Top 10 Superhero Movies That Aren’t Based On Comics

#7 Darkman

For a lot of readers, I expect Darkman to be a deserved favorite. It serves as Sam Raimi’s crucial predecessor to Spider-Man (though with his own original hero), and it does well to evolve Tim Burton’s Batman while at the same time hitting the melancholic chords of Watchmen, which at this point was still just an 80s comic no one expected to ever see on the big screen.

Darkman is a great film and quite ahead of its time to both its merit and downside. The film’s true importance comes from how it paved the way for better, more serious superhero movies, a decade before anyone would actually listen (and Batman Begins wouldn’t release for another 15 years, at that).

Nowadays, we’re saturated with super stories that focus on how powers negatively affect the psyche of our heroes. Darkman was a pioneer in bringing these concepts to life, and Liam Neeson filled the role with an expressive, yet mournful performance that is unmatched for the era. For better or worse, it’s the extreme of both the good and bad when it comes to the gritty, “grimdark” movies fans and critics are still battling to define.