Top 10 Highest Grossing Super Hero Movies Of All Time

 2. The Dark Knight – $534.9 million

When looking at strictly the box office numbers, what’s striking to me is how much of a gap there is between the top three movies on this list. The Dark Knight made almost $85 million more than The Dark Knight Rises, yet it trails The Avengers by almost $90 million. Those are huge differences.

As for the movie itself, it’s impossible to separate its place in super hero movie history from the captivating performance turned in by Heath Ledger as the Joker and his untimely death. Did the movie attract more attention because he died? There’s little doubt that it did, and that’s always going to make it sadly unique.

It’s also important not to engage in any retroactive history here and remember that this movie becoming a blockbuster of this magnitude was no sure thing. Batman Begins made only $206 million three years prior, and was regarded as more solid than spectacular by the world at large. Christopher Nolan and his team succeeded wildly with their vision of Gotham City and the man protecting it, and while Batman movies are probably going to keep getting made until the end of time, this is always going to be one of the most memorable ones.