What is the best and worst Marvel film of all time? Well, I’m sure we all have our opinions on that subject, but I wanted to know what the consensus was. To figure that out I gathered data from three major websites for rating movies and calculated the results. I gathered the average user ratings from IMDB, Letterboxd, and Rotten Tomatoes, along with the critics rating from the latter. I used those values to create an average score (a percentage) and ranked the movies. The films are ranked first by their average score and then by release date (newest to oldest). Average scores for this list are not weighted based on number of reviews, and the formula is modified in the case of missing ratings (generally critic scores on Rotten Tomatoes). While this list will include my own personal thoughts and opinions on each entry, the ranking is based entirely on the average score, along with sections highly plagiarized from Wikipedia.
Before I did that, I had another question though: what movies? For this list I gathered all the live action feature length films using Marvel properties as the protagonists or antagonist (legally or not, this is important for one entry). This is not the MCU only or only theatrical releases. If you notice any movie missing, please let us know and we will update the list.
The list is up to date as of Thor: Love and Thunder as I did not want to include any films not readily available to a large audience (on Disney+ for at least a month). With that in mind, supplemental addendums may be published listing where future releases fall in this list.
*48 – Ant-Man and Wasp: Quantumania (2023) – 59% – Before we start with the top ten, let’s add the latest and last addendum to this massive list of movies. By the time we’re finishing up this list, this movie has been on Disney+ for two months now, so I thought it only fair to include it. While this film is considered by some fans to be a fun sci-fi action-adventure film, the movie suffers from several things. First, it creates an interesting and diverse environment and does very little to actually explore that world. We’re met with a few as a team other than Janet discover and are introduced to the world, but with the myriad of interesting and weird characters and figures that are quickly introduced we don’t really get to know any of them. And then to top that off the movie doesn’t really give us enough details to work on filling in the rest ourselves. Next, Wasp seems like an afterthought to the entire script. This movie is really about Scott Lang and his daughter, which is fine, but generally when you announce multiple characters in the title, they usually get their own arcs and character growth. I forgot she was in the movie until she was reintroduced for plot convenience at one point. Another issue that I’ve commonly heard is that Ant-Man takes out Kang fairly easily, even though Kang killed Thor in his universe. For what it’s worth, this isn’t a bad movie, but like many of the modern MCU entries it is middling at best and mired in obvious studio mandates to include characters and set up future plot threads. This film was written and directed by humans apparently and stars humans doing their best to pretend to be other humans.
10 – Avengers (2012) – 84% – [By John Coughlin] –While the MCU may have started with 2008’s Iron Man, it wasn’t until 2012’s Avengers that we finally got to see all of our heroes together on the big screen. Aside from bringing everyone together, The Avengers is a funny, action packed movie with great character interaction. Director Joss Whedon was able to bring the stars of four separate franchises together, in a fun cohesive story that ensured the future of the Marvel cinematic universe.
9 – Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) – 84% – This film is a taut political thriller which also manages to aptly introduce moments of spectacle in the third act that don’t feel overindulgent and unnecessarily chaotic the way many recent blockbusters (including MCU films) feel. This movie has some of the best-grounded action of the entire MCU with the amazing freeway chase which turns into a street fight that rounds out the second act of the film. This sequel introduced us to the brothers Joe and Anthony Russo as the directors. Along with screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely writing their third entry for the MCU, this team would end up delivering what many consider to be the high points of Phases 2 and 3 of the MCU with this movie, Captain America: Civil War, Avenger: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame with those four movies delivering a combined box office of 6.718 billion dollars (off a combined budget of 1.227 billion dollars). This film uses mostly existing characters/actors from the MCU but adds Anthony Mackie (8 Mile and Pain & Gain), Emily VanCamp (Revenge), Frank Grillo (Boss Level and The Grey), Robert Redford (Barefoot in the Park… this is my wife’s favorite movie so I had to reference it), Toby Jones (The Mist and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), and Jenny Agutter (Logan’s Run and An American Werewolf in London). This is personally my favorite film in the entire MCU.
8 – Thor: Ragnarok (2017) – 84% – If you disregard the comic and the previous film entries, this is a real people pleaser of a film. It is whimsical and fantastical and brings a lot of energy to a film series that a lot of people found uninteresting and lifeless. For those of us that disagree with that statement, this is seen as a joke-filled entry which undercuts the severity of the events happening. Odin dies and we don’t feel anything. Most of the population of Asgard dies and again we don’t feel anything. Asgard is destroyed and we barely feel anything. While I think this movie is still a good time and if watched through the eyes of a general audience, I can see why it rated so highly. But this movie also taught the studio and filmmaker lessons that maybe it shouldn’t have learned, which is why we got what we got with Thor: Love and Thunder. This movie was directed by Taika Waititi and written by Eric Pearson (Black Widow), Craig Kyle (X-Men: Evolution), and Christopher Yost (Thor: The Dark World). The previous cast is joined by Cate Blanchett (Lord of the Rings films), Jeff Goldblum (The Fly), Tessa Thompson (Annihilation), and Karl Urban (Dredd and Star Trek).
7 – Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) – 84% – I don’t hate this movie (I’m not actually sure I hate any movies on this list… sure some are bad, but they are offensively bad to the point I hate them like the movie Jack and Jill), but this movie does not deserve to be ranked as high as it is. This movie isn’t bad and deserves to be in the top half of the films on this entire list, but not in the top 10. As martial arts movies go this film suffers from exceedingly modern American filmmaking and editing choices. They use quick shots, CGI melding, and excessive cuts to mask a tightened filming schedule and the lack of extensive choreography training. While the tricks above can be used to intensify a fight sequence, they often show sloppy and untrained individuals behind the camera (producers, directors, and editors typically… I am not talking about the stunt crew). This film is ultimately about the master of Kung Fu in the Marvel universe (the character is based on Bruce Lee) and there are three fight sequences that I remember, and none are remarkable. The best (the bus fight) is the first one with the final one being boring CGI blast fighting. The film was directed by Destin Daniel Cretton (Just Mercy and The Glass Castle), who based on his previous films is a good director when it comes to drama, but this should’ve been a martial arts film first with a director who knows how to handle that material. This feels like a film where the character moments were directed by the director, but everything else was pre-visualized before he was signed on to the project (which is in no way unique to this MCU film… see: 26, 42, and 44). The director is co-credited as writer along with his common collaborator Andrew Lanham (The Shack), but was also written by David Callaham (Doom, The Expendables, & Wonder Woman 1984). The film featured Simu Liu (Kim’s Convenience) in the lead role as a breakout star, and he really is one of the best things about the film. The film also has an amazing pedigree of co-stars with the lead actor with Tony Leung (Hard Boiled, Infernal Affairs, & Lust, Caution), Michelle Yeoh (Police Story 3: Supercop, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, & Everything Everywhere All at Once), Yuen Wah (Enter the Dragon, Fist of Fury, & Kung Fu Hustle), and then it also stars Awkwafina (Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean’s 8).
6 – Iron Man (2008) – 85% – Fifteen years ago, this film wrote the blueprint for the MCU in more ways than one. While it started the MCU, it also developed a template for a plot which has be regurgitated multiple times inside the MCU: Our hero is introduced, struggles, gets to a low point, overcomes the odds, and becomes the hero we know, and finally must defeat a mirror image of themselves to save the day. It could be argued that this is also kind of the plot of Superman II, but as this is a Marvel website, we don’t know what you’re talking about. But also, that is kind of the plot of Blade, Blade II, X-Men, and the 90s Captain America movie. Hey, it makes for a good origin story, but like with Uncle Ben getting shot, I’m ok if I never see it again. This movie was directed by Jon Favreau and written by Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby (The Expanse), Art Marcum & Matt Holloway (Kraven the Hunter). It stars Robert Downey Jr (Tropic Thunder) as the titular character along with Terrence Howard (Prisoners), Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski), Gwyneth Paltrow (Seven), Leslie Bibb (Law Abiding Citizen), and Shaun Toub (The Kite Runner).
5 – Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) – 85% – [By John Coughlin] – When Marvel announced that they would be making a movie about the Guardians of the Galaxy many fans and critics predicted Marvel was about to have its first flop. After all this wasn’t the semi popular Guardians team from the future. These Guardians had a tree who knew 3 words, a talking racoon and Star-Lord. To quote Korath the Pursuer, “Who?” Upon its release in 2014 GotG was far from a flop. James Gunn had written and directed a film that made fans and critics fall in love with characters we hardly knew. This movie had heart, humor, and an amazing soundtrack. Many consider this film to be one of the MCU’s best, which is why it ranks so high on our list.
4 – Avengers: Infinity War (2018) – 85% – [By Andrew Burbage] While ambitious and overdue, this movie has no right to be anything other than absolute chaos. Numerous story lines for both heroes and villains, crammed into two and a half hours, is typically a recipe for a box office bomb. And yet, this movie felt like one of the shortest in the franchise. Directed by the Russo brothers (Captain America: Winter Soldier and Civil War), and starring everybody but Brie Larson (Captain Marvel), this was the decade-long culmination of the MCU. Yes, everyone knew Avengers: Endgame was around the corner, but Infinity War was finally going to give us the true threat to the galaxy we had all been waiting for. Somehow, Marvel was able to develop Thanos into a much more complex character than in the comics, while still giving our heroes plenty of meaningful screen time. When interviewed, Joss Whedon expressed that he loved Thanos from the comic books, but that he “hung him out to dry” when introducing him to the MCU. Whedon couldn’t see how to work in Thanos’s nihilism or love of death. He was impressed with how the Russos were able to make him his own, from so little to work with. From beginning to end, every emotion can be felt, without any of them feeling unearned or forced. In many ways this feels like the peak of the MCU, and something Disney is longing to replicate.
3 – Avengers: Endgame (2019) – 87% – The culmination of eleven years and 21 films gave us an epic time traveling heist film that explores previous films and moments in a different light while also giving us the completion of several different character arcs. A lot of people talk about the epic moments in this movie (Avengers Assemble) which are great, but the core of this movie (and of any great movie) are the characters. And this movie took characters we loved and gave them extremely satisfactory completions to their stories. Ok, maybe not as much for Black Widow, but we got it for Captain America and Iron Man. This movie also features virtually every superhero character from the MCU that was introduced and still alive by the time this movie started. Is it a perfect film? No. Is it still fairly great and worthy of this high of a spot on this list.
2 – Logan (2017) – 87% – A lot of the problems that I have with the “Snyderverse” and why I don’t think it works, for some reason work here. My few moments of actual pearl clutching are when I think about how superheroes, designed for children, are conscripted by adults and turned dark and grim. I really do worry that kids don’t have the same pathways I had as a child to fall in love with these characters. And if they do, because they aren’t really getting into the stories, just the visual images, they are getting a very shallow and temporary infatuation with the character. I fear some of the films and shows are developing fair-weather fans instead of true, lifelong fans. But with that said, I really love this dark and gritty take on a dark and gritty character. This film wants to be an old Western and wears that on its sleeve. And the genre fits perfectly. The violence is bloody. The drama is emotional. And the action is mostly really good. While this may not be a feel-good movie you put on in the background while cleaning your house, it is one of the few works on this list that I think reaches to the level of cinema that Martin Scorsese was misunderstood when referencing. This is not merely a rollercoaster ride of action with mindless CGI capitalizing the main moments. This movie is a true character driven piece with characters who happen to have extraordinary powers. That can’t be said for many of the movies on this list. But it is also why it has resonated so much with fans of the source materials, lovers of cinema, and film critics alike.
1 – Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) – 88% – While the argument could and has been made that every comic book related film is nostalgia bait due to our longstanding pre-existing relationship and love for the characters that appear in these films, this movie is the Ouroboros of “member berries” (I recently heard them referred to as “Nerd Nods” and I think that’s an appropriate term also). I don’t believe this movie is bad in any way shape or form, and the nostalgia factors worked for me to a certain degree, but I have a hard time believing that a similar plot without those elements would’ve been rated as high especially by the audience. This movie’s gimmick (and it is a gimmick) is to shove as many Spider-Man related images in your face to elicit the desired effect of making you think the whole is equal to the high points of single moments. And it all feels obvious which is what shocks me about the overall rating. And again, don’t take this as me saying this is a bad movie. I generally try to determine the thesis or point of a movie and figure out if that was achieved or not to determine if a movie is truly bad, and I think in the case of this movie I think the point was to be nostalgia bait. And I have read a few critiques of this film online which call it manipulative, but I think that’s unfair. Every movie is manipulative because none are completely factual and organic scenarios. The trick a movie must accomplish is not make us notice that it is manipulating our emotions. But did I get choked up when Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man saved Mary Jane there by fulfilling his character arc after his Gwen Stacey died? Yeah. And did I feel for Tom Hollands’ Spider-Man at the end of the film as he discovered the true cost of being a superhero? Yeah. And was I thrilled at the amazing cost savings when the CGI heavy characters all hung out in a box truck to remain unseen while the rest of the characters were in the apartment? I guess. This movie was directed by Jon Watts (Clown and Cop Car) and written by Chris McKenna (Community and Ghosted) and Erik Sommers (Community and Crank Yankers). It stars everyone from all the other Spider-Man movies on this list that aren’t from the 70s or 80s.
