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By now, it should be very obvious that writing a compelling narrative around Superman is a notoriously tricky challenge. In fact, writing a compelling narrative around any near-invincible hero or villain brings an innate creative problem. After all, how do you get anyone to care about a conventional good versus bad story when there are no real stakes?
The answer, of course, is that you undermine that hero’s built-in godhood, either by nerfing their powers (as the MCU has done numerous times) or bringing in villains so unthinkably powerful that you end up locked into a cycle of cartoonish escalation to outdo each one (lest you copy the MCU’s Thanos problem). Luckily, you can also give your superhero god types convenient weaknesses, as DC did with Superman. So no matter how powerful he gets, he’s still vulnerable to magic, Kryptonite, psychic powers, and red sun radiation, to different degrees.
Superman also isn’t entirely unbeatable, even without considering all those well-publicized weaknesses, and there are some villains in superhero movies who could definitely take him down. He’s been beaten enough times in DC’s comics that there is still a believability to threats, and the various live-action versions of Superman in movies have shown him being beaten down or even killed.
Since it always tends to inspire discussion, finding more villains who could give Superman a good fight – or destroy him entirely – is its own reward. And luckily, superhero movies have provided some notable further examples over the years. In their honor, here are six more superhero movie villains who possess the raw strength, power output, or specific powers to defeat the Man of Steel, ranked from least to most powerful.
6
Doomsday
It’s not a cheat to include Doomsday on a list of threats capable of taking down Superman, considering he already managed it in Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The DCEU’s version of DC’s classic villain was reimagined as a monstrous bio-weapon engineered by Lex Luthor from Ancient Kryptonian DNA and his own blood in a Genesis Chamber. The hulking mutant was capable of absorbing attacks, and actually becoming stronger through adaptive evolution. So every time Superman hit him with a heat vision blast or beat him down, Doomsday simply came back more powerful, with greater, spikier defenses, and harder to beat.
It’s telling that Superman only managed to stop Doomsday by sacrificing his own life with a Kryptonite spear, with tactical support from Batman and Wonder Woman. In a straightforward brawl, without external weapons or help, Doomsday’s reactive powers would make him an impossible obstacle for live-action Superman. And if that’s not terrifying enough, in the comics, the true limit of his potential is even higher, and his adaptive evolution is so highly tuned that any time something defeats him, he can never be beaten the same way a second time.
5
Thanos
Even without the fully-powered Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos is still a powerhouse, proving it with stunningly little effort in Avengers: Infinity War by dismantling the Hulk in a fist fight. In all honesty, Josh Brolin’s Mad Titan barely looks like he’s even breaking a sweat during that sequence, which also sees him overpower Thor, and kill both Heimdall and Loki. That’s basically three gods and a monster taken down at once.
With the Gauntlet, he’s on another threat level entirely, pulling a moon out of orbit to throw at Iron Man, messing with reality, and defeating almost everyone who crossed his path. Superman’s good, but he’s not on the level of a villain who can click half of existence away, and the protections of the Infinity Gauntlet equalize even Superman’s most formidable powers. The ability to change matter is a very difficult thing to argue against, and Thanos’ feats against even more powerful cosmic beings in the comics are even grander.
4
Hela
Obviously without Asgard to draw her power from, Hela isn’t much of a threat, but with Thor’s home still in play, Cate Blanchett’s Goddess of Death is on a terrifying level that few could compete with. She effortlessly crushed Mjolnir – one of the MCU’s most formidable weapons – slaughtered the entire Valkyrie army, and made Thor look like an amateur boxer. Even Odin feared her potential, recognizing that she needed to be stopped for the good of the Nine Realms.
She’s also magic, which makes her too much for Superman. In the MCU, Hela’s powers are almost unmatched, she can conjure projectiles, regenerate instantly, and is essentially immortal (as long as Asgard exists), on top of her enhanced Asgardian physiology that already puts her close to Superman’s base level as a start. The Man of Steel simply couldn’t slow her down, without knowledge of and willingness to sever her ties to Asgard in a very uncharacteristic move that would have cost more lives than he’d ever willingly take.
3
Surtur
Why settle for one hugely powerful Thor: Ragnarok villain, when you can bring in two? When Clancy Brown’s fire demon Surtur reached full power in Thor: Ragnarok, he was more of a terrible force of nature than a character in conventional terms. Becoming the size of a mountain thanks to Loki resurrecting him using the Eternal Flame, he rained hellfire down on Asgard and destroyed it using his huge Twilight Sword. Hela, destroyed alongside her home planet, was as powerless as a fly against his grim inevitability.
No amount of yellow-sun enhanced physical powers could defy the fact that Surtur operates on a planetary scale of destruction. Brute force is pointless, and Hela’s fate proves just how limited the idea of any powerful being stopping Surtur at maximum power level. Thor had obviously taken him down in Ragnarok’s opening, but that was a severely weakened version without access to the Eternal Flame. With it back in play, all bets are off.
2
Arishem The Judge
The true level of Celestial powers is somewhat underplayed by Ego’s role in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, because he’s defeated so easily by Star-Lord, but the gigantic cosmic beings are ridiculously powerful. Introduced fully in Eternals, Arishem the Judge is the Prime Celestial who literally created the first stars, and who is established as being immune to the direct power of the Infinity Stones.
Arishem is so massive that he towers over planets, and Superman exists on a normal planetary scale. In other words, the strongest punch from Superman would be like taking a haymaker from an end. Arishem commands cosmic manipulation at the highest level, meaning he could simply extinguish Earth’s yellow sun and dampen the Man of Steel’s power entirely. His powers include control over space-time, cosmic energy manipulation, and matter transmutation, making heat vision look like a parlour trick.
1
Mephistopheles
Like the MCU’s Mephisto, the version who appears in Nicolas Cage’s Ghost Rider movies (played first by Peter Fonda and then by Ciarán Hinds) is a literal demon from the Bible. He has vast, almost untold powers, and is a grand manipulator with a fetish for Faustian bargains and wields almost incalculable dark magic powers. The Ghost Rider movies actually lean away from revealing his true power levels, but the fact that he’s the one to grant Ghost Rider his powers is a fair indication.
As discussed almost endlessly, Superman has low resistance to magic, and Mephisto is a literal embodiment of magic. He also controls hellfire – a dark enchanted flame capable of ignoring all physical barriers to destroy souls. Even at full power, Superman has no built-in defense against an extra-dimensional demon king stripping away his soul or altering reality around him. His powers include almost every power imaginable from telekinesis and telepathy to technopathy and the ability to resurrect himself or others after death
