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The Superhero Movie Grows Up

Watch these as one arc — Raimi's warmth into Nolan's gravity into Logan's elegy and The Batman's rain-soaked noir — the two decades the comic-book film reached for real weight.

Almost all crowd favorites and widely seen, so it's an easy, generous run; Logan and Sin City turn genuinely brutal, and Birdman asks the most as the art-house mirror held up to the whole genre.

• The Dark Knight (2008)
• Batman Begins (2005)
• The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
• The Batman (2022)
• Man of Steel (2013)
• Spider-Man 2 (2004)
• Logan (2017)
• The Avengers (2012)
• Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
• Sin City (2005)
• Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
• Blade (1998) — The overlooked 1998 progenitor that quietly kicked off this whole grown-up era — a brutal, R-rated, neon-noir vampire hunt whose stylized darkness rhymes with Sin City more than you'd remember.
• Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993) — If The Batman's rain-soaked tragedy landed, this is the under-seen animated one to finally pull down — a noir origin of doomed romance and mob-boss murder that got there thirty years earlier.
• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1 (2012) — The elegy for an aging Bruce Wayne that gave Nolan his gravity and Logan its whole mood — the seminal Frank Miller story you forgot you never watched, part one of the arc these films are quoting.
• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2 (2013) — Its brutal second half — the Joker's last stand and Batman versus Superman — is the source The Dark Knight Rises and Logan both bow to, an overlooked capstone to the grown-up comic-book vision.
• Superman (2025) — If Man of Steel and The Batman are on your list, this is the recent Superman to pull down next — a full-weight DC film that skips the origin and treats the icon as someone picking himself up after a real defeat.