MCU: Best-to-Worst

We’re well past the spoiler window for Spider-Man: No Way Home, so let’s put it on the list.

Full disclosure, I’m a Captain America nerdd.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

To me, a good superhero is two things: Action + Character. This movie has amazing action and fight scenes, as well as beautiful character development. If you don’t like this movie, you’re wrong.

Best: I’m with you till the end of the line.

Worst: Fury’s magic lightsaber, that causes Bucky to stop following him.

Avengers: Infinity War

This movie is such a satisfying buildup to 10 years of films. Every single character has a moment, when the screen is on them, and they do something memorable. It can be hard to do that with 10 characters, much less 76!

Best: Thanos

Worst: Hand cutting magic isn’t used to cut off Thanos’ hand.

Avengers: Endgame

This movie is so depressing, but they truly nail it. This movie lets the failures of the previous movie set, allowing us to see the consequences of what happened. The amount of callbacks and character arcs that were used and completed felt so satisfying, that I don’t care if it was fan service. Honestly, if this was the last MCU movie ever, I would be satisfied.

Best: AVENGERS…assemble.

Worst: So, Doctor Strange’s 1/14,000,605 chance of winning required a rat to casually walk over the dashboard of a car in storage?

Spider-Man: No Way Home

This movie is difficult to rank. On the one hand, when I walked out of the theater, I said to my wife “BEST MCU MOVIE EVER”. The pure nostalgia and healing energy of that film, is like taking the return of Steve from Blue’s Clues and adding in the glory of Marvel movies. However, if you can take off your nostalgia glasses, you’ll see that the movie itself is far from perfect. The pacing is weird, the story is haphazard, and the emotional beats for Tom’s Peter don’t quite hit right. Watching this movie is like eating a sandwich with the best, freshest ingredients, but it falls apart on your plate when you take a bite.

Best: The healing for Andrew’s Peter.

Worst: The whole first half is way too fast.

Captain America: Civil War

This movie is everything Batman v. Superman should have been. Also, by the way, the reason Iron Man lost and Cap won isn’t because the Russo Brothers value personal freedom over national security. They were making commentary on how reactionary measures, based on fear, will always fall short. Whereas careful consideration based on core values are stronger and cannot be shaken.

Best: I can do this all day.

Worst: The plot of the other Winter Soldiers, that was built up to be terrifying, then dropped immediately.

Black Panther

One of the most fleshed out villains in the entire MCU, in an amazingly artistic film, surrounding one of the best heroes in Marvel. This movie has made huge strides in African-American centralization and normalization in Hollywood, and it deserves every bit of praise it has received.

Best: Cultural Design

Worst: CGI

The Avengers

This movie accomplished something no other movie in history even attempted. Thus starting a wave of attempts from every major studio in Hollywood. No one should have to tell you how amazing this movie is.

Best: This shot

Worst: They hadn’t yet figured out how to make Hawkeye important.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Many people have said that this movie is this generation’s Star Wars. Not meaning that this film should be put on a pedestal like Star Wars, but that it has shown younger audiences the joy of absurd sci-fi, and opened the doors of storytelling. A solid team film, where no characters were introduced previously, and yet they all feel real. They all can stand on their own two feet, and I would watch a solo movie featuring any single character, except maybe Groot. But Groot gets enough love as it is.

Best: Amazing team dynamics

Worst: That’s just nasty.

Captain America: The First Avenger

People always make fun of the “Boy Scout” hero, claiming it’s unrealistic for someone to be this pure and true. This movie shows that Steve Rogers is just trying his best, and sometimes he messes up. He falls prey to emotions and anger just like the rest of us, but that doesn’t mean he stops fighting against it.

Best: I don’t like bullies. I don’t care where they’re from.

Worst: This guy. He’s a jerk.

Iron Man

This movie started the entire MCU. Marvel wasn’t even owned by Disney when this movie came out (and it shows). An amazing redemption story, full of strong plot choices, that has been repeated by almost every other Marvel movie since. This movie can’t be blamed for that, since it created the cliches.

Best: Gulmira fight scene

Worst: Complete disregard for civilians on highway fight scene.

Black Widow

This movie came out way too late, and probably didn’t do as much as it should have, but man it was enjoyable. This rockstar cast take an emotional path that most of the MCU hasn’t attempted, and those that have tend to undercut the darker moments with jokes. Between playful family teasing, big setpiece fights, and a villain that is a human without superpowers, it’s a solid movie that deserves some attention.

Best: The post-dinner daddy-daughter conversation.

Worst: It took way too late to come out. She’s already dead.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

You could take out ever scene that involves Spider-Man in his suit, or Iron Man, and this movie would still kill as a John Hughes film. Balances the two stories of Spider-Man as well as Peter Parker, emphasizing the stress he’s going through leading these two different lives. Just the right amount of reference to the wider MCU, believable child actors, and Happy being a big goofy goober. It’s great.

Best: Michael Keaton

Worst: Too much Iron Man interference in my Spider-Man movie.

Captain Marvel

While this movie uses Amnesia for the origin story like some kind of Jason Bourne movie, it gets a lot of things right. Awesome combat, twists, Feminism, and Samuel L. Jackson being so charming it hurts. Australian Ben Mendelson alien is hilarious. Powerful woman realizing that the men in her life are holding her back. Just everything is firing on all cylinders. Hopefully Carol can be a bit more excited in later movies.

Best: Goose the Cat

Worst: Saying “Hold back your emotions” to an emotionless woman.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

This movie has a lot of ups and downs. Some strong character moments are great between the opening party scene and the farm scene. There are also some beautifully shot action scenes. Even the villain is the most charming robot I’ve seen since I, Robot. Unfortunately it’s stitched together with some things that don’t really seem to fit, a weird nightmare sequence, and Thor’s little side story that never really pays off. The nightmares do lead to the Hulkbuster though, so that’s good.

Best: Everyone tries to lift Mjolnir

Worst: Quicksilver’s Death. Didn’t quite get the emotional pull they wanted.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

In the MCU’s attempts to allow their films to be a bit more unique based on the director, we have Sam Raimi giving us the closest thing the MCU has to a horror movie. While we still have some great quips, action, and imagery with the mystic side of Marvel, there were definitely some things that fell a little flat for me, that adding 15 minutes to the runtime could have solved. What does Wong get to do as the Sorcerer Supreme, besides rallying the forces at Kamar Taj? He still just feels like the Sidekick to this movie. Also, America Chavez was an interesting character, but was treated more like a McGuffin than an actual person.

Best: Real stakes. Since it took place in a different universe, you feel like anyone can die. And many do.

Worst: The rules and consequences of the two books, Darkhold and Vishanti, were not clear, and so I wasn’t sure why it was such a big deal, or felt the jeopardy of Doctor Strange deciding to use it.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Here we have a classic Marvel movie, but with the coolest fight scenes in the whole MCU. The villain that has a sympathetic cause, but ultimately will destroy the world, the finale fight of two people with identical powers, the unlikely hero who is brought into a world much bigger than he previously thought possible, etc, etc. It’s great to have some real representation, a cast of actors that are big names in China, and some real fight scenes that aren’t just supercuts of stunt doubles. But I probably won’t remember much of this movie a year from now.

Best: The bus fight scene.

Worst: It was fine to mention how actor Trevor Slattery wasn’t the real Mandarin, but we didn’t need to actually bring him back.

Ant-Man

This movie is about as middle of the MCU-origin-story road as you can get. Fairly intelligent white guy, who is way too charming, gets himself into trouble somehow and can’t continue the life he was living before. Then he meets with an older scientist who needs our hero to complete their life’s mission. Unfortunately an evil version of our hero is after the same McGuffin, and has a history with old scientist. Hero and Villain must fight each other, using their nearly identical power set. Luckily, earlier in the story our hero learned a valuable lesson the villain never did. This is why Ant-Man is in the middle. It just is what it is.

Best: Scott Lang actually being super smart.

Worst: Yellowjacket.

Doctor Strange

It’s tough introducing the Mystic side of the Marvel Universe, but they did it fantastically! The visuals are beautiful, and I understood how the magic works as best as you could hope for. This movie has all of the same faults as Ant-Man did above, but with less charm. We know Benedict Cumberbatch can be engaging, he’s done it before, but here he is just hanging out, kinda having a character, kinda being a stand-in. He spends the entire movie being completely reactive, and it isn’t until the end credits scene that we see him take an active role in his life. Hopefully they let him grow more in the later movies.

Best: Mystical Visualizations

Worst: His love life.

The Eternals

This movie tried so hard to be different and unique, and I wrote an entire article about how being in the MCU was actually the worst part about this movie. They took some really big swings, and had some amazing characters with deep important relationships, beautiful shots and settings, and was incredibly nice to watch the entire time. Unfortunately, trying to put such a big story into a universe so late in the game, it’s more than a shoehorn, they compressed these characters down into something that is far less interesting.

Best: The characters, specifically Druig, Makkari, Phastos, Kingo, Gilgamesh, and Thena.

Worst: Why haven’t you guys helped at all with any problem ever? Because we weren’t written into the MCU yet.

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Very few MCU sequels are better than their original counterparts, and unfortunately this is no different. Don’t get me wrong, the love story, the travelling across Europe, the villain twist, are all great. But my least favorite part of the first movie, how Peter is playing second fiddle to Iron Man in his own movie, is increased tenfold in the sequel, where even the villain wishes he was an Iron Man villain, but has to settle for Spider-Man instead.

Best: Jake Gyllenhaal nails his double person in one character so well, he’s the best not-a-hero hero besides Captain America.

Worst: So Fury and Hill were Skrull the whole time? Does that make sense? I truly don’t know anymore.

Thor: The Dark World

This movie would have been so much better as just a Loki film. We meet Loki in the first Thor movie, and he’s the villain of the first Avengers film, but this is where we really learn who Loki is and what’s important to him. His whole relationship with his mother is so much more important than Thor and Natalie Portman being into each other. The inter-portal fight scene was exciting though.

Best: Loki

Worst: Infinity Stone Intro

Iron Man 3

Tony Stark creates the Iron Man suit, then shortly after realizes that he’s essentially created super villains. Then when the Avengers movie happens, it’s easy to believe that Tony would put all of that destruction on himself. Everything was fine before, but once he started rocking the boat, the whole world’s crap hit the fan. So his entire PTSD journey is super engaging, and the best part about this film. However, the villain is lackluster, before and after the reveal, the Extremis is stupid, as well as half the rest of the plot. If they just picked a story and followed it, it would be better.

Best: Ben Kingsley basically playing two parts.

Worst: US Veterans are the bad guys?

Thor: Ragnarok

This is definitely going to make some people upset. This movie is so far down on this list for one big reason. It doesn’t take itself seriously. A lot of super upsetting things happen in this movie. Odin dies, the Warriors Three die, Thor is made a slave and literally has to fight for his life, and Asgard explodes. Every time something happens, Thor just keeps on going. He should be devastated! We see more sadness from him in Infinity War, when he gets 15 minutes of screen time. Maybe some of the hour that he has in his own movie can be dedicated to him being a little upset. Yes this movie is hilarious, but set on the backdrop that it is is just depressing.

Best: Korg

Worst: Warriors Three Death

Thor

Before The Avengers, the MCU didn’t have the financial backing that they do today. So how do you handle a god-tier hero, who lives on a planet that’s basically heaven, and have impossible powers? Easy! You just take them all away so he can learn humility. It makes this one of the more boring, non-comic book movies in the whole series, but they did what they could.

Best: Thor being super genuine.

Worst: Thor’s lack of anything else super.

Iron Man 2

No one is going to argue, this movie just isn’t great. Now they know that they are going to make The Avengers, so time to shoehorn all the wider MCU stuff they couldn’t put in last time, while also trying to balance two villains, and a fracturing friendship. It’s too much, and they don’t really do any of it to the point where it really matters.

Best: War Machine

Worst: I want my bird.

Ant-Man and the Wasp

Why was Ant-Man not in Infinity War? Because he was doing this. I might think this movie is better when I can watch the Ant-Man Trilogy, and see some cool character development and world-building or something. But as it stands, this was the first movie after Infinity War, and it’s just so flat. This is just some weird tangent, that doesn’t matter, and it’s a bummer. Who cares? I don’t.

Best: Giant ant playing the drums.

Worst: No one can take this seriously knowing Thanos is, at this moment, kicking the Hulks butt before he kills Loki. There are no stakes here.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

I’ve already written an entire article on this movie, so if you want in depth analysis on the relationships here, go read this article. The reason I put it so far down on the list isn’t because of the relationships, as much as it is how it relates to the rest of the MCU. The whole movie builds up to this point where we learn that Peter Quill is half god! That’s an amazing revelation! And yet, by the end of the film, he has lost all of his powers, and nothing has changed for the better. He now appreciates everything that Yondu did for him, but Yondu is dead now. If they didn’t want to give Quill such strong powers right before Infinity War, that’s fine. Just don’t tell this story. Infinity War Quill is indistinguishable from end of GotG vol. 1 Quill. It makes the whole story kinda meaningless in the grande scheme of things.

Best: I’m Mary Poppins Y’all!

Worst: Spiritual Baseball

The Incredible Hulk

This movie only half counts as an MCU film. The only connection from this movie and the wider MCU, is General Ross telling the Avengers about the Sokovia Accords. Otherwise, it’s just another Hulk movie, and at this point, no one knows how to make a good Hulk movie. If you think Hulk deserves more praise, let me know. But for now, it’s down here.

Best: This kick!

Worst: This guy.

What’s your favorite MCU movie? Let us know in the comments below!

<All images from Disney>