“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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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
Director: Peyton Reed
Screenwriter: Jeff Loveness
Starring: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors, Kathryn Newton, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, William Jackson Harper, Katy M O’Brian, David Dastmalchian, Bill Murray

In 1964, Kang the Conqueror made his debut in Marvel comics, a year after appearing as another character entirely (it’s complicated, but basically Marvel writers later decided an Egyptian Pharaoh villain was another version of the time-travelling terror). After menacing The Avengers and the Fantastic Four for decades on the page in some of the most convoluted and regularly ret-conned stories around, he finally made his live-action debut in the Season 1 finale of ‘Loki’, hiding at the nexus of all realities as He Who Remains, portrayed by Jonathan Majors. His demise was one of the events that cracked open the Marvel Multiverse, and now Majors returns as Kang proper to clash with the MCU’s seemingly most insignificant super-family. Got all that? Good.

The newfound comfortable existence of Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) as a well-liked world-saver plugging his memoir is shaken when Janet Van Dyne’s (Michelle Pfeiffer) time trapped in the Quantum Realm comes back to haunt her. Threat to all reality, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), who has been banished to the microverse, brings the Lang/Van Dyne family – including Scott’s partner Hope Van Dyne/Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), Scott’s now teenage daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) and Dr Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) – to the Quantum Realm in order to use their size-changing technology to escape his prison.

In Ant Man and the Wasp, during our brief sojourn to the Quantum Realm to rescue Michelle Pfeiffer, a lot was made of the fact that it “melts your mind”, implying something pretty psychedelic and out-there. There are certainly some surreal vistas and weird lifeforms inspired by micro photography, especially when our tiny heroes first plummet into a tinier world, but they could have definitely gone further with the brain-melting, especially in movie with such an attention-grabbing title as Quantumania. 

The denizens of the Quantum Realm are an assortment of interesting-looking creatures you might find on the covers of pulp sci-fi magazines in the 1950s, ranging from living broccoli to anthropomorphic glowing goo to Bill Murray. Then there’s the new secondary villain, android M.O.D.O.K, who looks absolutely terrible and completely breaks your suspension of disbelief whenever he’s on screen, though that is partly because they’re trying to do the impossible and adapt his particularly goofy design from the comics faithfully into live-action.

Paul Rudd remains the lovable core of this corner of the MCU, and as well as hearing his thoughts on his fellow Avengers out loud (“I was just happy to meet a raccoon who could talk”) this time Scott Lang is really put through the wringer. There’s a warm chemistry between Scott, Hope and Cassie, here recast as Kathryn Newton (Freaky), who regularly threatens to steal the show with her sheer moxie. It’s also refreshing that Cassie has to learn to effectively use her powers very much through trial and error – the five years she was on her own post-Thanos snapping half the universe away was used productively and she has a gifted scientific mind, but she has never had to test this technology in a fight before. Michelle Pfeiffer is on (admittedly committed) exposition duty for much of the movie, while Michael Douglas keeps a straight face with his hands stuck in a couple of slugs to fly a quantum spaceship. 

But this is Kang’s or, more accurately, Jonathan Majors’ movie. This particular saga of the MCU’s ongoing story has taken some time to gain traction, but the arrival of this particular big bad could very well accelerate things. A time-travelling world-conqueror whose many variants from other timelines have caused temporal and inter-dimensional chaos, Kang creates an oppressive regime within the Quantum Realm. He desires to correct the mistakes of his other selves and ultimately escape the tyranny of time itself. Majors is a charisma supernova and is able to convey with a gesture what many of his contemporaries would struggle to evoke with a monologue, not to mention that his physique makes him a credible threat even without his advanced weaponry.

The visual effects work on this movie, M.O.D.O.K aside, is certainly more polished than on Love and Thunder, which makes you think the VFX artists were given more ample time to complete the considerable task that was being asked of them. It’s all very bright and colourful, and the action scenes are dynamic, but shots can feel a bit busy and hard to pick out the details that really matter; a problem that will only be exacerbated in post-converted 3-D, which is disappointingly starting to re-surface with another ridiculously successful Avatar instalment.

The humour in Marvel movies often receives criticism for being incessant and interfering with dramatic moments landing with real impact, and the same could be argued here. Thankfully, Rudd, Newton and even Douglas demonstrate good enough timing to make sure most of the jokes about their family’s crazy science projects and tendency to land in jail really hit home. As fun as the film’s frankly ridiculous final stretch is, for a time it looks like they’re going for something pretty bold and grounded for a change before chickening out last-minute, which is a shame.

The main problem with Quantumania is that it is trying to be two very different movies that don’t really fit together. On the one hand you’ve got a fun, Fantastic Voyage-meets-Star Wars family sci-fi, and on the other you’ve got a deathly serious Kang origin story following a tortured time-travelling mass-murderer that’s like one of the darker ‘Doctor Who‘ stories. Given that he has apparently killed a lot of Avengers in other universes, Kang understandably underestimates Scott, his family and their capabilities to his cost, and it’s this perhaps misplaced faith in his own power and the fact that he’s just a man using technology from the future and not a space god that may ultimately make him more interesting in upcoming films than Thanos was. 

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is OK, but continues the slightly underwhelming, slow downward trend of the post-Endgame Marvel Cinematic Universe. At least it shows some imaginative flourishes and compellingly sets up the many faces of the next villain big enough to prompt the Avengers to reform and save the universe once more.

Score: 15/24

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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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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The superheroes that did emerge on the big screen in this time period (especially those who weren’t the Boy Scout or the Bat) tended to be strange and less well-known; they represented filmmakers, studios and stars experimenting to find out what the winning formula would eventually prove to be and, more often than not, failing to find their own success along the way.

Don’t know your Shadow from your Spawn, your Mystery Men from your Mask? (And while we’re on the subject, what the hell is a Guyver anyway?) Well, we at The Film Magazine are here to help. We’ve ranked all the major superhero movies released in the 1990s from worst to best based on critical and box office success, as well as whether the films have had any lasting influence on Hollywood. These are: 1990s Superhero Movies Ranked.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

18. Batman & Robin (1997)

With the help of some new allies, Batman (George Clooney) tries to thwart supervillains Mr Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) from using diamonds to freeze Gotham City solid (it makes no more sense in context).

This was the first but certainly not the last superhero movie with far too much crammed into its runtime: multiple villains, too many sub-plots that don’t go anywhere, and a shudder-inducing amount of ice puns. A completely miscast Clooney is restricted by a comical super-suit but looks even more embarrassed with his face fully exposed as Bruce Wayne. Schwarzenegger and Thurman do little if anything to justify their stunt casting, and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman doesn’t seem to have noticed that Ivy’s stake in the plan makes absolutely no sense (a new ice age will help plants how?). 

It might not be entirely technically incompetent – it looks exactly as expensive as it was to make ($150 million+) – but this remains a monumentally miscalculated, franchise-killing misfire; an amusement park ride with a tone-deaf script and sinful performances.

Recommended for you: Live-Action Batmen Ranked

17. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995)

Six teenagers are chosen by the immortal Zordon to protect their home town of Angel Grove and the wider world from evil. As the Power Rangers they are sent on a quest to find a mythical power source to fight back against ancient shapeshifting despot Ivan Ooze (Paul Freeman, Raiders of the Lost Ark).

‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers’ from Saban Entertainment was the show for a lot of children who grew up in the 1990s, but this movie seems to have primarily survived in the public consciousness over the last few years because of how much Oscar Isaac’s villain in X-Men: Apocalypse supposedly looked like Ivan Ooze. This is a mostly forgettable extended episode of the popular kids’ martial arts/superhero series with an even more ridiculous than normal plot involving parents being possessed by purple goo and the Rangers travelling to a distant world that looks suspiciously like a beach in Australia, but at least Freeman looks like he’s having a lot of fun prancing around like a pantomime villain under heavy prosthetics.

This was the first time in the ‘Power Rangers’ franchise where existing Japanese “Super Sentai” footage wasn’t re-purposed, making the pretty huge action finale with the Rangers in their new Zord suits fighting giant mechanical insects over a city skyline rather impressive. Everything else looks pretty cheap though (it did only cost $15 million), and you can’t really be expected to get much out of this if you’re not already heavily invested in these characters or you’re watching it with your sense of irony and nostalgia working overtime.

16. Judge Dredd (1995)

Judge Joseph Dredd (Sylvester Stallone) is the street judge in the dystopian Mega City One tasked with eliminating criminality without prejudice, but when he is framed for murder he finds himself an outlaw on the run in a desolate wasteland.

The film has a decent stab at recreating the dystopian aesthetic of Mega City One from the 2000 AD comic and the money is definitely on screen, but it brings next to nothing else from its pages. There is a Judge called Dredd, he has an evil clone half-brother called Rico (played here by Armand Assante) and that’s about it. Studio meddling and Stallone’s misguided intentions for what he thought a Judge Dredd movie should be (funnier and less violent) helped deliver a pretty toothless final product. 

It should have been obvious something was wrong when in the opening scene Dredd, who famously in the comics is the faceless, incorruptible symbol of absolute justice, first stomps onto screen in his iconic armour and immediately takes off his helmet. Completely wasting Max von Sydow and giving Dredd a comedy sidekick played by Rob Schneider just about puts it down for the count.

15. The Shadow (1994)

After spending years as a morally reprehensible warlord in China, playboy Lamont Cranston (Alec Baldwin) returns to New York with dark new superpowers to fight a descendant of Genghis Khan hellbent on bloodshed.

An over-stuffed plot and over-cooked presentation with leaden performances and admittedly striking visuals makes The Shadow a bit of a disappointment overall. Taking the title character as he appeared in radio serials and later comics and adding a weird supernatural twist could have made this really unique, but anyone without at least some knowledge of who the Shadow is and what he can do will be left bewildered and frustrated because nothing is adequately explained. 

You can see Alec Baldwin would have made a decent Bruce Wayne as he is strongest in smug millionaire-with-a-secret mode, but elsewhere looks somewhat unengaged or lacking in useful direction. Ian McKellen somehow manages to keep a straight face as a hypnotised scientist and Tim Curry hams it up as well as ever, but everyone involved should be doing stronger work when you get to this level of filmmaking. 

Doctor Strange (2016)
Director: Scott Derrickson
Screenwriters: Jon Spaihts, C Robert Cargill, Scott Derrickson
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Tilda Swinton, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen, Michael Stuhlbarg, Benjamin Bratt, Scott Adkins

One of the major problems with launching new films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that a lot of the characters from Marvel comics have essentially the same origin story. “Arrogant jerk becomes selfless hero” is almost as omnipresent as DC’s “grief gives hero guilt-driven purpose”. Stephen Strange’s story may not be all that far removed from that of Tony Stark or Thor, and the first act of Doctor Strange might feel very familiar to anyone who has seen Batman Begins recently, but the rest of the film offers so much that is new on a visual and conceptual level that you don’t really mind.

Brilliant but arrogant neurosurgeon Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is brought crashing down to earth when a car accident leaves him barely able to use his hands. In a desperate search for a miracle cure, he travels to Tibet and comes under the tutelage of the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) who leads an order of sorcerers who protect time, space and reality itself from inter-dimensional threats. Will Doctor Strange put aside self-doubt and reach his full potential in time to stop renegade sorcerer Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) from performing a dangerous ritual that will open the door to the “Dark Dimension”?

From the film’s first sequence – an eye-popping magical heist and chase through London – director Scott Derrickson is making a bold aesthetic statement. Christopher Nolan, who may have been influenced himself by Steve Ditko’s imagery from the original “Doctor Strange” comics, ain’t got nothing on this. From entire cities flipping and folding, shards of reality punching through our field of vision, an elaborate fistfight inside a reversing timeline and some good old-fashioned psychedelic mind-melting, this is easily one of the most unique visual offerings of the MCU so far. An argument could certainly be made that the benchmarks of distinctive modern visual effects used to portray reality misbehaving are Dark City and The Matrix, Inception and now Doctor Strange.

As much of a bold choice as Joaquin Phoenix (who turned down the role) would have been, Benedict Cumberbatch was born for this and makes surgeon Strange a strutting Sherlock. He is an endearingly inept magic user at first, but never above using his previous arrogance and competitive streak to try and get ahead in his new and unlikely profession. Chiwetel Ejiofor hints at a lot more going on below the surface of his calm and collected but pained Mordo, whilst Mikkelsen brings deadpan humour to Kaecilius’ interactions with Strange, and Rachel McAdams’ Dr Palmer refreshingly reacts to strange goings on like a real person would and doesn’t instantly forget her ex was a terrible person when he rocks up in a snazzy new uniform. Swinton is convincing as an ageless bastion of knowledge and generally justifies her casting over the highly stereotyped image of the Ancient One in the comics, but they could always have made her odder to really tap into Swinton’s skillset. 

It helps that Marvel is committed to keeping things light where needed, notably a pleasing recurring gag that has Strange comparing formidable arcane librarian Wong (Benedict Wong) to the endless list famous mononymous music stars. Even the most intense action set pieces get punctuated by a few slapstick gags, especially when Strange is still a novice and tends to win more by fluke (or very protective sentient cloak) than through skill.

The sheer visual onslaught is at times a bit much. It seems churlish to compare this (one of the best blockbusters of 2016) with Duncan Jones’ Warcraft released earlier the same year (which…wasn’t), but both do encounter the same problem in that human beings can only process so much information via our eyeballs at once. The opening set piece works, as does the concluding sequence for its sheer ballsinesss, but there is so much going on in the scene that ends the film’s second act where Strange and Mordo chase Kaecilius through the highly malleable “Mirror Dimension” that it’s a real challenge to keep up.

Doctor Strange may not be the most thematically demanding movie out there, but it has got imagination in abundance and personality to spare, and it’s very easy to enjoy it on a wild, pure escapist level. The way the Marvel Universe(s) are left at the end of all this certainly offers up some interesting narrative and character possibilities for the MCU’s future, and those possibilities have certainly started to bear fruit in over the past couple of years. Whereas once we might have feared how Strange joining the wider action in the MCU would remove any tension given that his powers are essentially limitless, post-Thanos those fears have proven unfounded. Besides, there are other formidable (and colour coded) magic users sharing this universe who have had a pretty bad time in their appearances of late and who could conceivably abracadabra even Strange into oblivion without much effort should they wish to…

19/24

Morbius (2022)
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Screenwriters: Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless
Starring: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Tyrese Gibson, Al Madrigal

Morbius the Living Vampire first appeared in “Spider-Man” comics in 1971 after the American Comics Code Authority lifted their bizarre ban on horror-based and supernatural characters. Unless you grew up in the 1990s and saw his memorable episodes of the ‘Spider-Man’ animated series you’re probably not all that familiar with who he is and what he is about. This isn’t another Venom situation where Sony have taken an instantly recognisable supervillain turned anti-hero and given him his own side adventure, so it’s a pretty obscure choice for a solo comic book movie that producer Avi Arad and others have been trying to get off the ground for years. Nearly two years after its original scheduled release date, is Morbius worth the wait? It is not.

In an effort to cure his debilitating blood disease, Nobel-winning scientist Dr Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) begins unethical experiments with the DNA of vampire bats, and after testing the resulting serum on himself transforms into a vampiric creature that needs to feed on blood to survive. Finally freed from his lifelong pain and physical limitations, Morbius must fight against his dark side just as others seek to use the same power without restraint.

The strangest and arguably most interesting thing about Morbius, the final form of which is a boringly mediocre superhero horror, is how clearly the screenplay and overall arc of the central characters in this story were at least partially re-written midway through. Adria Arjona and Jared Harris seem to have lost most of their screen time and character moments in the edit. And, according to interviews he has given, Matt Smith didn’t even know for sure which villain he was supposed to be playing, his fairly entertaining performance as Michael Morbius’ troubled surrogate brother Milo all too often overshadowed by distracting add-it-in-post stuff.

We know next to nothing about our protagonist Michael Morbius by the end of the nearly two hours we spend with him. He’s shown to have made some significant scientific breakthroughs for the good of mankind, and dreams to cure himself and others of their conditions, but beyond that there’s nothing to him. Something is really troubling about Michael’s “I should have died years ago” line, too. It frames his disease as all he is, someone to pity, and quite insultingly implies he should be prepared to throw in the towel on life should he fail in his latest curative mission. 

Michael is gravely warned that “You’re mixing human DNA with bat DNA” in case we in the audience hadn’t worked that out, all because a vampire bat’s anti-coagulation ability helps fight Michael’s rare, unnamed and fictional blood disease, or something, in addition to giving him “bat radar” powers. The vampire bat is an animal in need of some serious character rehabilitation like the Great White Shark justly received a few years post-Jaws – it’s suggested here that they’re capable of shredding animals like kind of flying piranhas when in reality a human’s biggest risk from them would be contracting rabies. 

No moment in this story feels in any way original or organic, and everything feels like they thought of the set pieces first and hastily stitched the scene progressions between them after the fact. Michael isn’t on a boat in international waters because he’s conducting an illegal experiment, but he is instead placed there to give Morbius a confined space in which to run violently amok following his first transformation, and because the various versions of Dracula did it. In the final battle, Morbius punches his opponent using a swarm of bats not because he is gradually learning the extent of his new powers by instinct but because he has been regular-punching his opponent for about ten minutes by that point and because Dracula Untold did it (no surprise both films share screenwriters).

‘Buffy’ did monster-face vampires so much better using prosthetics and clever editing, but here, thanks to some sub-par VFX over practical options, it looks like Morbius is constantly being photographed mid-computer render when he’s letting his animalistic side take control. There’s no reason for a film costing $75million to look so much like an early-2000s effort, though it at least appears as if physical sets and real locations were employed extensively – which is a sad rarity in blockbuster filmmaking these days. 

The smug references to other, better Marvel movies throughout the film are pretty insufferable as well. Young Michael is sent to a “school for the gifted” in New York, he warns interrogating FBI agents that “You don’t want to see me when I’m hungry”, and then there’s the frankly embarrassing mid-credits extended cameo that features in some of the trailers.

The old “gift is also a curse” metaphor is taken to literal extremes here, with Morbius conquering his condition at a terrible price and unwilling to pass it on to other sufferers lest they turn into a similar monster as he has. This of course happens to the big baddie who, wouldn’t you guess it, is a dark reflection of Morbius with the exact same powers but none of the moral scruples.

We end up with the standard two-special-effects-fighting-each-other-at-night finale that Sony might as well patent at this point after ending both Venom movies in this way. One visual gimmick employed throughout the film to portray super-speed is to give everyone with vampire powers a vapour trail colour-matched to the dominant shade of their outfit, which at least helps distinguish the two combatants as they wiz around the screen punching and bloodlessly slashing at each other, but it’s a jarring visual that appears to be trying to be distinct for the sake of it.

Though it is technically competent enough in most aspects, Morbius is a superhero horror film that isn’t thrilling or scary and generally lacks any much-needed bite. To be fair to Jared Leto, he does his best with uninspiring material, and Matt Smith chews scenery with the best of ’em, but everyone involved in this needed a clearer idea from the start of who the characters are and what the film is trying to say within its well-worn genre trappings. 

6/24

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