After over two decades of big-screen blockbusters, the Marvel behemoth has finally started getting serious about TV, making miniseries and ongoing shows that contribute as much to giant multi-movie story arcs as the actual films do. (Rumor has it that Marvel still prints illustrated versions of these stories in paper form, and that teenagers who enjoy collecting those publications are no longer shunned by society.) But this list’s purview has to end somewhere. So Loki, Ms. Marvel et al will need to go elsewhere to prove they’re better than Ghost Rider.
As of November 2022, here are how Marvel-sourced big-screen movies stack up against one another. This list doesn’t yet include Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — where will it land? — but you can read THR’s review here of the sequel, which hit theaters Nov. 11. (Click here to see The Hollywood Reporter’s rankings of all 50 DC Comics movies.)
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Man-Thing (2005)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Produced in the thick of the pre-MCU Marvel boomtime (by 2005, two Spideys and two X-Men had already stormed through cinemas), this nearly forgotten outing never even made it to Stateside theatrical release. Giving it to Lawnmower Man director Brett Leonard probably signified producers’ lack of faith in a property easily confused with DC’s Swamp Thing.
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Captain America (1990)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Produced in Yugoslavia by the late exploitation mogul Menahem Golan, this cheapie offers enthusiasm, but only the most ardent so-bad-it’s-good-seekers will argue it’s worth hunting down on video.
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Howard the Duck (1986)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel The notorious bomb about a duck-billed creature from a faraway galaxy was, one now realizes, a very expensive research project for producer George Lucas’ later creation, Jar-Jar Binks. The less said about this proto-Marvel adaptation, the better.
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Fantastic Four (2015)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Film Corp./Courtesy Everett Collection A cast of up-and-comers and a promising young director gave discriminating fans hope for a seemingly doomed franchise. Instead, the latest outing furthered our distrust of the comic-book reboot in general, raising the bar for future efforts: Every new “reimagining” that conspicuously lacks imagination will make us come to the next with even stronger defenses in place.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Elektra (2005)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Jennifer Garner was perfect for Alias‘ ass-kicker with a conscience, but was woefully miscast as the Greek assassin/love interest Frank Miller created for his Daredevil comics in the 1980s. Having made her part of the misbegotten Ben Affleck Daredevil movie, producers doubled down on the error in this best-forgotten spinoff.
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Fantastic Four (1994)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Sure, this Roger Corman-produced cheapie is worse than any other FF outing by several objective measures. But watching the hilariously klutzy movie, which has never had an official release but is widely shared on bootlegs, offers the illicit thrill of seeing what Marvel wanted to hide from you — and “thrill” is a word rarely associated with Fantastic Four movies.
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Fantastic Four (2005)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Pity the poor filmmakers who have to make Mr. Fantastic, whose body stretches like Silly Putty, look cool as a live-action champion of the universe. Maybe it’s something that can’t be done, like making Wolverine’s hair lie down flat. Maybe Hollywood should stop trying.
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The Punisher (1989)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel So ambivalent about its comic-book roots that it doesn’t even let its namesake wear that cool skeleton-head shirt, this first adaptation of Marvel’s take on Dirty Harry found a post-He-Man Dolph Lundgren dyeing his hair and hoping we wouldn’t make the connection between the two pix. After kicking around international theaters for a year and a half, it went straight-to-video in the U.S.
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Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Back by not-so-popular demand, this brand-milking dud can at least be credited with not taking the cheap reboot route. (Or should it be damned for not investing that kind of imagination?) Should-be-great co-stars Ciarán Hinds and Idris Elba are wasted in a muddled story.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Who would think that a CGI character resembling an Academy Award could actually increase the charisma quotient of an ensemble superhero movie? But even with the eponymous “Sentinel of the Spaceways” on hand, the film failed to capture the planet-consuming awe Kirby and Lee intended their villain Galactus to radiate.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Ghost Rider (2007)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Picture a Vampire’s Kiss-mode Nicolas Cage starring in a story about a stunt-biker cursed by the Devil to hunt down bad guys, transforming into a flaming-skull maniac whenever there’s action afoot. Congratulations: your imagination just made a better movie than Ghost Rider, whose director, Mark Steven Johnson, managed to write three of Marvel’s worst pictures and direct two of them.
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Daredevil (2003)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Though he was a much better fit for Matt Murdock than he is for Bruce Wayne, Ben Affleck couldn’t save this Mark Steven Johnson misfire, which manages the impressive feat of draining an origin story of its myth-building romance. And back before he found his footing with In Bruges, Colin Farrell’s leather-boy Bullseye threatened to turn the whole thing into Schumacherian camp.
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Punisher: War Zone (2008)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel The third time was not the charm for this character, who probably looked to producers like he should’ve scratched the fanboy-ultraviolence itch that Deadpool finally addressed. One problem: It’s hard to get (intentional) laughs from a guy named Punisher. The first production from Marvel Studios splinter Marvel Knights, it should’ve been the last.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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The Punisher (2004)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Pretending its 15-year-old Dolph Lundgren predecessor didn’t exist, this barely acceptable shoot-’em-up cast Thomas Jane in the title role and put him in the crosshairs of a kingpin played by John Travolta.
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Blade: Trinity (2004)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Though Guillermo del Toro breathed undead life into an unpromising franchise with Blade II, once David S. Goyer slid from the screenwriter’s chair into the director’s, it was goodbye to all that.
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X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Inaugurating a “the third one sucks” trend that would afflict several Marvel properties, Fox gave what should have been an operatic tale (in which a martyred character from X2 returns as something like a god) to one of Hollywood’s most moneymaking hacks, Brett Ratner. Next time around, the series had to go back in time to make us forget.
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X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Plenty of fan-pandering action but too little brainpower went into this first Wolvie spinoff, which was especially surprising given the casting of typically thoughtful Liev Schreiber as the X-Man’s taloned bro Sabretooth. Some fans will never forgive the fakeness of Wolverine’s snickety-snick claws in this installment.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Morbius (2022)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Columbia Pictures
Inject your own “anemic” zingers for this one, a limp attempt to expand the ragtag gang of movies derived solely from Spider-Man’s adventures. Jared Leto’s customary, um, enthusiasm was wasted on a character few knew and fewer cared about.
Read THR’s film review here. -
Blade (1998)
Image Credit: New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection When New Line released Blade in 1998, a schlocky supernatural actioner starring Wesley Snipes as a “daywalker” (read: half-vampire who isn’t afraid of daylight), a layman would hardly have believed that soon the cineplex would overflow with Blade’s kin. But the horror/action hybrid made enough cash to earn two sequels, and before it ran its course, we had both angsty mutants and an arachnid teen ready to pick up the baton.Â
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Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Too many villains spoil the broth in this bloated conclusion to an otherwise successful trilogy. With Spider-Man battling best frenemy Harry Osborne, mutant dirtbag The Sandman and an alien “symbiote” that would become Venom, the film offered an overdose of action with little wit to spare. Though definitely not the charm, Raimi’s third effort still grossed a whopping $890 million, keeping Marvel’s coffers tingling.
Read THR’s review here.
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The New Mutants (2020)
Image Credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Pandemic chaos gave a bit of cover to this flop, which would’ve underwhelmed even under the best circumstances. However rejuvenating the series was in print in the ’80s, Josh Boone’s attempt to re-create its ensemble magic failed despite an up-and-coming cast.
Read THR’s film review here. -
Dark Phoenix (2019)
Image Credit: Twentieth Century Fox
The herky-jerk saga-building in X-Landia, which never really recovered from Brett Ratner’s disastrous 2006 trilogy-ender, limped further as Simon Kinberg’s directing debut returned to that film’s botched source material, the transformation of Jean Gray. Suffice to say the graphic novel of this beloved story is still in print.
Read THR’s film review here. -
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Tom Hiddleston’s Loki has to do most of the heavy comic lifting to keep this otiose sequel buoyant, but there’s still plenty to savor here. From a geek point of view, The Dark World helpfully fills in a bit of the cosmology behind The Nine Realms and the Infinity Stones and all that stuff, but the overall narrative arc and placement of action beats is a bit too formulaic to fully satisfy.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Most of us who stood by the oft-maligned incarnation of Peter Parker in Amazing #1 got off the boat with this one, which was too overstuffed with goofy villains (Paul Giamatti’s Rhino?!) to do justice to its affecting Petey/Gwen Stacy love story.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Venom (2018)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment Venom feels like a throwback, a poor second cousin to the all-stars that have reliably dominated the box-office charts for most of this century. Partly, this is due to the fact that, as an origin story, this one seems rote and unimaginative. On top of that, the writing and filmmaking are blah in every respect; the movie looks like an imitator, a wannabe, not the real deal.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Iron Man 3 (2013)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Some superhero movies fail by throwing too many villains at us. IM3 glazed our eyes over with too many heroes as well: When Tony Stark sent all those robots out to do his dirty work, didn’t anybody start to wonder why he needed to risk his own life in a suit? And that ending was intolerably wishy-washy about Stark’s retirement from the game.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Columbia Pictures
Though better than its much maligned predecessor, working harder to exploit the material’s comic potential, the second outing for Tom Hardy’s brains-eating antihero felt far too much like all the normal-hero hero movies around it. Unlike Deadpool, who could’ve cavorted in the margins happily for years, this guy’s just killing time until they finally put him in a movie with Spidey.
Read THR’s film review here. -
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures More of the same here, in a sequel whose sassy tone and retro style no longer come as a surprise. Sure, Baby Groot’s a delight, but all the daddy issues between Star-Lord and the godlike Ego kill the buzz.
Read THR’s film review here.
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X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
Image Credit: Alan Markfield/EPK Though they’d come back from the brink of a Brett Ratner-directed crapocalypse, the team of mutants was creaking under the strain of too many piled-up plotlines in this outing. But you certainly can’t fault it for a lack of ambition, and that whole cavalcade-of-characters thing is true to the source material.
Read THR’s film review here.
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Hulk (2003)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel God, how we wanted to like a Hulk film by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon‘s Ang Lee. And there were bright spots, like Lee’s cheeky use of moving split screens to recall the irregular panels of a print comic. But no: Those Hulk dogs were absurd, the script problematic, and Eric Bana’s Bruce Banner compares poorly with those who followed.
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The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Edward Norton brought more charismatic pathos to the big green brute than Eric Bana did a few years earlier, and a long hideout in Rio’s slums helped give this version a fresh start. Even so, the pic didn’t make a great case for Hulk as a solo movie star: Mark Ruffalo’s subsequent Avengers turns, in which he plays so deftly with louder co-stars, suggest Hulk is best as color in other heroes’ stories.
Read THR’s film review here.
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Black Widow (2021)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Jay Maidment/Marvel Studios
This solo outing was so long overdue that many fans had forgotten how poorly Marvel’s favorite egotist treated the character when she first arrived in Iron Man 2. Back then, a spy film drawing more on cold war nostalgia than spandex tropes could’ve given the nascent MCU some much needed variety. But over a decade into the franchise, stepping too far from the Avengers mold wasn’t possible; Widow was less a sendoff to an MVP than a clumsy introduction to her sister, part of tomorrow’s storylines.
Read THR’s film review here. -
Blade II (2002)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Producers could hardly have made a smarter move than giving this franchise to Guillermo del Toro, whose gifts were known mostly to horror fans willing to read subtitles in Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone. Ensuring over-the-top production design and oodles of bloody-ninja cool splattered onto the screen, the director bought himself not a recurring Blade gig but something better: the clout to get his vision of Hellboy out into the world. (And thus, the Marvel universe begets even more comic-book adaptations.)
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X-Men: First Class (2011)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel A step in the right direction that wasn’t quite witty enough to renew our faith in this series, First Class got some mileage out of casting Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy as the young Magneto and Xavier. But it lacked imagination in its embrace of a 1960s setting, relying on too-obvious retro design cues, and the let’s-save-this-cash-cow desperation was difficult to ignore.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Studios Is this heroic tragedy, screwball comedy, or the most self-important TV clip-show the world will ever see? Riddled with tonal miscalculations and fan service that managed to pander without satisfying, Endgame had its pleasures — with a decade of groundwork laid, how could it not? But the series’ ever-inflating self-regard was exhausting, and not in a “we just saved the universe!” kind of way. Let’s not get started about those closing credits.
Read THR’s film review here.
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Thor (2011)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Despite the fact that they’re anchored by arguably the most self-serious character from the Avengers’ posse, Chris Hemsworth’s terminally noble Nordic beefcake, the Thor films have a gleeful, subversive wit, thanks especially to Tom Hiddleston’s deliciously naughty villain Loki. And how can you not like a film in which the hero tries to buy a horse in a pet shop?
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Eternals (2021)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Sophie Mutevelian/Marvel Studios
Marvel built the Avengers up over years, reintroducing household names like Iron Man in solo movies that snapped into each other like jigsaw pieces. Is it any wonder they fell flat here, trying to sell us a team almost nobody knew while simultaneously introducing stakes high enough to make an Asgardian cower? Kudos to the studio for hiring Chloé Zhao, but the Nomadland director’s humanism wasn’t a natural fit for Jack Kirby-sized mythmaking.
Read THR’s film review here. -
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Image Credit: Chuck Zlotnick. ©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection Though sometimes exciting and benefitting from Tom Holland’s winning performance, Spidey’s entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe smacked of corporate synergy and ignored (or actually rejected) some of the things that make the character an icon.
Read THR’s film review here.
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Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
Image Credit: Marvel Studios
Intentional confusion reigned in Taika Waititi’s second Thor pic, a movie with three potential heroes and a villain whose mission — kill all the gods, who clearly don’t care about us — threatens to win viewers over if the heroes can’t decide who’s in charge. More a casserole of narrative leftovers than an eye-opener like Ragnarok, it wasn’t nearly as bold as it might’ve been, but its light touch ensured we wouldn’t much care.
Read THR’s film review here. -
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Studios More than most others, this film’s ultimate merit depends on what the filmmakers pull out of their hats in their forthcoming sequel. As it stands, Infinity War‘s attempts to make us cry for deaths that almost certainly aren’t final encourages viewer cynicism and trains us to care less once Marvel starts killing people off for real. Beyond that, even a much-better-than-average supervillain couldn’t save Infinity War from the monotony of one set piece after another in which strangers had to band together.
Read THR’s film review here.
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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Studios
With an ocean of genre classics to draw on, Destin Daniel Cretton’s wuxia-flavored tale could have done more to separate itself from all the other Marvel origin stories we’ve seen. (Though giving key roles to Tony Leung and Michelle Yeoh was a start.) But it was a welcome reminder that, billionaires and kings and brilliant surgeons notwithstanding, Marvel owes its greatness to working-class, Peter Parker-like schmoes who, when faced with something extraordinary, rise to the occasion.
Read THR’s film review here. -
The Wolverine (2013)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Finally, a superhero movie that behaved like an unpretentious genre pic. (And reminded us that comic books come out once per month, sometimes going long stretches between world-threatening cataclysms.) If this had been the first Wolverine solo outing, Hugh Jackman’s razor-clawed beastie might have carried a whole series of his own films by this point.
Read THR’s film review here.
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Iron Man 2 (2010)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Action-packed and delivering the same smart-ass kick of its predecessor, the second Iron Man go-round hinted at the overkill that would plague the next — and which, to be fair, tends to make most of these movies less fun than they oughta be. Paving the way for IM3‘s dubious villain The Mandarin, Mickey Rourke munches all the scenery without swallowing his toothpick as the vengeful Russian Whiplash.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Hard to follow? Yeah, kinda. But this time-travel story stayed digestible enough to justify the presence of actors we wanted to see from both the old and new incarnations of the team — while, natch, introducing new ones like Evan Peters’ Quicksilver.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Yes, it was much too early for a reboot (unless we’re judging by Hulk standards), but Andrew Garfield brought an intelligent 21st century emotional edge to the 60-year-old icon of teen anxiety. Throw in Emma Stone, a richer love interest than comics movies (including Spider-Man ones) usually get, and you have an enjoyable first chapter whose promise went unfulfilled.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Studios Director Taika Waititi successfully executed a left turn in the arc of this hero, whose name rhymes with “snore” for a reason. Deflating his pomposity with a shot of goofy humor and hinting that possessing godlike powers might actually be fun on occasion, the picture might remind comics fans of the period in the ’80s when writer/director Walt Simonson all but reinvented the hero in print.
Read THR’s film review here.
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Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Image Credit: Sony Pictures Releasing / Marvel Entertainment / Courtesy Everett Collection
Moviegoers loved seeing three Peter Parkers team up for this trilogy-topper, which brought back characters from throughout Spidey’s fractured modern big-screen career. Though Marvel’s increasing investment in many-universe storylines threatened to give us all multiverse headaches atop our superhero fatigue, a big red “reset” button proved helpful in (here’s hoping) getting our young hero out of Tony Stark’s smug shadow for good.
Read THR’s film review here. -
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / Marvel Studios / Courtesy Everett Collection
Though he might’ve put a little more of himself up on the screen, Sam Raimi fared pretty well in his return to comic-book movies, sending Stephen Strange into some of the darkest realms imagined so far for the MCU. Deadite-style mayhem took a back seat to the still-unfolding pathology of Scarlet Witch’s superpowered grief, while a newcomer named America (Xochitl Gomez) showed the would-be Sorcerer Supreme that tinkering with the multiverse is even trickier than he thought.
Read THR’s film review here. -
Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
Image Credit: JoJo Whilden/Columbia Pictures/Marvel/Courtesy Everett Collection
Though its handling of “the blip” suggested that the MCU was going to be terrible at imagining a post-apocalyptic Earth, the second Tom Holland Spideyflick had fun fleshing out the most important friendships in Peter Parker’s life … all so director Jon Watts could break our hearts by taking Ned Leeds and MJ Watson away at the end of the next installment.
Read THR’s film review here. -
Deadpool (2016)
Image Credit: Joe Lederer/Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation Also overrated (sex and sadism! Ryan Reynolds making Ryan Reynolds jokes! and check out those box-office figures!), this quite funny jab in the side of the superhero aristocracy eventually slides into conventionality but has a lot of fun along the way. One can already feel the forces of corporate homogeneity assimilating its thorniness, looking for opportunities to naughty-up other properties on the assumption that an R rating accounts for Deadpool‘s success. Sigh.
Read THR‘s film review here.Â
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Deadpool 2 (2018)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Joe Lederer/Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation At least three sequences in this film offered honest-to-god surprises for viewers who managed to avoid spoilers. And the script walked some pretty fine lines: between snark and earnestness; between corporate franchise-building and seeming to genuinely not give a damn. Here’s hoping Firefist returns, with a little more of Julian Dennison’s Wilderpeople bite, as a foil for Ryan Reynolds’ unflappable mercenary.
Read THR’s film review here.
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Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Entertainment Wildly overrated upon its release because it was such a refreshing change from familiar formats, Guardians is a winner despite its occasional forays into ordinariness. It seemed to have as little to prove as its roguish lead characters, but that didn’t keep director James Gunn from treating this goofy corner of the galaxy like it was a real place inhabited by alien beings, not mere production-designed eye candy.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel One of Marvel’s most boring major print characters became arguably their movies’ most likeable one thanks both to a note-perfect characterization by Chris Evans (thanks for not blacklisting him after Fantastic Four, Marvel!) and to the filmmakers’ rejection of “USA! USA!” jingoism. This Cap’s patriotism, however steadfast, never plays like propaganda.
Read THR‘s film review here.Â
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Big Hero 6 (2014)
Image Credit: Disney/Screengrab Didn’t know this absolute charmer was a Marvel adaptation? Sure was, though the screenwriter reportedly avoided reading the source material in order to keep his take on it fresh. Calling it a superhero team pic is technically accurate, though the core story — of a grieving teen inventor and his emotionally sensitive robo-protector — feels more like a classic kids’ movie that wins grown-up love as well.
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Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
It sometimes felt like a hangout movie focused on figuring out how these unthinkably powerful characters could share a room without their supercharged egos destroying space-time. But Ultron also offered one of the more conceptually appealing villains in Marvel-movie-dom, and almost offhandedly created a hero, The Vision, unlike any of his predecessors.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
Image Credit: Marvel Enjoying the characters’ last (for a while, anyway) adventure away from the increasing pile-on of the Avengers’ woes, the Ant-Man sequel is as sincerely balanced as its title implies, giving Evangeline Lilly’s Janet van Dyne a mission every bit as important as Scott Lang’s. And the object of that mission, the long-lost original Wasp (Michelle Pfeiffer), not only expands the number of women on Marvel’s roster of heroes, but introduces some welcome age diversity as well. What has this mysteriously gifted character learned in the Quantum Realm?
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Captain America: Civil War
Image Credit: Courtesy of Film Frame/MVLFFLLC/Marvel Posing serious questions about violence and vigilantism while reveling in both, the third Captain America film is overlong but surprisingly light on its feet. It builds upon the plotlines of previous Avengers outings, bringing together known marquee quantities and introducing the Black Panther and a new Spidey in winning fashion.
Read THR's film review here.
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2019)
Image Credit: Columbia Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection Blindsiding the casual Marvel fan, what looked like it might be a made-for-video cash grab was actually one of the most satisfying animated films of the last few years. Who needs reboots that try to out-Peter-Parker each other when you have Miles Morales, a conflicted cop’s son inhabiting a parallel universe? An exciting new visual approach was icing on the cake.
Read THR’s film review here.
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Logan (2017)
Image Credit: Ben Rothstein/20th Century Fox Film Corp. /Courtesy Everett Collection If his 2013 The Wolverine suggested how much fun it could be to treat superhero movies like more earthbound genre pictures, James Mangold followed through on his promise here, turning everyone’s favorite X-Man into both a world-weary noir protagonist and a Western hero simultaneously. Gritty in a very distinctive way, it also probably elicited more audience tears than all the other titles on this list combined.
Read THR’s film review here.
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Ant-Man (2015)
Image Credit: Marvel/Screenshot An outsider Marvel pic that didn’t work to make its novelty obvious, Ant-Man deflated overblown superhero pomposity like a pinprick to a giant balloon. The persistence of a team that saved it from development turmoil may be irrelevant to the merits of the finished product, but it’s certainly worth celebrating.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Doctor Strange (2016)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel A visually dazzling picture that occasionally felt as fresh as The Matrix did in its day (despite its borrowing from Inception), Strange made sense of a character many non-geeks hadn’t even heard of. The unusually high level of talent in the cast might even have made some ignore how few Asian actors were in this Nepal-centric yarn.
Read THR’s film review here.
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X-Men (2000)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Sorry Blade, but this 2000 Bryan Singer film deserves credit (or blame, if you lean that way) for pulling the superhero movie out of its dumb-DC-sequels doldrums and initiating its current reign. It also clued Hollywood in to the wealth of characters birthed by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, et al. From here on out, Batman and his Justice League cohort had to work a lot harder for their big-screen cred.
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X-Men 2 (2003)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Adapting one of the comic series’ best stories, the franchise’s second installment deepened its social metaphors and, having done plenty of exposition in the first chapter, dug into its core characters’ personalities while introducing intriguing new ones. Wolverine came into his own, with Hugh Jackman’s charismatic performance explaining to uninitiated viewers what devotees always saw in the character.
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Captain Marvel (2019)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Studios More than any of her fellow Avengers, Captain Marvel begins her career as a mystery to herself, in a throwback-style adventure setting up the hero who may be the most powerful of them all. A terrific performance by Brie Larson punches through the thick narrative of shapeshifting aliens and murky intergalactic war, very much giving the impression that the truly fun stuff is yet to come.
Read THR’s film review here.
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Spider-Man (2002)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel X-Men beat it to the screen by two years, but with its gimongous box-office take and certified pop appeal, the first of five (and counting) live-action Spider-Man features launched the superhero genre into its current stratosphere. As light on its feet as Tobey Maguire’s web-head himself, this fast and funny origin story holds up more than a decade later, especially in comparison to Marvel’s CGI-serious reboot.
Read THR’s film review here.
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Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel With the WWII origin story out of the way, filmmakers didn’t stop to wallow in the culture shock of their frozen super-soldier’s 21st century awakening. They gave the square-jawed hero a hell of a conspiracy to face down, one that slyly encouraged viewers to question the kind of vastly powerful authorities another costumed hero might blindly obey.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Iron Man (2008)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Where Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man fulfilled every pimply nerd’s fantasy of superpowered liberation, the Iron Man embodied by Robert Downey Jr. understood the next phase of adolescence, in which a fanboy desires not just supernatural abilities but panache. Director Jon Favreau was the right man for this job, with one foot in the fantasy world of Zathura but a strong ear for contemporary swagger.
Read THR‘s film review here.
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Black Panther (2018)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Studios Afrofuturism hit the multiplex in an MCU outing that didn’t just boast the not-like-the-others factor of Deadpool and Guardians but actually, more than any Marvel-sourced pic since the early X-Men, had something to do with the real world. It also created a world of its own — Wakanda — far more dazzling and myth-rich than Thor’s thinly imagined Asgard. And director Ryan Coogler did something too few of his predecessors even attempted, putting a personal stamp on the corporate property he was hired to envision.
Read THR’s film review here.
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Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Though Batman would beg to differ, comic book sequels rarely surpass their predecessors. But Sam Raimi’s follow-up to his Spidey sensation improves on the first film’s action and f/x while giving us the best baddie in the Marvel screen universe. As the tortured Doctor Octopus, Alfred Molina’s psychological reach was as long as his tentacles, culminating in a rare case of super-villain suicide.
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The Avengers (2012)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Single-hero pictures offer one kind of thrill, but Joss Whedon’s rollicking, bantery ensemble movie delivered something bigger: a giddy group dynamic one might imagine to be impossible for teammates who fly separately through the chaos, battling the forces of destruction. It captured the energy of a classic team comic while doing right by the diverse individual plotlines that team contained.
Read THR‘s film review here.
