Ranking the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Part 1
- Steve Katz
- Apr 26, 2018
- 10 min read
This weekend sees the release of the nineteenth movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a hair shy of a decade since Iron Man rode his repulsor rockets into the cineplex (and our hearts?) in 2008. Much has changed since then, chiefly the utter domination of these Marvel films at the box office, turning even heroes with the most questionable of star power into international box office juggernauts. The MCU has changed the landscape of cinema itself, ushering in a seemingly endless parade of interconnected cinematic universes. Granted, none of those copycats have managed to succeed, but it’s clear Marvel Studios and Disney have created the blueprint for boffo ticket sales, leaving the other major studios to play catch-up.
Infinity War is the biggest Marvel movie yet, so now seems like the perfect time to look back at the history of Marvel Studios at the movies with a completely scientific and unassailable ranking of the movies from best to worst. When these movies first came out, I was a comic book fan first and a film fan second. They were both big passions of mine, but I was far more entrenched in the comic world than the film world. In the ten years since, my priorities have shifted, leaving behind the weekly/monthly comic book grind for a life deeply devoted to cinema. Keep that in mind as you read this; these are the thoughts of a film fan who likes comic books more than a comic book fan who likes films. It’s a small distinction, arguably, but one that has huge implications for how these things are judged.
We start at the bottom, because this is how things go, and suspense is the flavor of internet journalism. Over the next two days, I’ll be splitting all 18 current releases into their perfectly categorically ranked places.
Without any further bluster or ado, on with the show.
THE “GOOD LORD THIS MOVIE IS JUST COMPLETELY TERRIBLE’ ONE
18. Thor: The Dark World (2013, Alan Taylor)
I am not embarrassed to admit that I got tricked by Thor: The Dark World when I first saw it in the theater. It was bolstered by the breezy, jokey chemistry of Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston, quietly continuing the Thor series’ status as the most comedic of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But then I watched it again when it hit home video, and it turns out that this movie is a nightmare. It’s an impressive feat to boast the worst villain in a series of movies that is so often defined by pretty terrible villains at best, but Malekith drives this movie into a crater well below the other dregs of the MCU. Bringing back Natalie Portman and completely wasting her (let alone Stellan Skarsgard and Kat Dennings) by infecting her with some nonsense red stuff and locking her in a room with Rene Russo for the bulk of the screen time hurts, but not nearly as much as every time Malekith shows up on screen, speaking his nonsense language with his nonsense motivations. The final battle is kinda fun (a bit of a rarity in these movies), making some good use of Mjolnir, but my God this movie is dire. Boring, limp, lifeless, and existing only to start the Infinity Stone narrative, Thor: The Dark World is the most disposable MCU movie by a country mile.
THE ‘OKAY, WELL THESE ARE AN IMPROVEMENT OVER THOR 2, BUT THEY’RE STILL PRETTY MUCH JUST NOT VERY GOOD MOVIES’ ONES
17. Iron Man 2 (2010, Jon Favreau)
This is probably the first case of an MCU movie disappointing in any real way. Sure, The Incredible Hulk (more on that in the very near future) is no great shakes, but it was only the second MCU movie and we didn’t really have a good idea of what this crazy thing was going to be. With 2009 being the only dormant year at the multiplex since this wild MCU train pulled out of the station, Iron Man 2 had a lot on its shoulders. This one blows out the continuity in a big way, bringing in Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, giving new War Machine Don Cheadle his suit and making Nick Fury an actual part of these movies and not just a post-credits stinger. In so doing, Iron Man 2 also has the distinction of being the first of the Marvel movies to care more about where it’s going and what it’s setting up than making the movie itself satisfying in its own right. I will admit that Sam Rockwell is at his smarmy best as Justin Hammer, but Mickey Rourke’s attempt to capitalize off the success of The Wrestler fails before it even gets started. Iron Man 2 sets a worrying precedent, a pitfall too many of its successors fell into with alarming speed.
16. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015, Joss Whedon)
I’d probably rank Avengers 2 (and Guardians 2, for that matter, but more on that in a second) above The Incredible Hulk under normal circumstances, but that messes with this whole category thing I’m doing, so here we are (but trust me, this list is unassailably perfect). Still, you can tell just by watching this one how heavily it was harmed by studio involvement, with Joss Whedon’s...well...Joss Whedon-iness popping up in fits and starts only to be thoroughly dwarfed by the bombast of it all. Ultron as conceived is a pretty classic snarky Whedon villain, and the attempts to make him a reflection of his creator is a nice touch, but the way the movie completely abandons the end of Iron Man 3 and stumbles in its attempts to introduce Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch makes it perhaps the most uneven film in the MCU canon. And you could see that sense of chaos in Whedon’s interviews after it released, as well as his split from Marvel Studios moving forward. Scenes like the digression to Hawkeye’s hidden country home (with Linda Cardellini!) or the heroes hallucinatory visions of the future are interesting on their own, but they don’t gel together well as an actual movie alongside the Ultron stuff.
15. Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017, James Gunn)
The second time wasn’t a charm when it came to Guardians of the Galaxy, with Gunn doubling down on the silly tone of the first while trying to sneak in some pathos in ways that didn’t particularly work out in the long run (mostly because he constantly undercut that pathos with more silliness). The opening credits, featuring the clearly toy-focused Baby Groot dancing to “Mr. Blue Sky” while the rest of the team is attacked by a giant monster is the exact sort of scene that made Suicide Squad the worst movie of 2016. Honestly, the whole thing feels soulless and focus-tested, just more of what worked the first time without its anarchic spirit with the soundtrack weighed down by even more pop songs clearly leveraged to sell a soundtrack after the success of the first. Kurt Russell has a lot of fun in the villain role until (and stop me if you’ve heard this one before) it turns into a stultifying CGI bore-fest in the third act. Everything just feels worse the second time around. The characters are less interesting, the attempts at humanizing them don’t work, the comedy is forced down your throat (the amount of real estate reserved for Taserface jokes...I think I aged a year in the theater). Pretty much the only truly good thing about this is the continued evolution of Dave Bautista’s Drax and the fact that this movie gave us more Elizabeth Debicki in movies, which is always a plus. Like the first Guardians, this is a movie that plays better when you first watch it and suffers mightily on the rewatch tip.
THE ‘HEY LOOK IT’S THE CHARACTER’S FIRST SOLO MOVIE SO LET’S HAVE HIM FIGHT AN EVIL VERSION OF HIMSELF’ ONES
14. The Incredible Hulk (2008, Louis Leterrier)
The second movie ever released in the MCU is the series’ red-headed stepchild, with star Edward Norton destined to be replaced by Mark Ruffalo and anything regarding Hulk’s family life relegated to non-existence once Hulk became a side character (so long, Liv Tyler). Indeed, outside of Robert Downey Jr’s cameo, the only other actor to recur in the MCU is WIlliam Hurt’s Thunderbolt Ross, eventual Secretary of State and bureaucrat of the military. Hulk solo movies are clearly a difficult pill to swallow, and this one is no different. There are little moments of brilliance (Tim Roth may be wasted once he turns into Abomination, but at least he has a lot of fun being wasted prior to becoming a CGI monster, as well as giving us a tiny little taste of how a Super Soldier would work in this world in a nice mid-film action scene), but those moments do not last.
13. Ant-Man (2015, Peyton Reed)
It’s possible that I was never going to give this one a fair shake. After years of Edgar Wright developing this film, we end up with a thoroughly average and utterly unimpressive take on a heist film from Peyton Reed. Corey Stoll is a total snoozefest in his personal iteration of “evil guy with the same powers as good guy” and this one’s got a particularly egregious case of MCU crossover syndrome that feels like it was stitched in from a completely different movie just to make sure everyone is clear that this silly little trifle of a film has some stakes and is building to something (yes, it builds to something. No, it doesn’t have stakes). It doesn’t help that Rudd’s goofy everyman just doesn't really work once he puts on the suit, looking like he never should have been there in the first place. In some sense, that's the point they’re striving for, but it doesn’t work in practice, nor does the attempt to use a father/daughter relationship to ground him. Michael Pena does what he can to salvage things by continuing to be an out and out scene stealer, but you can just see the potential that was left at the door, sacrificed at the altar of creative differences.
12. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017, Jon Watts)
The MCU needs to move past Tony Stark. This became painfully obvious with Spider-Man: Homecoming, where Stark plays a disapproving father figure to the young Peter Parker. He’s a whirlpool of charisma, sucking the joy out of the screen whenever he wanders onto set doing the same schtick he’s been doing since 2008. It’s the ultimate case of diminishing returns, especially as the film attempts to add some new blood to the universe with Parker's dorky friends. They're fine, but Stark just pulls the whole movie down, which has some decent ideas here and there that aren’t executed on particularly well (Vulture’s ragtag group of everymen fighting against corporate America falls apart a bit when they magically know exactly how to harness alien technology for weapons purposes). Tom Holland is probably the most teen-like of the three modern live-action Spider-Men, but that doesn’t make him the best of the bunch. He's certainly not bad, and the issues I have with Spider-Man: Homecoming aren't really his fault, to be fair. But I think he works better as a small dose side character in Captain America: Civil War than he does blown out into his own feature. This is the one case where we have previous iterations of the character in a modern context to compare (no, Hasselhoff’s Nick Fury doesn’t count), and the Sony/Marvel collaboration doesn’t hold a candle to the Raimi films that preceded them. Admittedly, that’s a tough act to follow, but those movies (especially Spider-Man 2) felt free as a bird due to the lack of continuity concerns that bog down much of Homecoming.
11. Thor (2011, Kenneth Branagh)
Points for making this one focus almost entirely on the fish out of water experience of having an Asgardian show up in small town New Mexico and treat the whole place like his own personal mead hall, spiking coffee mugs when he wants more coffee and doing all sorts of gauche things in modern society. Further points for the stroke of genius that was hiring Chris Hemsworth for the role. Some points for the creation of Loki, a character that doesn’t entirely succeed as a villain but does as a screen presence and a charisma partner for Hemsworth. Heavy point deduction for the awful shoehorned Hawkeye cameo that was so clearly shot on a sound stage months after everyone else had gone home, as well as the pretty much pointless inclusion of the Destroyer armor and the frost giants as a series of distraction techniques that drive the narrative away from Thor and Loki a little bit too much. Thor does set the stage for making this series of films the funniest of the franchise, something you couldn’t possibly have expected from the super serious Asgard via Shakespeare tone of the comics (frog transmogrification notwithstanding). It’s an acceptable but uneven table-setting feature, but it doesn’t seem even remotely interested in striving for anything more.
10. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011, Joe Johnston)
When you want to make a throwback World War 2 movie, you might as well just go and hire the guy who made The Rocketeer, right? And the throwback newsreel nature of The First Avenger ended up being a nice change-up after two Iron Mans, a Thor and a Hulk movie all taking place in the present day with a similar sort of setting and feel. It’s a rather strange cast of characters, with Stanley Tucci and Tommy Lee Jones and Toby Jones running around in this comic book movie. Hugo Weaving’s Red Skull is...fine, but he doesn’t really do much outside of looking menacing and messing around with some cosmic hoodoo mostly to set it up as the macguffin for The Avengers (and by extension everything else that has happened). Honestly, the best aspect of this first Captain America movie is how it paves the way for the next two (and its weird milquetoast take on the FULL METAL JACKET structure for a war movie), both of which serve as an improvement. The culture and the setting is a help, but it doesn’t quite make it a great film on its own.
9. Doctor Strange (2016, Scott Derrickson)
Doctor Strange is every single Marvel movie you’ve ever seen (with a nice helping of questionable cultural appropriation on the side), but it’s amazing just how much the license to get weird with the visuals helps make this one into more than the sum of its parts. The basics are pretty much as expendable as they come, be it Cumberbatch’s adequate leading man turn (he seems better in a group setting if Thor: Ragnarok is any indication), Rachel McAdams being a super forgettable love interest and Mads Mikkelsen barely moving the villain needle despite being, you know, Mads Mikkelsen, but when the movie uncorks and goes on some crazy inter-dimensional sojourns, it feels novel in a way these movies never do anymore. The same can be said about the finale’s impressive battle rewind sequence, one of the few cases of the big third act throwdown succeeding in at least being halfway interesting. I don’t know if I necessarily care to see another Doctor Strange movie (I could see him doing just fine in the Hulk role of “show up in everyone else’s movies”), but his debut was a perfectly fine effort.
We’re a little more than halfway there, so this is the ideal opportunity to take a break. Come back tomorrow for my ranking of movies 8 through 1, crowning the best movie of the Marvel Cinematic Universe prior to the release of Avengers: Infinity War.
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