25 Years Later, Ben Stiller’s Underrated Superhero Must-Watch Gives the MCU a Run for Its Money

Summary:

• Back in 1999, Ben Stiller-starring comedy made fun of the superhero movies’ tropes long before Prime’s The Boys.
• It followed an amateur superhero team hoping to show themselves.
• Reddit is sure it should deserve more attention these days.

Nowadays, in the era of the prominent box office domination of the superhero movie franchises, made by Marvel, DC and other studios, it’s hard to amaze the audience with a movie following a person with supernatural abilities. The subgenre starts to repeat itself and to use the same tropes in every subsequent movie again and again.

Back in 1999, there was a star-studded comedy that made fun of the typical superhero movies long before the Avengers fever and even before Prime Video ’s The Boys series, also appearing to be a satire to the MCU and other films about courageous supermen.

Its plot focuses on the tragedy happening in the fictional Champion City: it lost its main defender, a superhero named Captain Amazing. He was relentlessly captured by the villain Casanova Frankenstein, and it leaves the town in a vulnerable position.

However, it’s a perfect moment for other supermen to come into the light and to prove themselves. Indeed, there is a group of seven awkward crime-fighters, but the point is that their abilities, which include perfect bowling and shovel skills, are useless for saving the city. They’ll need to do the impossible to prevent the upcoming catastrophe.

The movie seems to be at least 15 years ahead of its time, as its superhero satire mysteriously holds up in 2024. The screenwriter Neil Cuthbert was really prophetic in his mocking the typical tropes of the subgenre that can now be perceived as timeless.

The film’s absurd characters and high-class visual gags are here brought to life by an all-star cast, which assembles Ben Stiller in the role of Mr. Furious, the head of the amateur superhero team, William H. Macy, Greg Kinnear, Tom Waits and, finally Geoffrey Rush as Casanova Frankenstein, the main city’s evil and the movie’s antagonist.

Titled Mystery Men, it appears to be really worth-watching in today’s realities, even though it was a back-then box office disappointment, grossing $33M worldwide against a $68M budget.

“I think a lifetime of super hero tropes makes this movie even better for zoomers than it was for my generation”, fairly admits Redditor @scorpiknox.

Check out this hidden satire gem, as Mystery Men is available for streaming on Prime.