10 Superhero Scenes That Could Never Be Made Today

The first superhero made his debut in April of 1938. Action Comics #1 introduced the world to Superman, the dynamically-costumed crime fighter who was faster than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. The first issue was a sensation, and launched an entire genre that is more popular today, some 80 years later, than at any other point in its history.

Superman, Batman, and countless other heroes from the early years of DC and Marvel Comics remain amongst the companies’ best-known characters. And within a few years of Superman and Batman’s debuts in comics, they made their first tall-building-sized leaps into movies by starring in their own serials. Some of these films are more than 80 years old now. Some of them also don’t hold up to modern scrutiny or sensitivity.

Like, at all.

At least those movies have the excuse that they came out almost a century ago. Some much more recent film — including several from the last 20 years — contain scenes and characters that would get approved today, whether for their sexist or racist content, or simply because they include stuff that today’s audiences would reject out of hand. Below, I’ve listed 10 scenes from throughout the long history of superhero movies that look very different in the 2020s than they did at the time of their release.