By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Nerds love to debate which superhero movie is best, getting into downright nasty arguments over whether, say, Avengers: Endgame or Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man are the best films in the genre. With respect to all you true believers out there arguing over which tights-and-flights film to watch next, the best superhero movie has nothing at all to do with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The best superhero movie is, of course, Sky High, and streaming it on Disney+ right now is the best way to discover just how beautifully this film has aged.
Sky High Soars
The premise of Sky High is simple: the movie focuses on a kind of superhero academy (the titular Sky High), where the talented youngsters of today train to be the superheroes and sidekicks of tomorrow. Our main character is the son of a superhero power couple who seemingly has no powers of his own, which makes it hard for him to either fit in or find friends among all these talented tykes. Eventually, he discovers a power he didn’t know he had, but that may or may not be enough to stop a powerful foe from the past who has found a new way to terrorize the present.
If you’re a fan of superhero or genre media, the cast is a real “who’s who” of big names, including Kurt Russell as the Superman-like patriarch and Bruce Campbell as the world’s weirdest gym teacher. Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter, plays the principal of Sky High, and Dave Foley plays a former sidekick turned teacher alongside fellow Kids in the Hall alumnus Kevin McDonald (who plays a science teacher with a comically oversized head). As for the younger stars, the main character is played by Michael Angarano, who stars alongside future superhero genre legends Danielle Panabaker and Mary-Elizabeth Winstead.
At the box office, Sky High proved to be a modest hit, earning $86.4 million against a budget of $35 million. It was also a modest hit among critics, as the film currently has a 74 percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In general, those critics decreed that the movie was a bit derivative but still managed to entertain from beginning to end.
Why Sky High Is The Best
Now, time to address the caped elephant in the room: Sky High didn’t draw the biggest box office in the world, and it didn’t exactly thrill the critics. Why, then, am I calling this the best superhero movie on Disney+, a streaming platform where you can watch the entirety of the MCU at any time? For one thing, this film embraces the pure, goofy fun of the genre. While the MCU was way more lighthearted than the DCEU (and thank God for that!), some of its better movies often get buried beneath the weight of being either too realistic or too lore-heavy.
And for this long box lover, Sky High is that much stronger because it embraces the goofier side of comic books rather than trying to look cool. The MCU has previously done annoying things like replacing the over-the-top Mandarin comic villain with a drug-addled method actor and changing Ms. Marvel from a rubbery hero to one with light powers which, conveniently, would look less silly onscreen. Meanwhile, Sky High has characters riding a school bus into an aerial academy and a superhero father honestly considering dropping his son into a vat of toxic waste to help the young man finally develop powers.
Sky High isn’t a perfect movie, of course, but every scene is better than the sum of its parts. It succeeds as a superhero film, but it also works as a great comedy and a very unconventional coming-of-age tale, offering the kinds of great chemistry and character development that the latter MCU films have been severely lacking. Plus, the veteran actors are having so much fun chewing the scenery that it ensures you’ll never get bored before the credits roll.
Will you find Sky High makes the grade, or will you flunk this film out and go watch some more Marvel movies instead? You won’t know until you stream it on Disney+. And if director Mike Mitchell has his way and gets to create a sequel set in the MCU, then this cinematic universe might get more of what it so desperately needs: laughter and heart.
