Female Superheroes Have Struggled At The Box Office—Because Their Movies Have Been Bad

Rotten Tomato Critics Score: 7/100
Rotten Tomato Audience Score: 26/100
Domestic Box Office: $14,296,438

Supergirl punched through the superhero movie glass ceiling back in 1984 when she headlined her own solo film. Starring Helen Slater as the titular superhero, the film also featured Faye Dunaway as a wannabe witch named Selena. The film was panned by critics upon its release; both Dunaway and Peter O’Toole were nominated for Razzies. Christopher Reeve was supposed to have a cameo in the film, but he backed out early in production. This hurt the film’s legitimacy as an installment in the popular Superman film franchise, and it ultimately tanked at the box office.

Where to stream Supergirl

Rotten Tomato Critics Score: 38
Rotten Tomato Audience Score: 64
Domestic Box Office: $4,064,495

After the success of the Superman and Batman franchises in the ’70s and ’80s, superhero movies took a bit of a breather in the ’90s. Instead of bringing A-list superheroes to the big screen, movie studios opted to focus on long forgotten pulp heroes of the ’30s and super obscure modern characters—ones without flashy, budget-breaking powers. Tank Girl fits into the latter category, as it’s based on an ’80s British punk art comic of the same name. The film starred Lori Petty as Tank Girl, the surly and cool owner of, well, a tank. The post-apocalyptic film included crazy visuals, like mutated anthropomorphic animals, and a villainous performance by Malcolm McDowell. While Tank Girl has amassed a cult following over the last 20 years (it has the highest audience rating of any film on this list), it did not fare well with critics and performed horribly at the box office.

Where to stream Tank Girl

Rotten Tomato Critics Score: 28
Rotten Tomato Audience Score: 14
Domestic Box Office: $3,793,614

Barb Wire began as a series published by Dark Horse Comics in 1994. The property was rushed into production as a feature film with Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson in the lead role of bounty hunter Barbara “Barb Wire” Kopetski. The film’s plot plays out like Casablanca in a painful corset, as reviewers pointed out at the time. Like Supergirl, Barb Wire was nominated for a ton of Razzies; Anderson won one for Worst New Star.

Where to stream Barb Wire

Rotten Tomato Critics Score: 9
Rotten Tomato Audience Score: 18
Domestic Box Office: $40,202,379
Foreign Box Office: $41,900,000

Catwoman is a deeply weird movie. It’s ostensibly a DC Comics movie, although it was released in-between two drastically different Batman franchises and the titular character has almost nothing in common with the Catwoman of the comics. Post-Oscar and post-Bond Halle Berry was a solid casting choice, but everything else about this movie (the wild angles, frenetic editing, and nonsensical cosmetics line plot) seems crafted to baffle and bewilder audiences. The movie tanked at the box office, although it’s one of the most successful films on this list. Halle Berry took it all in stride, though; she accepted her Razzie award in person with her Oscar in hand.

Where to stream Catwoman

Rotten Tomato Critics Score: 10
Rotten Tomato Audience Score: 29
Domestic Box Office: $24,409,722
Foreign Box Office: $32,271,844

As iffy as critics and audiences were about 2003’s Ben Affleck-led Daredevil, a spinoff starring Jennifer Garner’s Elektra could have worked. Garner was already an action pro thanks to her TV series Alias, and critics didn’t have a problem with her. The film’s super serious tone just didn’t work, and that was a problem that also plagued Daredevil. The one-two punch of Catwoman and Elektra in back-to-back years is often cited as the reason why studios stopped making female superhero movies, overlooking the fact that both Catwoman and Elektra are just terrible. They don’t even have high audience ratings!

Where to stream Elektra

Rotten Tomato Critics Score: 40
Rotten Tomato Audience Score: 31
Domestic Box Office: $22,530,295
Foreign Box Office: $38,454,311

There have only been three female superhero movies based on actual comic superheroes, so there’s some padding to do here. Uma Thurman, an actor that should have been given a full-fledged action movie career after two exhilarating turns in the Kill Bill movies, got to play an original superhero named G-Girl in this romantic comedy/superhero parody. The film hasn’t exactly aged well, though, and a story about a Superman-esque hero going on a petty revenge kick after being dumped by her boyfriend is kinda cringe-worthy in 2017. The movie didn’t wow audiences or critics, although it was a little more successful than most of the other movies on this list.

Where to stream My Super Ex-Girlfriend

Rotten Tomato Critics Score: 45
Rotten Tomato Audience Score: 58
Domestic Box Office: $40,563,557
Foreign Box Office: $129,238,364

Ghost in the Shell’s place on this list as a superhero movie is debatable, but it was based on a manga series and controversially features superhero mainstay Scarlett Johansson in the lead role. Ghost in the Shell debuted in theaters earlier this year and had to contend with a year’s worth of negative press and accusations of whitewashing roles—specifically Johansson’s—that could have gone to Asian actors. On top of that, the film was mostly panned by critics and it stalled at the domestic box office.

Where to stream Ghost in the Shell

Rotten Tomato Critics Score: 94

We don’t have any box office information for Wonder Woman just yet, but the film’s already broken one curse surrounding female-driven superhero films. Look at its Rotten Tomatoes score! That’s a better score than Supergirl, Tank Girl, Barb Wire, Catwoman, and Elektra combined! Hell, it’s almost better than Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Suicide Squad combined! It’s not only the best reviewed female superhero movie of all time, it’s one of the best reviewed comic-based superhero movie of all time. Analysts have estimated that WW will pull in somewhere between $65 and $90 million this weekend, which will be more than enough for it to beats this list’s champs Catwoman and Ghost in the Shell. It looks like for the first time in history, there’s a legit great superhero movie with a female-lead. Now it just needs the box office to back it up.