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!

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

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.

Recommended for you: Where to Start with Universal Classic Monsters

The Spider-Man franchise has gone through more reboots than any other comic book character since Sam Raimi first brought him to the big screen in 2002. Over that time, whoever currently fills out the spandex has faced a variety of crazed scientists, criminals and rivals brought up to Spider-Man’s level by advanced technology, superpower-bestowing industrial accidents and cunning exploitation of the hero’s secret identity.

4 iterations of Spider-Man, 10 movies, many bad guys to fight, but which were the biggest threat to him and his nearest and dearest? A web of spoilers lies ahead in this edition of Ranked from The Film Magazine: Feature Film Spider-Man Villains Ranked.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

16. Aleksei Sytsevich / Rhino – The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

“I am the Rhino! I told you I’d be back!”

A Russian mobster embarrassingly foiled by Spider-Man during a heist involving an armoured truck and a lot of plutonium, Aleksei is only too happy to don a rhinoceros-shaped mech suit (like you do) gifted by Oscorp’s Special Projects division to get his own back.

Aleksei is small-time, a wannabe tough gangster shown to be humiliatingly inept in his two fights against Spidey that bookend The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The usually-excellent Paul Giamatti is outshone by his forehead tattoo and is reduced to shouting in an outrageous accent straight out of a terrible Cold War action movie as he is webbed up and pantsed in his civilian clothes and then defeated in freeze-frame in his stupid robot rhino form.

15. Harry Osborn / Green Goblin – The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

“You don’t give people hope, you take it away. I’m gonna take away yours.”

Peter Parker’s childhood friend returns to New York to say goodbye to his terminally ill father and discovers he carries the same genetic blood disease that makes you grow talons and turn green. Harry discovers that Spider-Man’s altered blood may somehow offer a cure but, when the hero refuses him, he takes an untested spider venom formula that warps his body and mind, leading him to take vengeance against the Wall-Crawler.

We’re told rather than shown that Peter and Harry have a history here and expected to buy Dane DeHaan’s twitchy take on the character’s rapid physical, mental and moral decline simply because we know a Green Goblin has got to show up in this Spider-Man universe some time, somehow.

In the race to set up a Sinister Six spin-off movie that never happened, all of Harry’s characterisation seems to have been excised so we’re left with a petty arch-nemesis who meets the Webslinger precisely twice and decides to kill his girlfriend on a whim because it took him a ridiculously long time to remember his company had made a battle suit with a bodily repair function and only used it after he’d already taken the uglifying spider-formula.

14. Eddie Brock / Venom – Spider-Man 3 (2007)

“Oh! My spider-sense is tingling… if you know what I’m talking about!”

A shady and arrogant photographer and rival to Peter Parker at the Daily Bugle who gets taken over by an alien symbiote and plans to take revenge on Parker for the part he played in Brock losing his job.

Before Tom Hardy took the role down the schizophrenic antihero route, Topher Grace brought a very different version of Eddie Brock to life. First he’s just a jerk competing with Peter for a staff photographer job before his faked photos get him blacklisted. Then, coincidence of coincidences, he goes to pray at the same cathedral where Peter is trying to separate himself from the personality-altering symbiote in the bell tower above. The symbiote jumps to Eddie and he immediately goes all the way bad and hatches a plan to make Peter/Spider-Man suffer.

Very obviously a late addition to Spider-Man 3’s plot by a reluctant Sam Raimi, Venom is only really in the film for the final action scene and is a very simplistic, weirdly camp take on the character who fails to leave any real impression.

Recommended for you: 10 Best Moments from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man Trilogy

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.

Recommended for you: Every X-Men Movie Ranked

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.

Recommended for you: 5 Great Comedies from the Past 5 Years That You Should Watch To Keep You Going

2019 – All Wrapped Up!

British cinema had a stand out year in 2019, taking the lead at the Golden Globes with Sam Mendes picking up both Best Director and Best Picture – Drama awards for his World War I epic 1917, and the UK box office well and truly booming over the course of the past 12 months.

Although the UK box office may have been largely dominated by American studio pictures, that’s not to say British titles didn’t make an impact. Successes came in all shapes and sizes. Downton Abbey took a remarkable £28.2m at the UK box office this summer with a sequel already rumoured, Dexter Fletcher’s Elton John biopic Rocketman was the 11th biggest film of the year in the UK grossing £23.4m, Last Christmas, the Christmas hit featuring the music of the late, great George Michael and Yorgos Lanthimos’ weird yet wonderful historical drama The Favourite both did extremely well, earning themselves a place in the top 20 films of the year.

There’s no doubt that the champions of film for 2019 were the cinema giant Disney however, with 4 of the top 5 films of the year being their property. They simply dominated the UK box office and, perhaps even more impressively, the worldwide box office too. Thanks to Disney’s ownership of Lucasfilm, Marvel and Pixar they took the world by storm, not only with these huge franchise films (Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker) but also with their self-created live-action and animated offerings (such as The Lion King and Frozen II).

Here were the top 5 films of 2019 at the UK box office: 

Avengers: Endgame – Disney – $114.9m/£88.4m
The Lion King – Disney – $93.4m/£71.9m
Toy Story 4 – Disney/Pixar – $82.8m/£63.7m
Joker – Warner Bros. – $72.3m/£55.6m
Frozen II – Disney – $65.05m/£50.07m

Avengers: Endgame not only topped the UK chart but back in July it became the highest grossing film of all time knocking James Cameron’s sci-fi epic Avatar (2009) off the top spot.

Frozen II also broke records with its massive November release making it the highest grossing animated film of all time with a whopping £50m, taking over from its predecessor Frozen (released in 2013) which earned £44.5m.

The list of top ten worldwide releases of 2019 looks very similar to that of the UK, Disney dominating the field with other big studio films filling the few gaps in between…

The top 10 highest grossing movies of 2019 at the worldwide box office:

Avengers Endgame – Disney – $2.7b
The Lion King – Disney – $1.6b
Frozen II – Disney – $1.3b
Spiderman: Far From Home – Disney/Sony – $1.13b
Captain Marvel – Disney – $1.12b
Toy Story 4 – Disney/Pixar – $1.07b
Joker – Warner Bros. – $1.06b
Aladdin – Disney – $1.05b
Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker – Disney/Lucasfilm – $989m
Fast & The Furious: Hobbs & Shaw – Universal – $758m

2019 was the first time the worldwide box office exceeded $42billion, taking an estimated $42.5billion, 25% of which came from China.

Hollywood relies heavily on the Chinese box office for the success of its films. Due to Chinese release regulations, the China Film Association will only allow 34 foreign films to have cinematic releases in any one year, so gaining one of these coveted spots is essential for the US studios to ensure successful releases.

The Chinese box office has a huge influence on the global box office. Out of the top 10 Chinese films of 2019, only 2 of them were foreign titles and both from the United States: Avengers: Endgame and Fast and The Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.

22% of the total box office takings for Avengers: Endgame came from China. This is a huge amount to come from one country and considering the total box office takings for the year in China was $8.76b/61.32b yuan, this is a huge push for films like Avengers: Endgame, and seems to indicate that the country’s severed ties with Disney may have ended – this originally happened after the bad box office performance of the 1998 animated Disney classic Mulan and the controversial Disney-funded film Kundun, released in the same year.

The new live-action remake of Mulan, due to be released in 2020, is already surrounded by controversy due to the badly timed release of the trailer, given all the political discomfort in Hong Kong. However, Disney are hoping, due to the remakes’s cultural accuracy, that it will succeed in the box office and get a China release.

The biggest film of the year in China was the fantasy animated film Ne Zha which took a record breaking $713mil/5bil yuan.

Safe to say that despite the political issues in China and the supposed disagreements between the CFA and Disney, big studio’s can still rely upon China’s cinema goers to boost their box office takings. Predictions are being made that in 2020 China will be the biggest single cinema market in the world with the expectation that the box office revenue will practically double.

And thanks to the success in China, and around the world, Avengers: Endgame quickly became the biggest film of all time; 12 years in the making and 22 films later audiences around the world saw the anticipated fate of all their favourite Marvel characters. Avengers: Infinity War was released 12 months prior and was the perfect build up to the epic finale, presenting us with the supervillain Thanos who would come to wipe out half of all living things with the snap of his fingers, literally. Audiences and critics alike loved the series ending film and the Critics Choice Awards 2020 even named it the Best Action Film of 2019.

Disney didn’t miss a trick in 2019. Not only did they finally wrap up the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it, but they also released the epic conclusion to the 42 year old Skywalker Saga in the form of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

Despite not doing as well financially at the box office as Endgame, The Rise of Skywalker was a huge hit and the 9th biggest film of the year grossing $989,569,690. 2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi opened to mixed reviews but was a huge box office hit – bigger than that of its sequel – making it the second biggest Star Wars film ever with a worldwide box office total of $1,332,539,889.

What Next?

2020 is going to see a continuation of both the Marvel and Star Wars franchises but in different forms. Although Endgame wrapped up the Avengers films, Marvel has plenty more hits in the pipeline, the first being Black Widow (May 1st, 2020); a prequel story telling us more about Scarlett Johansen’s super spy Natasha Romanoff and her star studded family. Florence Pugh (Little Women) stars alongside David Harbour (‘Stranger Things’) and Rachel Weisz (The Favourite).

Although it may have come to the end of its fictional time line, Disney and Lucasfilm have a lot planned for the future of the galaxy far, far away. Disney is soon to launch its own streaming service in th UK, Disney + (already available in other territories), with the hotly anticipated series ‘The Mandalorian’ available to watch on launch. Disney are also in the early stages of production for a series looking at the life and times of Jedi Master Obi Wan Kenobi, with Ewan McGregor set to star.

Out of eight 2019 films making it onto the billion dollar list, six of them are Disney property. The biggest surprise to make it into the elite club was Warner Bros.’ October release Joker. Directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix, Joker had a remarkable impact on the box office, causing conversations to start all over the world and appreciation for Phoenix’s performance being the hot topic. Joker brought a huge £57.9million to the UK box office, making it the fourth biggest hit of the year and the biggest ever hit in the country for a DC Comics film. A comic book film about a stand up comedian who isn’t funny is not something that seems like it’s going to work, but something about Phillips and Phoenix’s dynamic resonated with audiences up and down the country.

We have had a lot of film successes to celebrate over the past 12 months, but with success comes failure, and although the top 20 is dominated by remakes, sequels, prequels and reboots, it doesn’t always guarantee you a secure place at the top of the charts. We saw that with the 2019 reboot of Charlie’s Angels, starring Kristen Stewart and directed by Elizabeth Banks, which grossed a measly £1.13m at the UK box office. Rebooting a beloved franchise is clearly not always the best way to go. The previous trilogy starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu opening weekend took a huge $40m in North America back in 2000, while this new film opened to only $17.8m (and these figures don’t even account for inflation).

Other rebrands of pre-existing material that offered large cinematic releases, but garnered less cinematic audiences this year were features such as X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Terminator: Dark Fate and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, none of which grossed more than £7.3m in their lifetime run in the UK.

Despite the abysmal reviews Tom Hooper’s musical adaptation of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s hit stage show “Cats” received on first release, the film’s opening weekend gross of £3.2m may not have been the shockingly low response we were expecting. However, with a predicted loss of $70m globally, it should still be considered as one of the biggest flops of 2019.

2019 was a big year for films, with two major franchises coming to an end (one being the biggest film of all time), animation film records being broken in the form of Frozen II and Ne Zha, and independent cinema being seemingly more popular than ever. It’s safe to say 2019 was a year of cinema worth celebrating.

You can support Charlie in the following places:

Twitter: @funnyoldworldx
Website: Funnyoldworld

In this edition of ranked, we’re ranking each of these 9 releases from worst to best based on artistry and cultural significance.

Have an opinion? Make sure to leave a comment or tweet us!

9. Hellboy

Lionsgate
Director: Neil Marshall
Starring: David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim, Thomas Haden Church

In a year of many highs for the superhero/comic book movie sub-genre, the Hellboy reboot from Centurion director Neil Marshall and Lionsgate wasn’t one of them.

Coming some 15 years after Guillermo Del Toro first introduced the character to the silver screen, the remake was perhaps inevitable, but in the midst of Del Toro’s resurgence as a leading Hollywood creative figure following his Best Director Oscar win in 2018 for The Shape of Water, comparisons were perhaps even more likely to be negative than they may have been previously, the 2019 version opting to take a gamble on gore being its defining factor; perhaps using it as a mask for the missing creativity apparent in its creatures, narrative and action set-pieces.

This was a misfire that may warrant a sequel as being unnecessary.

Recommended for you: 2018 Superhero Movies Ranked

8. Brightburn

Sony Pictures
Director: David Yarovesky
Starring: Jackson A. Dunn, Elizabeth Banks, David Denman

Marketed as a James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) project asking “what if Superman was evil?”, Brightburn excited many a comic book movie fan for its intriguing idea that stood out from the rest of what we had become used to seeing. A superhero-horror movie seemed like a huge step for the sub-genre, but it offered way too little by the way of its superhero promise, the film instead being “structured and paced more like a contemporary possession or haunted house movie”, according to Jacob Davis in his The Film Magazine review.

Shallow in terms of character and world building, and ultimately underwhelming in other aspects given its promising premise, Brightburn was a gamble we’re glad Sony Pictures took, but one that ultimately didn’t pay off in terms of quality of product, critical reception or box office dollars; making it a somewhat unexpected 2019 superhero movie dud.

7. Dark Phoenix

20th Century Fox
Director: Simon Kinberg
Starring: Sophie Turner, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Jessica Chastain, Tye Sheridan, Nicholas Hoult, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee

Dark Phoenix was re-shot and rescheduled in the build-up to its Summer 2019 release, and with issues behind the scenes regarding its studio 20th Century Fox being bought out by Marvel overlords Disney, and the likelihood of Marvel Studios incorporating the X-Men IP into their studio because of that purchase, Simon Kinberg’s passion project seemed sent out to die. Perhaps that’s why they removed “X-Men” from the film’s title…

What Dark Phoenix did right, it did pretty well – there was a fantastic train battle sequence that was reminiscent of some of the X-Men franchise’s greatest moments – but the film suffered from a lack of originality in a number of key aspects (including a finale massively similar to Avengers: Infinity War) and looked cheap; the re-shoots probably being to blame for the massive lack of cinematic qualities on offer in a number of sequences.

To say goodbye to nearly 20 years of the X-Men like this was disappointing, and to still be waiting for a good Dark Phoenix Saga film after two tries is beyond disappointing, but Dark Phoenix managed to offer sparks of something special that at least lifted it from our bottom spot.

Recommended for you: Every X-Men Movie Ranked

It’s not been a bad year for the UK box office, with the total takings of 2019’s top 10 highest grossers (at time of writing) being approximately £388,967,274 (according to Box Office Mojo and google money converter). So today we are going to look at how the top 10 currently stands.

Which movies have earned the most in the UK so far? And what have critics and audiences had to say about them?

10. The Secret Life of Pets 2 – £19,570,258

The latest offering from Illumination managed to rake in the box office, despite a rather lukewarm reception.

Audience Reception: 90% – Rotten tomatoes / 6.6 – IMDb

Critical Reception: “A sequel that feels less necessary than willed into being, but that doesn’t mean it’s not pleasantly entertaining.”

9. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World – £21,219,615

While the concluding How to Train Your Dragon movie wasn’t as successful for Dreamworks Animation as its predecessors at the box office, it continued to impress both audiences and critics in equal measure.

Audience Reception: 87% – Rotten Tomatoes / 7.6 – IMDb

Critical Reception: “Who would have thought that DreamWorks’ “How To Train Your Dragon” would end up as one of the best film trilogies out there?”

8. Rocketman – £23,572,360

This Elton John biopic followed in the footsteps of last year’s Bohemian Rhapsody to become a smash hit across the UK.

Audience Reception: 88% – Rotten Tomatoes / 7.6 – IMDb

Critical Reception: “Rocketman is an honest, heartfelt tribute to Elton John’s music and his public image.”

7. Dumbo (2019) – £26,964,177

The first of Disney’s live-action remakes this year left an odd taste in the mouths of cinemagoers. As despite its high takings, no one seemed overly enthused about it.

Audience Reception: 51% – Rotten Tomatoes / 6.4 – IMDb

Critical Reception: “The problem with this latest entry in Disney’s ever-expanding range of recycled classics isn’t that it hews too close to the studio’s original animated masterpiece, but that its many departures only muddle the original’s nursery-rhyme simplicity.”

6. Spider-Man: Far From Home – £31,524,501

The most recent film in the ever dominant MCU, like many of its predecessors, deftly managed to please both audiences and critics.

Audience Reception: 95% – Rotten Tomatoes / 7.9 – IMDb

Critical Reception: “It’s not quite the home-run of Homecoming, but Far From Home isn’t far from matching it, with heaps of humour, energetic action, and the answers Endgame left you craving.”

5. Aladdin (2019) – £37,496,448

Unlike Dumbo, Aladdin did managed to please audiences. Critics, however, were very mixed.

Audience Reception: 94% – Rotten Tomatoes / 7.4 – IMDb

Critical Reception: “Another lavish and largely entertaining Disney re-do, with strong turns from Massoud and Scott. But…Smith’s genie performance feels disappointingly constrained — both by overdependence on the original and some ghastly CGI.”

4. The Lion King (2019) – £37,816,339

The latest Disney remake has, in only 2 weeks, already proven to be Disney’s most successful solo developed project in the UK. It also managed to capture the love of the general public.

Audience Reception: 88% – Rotten Tomatoes / 7.2 – IMDb

Critical Reception: “Unfolding like the world’s longest and least convincing deepfake, the new “Lion King” fatally misunderstands what once made Disney special.”

3. Captain Marvel – £42,632,688

Despite its divided reception by both audiences and critics, Captain Marvel continued to prove the power of the MCU’s marquee value.

Audience Reception: 55% – Rotten Tomatoes / 7.0 – IMDb

Critical Reception: “Captain Marvel is … a solid enough movie, but it suffers from an overbearing need for its agenda to be pushed – had it been handled with a little more care, it could have been fantastic.”

2. Toy Story 4 – £53,611,537

9 years after Toy Story 3, Toy Story 4 finally made it to cinemas. It continued the high standards set by the original Toy Story films, opening to almost unanimous praise across the board.

Audience Reception:  94% on Rotten Tomatoes / 8.2 – IMDb (#170 on IMDb’s top 250 films)

Critical Reception: “This franchise has demonstrated an impressive ability to beat the odds and reinvent itself…It’s a toy store of ideas, with new wonders in every aisle.”

1. Avengers: Endgame – £94,559,351

Lastly, we come to the highest-grossing movie of the year (and of all time). After over a decade of build-up, the MCU finally culminated with a fond farewell that pleased almost everyone.

Audience Reception: 91% – Rotten Tomatoes / 8.7 – IMDb (#24 0n IMDb’s top 250 films).

Critics Reception: “Avengers: Endgame is all that you hope it’ll be and a bag of chips. The Russo brothers hit all the right notes from start to finish, and the ending in particular is thoroughly satisfying.”

So ends the UK box office top 10 of the year so far…

With big releases like IT: Chapter 2 and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker coming up, this year’s top 10 may even beat last year’s top 10 gross (approximately £523,006,040). We’ll just have to wait and see.

Written by Josh Greally

To support Josh Greally and read more articles like this, make sure to click through to the following links:

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This piece contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Far From Home.

I loved Far From Home, both for its endearing teen relationship drama and for its super-heroic pizazz. I went back to watch it for a second time a few days later, and both times the same thing struck me: Mysterio is throwing some serious shade at superhero movies.

The master-stroke from director Jon Watts and writer Chris McKenna is how the film presents its central antagonist Mysterio. The scene about halfway through where he reveals his master plan may not be especially imaginative (in classic Disney villain fashion he explains it point-by-point to his cronies in a bar) but Gyllenhaal mostly pulls it off.

Essentially, what he and his tech team are doing in the film is using movie blockbuster technology to fool the whole wide world and disguise their criminal intent – it’s essentially what would have happened if Hans Gruber’s gang of faux-idealistic robbers worked for ILM as a day job. It relies on modern movie audiences being savvy about the filmmaking process and, specifically, what goes into a multi-million dollar blockbuster to make it look as good as it does. Once Mysterio’s grand illusion has been revealed, we get to see the making-of-the-scam, much like a DVD special feature: all action blocking, visual effects compiling and rendering as a supervillain plans his own next superhero set piece.

For all of this to work, the movie relies on all of us having seen at least some behind-the-scenes footage of an A-Lister prancing around in an unflattering grey suit covered in ping pong balls. When his scheme is foiled, the finale has Mysterio fighting Spidey in just such a leotard because his super-suit, like everything else in his arsenal of illusion, is projected.

At one point Mysterio scoffs incredulously that his invented backstory as a dimension-hopping hero “named Quentin” has become believable in a way it never could have been pre-Avengers. When you’ve got space raccoons, wizards and god-alien-vikings hanging out and saving the world, nothing’s off the table, and when nothing’s off the table any bizarre tale can be used to manipulate others.

If we take the filmmaking metaphor further, as a VFX artist Mysterio is sick of not getting the credit he deserves for all his hard work and technical innovation. Tony Stark was essentially both the director and the star of his own biopic, anyone who made valuable contributions behind the scenes to his fame and fortune was completely forgotten. Arguably, Mysterio is doing exactly the same thing to his team, who are crafting his illusions and giving his “powers” heft, while he gets to swan around as a superhero and bask in the glory; but what would a great comic book villain be without hypocrisy?

Mysterio’s claim that people will believe anything now, or more accurately that you’re not taken seriously unless you “shoot lasers and wear a cape”, is indicative of the current state of the film industry. While I don’t subscribe to the view that superheroes are ruining movies, as an audience we have to be aware of how the success of such movies, Marvel’s especially, is changing the Hollywood landscape and the way the films themselves work. Avengers: Endgame is now the biggest movie ever, having finally unseated Avatar thanks to satisfyingly paying off a decade’s worth of stories and giving audiences exactly what they wanted. We’re probably not going to see this kind of success again for a long time, even from the ubiquitous Marvel.

Far From Home is being gently critical of the industry that spawned it, of audiences who only want to see spectacular spectacle. Mysterio’s tricks allow him not only to fool Spider-Man but everyone watching in the cinema as well. Aside from appreciating the striking visual quality and imagination of the illusion sequences, we are being taught to not take what we see for granted. Blockbusters need to play with formula and keep us on our toes to survive. VFX magic and ever-bigger action sequences alone aren’t enough to be compelling. After Endgame not a lot will be enough for a long time. If there’s not anything more below the surface, we’re just paying to be dazzled by an illusion.

I know you couldn’t ask for a more exciting cliffhanger for Far From Home to leave us on, but by necessity it also means leaving Peter’s school days behind him, and that makes me sad. I’ve lived spending time with these characters and seeing Peter and MJ’s relationship blossom like a murder flower. Emotionally connected material like this needs to remain the focal point of Marvel films going forward to retain audience engagement: compelling character first, crash-bang-wallop second.

Written by Sam Sewell-Peterson

You can support Sam at the following links:

Website – SSP Thinks Film
Twitter – @SSPThinksFilm

In Spider-Man: Far from Home, all of the above seemed to pale in comparison to E.D.I.T.H. (an acronym for Even Dead, I’m The Hero). E.D.I.T.H is a pair of sunglasses that controls the Stark satellite network, which gives the person wielding said glasses access to killer drones and everyone’s personal information (including text messages and Google searches). This made Tony a one-man NSA; big brother without any semblance of a check on such power. On top of that, he chose to grant a teenager unlimited access to it.

Can you imagine giving a seventeen year old this kind of power in the real world? It’s bad enough when “capable” adults have access to drone strikes, and we see the immediate consequences when Peter doesn’t know how to stop a drone strike on a classmate in Far From Home. It’s played for comedy, but what in the world was Tony thinking creating this kind of power and not putting a check on it? Fury, Happy Hogan, Ant-Man; there has to be someone with access to a kill-switch to stop something terrible happening like, maybe… Peter turning over the system under coercion or duress? But no, even from beyond the grave, we see Tony’s arrogance shine through. Maybe Cap’s insistence on no checks and balances got to him, but I doubt it. 

Ironically, we’ve already seen similar tech in superhero cinema before; The Dark Knight shows a similar machine with less deadly capabilities. The machine uses sonar to image all of Gotham City using the populace’s cell phones. Batman plans to use it to locate the Joker. Lucius Fox believes it to be too much power for one man, calling it “beautiful, dangerous, and unethical”. When he threatens to resign, Batman lets him know that the machine can be shut down when Lucius types in his name. 

TDK’s director Christopher Nolan recognized the moral weight of such a device, and we’ve only come further in our understanding of why and how such machines are so dangerous. Information is power, and as we become more reliant on our technology, there’s more information available for companies to access. Fox was right in his assessment, Batman created contingencies for his objections, and Batman understood that there was a line he was crossing by using the machine in the first place. Far From Home, though a comedic film, doesn’t really grasp the moral issues behind E.D.I.T.H., and never grapples with the implications of its full capabilities.

It’s almost frightening how casual Marvel is when it comes to a spy-drone machine. Far From Home was the biggest film at the box office, and could be said to normalize this kind of technology. While it shows the danger of it falling into the wrong hands, very little is explored regarding the potential for real corruption (as opposed to silly mix-ups that almost kill classmates)? What about the implication that it’s the “good guys” that have this kind of tech? Will Marvel ever come to the realization that E.D.I.T.H. isn’t a good thing, and should be destroyed?

Even dead, Tony Stark is a maniac. I know that acronym wouldn’t be as catchy, but E.D.I.T.H. is basically an all-in-one US military/government without the benefit of (theoretical) checks and separation of powers. Who would think that’s a good thing outside of a maniac? At least The Dark Knight had the decency to acknowledge the moral quandary of sacrificing freedom for safety, and chose to destroy their machine when the Joker was defeated. Marvel doesn’t even seem to consider the ethical implications, a strong turn from earlier films. Maybe it’s because Far From Home is pretty comedic and fun, but there’s nothing forcing them to put such a device in their entertaining movie. If you’re going to use a drone/spy machine, address the problems with it outside of “it’s too much power for a teenager”, because that’s the biggest “duh” in the world. 

Except in the MCU apparently…

Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019)
Director: Jon Watts
Screenwriter: Erik Sommers
Starring: Tom Holland, Jake Gyllenhaal, Samuel L. Jackson, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Marisa Tomei, Colbie Smulders, Jon Favreau, J.B. Smoove, Martin Starr, Angourie Rice, Remy Hii, Tony Revolori

The latest instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Far From Home, is the second Spider-Man movie in the MCU and realistically concludes their Infinity Saga, the 22 film marathon that has been going for over a decade. Peter Parker heads on a class trip to Venice, where he must team up with Nick Fury and a new superhero, Mysterio, to combat elemental monsters from another dimension. The film is a solid summer blockbuster that nicely wraps up Spider-Man’s first character arc, but there isn’t anything radically new or earth-shattering to be found here.

Tom Holland perfectly portrays the skittish teenager who finds himself conflicted between what he wants and what Fury urges him to see as a greater responsibility. The internal struggle between hiding in the shadows or stepping into the light is the real conflict of the film, and the lead actor nails this effortlessly. Jake Gyllenhall’s performance in the film’s largest supporting role is also strong, the veteran actor swinging from kind to wrathful in seconds. There’s a quiet moment in a bar between the two characters, which is perhaps the best part in the film, where CG and action set pieces are replaced by an emphasis on the struggle of the Spider-Man character in particular, the acting of the starring pair coming to the fore in an absolutely wonderful way.

The scenes without all the action sequences are undoubtedly the best in the movie, because the big blockbuster moments, while fun and exciting, are fairly typical Marvel spectaculars. You’re not going to see anything radically new from it. There is a several-minute sequence playing on reality that is fairly disorienting and fun, but in terms of the explosions and fight scenes, there’s nothing revolutionary along the lines of Kingsman: The Secret Service’s church fight. You go in knowing what you’re going to get out of it.

Far from Home isn’t going to be completely ripping up the rulebook like Infinity War did, but neither is it as bland as a Marvel entry like Thor: The Dark World. It’s a decent entry into the MCU with a strong central premise and good acting. Marvel movies were made for increasing popcorn sales, and this is what Far From Home does. It’s two hours of a fun time that bookmarks the end of an era, and begins to put in the groundwork for the next sprawling narrative.

17/24

Follow Kieran on Twitter: KJudgeMental

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