12 Alternative Superhero Films To Consider

2) Watchmen

Zack Snyder has called his 2009 adaptation of Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel Watchmen “the anti-Avengers,” and it’s clear to see why. The film not only sports a much darker and more harrowing aesthetic and subject matter, but features a team of not-so-super heroes who disbanded but are brought back together when it’s discovered that someone may be conspiring against them and attempting to kill them. Along the way, they discover that there’s actually a much bigger, more sinister plot at play.

Watchmen was deemed “un-filmable” for quite some time, by Snyder managed to give the graphic novel an incredibly true and respectable adaptation that I personally greatly enjoyed.

The film stars Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl, a retired superhero similar to Batman, Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan, the only one with actual super powers, Matthew Goode as “the smartest man alive,” Ozymandias, Jackie Earle Haley as masked and violent vigilante Rorschach, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian, a tough superhero commissioned by the U.S. government, and Malin Akerman as the crime fighter Silk Spectre.

Existing within an alternate history, the film takes place in a world under constant threat of nuclear annihilation. If you’re looking for “alternative” superhero cinema, it doesn’t get any more subversive or twisted than this.