A few years ago, deep into the comic-book-movie renaissance, some critical voices began to protest that surely the superhero bubble would pop before long. Fatigue was bound to set in. But with exactly half of the Top 10 slots in the 2016 domestic box office belonging to comic-book movies, that bubble doesn’t look to be bursting anytime soon.

The box office isn’t the only metric we can and should use to measure the success of comic-book filmmaking in 2016. This year also saw a few entries that, while commercially viable, were absolutely decimated by critics. Whether that reveals an increasingly wide gap between the people who write about movies and those paying to see them, we can’t say. (There might be a silent-majority election metaphor in there somewhere.) But many who paid to see critically reviled films like Suicide Squad, X-Men: Apocalypse, and Batman v Superman might think twice before shelling out money for further installments in those franchises come 2017. There are lessons for the three major comic-book studios—Marvel, Warner Bros., and 20th Century Fox—to learn from both their hits and misses this year, lessons that will likely shape the future of the comic-book movies—and perhaps help them soar even higher in the years to come.

Deadpool—20th Century Fox

This post isn’t really about who “won” or “lost” on the comic-book scene in 2016—but if we were to pick a winner, it might have to be Deadpool. A modestly budgeted, experimental character launch that not only won huge at the box office (despite being banned in China), but also picked up surprise Golden Globe nominations for best comedy and for leading man Ryan Reynolds. (Not even the shiniest Marvel star can boast a Golden Globe nomination for playing a comic-book character.) *Deadpool’*s massive success will surely prove instructive to both its home studio, 20th Century Fox, and other studios looking to advance in the increasingly competitive arms race that is comic-book-film franchising. In fact, Deadpool has already made its mark on Fox’s next comic-book property: the Wolverine story Logan.

The surface lesson here is that an R-rating won’t necessarily kill the chances of a comic-book movie. Hugh Jackman reportedly took a pay cut so his final Wolverine appearance could also go R. But Deadpool isn’t rated R just for the fun of it; it would have been impossible for this character—also known as the Merc with a Mouth—to be sanitized and true to the spirit of what comic-book fans know from the books. (Fox already tried a cleaned-up version of Reynolds as Deadpool in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine by sewing the character’s mouth shut. Fans were not pleased.)