As ubiquitous as superhero cinema has felt in the past couple decades, it’s worth remembering that we’ve been here before, even within my lifetime.  Tim Burton’s Batman series was a cultural behemoth when I was a kid and inspired a robust generation of comic book adaptations in the 1990s the same way the 2010s was overflowing with various studios’ desperate attempts to echo the box office success of the MCU.  In 1997 alone, there were over three dozen announcements of major-studio comic book movies in development, a few of which actually arrived on screens: X-Men, Blade, The Fantastic Four, Daredevil, etc.  One of those many rushed-to-market cash-ins on the Burton & Schumacher Batman series was a spinoff of the satirical Flaming Carrots comics, titled Mystery Men.  It’s a sarcastic Gen-X riff on that era’s superhero boom, stuck somewhere between the smarty-pants irony of the recent Deadpool comedies and the kid-friendly goofballery of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, which were also adapted from superhero spoofs.  Even twenty years ago there was enough superhero media on the market that there was room for a movie making fun of the common tropes & trappings of superhero media; the only difference, really, is that studios used to produce other kinds of movies for adults at the same time.

There was something a little redundant about Mystery Men parodying the Batman series so soon after Schumacher already went full goofball cartoon in Batman & Robin a couple years earlier, the same way Scary Movie is redundant for parodying Scream.  Kinka Usher’s background directing the “Got Milk?” & Taco Bell Chihuahua ads made him a great fit for the material, though, balancing out the slacker irony of the comedians in the cast with sincere commercial-filmmaking aesthetics — complete with a tie-in Smash Mouth single.  I knew that Mystery Men was a comedy as a kid, but it didn’t feel out of step with Jim Carrey’s manic antics as the Riddler in Batman Forever or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s non-stop onslaught of cold weather puns in Batman & Robin.  I was tickled by Mystery Men‘s fart jokes & superloser anti-heroics in the theater, not quite old enough to see how it was spoofing the genre instead of genuinely participating in it.  As an adult who’s now lived through so many superhero action epics and their own subsequent waves of warped parodies (most recently in The Boys, Extra Ordinary, and Freaks vs The Reich), its jokes at comic book movies’ expense have somewhat dulled with time in a way Schumacher & Usher’s earnest breakfast cereal commercial energy haven’t, but there’s at least an interesting tension between those two sentiments in the production.

One thing that has unquestionably improved about Mystery Men in the two decades since I first saw it in the theater is my general fondness for the cast.  The screen was already overflowing with familiar faces in the 1990s, but twenty-plus years of pop media obsession has only made the crew assembled here even more incredible.  It’s the most shocked I’ve been by the talent assembled for a studio comedy since I revisited Galaxy Quest a few years ago; I’d even say it’s got Galaxy Quest beat, at least in terms of recognizable, always welcome faces.  And so, I feel the impulse to list the full cast of low-effort superheroes assembled on the titular Mystery Men team (not including other key contributors like Geoffrey Rush as the villainous Casanova Frankenstein, if not only to avoid copying & pasting the full IMDb cast list).  Here are the members of the Mystery Men, ranked by how important they are to the success of the film as a Gen-X comic book spoof, not how powerful they are as superpowered crimefighters — a nine-way tie for last.

1. Wes Studi as The Sphinx

Superpower: Cryptic doublespeak

Contribution: Wes Studi may be the least famous underpowered hero in the cast, but he’s a solid “That guy!” character actor who rarely gets to fire off as many punchlines as he’s armed with here.  The Sphinx arrives halfway into the film after the Mystery Men team is fully formed, stepping in as a Mister Miyagi-style philosophical trainer.  His pretzel-twisted wisdoms like “He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions” and “When you care what its outside, what is inside cares for you” are absurdly inane and consistently land the film’s biggest laughs.  His official superpower is the ability to cut firearms in half with his mind, but his real skill is in cutting apart the English language until it means nothing at all.

2. Greg Kinnear as Captain Amazing

Superpower: Inherited wealth

Contribution: Captain Amazing is even less of an official Mystery Men team member than group mentor The Sphinx, but he completes their missions and ungratefully takes advantage of their assistance often enough that I’m lumping him in with the crew.  A vague amalgamation of Batman & Superman (complete with Clark Kent’s magical glasses & Batman’s infinite funding), Captain Amazing is the perfect Handsome Chad counterbalance to official team’s bitterly inert slackerdom.  Greg Kinnear is perfectly cast for the role, weaponizing his generic good looks to play Amazing as a shameless fame chaser who’s more spon-con celebrity than genuine hero.  The visual gag of his superhero uniform being checkered with NASCAR-style sponsor patches feels ahead of its time, fully satirizing the property-protecting fascist leanings of all superheroism years before The Boys would make the same joke.

3. Janeane Garofalo as The Bowler

Superpower: Daddy issues

Contribution: The official spokesperson for detached Gen-X cool, Garofalo was the most aspirational character to me as a kid.  She carries around the film’s coolest prop—a sentient bowling ball that suspends her father’s telepathic, browbeating skull in clear resin—while glowering at the world through her trademark black eyeshadow.  She also carries the rest of the cast, establishing chemistry and cohesion among each of her fellow Mystery Men that would be totally absent without her.  Garofalo was reportedly an early believer in the project and put her legitimizing comedy-scene credibility behind Usher’s crassly commercial vision to bring the full production together.  Mystery Men wouldn’t be much of anything without Garofalo, which you could just as credibly say about 90s Gen-X comedy at large.

4. William H Macy as The Shoveler

Superpower: A strong work ethic

Contribution: In a film starring at least a dozen big-name comedians with selfish ambitions to steal the show, William H. Macy’s straight-man role is an essential tonal anchor, one that becomes its own metatextual punchline the more the film relies on him.  The Shoveler is a no-nonsense hard worker with a loving nuclear family waiting at home.  His supershovel is an off-the-rack “weapon” purchased from a hardware store, which he carries to work with quiet dignity as if her were punching the clock at a construction site.  An accomplished dramatic actor, Macy is overqualified for the role, which is partly why it’s so funny to watch him work alongside so many Looney Tunes lunatics.

5. Kel Mitchell as Invisible Boy

Superpower: Invisible invisibility

Contribution: Invisible Boy’s unconfirmable power to turn invisible only when no one is looking is a genius encapsulation of the Mystery Men’s team-wide ineffectiveness.  The plot’s machinations to engineer a situation where that power could be at all useful, even if only for a second, is also one of the film’s most inspired moments of comic book spoofery.  Most importantly, Kel Mitchell’s casting in the role was a smart marketing move in appealing to 90s kids, to whom All That & Good Burger were the absolute pinnacle of comedy as an artform.  At least that’s how I remember it.

6. Paul Ruebens as Spleen

Superpower: Hideous farts

Contribution: Likewise to Kel’s casting, you could not appeal to children’s comedic sensibilities in the 90s any more effectively than by casting Pee-wee Herman as a revolting superhero with rancid, long-range farts.  The only reason Spleen doesn’t rank higher here is that adults’ patience for his wet lisp & flatulence is stretched much thinner than their kids’, no matter how much of a cultural event it is to catch a glimpse of Ruebens outside his iconic grey suit.

7. Ben Stiller as Mister Furious

Superpower: Impotent white-boy rage

Contribution: Ben Stiller is ostensibly the star of the show, and his career-long rapport with fellow Ben Stiller Show alum Jeneane Garofalo affords Mystery Men a lot of its comedy-nerd street cred.  His heart just clearly isn’t in the project as much as Garofalo’s, and a lot of his stilted improv as an all-rage-and-no-skills Batman knockoff fails to land on any solid laughs.  The joke in the movie is that Mister Furious’s directionless, un-super anger isn’t especially useful to the team, and unfortunately the same is mostly true of Stiller’s chime-ins as the self-elected team leader.

8. Tom Waits as Doc Heller

Superpower: Tech savvy

Contribution: Doc Heller is another unofficial member of the Mystery Men team, but since he supplies the super-underachievers with high-tech weaponry his contributions to their vigilante crimefighting are invaluable.  In entertainment terms, his non-lethal superweapons encourage Usher to indulge in as much 90s-era CGI spectacle as the budget allowed, which helps date the film in an increasingly charming way.  It also means that one of the most notable members of the cast—barstool crooner Tom Waits—is sidelined for most of the action, which is unfortunate, since any amount of his presence contributes to the film’s general Gen-X cool.

9. Hank Azaria as The Blue Raja

Superpower: Fork-throwing

Contribution: Unfortunately, Hank Azaria’s cultural-appropriating silverware tosser is a one-man catchall for all of Mystery Men‘s worst qualities: Stiller’s go-nowhere improv, Ruebens’s grating vocal choices, and the vague threat that the next incoming punchline is going to be an actual hate crime.  Azaria’s onscreen way too much for a performer bringing so little to the table, but thankfully he’s got a full team of much funnier contributors backing him up with much funnier bits.

-Brandon Ledet