The Marvel Cinematic Universe: is it the gift that keeps on giving? Or a bloated embodiment of everything wrong with modern cinema?
Over the course of nearly two decades, the comic book franchise has released a staggering 37 interconnected films of wildly varying quality, making over $31bn at the box office.
Regardless of whether you eagerly await a new Marvel film like Christmas or you see the studio as a wayward freight train that needs to be stopped, the buck invariably stops with studio president Kevin Feige.
The episodic nature of the film series – with post-credits stings setting up the next blockbuster-to-be – may have started out as a costly experiment, but is now a formula other studios clearly view as a terrific business model.
While some MCU films are the best example of what they are – CGI-heavy superhero adventures – some are not so successful. An MCU ranking is a challenging ask for the sole reason that no fan could ever agree on the placement of certain films – but we’ve given it a go anyway.
From Iron Man to Doctor Strange and Captain Marvel to The Fantastic Four: First Steps, here is a full ranking of every MCU movie to date.
37. Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
A bad film, yes. An evil film? Well, there’s a reasonable argument to be made. This dismal exercise in intellectual property mining finds Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman at their least endearing and their most creatively bankrupt, the pair venturing through Marvel’s checkered back catalogue for a parade of miserable call-backs, useless cameos and bad jokes. This two-hour trip to hell is so inert, lazy and pleased with itself that it’s absolutely staggering that it made a billion dollars worldwide and is one of the most successful comic book movies in history. Maybe we shouldn’t try to stave off the climate crisis?
36. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
A real low-point for these movies, with the look and feel of something made up on the fly by the world’s most unfunny people. It’s also built on a smug presumption – speedily proven wrong by the plummeting box office returns of its immediate follow-ups – that the MCU can serve up absolute slop and audiences will continue to show up. Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster has terminal cancer, but why bother with that when director Taika Waititi is jangling his keys elsewhere – there are jokes about screaming goats to be made!
35. The Marvels (2023)
What is The Marvels, exactly? As a sequel to the 2019 smash hit Captain Marvel, it’s rather baffling, sidelining Brie Larson’s cosmic do-gooder into one-third of a three-woman ensemble. The other two – Monica Rambeau (Teyona Parris) and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) – are plucked from the ignominious arena of Disney+ streaming series (WandaVision and Ms Marvel respectively). The film ends up embodying Marvel’s extra-curricular “further reading” methodology at its very worst, tying together disparate franchise properties into a cheap-looking, shoddily scripted crossover entry that never really feels like a film. It’s not as obnoxious as the MCU’s very worst offenders, and the three leads are perfectly fine, but The Marvels was a box office bomb for good reason.
34. Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
The first two Ant-Man films were appropriately small in scale, placing Paul Rudd’s size-fluctuating everyman in modest heist storylines. The third, panned and relatively little-seen upon its release in 2023, was a wild swing in the other direction, sending Scott Lang (Rudd) into what amounts to an alternate dimension known as the “Quantum Realm”, to save his daughter from Kang (Jonathan Majors, later written out of the franchise following his 2024 assault conviction). The CGI is garish and worthy of ridicule, the dialogue throwaway and devoid of laughs, and Bill Murray, making a glorified cameo as a Quantum Realm bigwig, is downright abominable.
33. Iron Man 2 (2010)
Iron Man 2 barely holds together. Rather than making it a straight sequel to the successful Iron Man, Marvel overstuffed the film with universe-building references (Black Widow, Nick Fury and SHIELD’s Agent Coulson all make appearances) and two-dimensional villains (played by Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke). The resulting film lacks any direction and primarily serves as a Trojan horse setup for the first Avengers film.
32. The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Edward Norton’s version of the smashing Hulk often gets forgotten by Marvel fans – and for good reason. Whereas Mark Ruffalo’s bumbling interpretation of the character has a gravitational charm, Norton’s moping monster is void of any charisma. With Liv Tyler phoning in her performance as love interest Betty Ross, the film falls flat emotionally and serves only as a by-the-numbers character introduction. You won’t like this Hulk, even when he’s angry.
31. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
You’ve heard of weaponised nostalgia? Well, get ready for nostalgia that could militarise a small continent. Bringing back characters, actors and story beats from previous Spider-Man films (Willem Dafoe! Alfred Molina! Jamie Foxx! Others, probably!), Spider-Man: No Way Home was a big, bombastic ode to corporate synergy. Despite its unabashed fan service – and a few genuinely touching character beats, mainly courtesy of Andrew Garfield – No Way Home doesn’t really succeed as a Spider-Man film, miring its characters in a too-long mess of ideas, crossovers and webbing.
30. Captain America: Brave New World (2025)
In one of the stranger late-era MCU decisions, Anthony Mackie’s first outing as Captain America (with his character, Sam Wilson, being handed the mantle at the end of 2019’s Avengers: Endgame) serves mainly as a stealth sequel to the 2008 film The Incredible Hulk. Liv Tyler and Tim Blake Nelson return, respectively, as Betty Ross and Dr Samuel Sterns, the latter now an unsightly green-skinned mutant. Harrison Ford, meanwhile, steps in to play the president, who transforms into the monster known as Red Hulk. It’s all deeply silly, overstuffed with ideas, and lacking a single memorable set piece. A new world, maybe, but “brave” isn’t the word to use.
29. Eternals (2021)
Boasting one hell of an ensemble (Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden, Salma Hayek, Brian Tyree Henry), and being steered by Nomadland Oscar winner Chloé Zhao, Eternals prematurely convinced Marvel fans that the film would be a slam dunk for the studio. However, it ranks as one of the MCU’s woolliest and driest films, despite some attempts to stray from the usual Marvel formula. What little goodwill it engenders is derailed by an excruciating mid-credits cameo, but Eternals deserves a few points for shooting for something a little different.
28. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
No one can really blame the creators of Wakanda Forever for its failings: the film was fatally compromised by the tragic death of Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman, which caused a total overhaul of the story. It’s a film suffused with loss, a film with a tragedy and absence at its centre, and Wankanda Forever’s solution – to make the whole thing an ensemble piece – never really works out.
27. Black Widow (2021)
Considering that Black Widow is one of the few Marvel heroes who can’t fly, she spends a great deal of her own film plummeting through the air. Black Widow ends up landing as a valiant but chequered attempt to do justice to Marvel’s first female Avenger. Director Cate Shortland and writer Eric Pearson attempt to prise out new meaning from between the lines of the character’s official biography, setting their story in a time after Captain America: Civil War and before Avengers: Infinity War. A gritty, brisk but ultimately flawed instalment.
26. Captain America: Civil War (2016)
An Avengers film in all but name, this 2016 effort pitted Iron Man against Captain America in a war of ideologies (and, eventually, a battle of fisticuffs). There’s some interesting table-setting in Civil War – the nefarious scheming of Baron Zemo, the introduction of Boseman’s Black Panther and Tom Holland’s Spider-Man – but ultimately the film boils down to a conflict that is too silly, nebulous and threatless to really justify its own bluster.
25. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Just in case we’d forgotten that the Disney corporation is an all-consuming titan that owns half of Hollywood, the sequel to 2012’s Avengers Assemble decided to sneak in a little corporate synergy: when Iron Man accidentally creates a sentient robot (voiced by James Spader) who decides the earth’s only salvation is through the destruction of humanity, he announces his grim plans with the accompaniment of a little citation of the classic “I’ve Got No Strings” from 1940’s Pinocchio. It’s a moment that exemplifies the way Ultron feels like a cold, calculated operation from Marvel Studios and writer-director Joss Whedon. The film ends up choppy and unwieldy as a result, although there is time for the introduction of the glamorous Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), who would go on to better things.
24. Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Perhaps the disaster that was Love & Thunder has soured us on Taika Waititi’s take on Thor, but for all of the love directed the way of Thor: Ragnarok, it’s often forgotten that the first act of the film is actually very weak. In retrospect, it feels like the director crammed in everything he was asked to by the Marvel bigwigs before being able to let loose and inject the film with his own style. By the end, at least, it somewhat pays off: when the hammer-wielding God of Thunder arrives on the garbage planet of Sakaar, Thor: Ragnarok amps up, becoming one of the most vibrant Marvel films.
23. Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Often (and unfairly) maligned as the nadir of the entire MCU, Alan Taylor’s follow-up to Thor saw Portman’s Jane travel to Asgard after being infected by a sinister supernatural energy. The Dark World indulges some of the MCU’s worst habits, including an over-reliance on dreary CGI, an identikit villain (played by Christopher Eccleston) and unimaginative fight scenes. But there’s also a lot of enjoyable stuff here, with Kat Dennings’s Darcy Lewis and the Thor-Loki sibling relationship providing levity amid the Norse dirge. Whisper it, but this is better than the much-ballyhooed sequel that followed.
22. Captain Marvel (2019)
Captain Marvel is a pleasant if unremarkable introduction to Carol Danvers, with Room Oscar winner Brie Larson proving a refreshing addition to the MCU. Setting it aside is its 1990s setting, bringing a rare retro feel, bolstered by nifty twists and fun comedy turns (Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos is a standout). Ultimately, though, it feels small fry when compared with other standalone debuts, and isn’t befitting of a cosmically super-powered character who sits up there as the strongest of them all.
21. Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
A sequel that failed to capitalise on its predecessor’s successes, Ant-Man and the Wasp is still far from an unmitigated failure, thanks in large part to Rudd’s natural affability and the inherent comedy in Ant-Man’s big-and-small hijinks. Throw in Walton Goggins’s scene-stealing villain Sonny Burch, as well as Lawrence Fishburne and Michelle Pfeiffer, and you’ve got a caper that moves along at a nice, brisk pace – as watchable as it is forgettable.
20. Thor (2011)
Thor is an oddity of a film, an often-jarring adventure that veers from sci-fi family tragedy to fish-out-of-water comedy with diminishing success. For some reason, though, the film has aged rather well, perhaps due to being the first example of Kevin Feige’s willingness to hire people you wouldn’t expect (Kenneth Branagh) to introduce a character that would go on to become a household name. Thor’s sub-par Shakespearean prose would grow old quickly if it weren’t for Chris Hemsworth, a jewel in the MCU crown, bringing a joyous simplicity to his debut.
19. Doctor Strange (2016)
The reaction to Doctor Strange was strangely muted when it first came out. Was it Benedict Cumberbatch’s slightly strained American drawl? The abject waste of Rachel McAdams as his love interest? The controversial casting of Tilda Swinton in the historically Asian role of The Ancient One? It’s probably all that and more, but Strange was otherwise a perfectly serviceable slice of pseudo-mystical popcorn fare, with enough imagination in the visuals to hoist itself above the bottom of the Marvel barrel.
18. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
Shang-Chi has plenty going for it, from Simu Liu’s spirited performance (his debut!) to Destin Daniel Cretton’s breathtakingly directed action sequences; the bus and scaffolding fight scenes rank high as some of the best in any Marvel film. When the film moves to the fantastical Ta Lo, a dimension protected by a maze in a constantly changing bamboo forest, Shang-Chi should flourish. Instead, it devolves into a disappointingly drab third act, made confusing by, you guessed it, the over-reliance on CGI. It does a disservice to everything that comes before.
17. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 (2023)
There is, perhaps, a slight sense of being halfway out the door when it comes to James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. The filmmaker, whose first two Guardians entries rank among the MCU’s very best releases, had already dipped his toe into DC by the time this was made (having directed the entirely solid The Suicide Squad), and would, shortly after, join Marvel’s big rivals as the new co-CEO. But there’s still a basic level of craft to Guardians Vol 3 that makes it worthwhile. It’s funny at points, moving at others, and the ensemble cast are all deployed smartly.
16. The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)
So much works with this Marvel Studios take on the Fantastic Four – the set design, the Sixties-inspired costumes, the genuine chemistry between its four leads – that it only shines a bigger spotlight on the things that don’t. You can practically see the sweat beads sliding off the studio execs, eager to make this the most accessible yet inventive, different yet exactly the same kind of superhero nothing-burger imaginable, which does a big disservice to what this easily could have been. Still, it’s easy fun that goes down gently – even if its last-second tease of next year’s Avengers: Doomsday suggests we’re just in for more of the same moving forward. Sigh.
15. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, would eventually become the brooding centre of the Avengers, but there was once a time when he was all about the old-fashioned heroics. Director Joe Johnston stayed true to the film’s 1940s setting in a film that embraces that pulpiness of early comic book history, as Steve punches Nazis and romances military officer Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). Thankfully, her character is never relegated to the role of damsel in distress.
14. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Back in 2018, Marvel redefined cinematic narratives once more by creating a single culmination to a decade’s worth of films. While it plays as total nonsense to anyone who’s a newcomer to the franchise, for long-time fans it provided an unmatched emotional release. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo faced the monumental task of making each sub-franchise – from the Guardians of the Galaxy to the kingdom of Wakanda – cross over in a way that feels natural, while also ushering the MCU’s biggest villain, Thanos, into centre stage. It works… just about, while being overlong and lacking in real narrative cohesion. But it’s certainly epic, both in its sense of scale and stakes, and stages one of the bleakest finales in blockbuster history.
13. Thunderbolts* (2025)
To some extent, the warm reception offered to ensemble thriller Thunderbolts* was girded by the lacklustre films that surrounded it; this anti-hero caper arrived at a time when faith in the MCU was at an all-time low. But it’s still a very enjoyable, roundly well-made movie, centring on a winning performance by Florence Pugh, one of the best actors the MCU has snared throughout its run.
12. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Despite centring on a super-powered American nationalist, the first three films in the Captain America series more or less consistently delivered. Its crowning moment comes with The Winter Soldier – an adrenaline-fuelled conspiracy thriller that features a spectacular twist and provokes pertinent questions about modern-day surveillance. However, given that the Russo brothers root the rest of the movie in realism, the bombastic, CGI-heavy ending is a little ridiculous.
11. Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019)
Is Spider-Man: Far from Home one of Marvel’s most underrated films? Quite possibly. This sequel charts Peter Parker’s struggles with keeping his identity as the webslinger under wraps while on a school trip across Europe. Tom Holland is as spirited as ever, with Jake Gyllenhaal indelibly proving his days of taking himself too seriously are behind him. The Brokeback Mountain star gives an intentionally over-the-top performance as the villainous Mysterio. While nothing quite beats the Vulture reveal in Homecoming, there are several rug-pulls that come close – and it also earns points for being the refreshing calm before the No Way Home storm…
10. Iron Man (2008)
Where it all started. Iron Man subverted expectations by not only reintroducing Robert Downey Jr as a major blockbuster player, but by displaying the monetary potential of a whole swathe of Marvel superheroes. Other cinematic universes fail because they attempt to introduce too much (a mistake made in Iron Man 2). The first Iron Man, though, had a self-contained story that only hinted at a bigger world – a world that would eventually become a multibillion-dollar franchise.
9. Ant-Man (2015)
Perhaps it was Ant-Man’s status as a lesser-known Marvel hero that gave the impression that Ant-Man was a small-time player in the Marvel canon; perhaps it was simply the nature of his superpower. But while Rudd’s Scott Lang might not be dealing with world-saving stakes, Ant-Man endures as one of the MCU’s more charming efforts – a film whose modest scale belies a powerful grasp on what makes these movies appealing in the first place.
8. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
One of the most divisive films in the MCU, Multiverse of Madness marked Sam Raimi’s return to the comic book genre, nearly two decades after Spider-Man 3. While there is a degree of greatest-hits syndrome when it comes to Raimi’s trademark visual flourishes, there’s no denying that this is one of the most kinetic, stylish films in the whole franchise. The finale, in which Cumberbatch’s wizard inhabits his own other-dimensional corpse, is the rare instance of a Marvel film’s third act being not just a letdown, but actually the strongest segment of the film. That in itself elevates Multiverse of Madness to a very strong position.
7. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
The apotheosis of everything the first 21 Marvel films were building towards arrived in 2019; that it lived up to expectations deserves relentless praise. A cynic might argue that it was easy to succeed when your film ends with approximately five moments that were guaranteed to make its audience erupt into cheers, but the two hours preceding the fist-pumping climax is more refined than you’d expect. The Infinity Stone heist, which essentially serves as a glory tour of moments yoinked from previous films, was deftly handled. It’s hard to see a Marvel film ever topping this in terms of sheer triumphalism.
6. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
As an introduction to a new batch of characters set in a far-flung, never-before-seen reach of the MCU, Guardians of the Galaxy ticks practically every box. James Gunn was an inspired choice to direct, successfully making these characters as loved as the original crew; no mean feat considering Iron Man, Thor, Captain America et al were firmly wedged in fans’ hearts. Gunn proved not only his blockbuster directing mettle with Guardians, but his skill as a writer, flitting from moments of hilarity, emotion and catharsis with ease. The soundtrack, featuring Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love” and David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream”, is a winner, too.
5. Black Panther (2018)
Black Panther checks all the required boxes for a Marvel film, providing a bridge to films both past and future, and ending in a thrilling cinematic battle filled with perhaps its finest usage of CGI away from an Avengers film. On top of that, Ryan Coogler’s real achievement as director is to use a familiar framework to tell a radical story, within the confines of mainstream filmmaking. In the strife between Boseman’s T’Challa and Michael B Jordan’s Killmonger, he provided a nuanced, layered commentary on colonialism and Black identity. It’s a film that triumphs both within its genre, bringing new perspectives to the superhero story, and outside of it, satisfying purely as a piece of narrative drama.
4. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
After a run of three average Spider-Man films over at Sony, Spidey’s first solo entry in the MCU was a welcome return to form. Holland proved himself adept at playing a young, breezy iteration of the webslinger, while Michael Keaton was magnetic as Adrian “The Vulture” Toomes. The whole thing played like the MCU’s take on a teen coming-of-age flick – a combo that worked so well we could overlook the fact that skilled comic performers like Martin Starr, Hannibal Buress and Donald Glover went criminally underused.
3. Avengers Assemble (2012)
Marvel’s first crossover film was an unparalleled cinematic event – one that arguably changed Hollywood filmmaking forever. These days, every major studio wants to have a “shared universe” franchise of its very own. Although the MCU has refined the template since, Avengers Assemble established the focus on humour, character and heart that would come to define the success story of Marvel Studios. It’s a blockbuster that feels large on all fronts, delivering thrills not only in the “Battle of New York” finale, but in the knitting together of a team of characters that feel perfectly balanced and complementary.
2. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 (2017)
The 2017 sequel to Gunn’s hit space opera was received a lot more tepidly than the original – despite being a clear step up from its predecessor, visually and thematically. Guardians 2 takes the bright, unearthly hues of the original and doubles down. Kurt Russell makes for a cracking villain, a planet-god-cum-absentee-father who milks every drop of his quintessentially 1980s charisma. This is as purely fun as the MCU ever gets, almost serving as the platonic ideal of a superhero movie adaptation.
1. Iron Man 3 (2013)
In making Iron Man 3, writer-director Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang; The Nice Guys) was left with the unenviable task of following not just one of the MCU’s worst efforts – the veritable stinker Iron Man 2 – but also the juggernaut Avengers Assemble, which had smashed the box office one year earlier. Iron Man 3 reckons with the fallout of that film, as Tony Stark’s struggles with PTSD form one of the MCU’s most affecting story threads. But Iron Man 3 also boasts the franchise’s wittiest script to date, and some of its most accomplished storytelling. Black set out to make a proper movie, and the fact that it divides opinion to this day is a testament to just how bold that decision is.
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