There are a lot of movies about kids with powers, mostly in superhero films and magical young adult fantasy releases. It’s a popular subgenre of movies that attracts audiences of all ages, making them some of the most profitable franchises of all time as well. One franchise that features children with magical powers has not only made over $7.7 billion worldwide at the box office, but spawned sequels, theme park rides, and an entire subculture that revolved around the magical world. Thanks to those success stories, more movies about kids with powers are sure to come, many of varying levels of success.
Thankfully, these movies are not always the same. It is natural to have copycat movies, such as taking a child with magical powers and teaming him with two friends to go on adventures together. However, some are very different, including superhero movies based on kids and teens and movies in a dystopian world where their powers put them at odds with evil authority figures. There are also horror, animation, and fantasy versions of these tales, offering the best movies about kids with powers to entertain kids of all ages.
Disney was ahead of the game with 1975’s Escape to Witch Mountain, which introduced the mysterious siblings, Tia and Tony, who have psionic powers similar to premonitions, telepathy, and telekinesis that make them targets of an occult-obsessed millionaire. The film follows Tia (Real Housewives star Kim Richards) and Tony as they follow a map to Witch Mountain, hoping to uncover the secrets of their mysterious origins.
The fact that this movie about two superpowered kids was a hit is unsurprising given that it was directed by John Hough, a filmmaker most known for films like 1971’s Twins of Evil and 1973’s The Legend of Hell House. So successful was Escape to Witch Mountain that Disney sought to spin it off into a franchise multiple times over the subsequent decades. The film launched film and TV sequels, a TV remake, and a big-budget re-imagining starring AnnaSophia Robb and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson called Race to Witch Mountain in 2009.
The Darkest Minds is an adaptation of Alexander Bracken’s YA novel of the same name, which takes place in a dystopian future plagued with a disease that wipes out nearly the entire population of minors. The survivors are gifted with powerful abilities, which leads to their imprisonment and the development of a powered resistance. Amandla Stenberg, best known for her role as Rue in The Hunger Games, leads the cast alongside the likes of This Is Us and Tangled star Mandy Moore, among others.
The film was intended to launch a franchise that followed the book series, though a sequel The Darkest Minds has yet to move into development. Part of the reason was that it was a box office bomb, making only $41.1 million off a $34 million budget (via Box Office Mojo), although it was never as bad as reviews indicated.
Tim Burton is one of those directors who can find both the right material and the right actors to bring his vision to life. He seems to have found both in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, since the book is very much the sort of thing that Burton has shown an affinity for in his career, and Eva Green is just the right kind of off-beat star to bring the titular character Miss Peregrine to brilliant life.
The movie introduces audiences to the kids at Miss Peregrine’s home for kids with powers and shows their relationship and awkward situations. This movie about kids with powers also has elements of time-travel, another popular sci-fi and fantasy trope, as a young boy from the future travels back in time to find out what happened to his grandfather.
It takes a particular sort of writing talent to make Greek mythology unique and do something new and exciting with it. However, that’s precisely what Rick Riordan’s books do. The film version of Percy Jackson and the Olympians and its sequel manages to keep the spirit of Riordan’s books with a fantastic starring turn from Logan Lerman.
The Percy Jackson and the Olympians franchise combines the idea of kids with superpowers and fuses it with Greek myths and legends, making for a truly unique spin on both. Fans of the books often slammed the movies for changes made to the story, which made it almost impossible to carry on. However, taken on their own, the movies are great fun, and a new Disney+ Percy Jackson series arrived in 2023, delivering something even better — and more loyal to the books.
I Am Number Four is another movie about superpowered kids that was based on a YA novel, though has a healthy dash of alien sci-fi and rich conspiracy thrown into the mix. The novel series by Pittacus Lore (a pseudonym for James Frey) tells the story of alien children sent to Earth and put into hiding as a monstrous alien race attempts to wipe out their entire species. Each child was numbered and would gain their powers while mentored by a “guardian.”
Alex Pettyfer stars as Number Four (John Smith) and when the aliens find and start killing the other kids, he begins to realize he has to power up to save himself and the rest of his kind. Teresa Palmer plays another of the kids. While the movie was a box office disappointment, it deserved a better reception than it received.
When it comes to kids with superpowers, the Power Rangers are a staple of the trope, with multiple TV series and movies that all focus on teens gifted with extraordinary martial-arts abilities. The standalone Power Rangers movie, directed by Dean Israelite, was supposed to relaunch the franchise on the big screen in 2017. It was mostly an entertaining spectacle of a movie and did a lot of great things, although nothing ever followed it on the big screen to continue the story.
The five Rangers were a very diverse cast of characters and both Bryan Cranston and Elizabeth Banks were great as Zordon and Rita Repulsa. The movie made $142.5 million at the box office, but that wasn’t enough to warrant the budget of $100 million (via Box Office Mojo). The kids were all great in their roles with Dacre Montgomery, RJ Cryer, Naomi Scott, Becky G, and Ludi Lin set up as the Power Rangers of the future.
2005’s Sky High took place at the titular school for superheroes where the son of the world’s greatest superheroes (played by Kurt Russel and Kelly Preston) attended, despite not developing any superpowers of his own. The movie explored typical norms of high school life through a superhero filter and featured a number of cameos and surprising stars, while also providing a fun adventure with some great costumes and a wide variety of powers from the superheroes, sidekicks, and even future villains in training.
Sky High was always supposed to be light fun, and it delivered on that. While it wasn’t hugely successful at the box office, it became a minor cult film in the years after its release. The superpowered world it presented was truly unique, colorful, and catered to young audiences in a way few movies about superpowered kids manage.
At the opposite end of the tonal spectrum to Sky High is Brightburn, one of the darkest movies about a kid with superpowers ever conceived. James Gunn proved his mettle as a comic book movie director with both Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad. However, he also worked in the genre with his movie Super, and then in 2019, he produced the R-rated supervillain movie Brightburn.
Brightburn asked an interesting question: what if Superman crashed on Earth as a baby and grew up to be a villain instead of a hero? When Brandon crashed on Earth, a family took him in and adopted him. When he turns 12, he discovers he has powers and that is not good since he has also developed anger issues and soon goes on a murderous rampage, showing the effects of superpowers gone wrong.
Marvel and DC dominate when it comes to movies about superheroes, though surprisingly both have put out relatively few movies about kids with superpowers — with one notable exception. While they don’t look like movies about kids with powers, the Shazam! movies are just that. Billy Batson and his foster siblings are all kids, from late teens down to tweens. However, after Billy became Shazam! and shared his powers with his siblings, they became the Marvel Family and set out to save the world from danger as the newest team of superheroes.
It is an interesting look at the idea of kids with powers because they also gain the adult bodies to use the powers while keeping their childlike mentality. The first movie was a wide critical success, while the second Shazam ended up a slight disappointment as one of the final DCU movies in Zack Snyder’s world.