Over the course of the last 17 years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has emerged as the defining movie franchise of our times. Sure, individual releases stand out in that period, but the MCU has changed the cinematic landscape, both in influence and the reactions from Disney's competitors to find their own groove. Releasing 35 chapters of anything (without even ing for the TV shows), is a stunning achievement that flies in the face of the repeated suggestions at various points since 2008 that the superhero bubble is always on the verge of implosion.
The MCU's movies represent an almighty amount of homework now, but they do tell a narrative tapestry, but each one needs to work on its own. And, while the overall quality is uniformly high (few are outright bad, and most are at least above-average), MCU movies can be broken into clear strata of quality, ranging from the sure-fire classics to comparative misfires.
How We Rank MCU Movies
Alex Leadbeater and Simon Gallagher have combined experience writing about movies and TV of over 25 years. While the question of quality is subjective, they combine their experience with objective metrics, critical consensus, and - crucially - audience expectation to rank Marvel's 35 movies. At the heart of every decision are simple questions: what makes a great comic book movie experience, what viewers expect, and pure entertainment value. It's not all about how good each movie is compared to Avengers: Endgame.
36 Iron Man 2 (2010)
All of Phase 1 displays signs of a studio struggling to find its edge, but nowhere do you feel the strain of the shared universe as much as with Iron Man 2. Primarily, Jon Favreau's sequel seems to exist to move Tony Stark backwards from where he was left by the two post-credits scenes of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk - The Avengers plan changed and having Stark at the forefront of the team was no longer the starting status quo - which requires a lot of confused setup for the future, none of it very interesting.
35 Thor: The Dark World (2013)
While it's often cited as an out-and-out bad film, Thor: The Dark World's real problem is that it's bland. The story is - like other low-ranking MCU sequels - multiple different threads all undernourished. The tone never embraces the full-on Kirby cosmic side to the extent the movie thinks yet neither es as a knockabout comedy either. And there's so little ingenuity that its finale where all reality hangs in the balance is set in one square at the University of Greenwich
34 Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
After Ant-Man and The Wasp somewhat surprisingly outperformed the original, Marvel decided to go bigger, tying Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania into the then unnamed Multiverse Saga and using it as a de facto backdoor pilot for the hastily canceled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. And while Jonathan Majors' Kang is a strong presence, it's ultimately quite difficult to care about the stakes in a sea of distracting CGI.
33 The Incredible Hulk (2008)
It's not the worst MCU film, but The Incredible Hulk is undoubtedly the black sheep. And actually The Incredible Hulk is a solid piece of world-building bundled in an otherwise generic 2008 blockbuster. Louis Leterrier's direction is off the shelf, with high contrast, sweaty night-time scenes style du jour, and its story is any werewolf narrative turned action movie. Edward Norton may have had grander plans in mind, but The Incredible Hulk is lacking anything unique.
32 Ant-Man And The Wasp (2018)
Ant-Man and the Wasp is the Marvel movie everybody who dislikes the MCU sight-unseen thinks Marvel movies are. It's an unimaginative stringing together of multiple random plot strands that never fully pay off (the third act involves six different sets of characters and yet they barely connect up), instead repeatedly falling back on the charisma of its leads for quick laughs. The result is the most out-and-out boring entry in the series, one that does very little with its characters and is instantly forgettable.
31 Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015)
Avengers: Age of Ultron remains the biggest disappointment in the MCU and very much the result of the infamous Marvel Creative Committee, who by most s were meddling with the film's direction to a damaging degree. On the other hand, many of its missteps have come to define the MCU going forward: comedy undercutting sincerity (see: Ultron's "children" line); slow scenes filling in for genuine character development (see: Hawkeye's farmhouse); and a disregard for the continuity (see: the mid-credits scene with a totally new Infinity Gauntlet),
30 Black Widow (2021)
The decade-long wait for Scarlett Johannson to get her own solo movie, extended even further by the COVID-19 pandemic, wasn't worth it after all. Set directly following the mainline events of Captain America: Civil War, Black Widow could have effectively released in the early stages of MCU Phase 3 and been entirely unaltered as a movie or experience. But the problems with the Phase 4 starter as a movie aren't related to it coming after the outer-space death of its protagonist in Avengers: Endgame, but are more rooted in its uncharacteristically poor filmmaking, odd miscastings (chiefly Ray Winstone as Dreykov), and uneven editing.
29 Eternals (2021)
Fittingly, given how the comic inspirations for Eternals were created after Jack Kirby returned to Marvel Comics after his New Gods arc was cut short, there's a distinct sense of DC to MCU Phase 4's most experimental film. With Chloe Zhao at the helm, the result is bold, often exciting, but coming as the 26th entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe also confused. Fundamentally, while Marvel's weakest entries are undone by playing it too safe, Eternals finds itself overburdened by the restrictions the universe's well-worn formula imposes.
28 Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (2022)
A Sam Raimi multiverse Marvel movie implicitly promises a lot of things; horror-comedy tinges; weird and wacky universes; big, alt-take cameos. Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness delivers on all of these aspects, but in a lackluster manner. The Evil Dead stylings, outside of some nifty camera movements and a top-tier Bruce Campbell cameo, come across as window dressing.
Stephen Strange's sophomore adventure takes him to only two other universes for more than a second of screentime. And the much-lauded Illuminati cameos feel the strain of contract and COVID measures, most lacking depth within the narrative of the film or the wider MCU and existing mainly to deliver a gag done better by both Deadpool 2 and The Suicide Squad.
27 Thor: Love And Thunder (2022)
Love and Thunder's high points are found in its redemptive story for Natalie Portman's Jane Foster, and the delightful comedy of her awkward transition into superheroism, as well as Christian Bale's incredible performance as Gorr the God Butcher. Even if this proves to be the last the MCU sees of Taika Waititi's brand of superhero moviemaking, Love and Thunder was a fair - and underrated - of Marvel allowing a director to do mostly what they want. Yes, it has its flaws, but the low critical rating feels more like a reflection of a change in perception - and the willingness to accept that not every MCU movie needs a waterfall of hyperbole - than an actual drop in quality.
