’s not a flop, but the movie had plenty of factors going against it when released in 2005: better superhero movies like Spider-Man 2 and X2 were fresh on everyone’s minds, this was a live-action Disney offering without the Pixar logo plastered across it, and the premise itself seemed so brazenly X-Men meets Harry Potter, that most people assumed this was a leveled up Disney Channel Original Movie idea.

These assumptions ended up being completely unfounded, though, because Sky High was remarkably well done as both a superhero film and a teen comedy divorced from the more tired roundups of the genre that peaked with American Pie and 10 Things I Hate About You (don’t even try to argue She’s the Man disproves that point).

It’s covered in wish-fulfillment, to be fair, and there’s not nearly enough Kurt Russell to justify his top billing. But the characters and their powers are well-realized, the concept is fully explored to important extremes (the dichotomy between hero and sidekick is an interesting, and surprising, choice of themes), and the villain “twist” is genuinely surprising without feeling like an afterthought in the writer’s room. Best of all, it’s a celebration of super movies, rather than a rush to either make fun of them or replicate their success without understanding why we love these films in the first place.