to become Hollywood's second-highest-grossing film released during the pandemic behind No Way Home. The film earned $16.4million in its fourth weekend, contributing to the total box office that helped it to become the highest-grossing film of 2022 previously held by The Batman. As of June 2022, the film stands as the 11th highest-grossing of the MCU worldwide. superhero films are so important for the entertainment industry that they are, The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "one of the last ways for an actor to earn a major payday". It quoted a Hollywood executive as stating, "If you want to get paid, you have to put on a cape" because, the magazine said, "With rare exception, even A+ stars aren’t making what they used to"; characters like Spider-Man and Batman are more important than the actors themselves, it said. Animated Outside of live-action, animated superhero films have also achieved critical and financial success. Nearly all animated superhero films are direct-to-video though there are a countless number of these films creating different events in them from their live-action counterparts. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm was released theatrically and was a critical success (though a box-office failure). In 1968, VIP my Brother Superman was released, directed by Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto; it is a parody of superheroes and enjoyed great success. In 2004, Pixar released The Incredibles, about a retired superhero couple and their children, which did extremely well both critically and financially and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. In 2010 DreamWorks Animation released Megamind to middling success. In 2014, Walt Disney Animation Studios released an adaptation of the Marvel Comics superhero team Big Hero 6. The same year, Warner Bros. released The Lego Movie, which had Batman and other DC Comics superheroes in major and supporting roles. A significant box-office success, it was followed in 2017 by The Lego Batman Movie, as well as DreamWorks Animation's Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie. In 2018, three theatrical animated superhero films were released to considerable critical and commercial success: Pixar's Incredibles 2, Warner Bros.'s Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, and Sony Pictures Animation's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Furthermore, the latter of the three swept that year's major film awards for animated features, including the Academy Award. Criticism As superhero film production increased during the latter end of the 2010s, the genre's contribution to cinema was questioned. Martin Scorsese, in