We live in something of a superhero film golden age. The Marvel Cinematic Universe reigns supreme, with a slate of future films that seemingly stretches into the next decade. DC has been playing catch up with its Extended Universe, with Aquaman on its way this year and Wonder Woman 2 to start filming soon.

It wasn’t so long ago that these meticulously planned, years-in-the-making shared universes were a fanboy pipe dream. Superhero films were much more at the mercy of casual studio meddling and regime changes; sequels of both successful and unsuccessful films aborted for dubious reasons, generally having to do with short-term profit margins. A lot of these sequels clearly didn’t deserve to exist and would have been extensions of franchises that were either creatively exhausted or creatively inert at the start.

More curious are the sequels that likely should have been made, be they sequels to films that had potential but didn’t quite put it all together in their initial outing, or objectively strong films that ended up victims of studio politics.

These are 8 Canceled Superhero Sequels That Would’ve Been Terrible (And 7 That Would’ve Been Amazing).

TERRIBLE: Tim Burton’s Batman 3

Tim Burton’s first Batman movie was a cultural sensation, but his much darker, much weirder follow-up, Batman Returns, landed a bit softer at the box office, and its psychotically alluring Catwoman and black ink spewing Penguin made it a tough sell for Happy Meal tie-ins. Burton was already feeling a bit creatively hemmed in by the world of Batman, so he and Warner Bros. agreed fairly early on that someone else should helm the third film.

Burton did at least consider making a third Batman, as early pre-production elements have surfaced over the years, such as an updated costume for Keaton’s Batman and the fact that Marlon Wayans had signed on to play Robin in a Burton sequel.

The fact that Burton’s heart was no longer in it likely means this is a road best left unexplored, no matter how lousy Batman Forever was.

AMAZING: Dredd 2

Dredd was always going to have an uphill battle. The legendary comic book series was largely remembered by the general movie going public for the infamous 1995 film adaptation starring Sylvester Stallone. That notorious bomb kept Judge Dredd away from the big screen for almost two decades before Karl Urban donned the iconic helmet in the 2012 reboot directed by Pete Travis.

That gritty, action packed film was a critical darling, but it largely fizzled at the box office, and likely lost money despite its modest production budget. Both Urban and Travis had championed the idea of a sequel for years, but they’ve seemingly resigned themselves to the fact that’s not going to happen. However, Urban has suggested he’d be open to playing a part in the upcoming TV adaptation.

TERRIBLE: The Amazing Spider-Man 3

For a while it seemed like Sony couldn’t stop making bad decisions about what to do with Spider-Man. After scaring off Sam Raimi, who did nothing but commit the egregious crime of making the studio a couple billion dollars, Sony decided to reboot the character with director Marc Webb, who at the time had exactly one film to his name, the low-budget romantic comedy 500 Days of Summer.

The Amazing Spider-Man was a mostly inoffensive retread that lacked the verve and spark of Raimi’s films, but made enough money to warrant a sequel.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a step-by-step guide in how to sacrifice storytelling in favor of franchise expansion, and unsurprisingly ended up pleasing very few people. Plans for a third film were scrapped, and Sony teamed with Marvel to reboot once again with Spider-Man: Homecoming.

AMAZING: Hellboy 3

Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy films were some of the most imaginative, viscerally thrilling comic book adaptations of the 21st century, among the first to suggest you could do something other than traditional hero stories on the big screen. They were also, unfortunately, very modest box office performers; they didn’t lose money outright, but their profit margins were small enough to give the studio pause.

The unfortunate financial realities meant the trigger never got pulled on a third film. Don’t cry too many tears for Hellboy, though; Del Toro just won Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for The Shape of Water (starring Hellboy’s Abe Sapien, Doug Jones), and the character is getting a big screen reboot in 2019 from director Neil Marshall.

Stranger Things’ David Harbour will play the titular demon, with the blessings of both Del Toro and former Hellboy Ron Perlman.

TERRIBLE: The Punisher 2

Back in the early ’00s when the Marvel movie rights were largely still scattered across multiple studios, the quality of a given Marvel film was tough to predict. You never knew if you were getting something triumphant like X-Men and Spider-Man or something abysmal like Daredevil and Fantastic Four. The Punisher falls pretty squarely in the latter category.

Thomas Jane’s version of Frank Castle has his fans, but the film is marred by its PG-13 blandness and a truly ridiculous villain turn from John Travolta.

The film didn’t make much money, and a proposed sequel was abandoned in favor of a reboot, 2007’s Punisher: War Zone. That film also flopped, but has a cult following due to its insanely graphic action sequences. The character finally found some live-action acclaim in themNetflix series starring Jon Bernthal.

AMAZING: Superman Returns Sequel

It’s a little bit baffling that Superman Returns never got a sequel. The 2006 film – a gauzy, warm hearted love letter to the Christopher Reeve Superman films that also served as a pseudo sequel – was warmly greeted by critics, and boasted solid box office numbers that were nearly identical to 2005’s Batman Begins.

The problem was that the film’s budget was forced to absorb the production costs from a decade of unrelated, aborted reboot attempts, so its profit margins were thinner than they seemed. Director Bryan Singer spoke enthusiastically of mounting a Zod-centric sequel, but Warner Bros. chose instead to reboot the character in a decidedly different direction with 2013’s Man of Steel.

The fact that Zack Snyder’s Superman would go on to be criticized as too dark and violent is a bit ironic, considering WB chose to ditch Singer’s more optimistic take.

TERRIBLE: Spider-Man 4

Sam Raimi’s first two Spider-Man films were unqualified successes, making zillions of dollars and earning critical acclaim. 2007’s Spider-Man 3 still made a truckload of cash, but the reviews were much cooler, as was the reaction from general audiences.

Raimi was still committed to making a fourth entry in the franchise, and even had a script and casting ideas in place. John Malkovich and Anne Hathaway were in early talks to play the Vulture and Black Cat, respectively.

But Sony wanted the movie out by summer of 2011, and Raimi never felt he had a strong enough handle on the script to meet that deadline. When Raimi bowed out, Sony decided to reboot with The Amazing Spider-Man. Considering how that movie and its sequel panned out, it might have been smart for Sony to give Raimi a little more time to get his script up to snuff.

AMAZING: Tim Burton’s Catwoman

While Tim Burton toyed with the idea of directing a third Batman film, he was much more serious about making a spinoff starring Michelle Pfeiffer’s version of Catwoman from Batman Returns. The film’s script was actually turned into Warner Bros. the same day Batman Forever opened in 1995, which may have been a fateful coincidence. Despite Batman Forever’s dwindling reputation over the years, it was a box office sensation and was far more wholesome and family friendly than Burton’s dark, weird vision.

Warner Bros. cooled on the idea of the spinoff from a version of Batman that didn’t match up with the new tone Forever had taken, and Burton and Pfeiffer both dropped out. The movie would linger in development hell for years before surfacing in 2004 as the notoriously lousy Halle Berry film.

TERRIBLE: Spawn 2

It’s easy to forget now, but there was a period in the mid-90s where Spawn was a massive force in the comic book world. Spawn was the most successful of the ultra violent, “edgy” ’90s characters that were popping up from Image Comics as a darker alternative to DC and Marvel.

Spawn got his own movie in 1997 - a turgid, ugly lump of a film that they somehow convinced Martin Sheen to appear in.

The film was universally panned, but did make a tiny bit of money. Spawn creator Todd MacFarlane lobbied for years to get a sequel off the ground, and is still improbably pushing for a reboot. There’s a reason Spawn has largely faded from the cultural consciousness; it was a character that thrived on the ickiest impulses of 14-year old boys’ unbridled ids in the ’90s.

AMAZING: Green Lantern 2

Green Lantern is really not as bad as its reputation. Ryan Reynolds does solid work in the title role, and the scenes taking place on Oa come fairly close to capturing the awe-inspiring scope of the Green Lantern Corps. Director Martin Campbell was simply in over his head with the movie’s overly ambitious effects work, which led to some unfortunate editing decisions and a movie that never quite gelled.

Plans were in place for a sequel that would have focused on Mark Strong’s Sinestro – the best part of the first movie - going rogue and taking on Hal Jordan and the GL Corps. The film’s soft box office meant that never happened, and the character remains in something of a cinematic limbo, as the DCEU has largely ignored one of DC’s foundational characters. In the wake of that absence, it’s hard to not wonder what could have been.

TERRIBLE: Sinister Six

After The Amazing Spider-Man landed to reasonable success at the box office, Sony took a look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe and asked itself a question: “why can’t we have one of those?” The answer, of course, was because Sony only had the film rights to one hero, so a shared universe seemed like a non-starter. But you should never underestimate a film studio’s ability to make shaky creative decisions in pursuit of an additional profits.

In 2013, Sony announced plans to produce a Sinister Six spinoff film. It would have starred a half dozen Spider-Man villains in a sort of redemption story that made them something approaching heroes. But The Amazing Spider-Man 2 turned out to be a disappointment, so Sony took an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” approach by co-producing Spider-Man Homecoming with Marvel, ending Sinister Six in the process.

AMAZING: Constantine 2

The 2005 film adaptation of Constantine is a strange animal. Starring Keanu Reeves as the titular supernatural detective, it took significant liberties with the source material, perhaps none more notably than with Constantine himself.

A blond, snarky Brit in the comics, Reeves’ Constantine was a broody American, which irritated longtime fans of the character. Taken on its own merits, however, Constantine is a thoughtful, sumptuously shot film that ended up making over $230 million, no small feat for an R-rated film about such a dark subject.

Constantine was eventually folded back into the realm of DC’s heroes and figures to play a role in the DCEU going forward, and has appeared on the small screen in his own series and on Legends of Tomorrow, played by Matt Ryan. The TV version is much truer to the source material, but lacks the dark soul of the 2005 film.

TERRIBLE: Batman Unchained

Warner Bros. likely believed its Batman film franchise was in great shape in the summer of 1997. Batman Forever had been a huge hit in 1995 and, while it lost Val Kilmer, George Clooney was signed on, hot off the heels of his star-making turn on ER. The studio commissioned director Joel Schumacher to begin work on a fifth film, Batman Unchained, which would have featured the Scarecrow as the main villain. Schumacher wanted Nicholas Cage to play the Scarecrow, which honestly sounds kind of amazing.

But Batman and Robin proved to be a disaster, and Warner Bros. spent the better part of a decade trying to figure out what to do with the Caped Crusader before handing over the keys to Wayne Manor to Christopher Nolan. To say that was a smart decision would be something of an understatement.

AMAZING: X-Men Origins: Magneto

Fox was struggling with what direction to take the X-Men film franchise in 2007. X-Men: The Last Stand had more or less tied off the original trilogy’s stories, so the studio decided to invest in prequels.

One of the early concepts was a Magneto film, which would have been set in the ’40s and’ 50s, charting young Erik Lehnsherr’s childhood trauma at the hands of the Nazis and his mission of vengeance against them as a young man.

The relative failure of X-Men Origins: Wolverine led Fox to slightly alter their plans, electing instead to fold aspect of the Magneto sequel into a more all-encompassing soft reboot with X-Men: First Class. That was probably the right choice, but it’s hard not to wonder what a movie as potentially dark and daring as X-Men Origins: Magneto would have looked like.

TERRIBLE: Ang Lee’s Hulk 2

Ang Lee’s Hulk was one of the first truly polarizing superhero films. Lee’s film spent a surprising amount of time dealing with the spiritual conflict within Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) and attempting to tell a deep, thought-provoking story. There are moments in the film where he pulls it off, but taken as a whole, Hulk is a long, sluggish film that seems almost ashamed to be a comic book adaptation.

There were earlier plans to produce a sequel, but the film’s ho-hum box office and middling reviews led Marvel to reboot the character for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, first in the solo film The Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton, and to much greater effect in The Avengers (and several follow-up films), played by Mark Ruffalo.

Which of these sequels would you most want to watch? Let us know in the comments.