As happens, I got sidetracked this morning while I was writing 007(x3) Weeks of 007 (expect that to go live a little later today).  A friend pointed me towards the Metacritic rankings of the Marvel movies and asked if I thought they were accurate.

I did not.

I haven’t seen “Ant Man” yet (expect a review tomorrow), but before I do finish out Phase 2 here’s my list of worst-to-best Marvel movies (including Spidey films but not X-Men):

16. Spider-Man 3
15. Amazing Spider-Man
14. Thor: The Dark World
13. Amazing Spider-Man 2
12. Thor
11. Iron Man 2
10. Incredible Hulk
9. Iron Man 3
8. Spider-Man
7. The Avengers: Age of Ultron
6. Captain America
5. Spider-Man 2
4. Iron Man
3. Captain America: Winter Soldier
2. Guardians of the Galaxy
1. The Avengers

Why do I rank them this way?  Great question…

“Iron Man” would be higher, but watching it a couple months ago, as it turns out, it hasn’t aged very well. It looks very dated and it’s not that old. All the high tech stuff in it is lightyears behind today, or where Tony is today anyway.

“Spider-Man 3” was bad at release. I have no idea why they decided to play as much of it for laughs as they did, except that both Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi seem bored by it all. “Amazing 2” gets regularly slammed, but I think it’s better than the first “Amazing,” which didn’t really need to exist at all. No one needed another origin story for Spidey (which is wisely being passed over in the next Spidey movie).

“Avengers” is great. It shouldn’t work, but it does. “Ultron” relies too heavily on the coattails of the first one and feels more like it’s setting up Phase 3 than it is a movie on its own… plus all the stuff at Hawkeye’s house should be cut down AND the final action sequence isn’t great AND they don’t build Ultron’s story enough. Then they give Ultron a pretty weak-sauce way of destroying the world. You would think he could come up with so many better plans, things that would go faster and more cleanly.

To date, it’s the Cap movies that are the best as a series. The first being done as a war propaganda film is genius and the man out of time stuff in the second, and doing it as a spy thriller are just great. I’m nervous for the next one because it feels like they’ve overstuffed it a la “Spidey 3” or either of the “Amazings.”  How many people from the Avengers are in there?

Poor Thor. I think Hemsworth is fantastic and he’s just been given the weakest of the scripts. The opportunity they had with him to introduce the first person in the MCU from another planet and they just couldn’t get it right.

“Guardians” is brilliant, especially popping on the scene when it does. It so completely subverts the expectations of an MCU film and does it really well. From the moment Star Lord is dancing to his walkman during the opening credits you know you’re going to get something good.

photo credit: Marvel

Categories: Random Thoughts

Tags: Age of Ultron, Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers, Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy, Incredible Hulk, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, MCU, Spider-Man, Thor, Winter Soldier