Most Important Person to the Superhero Film Genre?

[TMC]

*Avi Arad got a lot of movies off the ground and kept Marvel in business in the dark days. He may have left the reservation, and he certainly doesn't have the approval rating as good as anyone else on this list but he was damn important in the path that brought us to Marvel Studios.

*Tim Burton - He was pretty much the first director to try a Dark and gritty superhero film and Batman (up until that point, most people still commonly associated Batman with the campy Adam West TV show from the 1960s) ended up being the highest grossing film of 1989. This was a year that was one of the most stacked Hollywood blockbuster years ever (with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II, Lethal Weapon 2, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids to compete against). Plus, Batman was really the first major grossing superhero franchise with Batman Forever breaking the record of highest grossing weekend.

*Robert Downey Jr. - He pretty much had to improvise the entire Iron Man movie and pretty much launched the MCU with his success. Plus, he's probably the biggest drawing actor in the superhero film genre because he might of been the most perfectly casted actor for a superhero role. If they would've started with another actor as Iron Man, the whole thing likely would've failed. If they would've started with another character, it wouldn't probably wouldn't have failed, but it would've been a huge uphill battle.

*Richard Donner - While directing the first two Superman films (which were really the first real, modern, big budgeted superhero motion pictures), he took them seriously and proved the genre can be critical and commercial success. Donner used an ensemble cast of extremely highly regarded actors, a heartfelt and deeply emotional story, state-of-the-art special effects, and Donner's motto of "verisimilitude" to turn the godlike comic-book hero into an extremely real and respectable character. Then he along with his wife, produced the first X-Men film to a critical and commercial success, which lead the second boom of superhero films. It also showed Hollywood that other superheroes outside of the A-list of Batman/Superman/Spider-Man could draw.

*Kevin Feige, for basically helming the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, that has been so successful, that virtually Hollywood as since been trying to make their franchise follow the MCU business plan. His world building approach to superhero films, while necessary due to Marvel not having access to X-Men, Spider-Man and the F4, has indirectly led to ASM2 and BvS.

*Jon Favreau, for turning Iron Man into a labor of love and showing that a non marquee hero could do big business. Favreau and Robert Downey Jr and Kevin Feige give way to the MCU and here we are with a completely different movie industry.

*Christopher Nolan - He basically created the darker, grittier reboot trend in Hollywood because he was so successful at it. Of course, Nolan also restored Batman's cinematic reputation after Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin destroyed it almost ten years prior. 2003-2007 was generally, an awful period of superhero films (Superman Returns, the threequels to Blade, X-Men and Spider-Man, Daredevil, Elektra, Catwoman, Tim Story's Fantastic Four movies, etc.) outside of Spider-Man 2, Batman Begins and X2. But when X-Men: The Last Stand and Spider-Man 3 ended up being awful (at least with most critics and fans despite making a lot of money at the box office) and there was turmoil over it possibly being the end of those franchises, it looked like the Superhero film genre was going to go bust. Soon afterwards however, The Dark Knight winds up shattering every box office record, Rotten Tomatoes score, and even got Heath Ledger an Oscar for his work as the Joker. With The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan showed us a glimpse at what the future of superhero movies could have been. Not just popcorn entertainment but serious dramas with interesting characters, themes, subtexts and social critiques.

*Sam Raimi - Bryan Singer's wave of comic book heroes were still (for better or worse) based in the we don't want to admit that we're comic book movies comic book movies. In effect the first X-Men movie seemed embarrassed about being a superhero movie more than really rolling with it. The X-Men movies had everyone in the black leather and openly mocking the comic book outfits. Raimi's Spider-Man put Peter Parker in the red and blue spandex. And while it didn't fully hit all the notes (Tobey Maguire's Spidey isn't nearly as quippy as he should have been), the first Spider-Man movie a far bigger hit compared to X-Men's fairly modest success. And plus, the first sequel, is to this day, generally considered to rank highly on the list of best superhero movie ever.

*Bryan Singer - The modern wave of superhero movies more or less, began (unless you want to count Blade from 1998) with his X-Men films. Superhero movies were were toxic after Batman & Robin. The first X-Men film from 2000 was probably the first critically acclaimed superhero film in such a long time. Singer followed it up with X2 which, was so beloved that it made X-Men: The Last Stand break the box office opening weekend record based on it's reputation. He basically saved The X-Men franchise a second time by producing First Class (not that the actual director, Matthew Vaughn didn't help) and The Wolverine and directing Days of Future Past.