All 10 Superhero Multiverse Movies (Including Deadpool & Wolverine), Ranked

Is the multiverse real? Is there another MovieWeb in a parallel universe, reporting how an alternate version of Chris Evans (instead of Robert Downey Jr.) has been cast as the new Doctor Doom? The idea of a multiverse has been discussed in various subjects for centuries, including Greek philosophy. Experts in fields like cosmology and physics have been among the many interested parties, but they have all concluded that it’s more of a philosophical fantasy rather than a scientific fact, simply because it cannot be empirically proven or falsified.

As skeptics and proponents keep fighting, the concept has gained momentum in fiction. Ever since cinema was invented, filmmakers and screenwriters have toyed with the idea of parallel universes.

In recent years, multiverse plots have become more popular thanks to superhero movies. Fans have shown excitement whenever alternate versions of their favorite characters have popped up on screen, so DC and the MCU have milked the hype. The latter’s latest release, Deadpool & Wolverine uses the same concept, but which superhero multiverse movies have been the most impressive?

10 Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

Scott Lang and his family enjoy playing around with science a bit too much. In Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, they do so again, only to get trapped in the Quantum Realm (a subatomic universe that exists outside of space and time). There, they discover a world of strange people and later bump into the warmongering Kang the Conqueror, who intends to conquer the multiverse. In typical superhero movie fashion, they try to stop him.

Kang Is the Saving Grace

According to Box Office Mojo, Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania is one of the few MCU films not to break even. Critics and fans both hated it too, and there are plenty of reasons why.

Even though Jonathan Majors does a great job portraying the villain, the movie lacks other tasty ingredients, notably humor. That’s a shame, considering that Paul Rudd has a good foundation in comedy. Beyond that, so much time is spent on worldbuilding, leaving the Phase 5 installment weak in other areas.

9 Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse (2022)

In Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse, the Super Hero Girls, and the Teen Titans — each from a different dimension — team up to solve a major crisis.

Lex Luthor has just freed all the villains of Metropolis using the Amulet and formed the Legion of Doom. He then proceeds to lock the Earth’s heroes in the Phantom Zone. The Teen Titans and the Super Hero Girls are thus left with the dual task of defeating the villainous group and rescuing their favorite heroes.

Too Much Action?

Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse gets roped into the same pattern of excessive action as many other notable superhero movies. There is too much fighting, coming at the expense of great storytelling. A multiverse movie ought to offer more details about how the movement between universes happened, but there is little effort to educate fans here.

Still, the film redeems itself through fun banter and crisp animation. All the voice actors also do a great job, with Tara Strong giving the standout performance as Batgirl.

8 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness begins with the titular character trying to decipher the strange dreams he has been having about America Chavez, a teenager who can sneak through inter-dimensional portals. He seeks Wanda’s help, only to learn that she has turned heel and is looking to steal Chavez’s powers so that she can reunite with her kids in an alternate universe. While trying to protect Chavez, Strange gets stranded on Earth-838.

Not Meeting Expectations

With Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Marvel Studios promised more than it could deliver. After Spider-Man: No Way Home, audience expectations were high. Many fans hoped for another mega multiverse full of euphoric MCU cameos. Instead, they got nothing of the sort. Overall, this stands as the quintessential MCU film. Both Benedict Cumberbatch and Elizabeth Olsen are appealing and feisty as the leads.

Strange’s predicament also adds to the movie’s tenderness. Still, the basics that might have elevated this superhero flick to classic status are missing. Sam Raimi has done better before, and he ought to have stepped up a little more here. There are no fun battles and one-liners. Instead, there are jump scares and massacres.

7 The Flash (2023)

Andy Muschietti’s The Flash turns the minutiae of normal life into a labyrinthine multiverse saga. Still grieving, Barry Allen travels back in time to prevent his mother’s death. While doing so, he gets trapped in an alternate universe where General Zod has returned, seeking to destroy the world. This world happens to have a deficiency of great superheroes. Luckily, it’s the same world where Michael Keaton’s Caped Crusader exists, so Barry seeks his help and that of a different Supergirl.

Looking Beyond Ezra Miller’s Transgressions

Because of Ezra Miller’s scandals, most morally upright fans never gave The Flash a chance. Consequently, it underperformed at the box office. However, it’s quite a decent multiverse film with a breathtaking opening sequence and marvelous cameos. Its minimal, incisive screenplay benefits from well-placed jokes and decent friendship arcs to make the team-ups worth it. Batman fans also get a festive season kind of treat here.

Apart from Ben Affleck’s Batman and Michael Keaton’s Batman, they get a cameo from George Clooney’s Bruce Wayne in his usual playboy glory.

6 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

After reuniting with Gwen Stacy, aka, Spider-Woman, Brooklyn’s wise-cracking, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, Miles Morales, looks forward to fun times only to get yanked across the Multiverse. There, he meets a team of Spider-People tasked with protecting various universes. However, the heroes end up loathing each other after disagreeing on a strategy.

Trawling the Multiverse, bickering, and openly scuffling, the Spideys reluctantly develop mutual respect when they are forced to handle a series of tough challenges together.

A Fitting Sequel

Right from its opening scene to its cliffhanger ending, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse keeps audiences in a trance, thanks to its dazzling, graphic-design-inspired animation and endless Easter eggs. Overall, it is a witty, exciting, well-voiced, action-packed sequel featuring warring, hysterically mismatched Spider-Men. On top of that, great subplots, and memorable quips help catapult the film to the top rank of animation actioners.

Unsurprisingly, it grossed close to $700 million at the box office, a great achievement for a production falling outside the live-action category.

5 Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (2013)

As cool as The Flash is, he keeps making costly mistakes. He does so again in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, where his actions trigger a temporal ripple that forms an alternate reality where there is no such thing as the Justice League. Superman doesn’t exist either, since a young Kal-El was imprisoned by the U.S. Government shortly after his spaceship crashed into Metropolis.

Meanwhile, a major war rages between Aquaman and Wonder Woman. With everything in disarray, Flash reaches out to Batman and Cyborg to help him restore the normal universe.

More Faces, Greater Joy

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox feels like a more succulent version of The Flash starring Ezra Miller. It has way more cameos and has all the fan-favorite DC voice actors. Even C. Thomas Howell, who never had a voice role before, adds a terrifying tone to the deranged Reverse Flash’s voice box.

Furthermore, the movie doesn’t just transplant the comic plot (something most DC animated productions are guilty of). It adds plenty of flesh to the skeleton. From a Batman who kills and breaks fingers to a Martha Wayne who becames the Joker, there is plenty to chew on in this multiverse movie.

4 Lego Batman Movie (2017)

The Lego Batman Movie transports fans to the Lego Universe of the larger DC multiverse where everything glistens with painterly tableaux, little realism, and surreal visuals. Here, Batman is quite the snob, preferring to be alone doing Batman things. When he hits the Joker with the classic “You’ve never mattered to me!” line, the villain becomes furious. Dying for attention, he releases all the dangerous members of Batman’s Rogue Gallery from the Phantom Zone. This forces Batman to act.

Several Gags Per Minute

Humor is The Lego Batman Movie’s greatest strength. The movie packs in so many gags that it’s easy to miss the deeper meaning of some of them. Pop culture references and random callbacks are also abundant, especially those dedicated to previous Batman productions. Every single Batman production, including the ‘40s serials, is mentioned. Besides that, franchises like Doctor Who, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, The Matrix, and Jaws get a nod.

3 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Tired of his acquiescent, dead-end teenage life, Miles Morales takes up graffiti drawing as a way to cheer himself up. While on a Brooklyn subway, he gets bitten by a radioactive spider, develops strange powers, and morphs into a newer version of Spider-Man.

When he meets the original Spider-Man, Peter Parker, he realizes that many other people currently have the Spidey powers. Soon, he is forced to use his abilities to fight Kingpin, a crime boss who can crack through the Multiverse portal and pull in different Spider-Men.

Great Chemistry and Great Visuals

This enthralling animated film initially unfolds in melodramatic detail, until the cinematic exhilaration heats up for the second and third acts. Miles is intriguing as a character trying to adjust to the great responsibility that comes with great power. The script also sizzles, especially in the funny yet thought-provoking exchanges between Miles and Peter.

Besides that, the comic-book-esque visuals add authenticity to the story, leaving hardcore fans with smiles on their faces. There is a mixture of computer and hand-drawn animation, creating a funky urban feel. So good is Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse that MCU’s Peter Parker actor, Tom Holland, described it as “the best Spider-Man movie that has ever been made.

2 Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

In Deadpool & Wolverine, Deadpool learns that his timeline has been in a state of decay and that the Time Variance Authority is planning to mercy-kill it. According to Mr. Paradox, Wolverine was the timeline’s stabilizing anchor and now that he is dead, the universe is struggling to survive. As expected, Deadpool refuses to let that happen, so he steals Paradox’s TemPad and journeys through the multiverse, hoping to find a variant of Wolverine who will help him save his timeline.

Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman Are a Match Made in Marvel Heaven

Hugh Jackman and Hugh Jackman have great buddy cop-like chemistry in the movie, an expected outcome considering that they had been throwing shady burns at each other on social media years before production began. Both leads turn in compact performances, and their efforts are boosted by a solid plot that helps erase the bad taste that recent MCU films left in the mouth. If the franchise continues on this trajectory, then it might just regrow into the juggernaut it once was.

1 Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Peter Parker has a big problem at the start of Spider-Man: No Way Home. Mysterio has just told the world that the young student is Spider-Man. Obviously, Peter can’t live with that because secret identities are important for superheroes. He thus enlists Doctor Strange’s help to make everyone forget the breaking news. But when the sorcerer casts a spell, he shatters the walls of the multiverse, bringing in the most malicious Spider-Man villains from other universes, as well as the Spider-Men from the Fox movies.

Reign of the Spider-Men

After a family-friendly start, Spider-Man: No Way Home morphs into somewhat of a tense psychological thriller, with sprinkles of action. The film mainly focuses on the delicately shifting dynamics between the heroes and the villains. The camaraderie of the three Spider-Men brings tears to the eyes, and it’s impossible not to wonder why no one ever thought of bringing them together before.

The complete ensemble cast gives a compelling performance, and while everyone does more than the bare minimum, Tobey Maguire is predominantly impressive. Despite being a standard superhero flick, this right here packs a smack and stays with you forever.