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Top 10 superhero movie directors of the decade

By Josh Baggins

LOS ANGELES, CA - APRIL 07: (front L-R) Danai Gurira, Jeremy Renner, Director Anthony Russo, Chris Evans, Director Joe Russo, Brie Larson and Mark Ruffalo, (back L-R) Karen Gillan, Paul Rudd, Scarlett Johansson, President of Marvel Studios/Producer Kevin Feige, Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle and Chris Hemsworth onstage during Marvel Studios' "Avengers: Endgame" Global Junket Press Conference at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown on April 7, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
LOS ANGELES, CA - APRIL 07: (front L-R) Danai Gurira, Jeremy Renner, Director Anthony Russo, Chris Evans, Director Joe Russo, Brie Larson and Mark Ruffalo, (back L-R) Karen Gillan, Paul Rudd, Scarlett Johansson, President of Marvel Studios/Producer Kevin Feige, Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle and Chris Hemsworth onstage during Marvel Studios' "Avengers: Endgame" Global Junket Press Conference at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown on April 7, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney) /
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TORONTO, ONTARIO – SEPTEMBER 10: James Mangold attends the “Ford v Ferrari” press conference during the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Bell Lightbox on September 10, 2019 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
TORONTO, ONTARIO – SEPTEMBER 10: James Mangold attends the “Ford v Ferrari” press conference during the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Bell Lightbox on September 10, 2019 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images) /

3. James Mangold

Directed: The Wolverine (2013), Logan (2017)

Many years after James Mangold directed Hugh Jackman in the fantasy romantic comedy, Kate and Leopold, he would work with the Australian superstar again to adapt a few of Wolverine’s most iconic storylines. The Wolverine is loosely based on the Japan Saga from the comics, and Logan captures the spirit of “Old Man Logan”. The latter is currently the only superhero movie to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

In the X-Men movies, Wolverine is incorporated into a team of superheroes, but Mangold exploits Logan’s solitary, untrusting, and reluctant, western-type outlaw to fascinating results. Mangold injects his love for westerns into the bedrock of his Wolverine movies. Even though The Wolverine is set in the martial arts/samurai world, that genre is often interchangeable with westerns, as evident by Akira Kurosawa’s influence on American westerns and vice versa. And Logan is more of a pure-breed contemporary western that pays homage to George Steven’s Shane in both plot and themes.

Logan is incredibly moving with some of the heaviest performances in a superhero movie this decade. The writing is superb, and the pacing is masterful. James Mangold pushed the enveloped by putting an A-list superhero in a very adult-oriented movie and his efforts led to the best film of his career (even better than the recently released Ford v Ferrari). Even if Logan isn’t the greatest superhero movie ever made, its melancholic mood makes it the most emotionally meaningful.

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