Over 15 years and 33 films, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has thrown countless seemingly insurmountable obstacles and more than a few apocalyptic events at their line-up of superheroes trying to save the world, the universe and reality itself. Their villains are at the head of all of this; crazed scientists, treacherous government agents, brutal alien warlords, amoral industrialists, gods and monsters and everything in between, an MCU villain can be so many things. Some were unfortunately the weakest elements in the movies they appeared in, being either generic, poorly served by the script or misjudged in their performances, while others ended up being memorable highlights even above the title costumed characters. 

There are often multiple antagonists in these superhero stories so we’ve tried to stick to one villain per MCU film. This is except where it’s the same antagonist carried over into a sequel film, and in cases where there’s more than one threat to our heroes. In these instances, we’ve focussed on the most active baddies or the masterminds of the various diabolical plots.

This ranking will be based on the level of threat the various bad guys pose to our supremely skilled and miraculously superpowered heroes, the diabolical creativity of their respective master plans and the sheer evilness of their actions. Spoilers ahead!

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31. Malekith – Thor: The Dark World (2013)

“Look upon my legacy, Algrim. I can barely remember a time before the light.” 

A dark elf conqueror with a vendetta against Asgard for a defeat in ancient times, Malekith is reawakened and plots to snuff out the light across the universe (because his kind really like the darkness of the void).

A hugely distinct and memorable villain from the comics became one of the most boring to ever antagonise a superhero movie. Whatever Christopher Eccleston was trying to do with his performance after undergoing many uncomfortable hours in the makeup chair was lost in a brutally hacked film edit and an all-round po-faced determination to live up to the “dark” of the title.

Note: dark is not the same as interesting. 

30. Ivan Vanko/Whiplash – Iron Man 2 (2010)

“You come from a family of thieves and butchers, and like all guilty men, you try to rewrite your history.”

Whiplash is a Stark-hating, parrot-loving nuclear physicist/inventor with arc reactor-powered whips and an army of drones to carry out his revenge.

Mickey Rourke got a lot of jobs in quick succession as various shades of tough guy in this period. The Wrestler this is not, and he doesn’t exactly stretch himself as Ivan, offering a barely passable Russian accent and playing with a toothpick as a poor substitute for a more intricate characterisation as he plots vaguely defined Cold War-fuelled vengeance on Tony Stark and the American Military Industrial Complex.

29. Emil Blonsky/Abomination – The Incredible Hulk (2008)

“If I took what I had now, and put it in a body that I had ten years ago, that would be someone I wouldn’t want to fight.”

Abomination is an unstable British Black Ops asset who volunteers for a series of dangerous experimental super soldier treatments in order to capture the Hulk.

The Incredible Hulk worked best when it was Marvel’s answer to a Universal Monster movie, but one of its weakest elements was having Blonsky as its villain. Roth is fine, but he just wasn’t all that threatening, the character thinly sketched as a violent jerk with a superiority complex. When he finally transforms into his bony green alter ego Abomination for a CG smashathon in Harlem, it becomes almost impossible to care.

Recommended for you: Once More with Feeling – 10 More of the Best Remakes

28. Dar-Benn – The Marvels (2023)

“I always come back.”

Continuing what Ronan the Accuser started, Kree warrior Dar-Benn seeks to unite the two powerful Cosmic Bands in order to open portals across the galaxy to pillage resources from countless worlds to restore her dying planet of Hala and reassert her species’ dominance in the galaxy.

The problem with Dar-Benn is not her evil-for-the-right-reasons master plan or her relative threat level to our heroes (which is considerable considering that with space-magical enhancement she can hold her own against three formidable supes at once), it’s that there’s nothing else to her.

We needed more time for layers to come though Zawe Ashton’s broad, pantomimey performance and she too often feels like a retread of the kinds of villains we’ve seen in the MCU many times before, just a means to an end.

27. Ava Starr/Ghost – Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

“It hurts. It always hurts.”

The Marvels Review

A scientist’s daughter with an unnatural condition that causes her to painfully phase in and out of the physical realm, Ghost resorts to stealing Pymtech to survive.

Ghost is an admirable attempt to make something interesting out of a gimmicky physics-based villain. The character is let down not by Hannah John-Kamen’s engaging and tortured performance but by her essential irrelevance to the film’s main plot and lack of enough meaningful screen time. It’s almost like they only decided late in the day that Ant-Man and the Wasp should have an antagonist at all, and that may have been the wrong decision for this particular movie. 

26. Ronan – Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

“I don’t recall killing your family. I doubt I’ll remember killing you either.”

Ronan is a Kree fanatic who courts war and is gathering enough power to wipe the planet Xandar from the galaxy.

Ronan, with his war paint, samurai helmet and big hammer has a strong look, and thanks to Lee Pace he is given an imposing presence and a rumbling voice. But you’d struggle to claim he had much in the way of depth as a character. He wants a weapon to destroy a planet because because he’s from a war-like race and that’s about it, though Pace’s affronted expression and confused “what are you doing?” as Star-Lord dances in front of him as he’s trying to trigger an apocalypse is pretty memorable.

25. Darren Cross/Yellowjacket – Ant-Man (2015)

“Did you think you could stop the future with a heist?”

Ant-Man Review

Hank Pym’s protégé, ouster and successor at his company, Yellowjacket seeks to weaponise and sell Pym’s shrinking technology to the highest bidder.

Marvel has a lot of evil CEOs in its rogues gallery and Corey Stoll brings plenty of punchable arrogance to his performance as Darren Cross. He murders rivals and exterminates animal test subjects without second thought, seemingly motivated by Pym not trusting him with the secrets of his technology (though really it’s because he enjoys doing it). 

Cross does have probably the most gruesome villain death in the MCU so far, and it’s no more than he deserves.

“There was an idea…”

Said idea was different to almost every version of the big screen superhero seen previously. Rather than each costumed hero existing in their own sealed-off vivariums, what if they could all share one interconnected universe containing a single ever-evolving and expansive story?

Once the idea gained traction, billions of dollars, and many “phases” of franchise continuity, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) became the envy of every studio with a lucrative intellectual property to siphon and thus many attempts were made to replicate the success of the “Marvel Formula”.

Much like the James Bond series in the decades before it, the MCU is primarily a producer-led franchise, the ultimate mastermind behind the project being Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, though distinct directors like Jon Favreau, Joss Whedon and Taika Waititi have certainly left their mark on their respective entries in the ongoing series.

What keeps us (and wider box office audiences) coming back, aside from the ever-increasing levels of superhero spectacle and long-form storytelling borrowing liberally from 80-plus years of comic books, is the time you’re afforded to grow to love the characters and their relationships with each other, especially in the ambitious team-up Avengers movies.

In this edition of Ranked we at The Film Magazine are assessing every entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and because fans have very different opinions on the best, the worst and everything in between regarding this series, we’ve attempted to find a balance between average critical consensus and general audience reception, as well as genre innovation and the lasting impact on popular culture, to order all of them definitively from worst to best.

Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration… Every MCU Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie Ranked.

Follow @thefilmagazine on X (Twitter).

33. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

“A guy dressed like a bee tried to kill me when I was six. I’ve never had a normal life.”

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Review

The Ant-Man films are probably the most inconstant sub-series in the MCU, quality wise, but because the final chapter of their trilogy tries to go both big and small, it well and truly overreaches itself.

Pitting the Lang/Van Dyne family against Kang the Conqueror in the Quantum Realm, force of nature Jonathan Majors playing a fascinating villain isn’t quite enough to save Peyton Reed’s threequel from being just an eye-catching jumble of mismatched, tonally confusing ideas.

For Kang’s first, less maniacal appearance and the start of this whole Multiverse Saga, make sure to watch Season 1 of ‘Loki’.

32. Eternals (2021)

“We have loved these people since the day we arrived. When you love something, you protect it.”

Eternals Review

Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) is a great director, no doubt, but she was just not a good fit for the MCU in this story of space gods guiding humanity’s progress. Considering the usually grounded and singular vision of her work, this was a particularly crushing disappointment for most audiences.

The ambition and epic millennia-spanning scope of Eternals sadly did not pay off in this jarring, misjudged slog of a final product that couldn’t even be saved by a stellar and diverse cast. 

31. The Marvels (2023)

“Listen to me, you are chosen for a greater purpose. So you must go. But I will never let you go.”

The Marvels Review

The Marvels smartly builds a lot of its appeal around its central team-up of Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan as their power usage causes them to swap places across the universe, but their found family warmth and oodles of charisma can’t overcome all the film’s flaws.

This needed more purposeful storytelling, a villain that doesn’t feel like a retread of what came before and more direct confrontation of the darker implications of the story. The musical elements will likely make an already decisive movie more so, but the MCU overall could do with some more audacious imagery like what Nia DaCosta does with alien cats.

Watching ‘Wandavision’ and ‘Ms Marvel’ through beforehand will certainly help you connect with two of the three leads that bit quicker.

30. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

“Whosoever holds these weapons, and believes in getting home, if they be true of heart is therefore worthy, and shall possess… for limited time only, the power… of Thor!”

Thor: Love and Thunder Review

Taika Waititi is the kind of distinct voice that gave the MCU a jolt in the arm when it was most needed, and he was vital in reinvigorating the Thor series, but the tonal balance and technical polish certainly felt off in 2022 release Thor: Love and Thunder.

Good performances from Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman and Christian Bale, and some memorable set pieces aside, Thor’s latest adventure battling a god-killer with his now superpowered ex-girlfriend Jane Foster at his side feels like too many mismatched stories smashed together.

Recommended for you: Taika Waititi Films Ranked

29. Thor: The Dark World (2013)

“One son who wanted the throne too much, and other who will not take it. Is this my legacy?”

The God of Thunder’s third film appearance tries to live up to its title with a story of dark elves trying to snuff out all light in the universe. Sadly, a late change in director – Alan Taylor taking over from would-be Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins – and extensive Loki-centric reshoots didn’t help an already disjointed film feel any less so.

Thor’s dynamic with his Earthbound friends is still funny and more Loki (shoehorned in or not) is always a good thing with Tom Hiddleston in the role, but the storytelling is inconsistent at best and Christopher Eccleston under heavy prosthetics as Malekith may be the most boring villain in the MCU so far.

28. Iron Man 2 (2010)

“The suit and I are one. To turn over the Iron Man suit would be to turn over myself, which is tantamount to indentured servitude or prostitution, depending on what state you’re in.”

The MCU’s first direct sequel went bigger and darker with Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark fighting a vengeful Russian inventor, a rival industrialist and potentially fatal health problems. Unfortunately, this ended up being a much less focussed, overblown and not all that compelling movie.

Scarlet Johansson makes her debut as Black Widow here, though she’s just a generic sexy spy at this point and not yet given the dimensions other writers would later bestow. The action is decent enough, but you wouldn’t lose out on much of you skipped over Iron Man 2 on your next MCU rewatch.

27. The Incredible Hulk (2008)

“You know, I know a few techniques that could help you manage that anger effectively.”

Lacking the clear intentions and boldness of many subsequent MCU movies, The Incredible Hulk is stylistically old-fashioned but works slightly better if you view this as a big-budget tribute to sympathetic monster movies (this one was made by Universal, after all).

A movie filled with false starts and one-off appearances (most obviously Edward Norton’s Bruce Banner would be recast with Mark Ruffalo for The Avengers in 2012), very little was carried over to the wider franchise right up until Tim Roth’s reappearance in ‘She-Hulk’ fourteen years later.

This is generally uninspiring stuff, with its most interesting man-on-the-run elements cribbed from the 1970s ‘Incredible Hulk’ TV show.

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The Marvels (2023)
Director: Nia DaCosta
Screenwriters: Nia DaCosta, Megan McDonnell, Elissa Karasik
Starring: Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, Iman Vellani, Zawe Ashton, Gary Lewis, Park Seo-joon, Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, Saagar Shaikh, Samuel L. Jackson

Previously on the MCU…

In Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers became the most powerful woman alive when she absorbed the cosmic energy of an exploding alien reactor. In ‘Wandavision’, astronaut Monica Rambeau gained the power to manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum when she passed through a barrier of chaos magic. In ‘Ms Marvel’, teenage superhero fangirl Kamala Khan’s inert extra-dimensional mutant powers were unlocked by a magical bangle passed down through her family. Now…

When three superheroes with light-based powers mysteriously start switching places across the universe, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) must team up to find the root cause of their conundrum and stop fanatical Kree warlord Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) from doing untold damage to the universe.

The debate about whether it’s a good move for buzzworthy indie directors to make the leap to superhero blockbusters so early in their careers continues. Cop Car’s Jon Watts managed to keep some of his directorial voice intact when he swung into the MCU with Spider-Man: Homecoming, ditto Taika Waititi taking up Thor’s hammer straight after Hunt for the Wilderpeople, but other filmmakers like Cate Shortland (going from Berlin Syndrome to Black Widow) and Chloé Zhao (following Nomadland with Eternals) have struggled to make their superhero movies stand out. Nia DaCosta (previously behind the Candyman reboot) seems to find herself somewhere in the middle of that scale, bringing plenty of personality to her story but perhaps having to temper her darker impulses to fit the studio brief.

The sheer charm of the central trio’s dynamic makes you forgive the film a lot of sins. This is what you’re watching for, to see this unconventional surrogate family unit – an absentee aunt, a grieving daughter and an over-enthusiastic younger sister who just wants to be included – puzzle out their predicament and support each other through their trials. The problem is that exactly what Captain Marvel has been doing since her movie debut, referenced in brief flashbacks and confronted directly at this film’s close, sounds a lot more interesting than the film we are actually watching. Rather than grappling with the responsibility of what to do with your near-unlimited power, seeing her make what will prove to be disastrous decisions that impact the lives of billions of extra-terrestrials, more often than not we’re hurtling around the universe searching for space trinkets for undefined reasons. 

There are some admittedly eye-catching sci-fi vistas on display, with glittering futuristic cities and spectacularly collapsing planetary bodies aplenty. There is also, disappointingly, still the odd uninspiring brawl that amounts to repetitive punching with added fireworks, usually in pretty featureless added-in-post environs. 

The action highlight is unquestionably the bravura fight sequence in the first act that is given its lifeblood and rhythm by sterling work from editors Catrin Hedström and Evan Schiff, hilariously inopportunely zipping the three Marvels in and out of their brawl taking place at three different points in the galaxy every time they use their powers. This unexpectedly not only puts the Khan family and their Jersey City home in the firing line but also keeps the powered trio physically apart and unable to effectively coordinate a little while longer.

You can’t really accuse DaCosta and co for playing it safe, mostly because of how prominently they feature multiple Flerkens (chaotic alien cats that can consume just about anything with their disguised tendrilled maws). The film also finds room for not one but two musical, or at least musical-inspired sequences to break up its more generic action. The more self-aware of these scenes that references an infamous piece of bad pop culture is the better and most memorable of the two by far and will doubtless be doing the rounds on social media as soon as The Marvels is released digitally.

This is one of the funnier Marvel movies, but most of the humour comes from the performances (especially Vellani’s insatiable excitement levels) rather than what was written on the page. The script could have used another pass for sure, and it contains very little that might be considered quotable. The warm interplay of Kamala and her protective family, the undoubted heart and highlight of her solo show, is always welcome, plus it’s amusing that they gave her parents (Zenobia Shroff and Mohan Kapur, both great value) more to do in this than Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury.

The Marvels has probably the most boring villain since we completely lost Christopher Eccleston behind his prosthetics to play Malekith. Zawe Ashton’s Dar-Benn is literally carrying around her Kree uber-bastard predecessor Ronan the Accuser’s hammer and making foreboding pronouncements, sneering through metal-capped teeth completely straight-faced without the luxury of a Star-Lord dancing to puncture her pomposity. We know she’s after a pair of magical MacGuffins and she wants to destroy a sizeable portion of the universe (which is bad) in order to save her own dying world (which is goodish), but she has no other personality or nuance to make her feel like anything more than a driver of plot.

You do wonder how much this movie was whittled down in the edit and whether DaCosta would have wanted to delve further into Carol’s costly mistakes and dwell on the dark implications of godlike power a little more in addition to delivering a fun space romp driven by sparky interplay between three gifted female performers. As it is, The Marvels is a decent enough time at the movies that doesn’t quite come together as a satisfying whole. Fans won’t need to be told to stick around during the credits for a couple of pleasant surprises. 

Score: 16/24

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
Director: James Gunn
Screenwriter: James Gunn
Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldaña, Bradley Cooper, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Vin Diesel, Sean Gunn, Chukwudi Iwuji, Will Poulter, Elizabeth Debicki, Maria Bakalova, Sylvester Stallone, Nathan Fillion, Linda Cardellini, Asim Chaudhry, Mikaela Hoover

How many trilogies really stick the landing?

In 2018, writer-director James Gunn was unceremoniously fired by Disney after some bad taste jokes from his early days as a comedian were unearthed on Twitter by right-wing trolls who objected to Gunn’s outspoken political views. Following a passionate campaign from fans and Gunn’s friends and colleagues, a year later he was brought back on board at Marvel to finish what he started. If you love this particular bunch of a-holes, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is going to be an emotional one.

Scoundrel-turned-superhero Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is in a dark place after making a mistake that doomed half the universe and lost him the love of his life, Gamora (Zoë Saldaña). The Guardians were restored following the defeat of Thanos, but a different Gamora – one who doesn’t even like Peter let alone love him – now stands in his paramour’s place. When an attack on the Guardian home base of Knowhere leaves one of their number mortally injured, the team set out on a quest that brings them into conflict with mad scientist the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) and causes Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) to confront his traumatic past.

What James Gunn has been hiding in plain sight up to now is that the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy is really about Rocket above anyone else. This is his journey, one that takes him from a bad start in life to being a full and happy person with people in his life he can trust and rely upon.

Much like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, if Rocket didn’t work as a VFX creation, then nothing else in this instalment (where he’s driving pretty much all the action) would either. Thankfully, the time-lapse transition between a terrified caged raccoon and Rocket’s older, cynically twitching nose that opens the film puts those doubts immediately to rest. Gunn’s empathy for all living things, but particularly those who have been mistreated, is what gives this story its power, and Bradley Cooper’s pitch-perfect vocal performance has the strength to make you feel all the feelings. Just as a raccoon crying over his lost tree friend made us shed tears in 2014, his relationship with his fellow abused creatures brings on the waterworks all over again here with some almost unbearably intense scenes in captivity. We don’t get to spend all that long with young Rocket’s animal experiment friends Lylla the otter (Linda Cardellini), Teefs the walrus (Asim Chaudhry) and Floor the rabbit (Mikaela Hoover), but we quickly grow to love them just as deeply he did.

This does have the feel of a victory lap, bringing everything full circle and giving everyone their time to shine. Everyone loves the literal-thinking lunk Drax (Dave Bautista) and towering tree-man Groot (Vin Diesel) but it is stoic cyborg Nebula (Karen Gillan) and eager-to-please empath Mantis (Pom Klementief), previously both pretty one-note, who end up being the undisputed highlights here. The former’s gruff and tough personality has gradually been eroded over her time with the Guardians, and the rare occasion when she lets down her guard and lets emotion overwhelm her really hits hard. The latter is the heart of the team, gets most of the funniest lines, and her unique power helps her and her friends out of a few tough spots in some unexpected ways.

Newcomers to this universe include Borat 2‘s Maria Bakalova as Cosmo the talking psychic cosmonaut dog who has an adorable film-long argument with space pirate Kraglin (Sean Gunn), Will Poulter as genetically engineered gold man-child Adam Warlock, and Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary, arguably the most evil and irredeemable bastard in the galaxy who will mutilate, torture and thoughtlessly dispose of countless living things all in service of his delusional mission to create a “perfect society”.

The action is all very polished and exciting, and because this is the team’s last ride it all feels a lot more dangerous for our heroes somehow. A fight in a corridor in the final act might be the finest couple of minutes of action in the MCU to date – not only is it meticulously choreographed, ludicrously entertaining and set to a killer Beastie Boys track, but it lets the team work in violent harmony and gives every member of the team a chance to showcase their special abilities, each getting their own big character moment at the same time.

James Gunn has always happily leaned into the sillier visual and conceptual aspects of space opera, and rarely have such strange ideas been more convincingly brought to life as here. From a bio-formed space station seemingly made of meat to learning that the city of Knowhere (built inside the skull of a dead space god) can actually be driven to a new location, and even to a mirror image “Counter-Earth” populated by humanoids forcefully evolved from lower lifeforms, big swings are taken. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is an epic, galaxy-spanning quest, but all this imagination vitally remains in service of a very intimate story. 

A minor criticism that could be levelled at this particular Guardians iteration is that the soundtrack isn’t as memorable or pitch-perfect as in the previous two films, with John Murphy’s (Sunshine, The Suicide Squad) original score extensively incorporating choral singing provoking a stronger reaction than the vast majority of the needle-drops. Similarly, the final act of the film, after over two hours of putting every Guardian through one life-threatening incident after another, keeps piling on the jeopardy to an almost absurd degree even when it is already fit to burst.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 brings this unlikely team’s journey to an immensely satisfying and appropriately epic conclusion. It is spectacular to look at and really funny, but it is also easily one of the darkest stories in the Marvel universe and does not pull its punches to make its pretty explicit discussion of abuse and animal testing any more palatable. We may see some of these characters again down the road, but for now it’s a fond farewell to them all, especially the acerbic Racoon who just wanted to be loved.

Score: 21/24

Recommended for you: MCU Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranked

On the screen, Marvel Studios’ trusted output has been received positively by critics and audiences alike, the majority of its thirty feature releases being well received and worthy of their hype, even their so-called “calculated risks” being more often refreshing to their already established formula than detrimental to their overall output.

Cinema has been forever changed by the dawn of Marvel’s big screen dominance and old-school serial approach to storytelling, Disney’s newly ordained crown jewel inspiring every rival studio and aspirational production company to gobble up trusted IPs and set forth plans for so-called Movie Universes based around everything from fellow superheroes to famous board games, reinvented children’s cartoons to horror characters.

In this edition of Ranked, we at The Film Magazine are putting the world’s most influential film franchise under the microscope to compare every feature length Marvel release with one another to determine which MCU films are the best and which are the worst, judging each on artistic merit and cultural impact.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter. 

30. The Incredible Hulk (2008)

To this day, Louis Leterrier’s 2008 MCU contribution The Incredible Hulk is the forgotten member of the family. And, while this isn’t necessarily this distinctly average film’s fault and is actually more to do with Edward Norton refusing to return to his role as the Hulk following strained relationships with both director and studio, as well as how the rights to the Hulk character are locked in a contract that limits Marvel Studios from telling a standalone story with Mark Ruffalo, a lot can still be said for how dated this film is – The Incredible Hulk playing a lot more like Spider-Man 3, Fantastic Four and X-Men: Origins – Wolverine than the later and much more tasteful Marvel Studios offerings to come in this list.

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29. Thor: The Dark World (2013)

The worst of a bad bunch of uninspired sequels, Alan Taylor’s Thor: The Dark World not only seemed absent of the comedy and much of the mythology of the original Thor film but it also hit at precisely the wrong time – that being between the much more highly anticipated Iron Man 3 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and the year after the original The Avengers.

Thor 2 was generic in a Suicide Squad “angry swirl of evil descending from the sky for no reason” kind of way; a movie so uninspired Chris Hemsworth has openly spoken about how he almost quit the role because of it; a perfectly serviceable sequel (especially at the time), but one of little consequence or imagination that few get excited to rewatch – an MCU entry that time hasn’t been very kind to.

28. Iron Man 2 (2010)

The first Iron Man was such a huge success creatively, artistically, critically and financially for Marvel Studios that a quick-turnaround 2nd movie was demanded to bolster Phase One’s launch – a period in the history of the MCU that was a lot more rocky than many are willing to admit.

Iron Man 2 was a failure in all of the ways Iron Man was a success, apart from financially, offering bland and sometimes barely comprehensible moments of action, dialogue and character. As a result, Iron Man 2 fits right in alongside the likes of The Amazing Spider-Man as a very particular brand of cheesy and uninspired comic book movie that was made more to earn a quick buck than it was to fulfil any creative or artistic need. It has its moments – which movie starring Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man doesn’t? – but thankfully the MCU has proven itself to be better than this in its other phases since.

27. Ant-Man and The Wasp (2018)

Coming between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame – ie, post-snap – Ant-Man and The Wasp was put in an awful position to succeed, the creative minds behind the film having to choose between embracing the actions of Infinity War or ignoring them altogether. They chose the latter (at least until the film’s final moments), but what fans wanted was something of an indicator as to what was to come in Endgame, or at least a taste of post-Infinity War’s MCU landscape, and the comedy-centred light-heartedness of an Ant-Man movie was an example of Marvel Studios not taking a minute to read the room.

More than that, Ant-Man and The Wasp felt scaled down from the original, its outlandish creative ideas brought into line with the wider MCU look and feel of things, making what seemed like a promising sequel to a moving and hilarious comedy one of the studio’s most formulaic and typically “superhero movie” releases to date – the “formula” not being necessarily bad, but certainly overplayed.

26. Eternals (2021)

Eternals Review

Eternals came with a lot of hope and expectation given the nature of the original material it was being adapted from and how it was the first MCU entry to be directed by an Oscar-winning director (Chloé Zhao). Ultimately, it proved too much of a mix of the trusted Marvel formula and director Zhao’s trademark directorial style, the clashes between action and existentialism forcing a disjointed rhythm in the filmmaking that made Eternals feel way longer than it was (which was one of the longest MCU films in history) and hit home way less effectively than anyone would have hoped.

As a product of the world’s largest production arm, Eternals was hopefully diverse from cast to crew, but ultimately this release had two authorial presences that seemed to clash on screen, this already troubling combination being amplified by its position in the MCU as a part of the studio’s fourth phase and thus responsible for a number of story elements and character introductions barely relevant to its standalone narrative.

25. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Thor: Love and Thunder Review

Despite featuring one of the most empathetic and exceptionally-performed villains in Marvel Cinematic Universe history, Thor: Love and Thunder was a messy fourth instalment in the God of Thunder’s individual franchise, a film that flipped between tones as if at a loss at how to create both meaningful drama and laugh-out-loud comedy.

In comparison to post-2012 Marvel releases, the action was relatively poor too. Gone were the exceptionally choreographed sequences of the mainstream Avengers films or the differing styles of Black Widow, Doctor Strange and Shang-Chi, and in its place were bland and almost inconsequential battles repeated, a few moments of awe failing to rectify for a movie’s worth of oversights.

Thor: Love and Thunder is an enjoyable time at the movies. It will make you laugh and it does have some interesting moments, but these pros are simply too few and far between to make for a strong (or even meaningful) MCU entry.

24. Iron Man 3 (2013)

Adored by some and maligned by others, Iron Man 3 simply came about much too early, screenwriter-director Shane Black’s offerings of genre and trope deconstructions – most notably the choice to twist a genuinely fascinating villain into a trope-ridden stereotypical bad guy as a form of commentary – being things usually reserved for the dying days of a genre, not for one of its peaks.

This film was the follow up to The Avengers where Tony Stark had almost died, so Black’s smarts didn’t hit as they could have much later in the studio’s line-up – people wanted emotion and stakes, as well as suitable conclusions to character arcs, and Black’s work was seen to undermine that, the very strong work in several aspects of this film ultimately shunned to the background of a film dominated by a creator’s singular intention seemingly forced into the canon at the wrong time.

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Tenoch Huerta’s Namor is the antagonist of the 2nd Black Panther movie, threatening war with Wakanda. Over the course of the film we learn that he is a mutant. Ever since Disney’s acquisition of X-Men rights holders 20th Century Fox, it has seemed inevitable that mutants would arrive into the MCU at some point. With a proposed mutant-centric film in the works, along with Deadpool 3 starring Ryan Reynolds as X-Men franchisee Deadpool and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, within the MCU continuity, there’s going to be even more speculation on who will also join the universe.

It is almost inevitable that the clawed badass Wolverine will be present in the MCU moving forward even if Hugh Jackman doesn’t stay on in the role. It’s also a given that Professor Charles Xavier and Magneto will come into the fold. As such, we won’t be speculating on them. Instead, in this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we will be offering up some different mutants to see in the MCU moving forward, some familiar and some new to movie audiences, for this: the 11 Mutants the MCU Should Introduce.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

1. Kitty Pryde | Shadowcat

Despite being an enduringly popular comic book staple since “X-Men” legend Chris Claremont created her, Katherine “Kitty” Pryde has yet to get her due on screen.

Despite two appearances in the original Fox film franchise, with Elliot Page filling the role, she was always relegated to a secondary character, adept at running through walls and sending Wolverine back in time.

The reality is, her ability to phase through matter is visually striking and opens up fun action, and her history as a Jewish-American offers ample opportunity to explore persecution and prejudice, something that has been key to the X-Men from the start.

She also has an inter-dimensional pet dragon called Lockheed, and has at times joined the Guardians of the Galaxy, so her potential to become a key member of the universe is all there to be used. It helps (given that Marvel has been taking steps to offer better representation) that Kitty is a bisexual character.

Who should play them? Jane Levy.

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2. Akihiro | Daken

Daken is the mutant son of Wolverine and a certified badass in his own right. He has all the same abilities as his old man, only with added pheromone manipulation.

Like most of the MCU, he has a history of daddy issues which makes him ripe for exploration. Daken blames Wolverine for the death of his mother, Itsu, and how his not being present in young Daken’s life meant it was filled with hardship. This sort of tasty drama could make him the natural successor to Loki’s conflicted baddie role.

Given the popularity of Logan, and the slim chances of Hugh Jackman doing another long-term stint as Wolverine post-Deadpool 3, it might be worth Daken and X-23 going head to head over their father’s mantle.

Daken has also taken a more heroic role over time, offering a long term story arc of redemption for whomever takes on the role, something the MCU has also proven fond of.

Who should play them? Honour Jackman’s legacy by casting an unknown, preferably someone with a history of martial arts.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
Director: Ryan Coogler
Screenwriters: Ryan Coogler, Joe Robert Cole
Starring: Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Angela Bassett, Tenoch Huerta Mejía, Winston Duke, Florence Kasumba, Dominique Thorne, Michaela Coel, Martin Freeman

On 28 August 2020, the world woke to the heartbreaking news that Chadwick Boseman had passed away. He was only 43 and had been battling cancer in secret for some time. This left Marvel Studios and Black Panther director Ryan Coogler with an unthinkable dilemma: to recast, or to acknowledge the in-universe death of one of your most prominent lead characters? They went with the far the more respectful second option, and so the sequel to one of the biggest hits in the Marvel Cinematic Universe had the added challenge of paying tribute to its dearly departed star in addition to telling a new and expansive story.

A year after the untimely death of her brother King T’Challa, Shuri (Letitia Wright) has thrown herself into her work to avoid confronting her grief, leaving her mother Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) to represent Wakanda on the global stage as ruler, the title of Black Panther vacant. When a new threat emerges in the shape of Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), the warrior-king of the powerful aquatic nation of Talokan, Shuri must rally her allies and embrace her destiny if Wakanda and the nations beyond it stand any hope of survival.

The world has changed. The MCU may not have experienced a Coronavirus pandemic, but half of it was snapped out of existence for five years by intergalactic tyrant Thanos. Friends and loved ones were torn apart, including Ramonda who lost both her children to “The Blip” and was then reunited with them briefly after the events of Avengers: Endgame only to lose her son all over again to human mortality. In the absence of heirs to the throne, hungry eyes have been on Wakanda, and UN member states have been performing incursions for their precious vibranium metal deposits. Everything comes to a head when the previously unknown Talokanil people attack the surface world to protect their own stores of vibranium, drawing out the isolationist Wakandans to take action of their own. 

Tragic circumstances have promoted Black Panther’s memorable supporting cast to main players, and everyone in the ensemble is given new depths and plenty of interesting things to do. One of the best things about the first Black Panther is how it saw T’Challa relying on a close support network of family and friends to effectively perform his role as superhero, and it is these same loved ones – Shuri, Ramonda, love of T’Challa’s life Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), and loyal bodyguard Okoye (Danai Gurira) – that are tasked here with continuing his legacy as best they can.

When it comes down to it, for all its spectacular, multi-tiered action and dazzling portrayals of hidden futurist worlds inspired by African and Mesoamerican cultures (much respect to returning production designer Hannah Beachler here), this is a film about legacy and a mother’s need to give her children a future. Namor’s origins are told through the lens of his mother’s experiences in 16th Century Mexico, and in one of the film’s standout scenes a particularly powerful, distraught Angela Bassett takes the floor in her throne room to illuminate the grief she has been through. The script from Coogler and Joe Robert Cole can at times be too tell-not-show, but in this moment Ramonda’s assembled audience need to be told in no uncertain terms.

Namor just shouldn’t work in live-action. Amazingly though, in the capable hands of a charismatic Huerta and Marvel’s digital artists (a couple of dodgy CG transition shots aside), this wing-footed merman is actually made to look pretty cool, and scary. Dubbed K’uk’ulkan by his people after the Mayan serpent deity, Namor commands a near-invulnerable army as well as the ocean itself, and thus every creature that inhabits it becomes a weapon in his hands. In a particularly striking image lifted straight from the “Avengers vs X-Men” comic storyline, Wakanda’s capital city feels the full force of Namor’s wrath, and like the best antagonists in the MCU such as Black Panther‘s Killmonger, he is both terrifying and fully understandable in his worldview. Why should the colonialist nations of the world feel they have the right to the resources of two small but advanced nations who have kept to themselves for centuries?

The film is a long one, at just over 2 hours 40 minutes it is the second-longest in the MCU after Phase 3 finale Endgame. While it could possibly do with a little tightening here and there, and less “Lord of the Rings ending syndrome” in its final few minutes, there is a sizeable ensemble of characters to serve here, not to mention having to close out Phase 4 of the MCU, set up new characters who will have large parts to play going forward (like teen genius Riri Williams/Ironheart, played by Dominque Thorne), and of course pay tribute to Chadwick Boseman – it’s difficult to see where the cuts could come.

The main problem aside from having to balance respect for an unexpectedly departed star with moving a franchise and its characters forward is that the slightly unwieldy script is very stop-start-stop-start. The world-building could always be more elegant, the story’s shift of gears less noticeable, but the character work is on point and there are plenty of individual moments in the film (from the intimate to the epic) that will stay with you.

Wakanda Forever has the unenviable task of eulogising the dearly departed and carrying a long-running franchise on the road to its future. Chadwick Boseman tragically died before his time and so this film does the rare thing of showing that superheroes might be stronger, faster and more powerful than us, but most are are not immune to illness and to grief. Ryan Coogler’s film does about as well as you might reasonably expect at balancing many disparate elements, and while this undoubtedly ended up as a very different film to the one it started as, Wakanda Forever makes a heartfelt connection and delivers memorable action in spades as well as some of the best performances in the entire MCU.

19/24

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We followed Thor as he returned to Asgard to find his long-lost warmongering sister Hela (Cate Blanchett) making a bid for the throne, the prophesied Viking apocalypse Ragnarok on the horizon. De-powered and enslaved to fight aliens for sport on the planet Sakaar, Thor was tasked with winning his freedom and gathering allies (both willing and reluctant) to take back his home realm.

Primarily known as a director of comedies, Waititi imbued his distinctive sense of humour into his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in a lot of the oddball dialogue exchanges, but Ragnarok was also pretty boldly iconoclastic: it fully embraced Jack Kirby’s wild comic book designs, and even snuck a fair number of big emotional beats and some weighty subtext into the film as well.

In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we are counting down the very best moments from Taika Waititi’s first foray into superhero movies. These are the 10 Best Moments from Thor: Ragnarok.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

10. Strange House Call

While searching for their missing father Odin (Anthony Hopkins), who Loki (Tom Hiddleston) had hypnotised and dumped in a now demolished retirement home on Earth, Thor and his trickster brother get called to the Sanctum Sanctorum at 177A Bleeker Street for an audience with Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch).

Midgard’s mightiest magician proceeds to flummox and bewilder his demigod visitors by shifting reality around the brothers, teleporting the bothersome Loki into a bottomless pit and serving Thor a bottomless beer as they talk. He eventually offers them the information they are seeking and conjures a portal to take them to Norway, but not before Loki tries to stick a dagger through him out of indignation as he had “been falling for 30 minutes!”.

9. RIP Mjolnir

Almost immediately after Odin Allfather says goodbye to his sons and passes on to Valhalla, his hitherto unknown first-born Hela (the Goddess of Death) escapes her prison, faces off with the other offspring of Odin (to Thor: “You don’t look like him” / to Loki: “You sound like him”) and puts her plot to reclaim her birth right into motion.

Her first act is to completely emasculate the overconfident Thor and essentially send him right back to his unworthy starting position by catching and crushing one-handed his unstoppable magic hammer Mjolnir (he takes this badly). Then, while they flee her in the Bifrost to Asgard, Hela easily dispatches both brothers in two hits and sends them hurtling off to the junk planet of Sakaar.

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Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
Director: Taika Waititi
Screenwriters: Taika Waititi, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Christian Bale, Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, Taika Waititi, Russell Crowe, Jamie Alexander

In 2014, Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman introduced to Marvel Comics the Mighty Thor, a female wielder of Mjolnir, and secretly Dr Jane Foster gaining a reprieve from terminal cancer through Asgardian magic in one of the best comic book runs of the last decade. Natalie Portman, aside from a single scene without dialogue in Avengers: Endgame, hasn’t been seen in the MCU since 2013’s Thor: The Dark World but now she’s back, likely because this time Jane gets to be a superhero. Thor himself is back as well of course and treading some familiar ground in his latest adventure.

After playing his part in saving the universe from Thanos, God of Thunder Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has got his god bod back and is off adventuring with the Guardians of the Galaxy. His world is turned upside down when former paramour Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) reappears in his life now bestowed with Asgardian powers, and a dangerous new foe emerges in the shape of Gorr (Christian Bale), a being who carries a weapon capable of slaying any god.

In a typically Waititi off-kilter choice, this is a rom-com between two exes and their jealous hammers. It’s so gratifying for fans of the Jane Foster Thor run to see Mjolnir and Stormbreaker given such vivid personalities, an idea that became prominent in that era of the comics. You expect there to be some form of resolution to Thor and Jane’s prematurely ended relationship, but their chosen weapons being anthropomorphised as the third wheels in this love story is just such a lovely absurdist touch. 

Natalie Portman getting to be both a kick-ass action hero and the emotional heart of the film makes her the undoubted highlight, but props to Christian Bale for playing his role with as much deranged commitment as any of his Oscar-nominated work. Gorr the God-Butcher is easily the most frightening and magnetic antagonist of the Thor franchise, as well as being (like Black Panther‘s Killmonger) another Marvel villain whose worldview is very difficult to not empathise with. 

The gods are all going to be killed, but since most gods are shown in no uncertain terms to be bastards, would that be such a bad thing? The very first thing we see in the movie is Gorr’s origin story; having his faith crushed by a pitiless and cruelly mocking god, and pretty much every non-Asgardian divine entity we see is some shade of awful.

Enter Zeus (an entertainingly over the top Russell Crowe with a thick Greek accent), the bastard-god to beat all bastard-gods. He holds court at the gleaming, hedonistic Omnipotence City, and is far more concerned with human sacrifice leaderboards and daily orgies than heeding Thor’s warning of a deity serial killer or offering assistance in the upcoming fight.

The script by Waititi and TV writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson could definitely have been tighter. Most of the film’s flaws become apparent in the first hour, which is, to be blunt, a mess. Thor latches on to the Guardians of the Galaxy like a blonde limpet and they keep trying to shake him off to get on with the next film in their own franchise. And, just like Shrek, the God of Thunder is out to re-learn the exact same lesson he learned in his three previous movies. For the ogre it was “be yourself”, and for the Asgardian it’s “be worthy of being a hero”. 

Perhaps the most pressing question is: why does some of this look so cheap? The big VFX-driven extravaganzas (including a golden blood-drenched god brawl and a late scene involving empowering the powerless) are all dazzling enough, but why do our heroes spend so much time standing around in their plastic armour in big empty rooms or featureless backlots with a vaguely fantastical projection behind them in a $250 million blockbuster?

Such moments are all the more glaring when Waititi can create sequences of such a striking aesthetic as when our heroes go to confront Gorr in the monochromatic Shadow Realm. Battling Bale’s character and his shadow monsters on a black-and-white planetoid with superpowers brightly illuminating and cutting through the greyscale makes pretty much everything else in the film look terrible in comparison.

Waititi sometimes needs to rein himself in a little. He’s a funny guy but didn’t need to lean so heavily on the screaming goat meme (which is funny precisely once) nor make his rock man Korg as prominent with his constant stream of innocent misunderstandings instantly diffusing any character tension. On the one hand you have the undeniably amusing sight of a Kronen (Korg’s rocky alien race) with a handlebar moustache, but on the other he gives his character not one, not two, but three “gather round and let me tell you a story” scenes that become less funny through repetition.

Once it works out what film it wants to be and especially when our attention is on Portman or Bale, Thor: Love and Thunder is ace. When it tries to do justice to the rest of its colourful ensemble, including its titular character, it is a bit more inconsistent. Tessa Thompson’s alcoholic warrior Valkyrie, a highlight of Thor: Ragnarok and now crowned King of New Asgard, gets token references to her sexuality and a few memorable action beats but often feels like an afterthought, even to the extent of one shot that looks suspiciously unfinished, like she’s jumping down from a box rather than from her winged steed.

There’s fun to be had with Thor: Love and Thunder, but it’s far too inconsistent to trouble the best of the Marvel movies, even Waititi’s own previous effort. 

Score: 15/24

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That’s fine, generally, when the movie is an original piece or a sequel to a long-beloved franchise – Jungle Cruise and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker spring to mind – but in an age in which the superhero reigns supreme in all multiplex cinemas, where Marvel stands tall among your options and DC offer more films, the blockbuster sphere’s choices in representation must face more scrutiny. Both Marvel and DC should be praised for an often interesting route of colour-blind casting, shifting the films away from a sea of white faces like their comic book counterparts, but when it comes to sexuality the cinematic multiverses of both comic book companies have been let down. 

Things change in adaptations – outfits are modified, origins tweaked, sometimes even superpowers are added or subtracted – but characters’ sexualities are often so intensely a part of who they are that taking them away is undoubtedly detrimental to their representation. What would Spider-Man be without his pining for MJ or Gwen? What would Batman be without his flirtations with Catwoman? The comic books they’re based on are filled with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters. But, while generally gay, lesbian or trans characters have just been flat out avoided, bisexual characters have been straight-washed into oblivion. 

From the start of the modern era of comic book movies, canonically bisexual characters have been dumped into the wasteland of being depicted as straight. The “X-Men” comics, for example, have always been political stories – Stan Lee based Professor Xavier and Magneto on Martin Luther King and Malcolm X – but under the tenure of Chris Claremont, the stories dovetailed into addressing the oppression he saw en masse: that faced by the LGBTQ+ community. 

Claremont wrote in the 80s, during the AIDS crisis, and his stories followed similar routes. Rogue is one of the central heroes of the original X-Men trilogy, and yet for the three films she is only ever presented as straight. Much was made about how Ian McKellen suggested certain scenes in X2 allude to “coming out”, and yet the sexualities of the canon characters remained ignored. This is even more interesting given that Rogue actress Anna Paquin is bisexual, and the director of X-Men and X2, Bryan Singer, is also bisexual, yet Rogue is reduced to someone pining for a boy. Notoriously homophobic director Brett Ratner, brought in to helm the third film, even forces a pointless love triangle for her, Rogue being pined after by both Ice-Man and Shadowcat. 

What becomes more perplexing is that the prequel quadrilogy – X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix – pivots to focusing on the young iteration of Mystique. In the original films, Rebecca Romijn’s interpretation is a loyal, and lethal, second-in-command to Magneto until she is turned “normal” by the mutant cure. But in the prequels Jennifer Lawrence is given a much more substantial role, eventually becoming the focus of the second film. Yet, despite the prequels being even more overt in their allusion to LGBTQ+ issues (Mystique’s final line in First Class is “mutant and proud”), she is depicted as straight, First Class presenting her burgeoning romance with Nicholas Hoult’s Beast and her growing interest in Michael Fassbender’s Magneto. 

Despite going off on her own for the subsequent two films, there is nothing made of her sexuality. She is depicted as straight despite Mystique’s status as a bisexual woman. What makes this worse is that there is plenty to mine in terms of representation. Mystique’s list of powers includes shapeshifting. This provides ample chance to explore the concept of passing for straight. Had they used her sexuality properly, this could have been a way to look at how people sexually express themselves – her blue form representing her interest in men and women, her “normal” form being a way of conforming to the sexuality binary of gay or straight. 

Bryan Singer also directed Days of Future Past and Apocalypse, thus making his four X-Men films notable for being so lacking in representing their characters properly. In Apocalypse, for example, Olivia Munn’s Psylocke is reduced to a near-mute henchman of villain Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac). Munn is given nothing to do. In fact, she has the least of the four Horseman that follow Apocalypse, and by the end is the only one not to die (ArkAngel) or defect (Storm, Magneto). She skulks off into the shadows never to be referenced again. 

The argument could be made that these are films aimed at children and a large mainstream audience, and that in the early 2000s having two prominent bisexual characters would have been hard to do. But, as the world has changed, the fact that the X-Men films stuck to borrowing from LGBTQ+ culture without properly showing it becomes all the more troublesome. It extends further than just the mainline films, too. R-rated swear-fests like Deadpool and Deadpool 2 don’t offer much in the way of showing people. 

Much was made of Brianna Hildebrand’s Negasonic Teenage Warhead being shown in Deadpool 2 to be in a same-sex relationship with Yukio (Shiori Katsuna). This would be a huge step in the right direction, incorporating Hildebrand’s own sexuality into her character and staying true to the roots of the comics, if it weren’t for the fact that despite three leading appearances (once in a poor Wolverine prequel and twice in his own films) Deadpool himself is reduced to being straight. 

In the comics, Deadpool is an out, proud and extremely loud pansexual character flaunting his sexuality at any chance he gets. The first film opts, instead, to offer a love story of him trying to cure his own cancer to be with his love Vanessa. Despite Ryan Reynolds being perfect for the role, and having a very sex-positive attitude – a funny scene of him being pegged for International Women’s Day is a highlight – the first Deadpool film still presents the character as straight. Even in the sequel where Vanessa is unceremoniously killed in the opening act, the film becomes a long meditation on loss and Deadpool’s pining for his heterosexual love.

Deadpool is never shown as anything other than straight. Flirting with men sure, but never expressly showing himself engaging in sex with men. Given that the film is excessively violent, and filled with bad language, showing Deadpool having sex with a man would not be out of the realm of doable and certainly negates the excuse of avoiding such to reach large family audiences.

Marvel Studios, under the guidance of Kevin Feige, have tried in part to offer better representation. It’s clear that, for a period of time when Feige answered to Ike Perlmutter, there was a tension between Feige’s desire to show the full spectrum of the universe and Perlmutter’s bottom-line decisions to not make black or women-focused films, meaning that the time it took to get Black Panther and Captain Marvel are indicators as to why no LGBTQ+ characters appeared until Chloe Zhao’s Eternals, released in 2021.

This excuse can only extend so far, however. Perlmutter has been ousted for some time, and yet the Marvel Cinematic Universe has still not done much to course-correct this oversight. Loki, perhaps one of the MCU’s most popular characters, is a prime example. Having first appeared in Kenneth Branagh’s 2011 film Thor, Tom Hiddleston has played the role across five additional films and a spin-off Disney+ series. In the films, little is shown about Loki’s internal life, the focus being squarely on the family dynamics of him, his brother Thor, and his parents Frigga and Odin. 

The issue arises in his self-titled series ‘Loki’. While much was made about showing variant versions of Loki, the exploration of his sexuality boils down to one conversation in which he summarises his companion Sylvie’s sexuality as both, before confirming that his is also both. The focus on looking at Loki falling for his female variant undoes what was genuine chemistry between Hiddleston and Owen Wilson as his mentor-figure Mobius. Showing a more sensitive side to Loki, and him being the central character, could have allowed for his sexuality to come into its own. 

Even when variant versions of Loki are introduced, none are afforded any insight. A sexually liberated Loki, replete with both male and female partners, could have been presented to offer an insight into Loki’s head and heart. It is telling that, for all the potential Lokis we are presented with (an ageing one, an arrogant one, one that is a crocodile), they opted for one of them to be a child, as doing so has long been a guaranteed way for comic book adaptations to avoid inevitable questions regarding sexuality representation.

Kid Loki actor Jack Veal, at 14, is much too young to be depicted as sexually liberated. And he’s not alone. X-Men spin-off Logan took bisexual character Rictor and made him a child too, robbing him of his sexuality. But even within the MCU this tactic has been used multiple times…

‘WandaVision’ explores the world of Wanda Maximoff, and her creation of her two sons Billy and Tommy. Both are shown primarily as children around the age of ten. For anyone familiar with the comics, both children are a part of the LGBTQ+ community. Julian Hilliard’s Billy/Wiccan is gay in the comics, while Jett Klyne’s Tommy/Speed is bisexual. Putting them into the world as children might mean there is longevity for their arcs, but we are yet to see any representation of these fundamental character traits in their appearances across ‘WandaVision’ and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. 

What appears to be the changing status of the MCU is Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder in which Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie will be searching for a Queen to rule alongside her. Thompson and Waititi confirmed before the release of Thor: Ragnarok that Valkyrie is bisexual, but a scene depicting her leaving her room with a woman was cut for “pacing”. Even so, introducing your first proudly bisexual character after 29 films feels a little too late given that Valkyrie isn’t the main character of the film anyway. 

The rival to the MCU, the DC Extended Universe, is not much better, despite a rich history of bisexual characters to choose from. One of the cornerstones of the DCEU is Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, first introduced in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Diana Prince has gone on to star in two versions of Justice League and two solo films. Her first solo film, Wonder Woman, plays out like an epic war story romance, with director Patty Jenkins opting to tell a story of compassion and love during World War I. Diana is shown to have been raised on the mythical island of Thymescira, populated only by Amazon women. Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor is the first man she has ever seen. 

Their romance forms the backbone of the narrative, allowing her to see the contradictions of mankind, and his heroic sacrifice convinces her that mankind has redeeming qualities. In the follow up, Wonder Woman 1984, Trevor is resurrected via a wish. The main point of contention is that his resurrection means he possesses the body of a totally different man. Despite the film’s epic runtime, WW84 underdeveloped one aspect of its narrative: the clear flirtations between Diana and Kristen Wiig’s Barbara (who becomes the villainous Cheetah). In the comic books, all Amazons engage in same-sex relationships. As such, Diana has been portrayed consistently as bisexual, as has Cheetah. Their relationship or, more aptly, their lack thereof, seems dismissive of a fundamental part of each of these famous comic book characters.  

Jenkins’ exploration of love could have extended to showing Diana and Cheetah falling in love and Cheetah’s villainous turn being the emotional point of contention. While the comic code authority put a stop to most explicit depictions of Diana’s attraction to women for some, her creator William Moulton Marston was a professor who theorised that the world would be better under the loving authority of women. Diana herself was based on two women, his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and their mutual lover Olive Byrne. Byrne was also the daughter of radical feminist Ethel Byrne and niece of Margaret Sanger. The fact that Wonder Woman was explicitly based on two bisexual women, and radical feminists, is as key to her character as the lasso of truth, yet in Wonder Woman and WW84 it is absent.

Similarly, the DCEU’s other consistent character is Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, first introduced rather unfortunately as the abused and lovelorn sidekick of The Joker in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. As one of only two female members of the team, Harley is the sexual object, the one who walks into battle against an ancient witch in hot pants and a crop top.

Given that the most praised aspect of the negatively reviewed film was Harley Quinn, it’s not a surprise a spin-off was green-lit. For some reason, instead of taking her away from a team and allowing her to shine on her own (or at least with her on/off girlfriend from the comic books Poison Ivy), DC pushed her into a group, the all-girl Birds of Prey. Director Cathy Yan begins the film with Harley narrating her life story over animation, including her lamenting failed relationships. Here, an image of her with another female is shown briefly and then nothing is made of it. 

Despite Yan’s best efforts to subvert the tropes of many women-centred comic book films – practical outfits, decent fight scenes, etc. – the film falls into queer-baiting tropes. Despite the prominent role for Rosie Perez’s lesbian detective Montoya (who is shown to have an ex-girlfriend briefly), the film does nothing with its LGBTQ+ characters. There are no references made to Harley’s sexuality outside of the opening animation, and given that this is entirely her emancipation, that is noticeable by its absence. It should also be noted that there is heavy queer-baiting on the part of villains Black Mask (Ewan McGregor) and Victor (Chris Messina), without ever properly exploring it. 

It’s this lack of care shown to Harley’s sexuality that best illustrates how studios continue to consider bisexuality as something to be erased. And this is made worse in James Gunn’s R-rated gore fest The Suicide Squad in which Harley’s subplot is based entirely around her falling in love with her captor (a nondescript Latin-American fascist). Gunn’s genuine attempt to inject emotion into the caper is admirable, but making her subplot entirely about this romance with another man once again robs us of the full spectrum of her sexuality. 

Much of the erasure comes in the midst of these large multi-film franchises, but 2005’s Constantine is not such a film. Francis Lawrence’s take on the main character from the ‘Hellblazer’ comics is so radically different it should be laughed at. Alan Moore’s creation, a Sting-lookalike Liverpudlian occultist, dons a trademark pale trench coat and red tie to do battle with the forces of the unnatural. In Lawrence’s film, Keanu Reeves plays him as an American, black haired guy in a black suit. What’s more, the film makes no reference to his bisexuality which is ever-present in the comics. 

Given that Constantine was an action-horror aimed at adults, there is no excuse for this to happen. Moreover, Constantine wasn’t tied to any ongoing franchise so did not need to curtail to bigger universe needs. While the film is interesting for casting Tilda Swinton as Gabriel, giving the angels an androgynous look, it’s still questionable why sex is barely present. There is a hint that Peter Stomare’s underused Lucifer is sexually interested in everyone (he is also bisexual in the comic books), but nothing is made of it. 

More so than any other comic book character, John Constantine has been a symbol of the punk era, showing Moore’s ability to imbue a subculture with stakes. His bisexuality, at a time when AIDS was a very real threat to the LGBTQ+ community, makes him more than just a cool guy who fights demons, he’s one of the first comic book characters to proudly have that sexuality. This is lost in his film translation. 

It remains to be seen if proper strides are going to be taken to change this kind of flawed ideological process. With films taking on long-form narratives now, and no sign of the big superhero machine stopping, it’s probably time to question if we’re really “respecting canon” by not representing a key aspect of any given character. After all, the importance of people being represented has been spoken about time and time again.

For now we have to settle on the promise that something might become of people gesturing to an interest in “both”, that superhero cinema will one day be brave enough to take a stand against sexuality inequality and discrimination just as it has long taken a stand against demons, aliens and gods. 

Written by Paul Klein

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