Ranking Marvel movies harder than it seems
February 19, 2023
Starting with Iron Man, Marvel has been producing movies based off of the comic books written by Stan Lee since 2008. Their movies try to stick to the original storylines as much as possible, with slight variations. They feature many well-known actors including Robert Downey Jr., Chris Pratt, Samuel L. Jackson, and Natalie Portman. Everyone always looks forward to the Stan Lee cameos, when he randomly shows up as some new random character.
There are many ways you can go about ranking them as all Marvel fans have strong opinions about which are best. People can generally agree however, that The Incredible Hulk and Eternals are at the bottom. Both just could have been made better.
The Incredible Hulk tends to get lost amongst the other origin movies that surpassed it, which might be because Marvel doesn’t own the rights to the movie. However, Eternals had the potential to be good but ended up being a letdown from Shang-Chi and Infinity Wars/Endgame, mainly because their action scenes weren’t as impressive, the storyline was weak and the characters were basic.
Movies that find their way to the top of the list are Black Panther, Infinity Wars/Endgame, Spiderman: No Way Home and Thor: Ragnarok.
Black Panther’s popularity comes from not only being a great stand-alone film, but also being the first major African-American superhero and a cultural phenomenon.
Infinity Wars/Endgame was loved for being the climax of the last 11 years with everything leading up to that point. It was a great ending to a great chapter, finishing stories and storylines while making the way for new ones.
Spiderman was able to hit harder at the darker aspects of the character, by losing everyone and showing the backlash he faced when his identity was revealed. It also included nostalgic characters. They were able to get all of the actors to return as Spiderman or the villains, which made it kind of a last hurrah for Tom Halland’s trilogy.
Ragnarok takes a much more comedic tone, taking a different approach than previous Marvel movies. It shows a different side of Thor by combining comedy and mythological storytelling.
Marvel is one of the biggest franchises, producing movies that are loved by many. Very few would be considered awful and it’s hard to determine which is actually the best. They do a pretty good job of being able to switch from joking to serious while maintaining the action.