Flickering Myth’s writing team ranks the ten films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe from worst to best…
In 1998, one year after director Joel Schumacher brought the genre to its knees with the release of Batman & Robin, a superhero movie resurgance got underway, spearheaded by the Marvel properties Blade, X-Men and Spider-Man. However, unlike DC – whose parent company Warner Bros. controlled the movie rights to its stable of superheroes – Marvel’s characters were licensed out to other studios, to varying degrees of success (for every X2, there’s an Elektra).
By 2004, Marvel was formulating a plan to produce a slate of self-financed movies and having secured $525 million of funding, it was announced the following year that Marvel Studios would produce ten movies based upon its characters. The only problem was, Marvel’s A-list properties were already under the control of other studios, and aside from Captain America and The Avengers, the likes of Nick Fury, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Cloak & Dagger, Doctor Strange, Hawkeye, Power Pack and Shang-Chi didn’t quite have the same ring to them as Spider-Man and X-Men.
Despite initial cynicism, Marvel Studios bolstered its roster by regaining the rights to Thor, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, announcing the latter two as their first two features for release in 2008 and marking the beginning of a shared Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now, six years and ten films later, the Marvel Cinematic Universe stands as the highest-grossing domestic franchise of all-time and is just an Age of Ultron away from overtaking Harry Potter and replicating that achievement on a global scale.
With the release of Guardians of the Galaxy bringing Marvel Studios’ filmography up to ten, we thought it was an ideal time to rank the Cinematic Universe from worst to best. To do so, we invited our writers to submit their individual lists, and allocated points accordingly. Click below to begin our countdown, and see how Flickering Myth ranks the MCU…
Originally published August 13, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
