Every Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, ranked from worst to best

Conventional critical wisdom holds that the floor and the ceiling of the 15-year-strong Marvel Cinematic Universe, a.k.a the MCU, are not so far apart—that in devising a recipe for success, the company has managed to avoid any outright disasters, even as its principle of quality without risk more or less negates the possibility of a true pop masterpiece of the genre. Still, as anyone who’s sat through both Eternals or Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and the Oscar-winning zeitgeist phenomenon Black Panther can surely attest, there remains a range of quality within this franchise of franchises. Which is to say, while most MCU movies have been hits, they are not all created equal.

How does Marvel’s latest cinematic installment, The Marvels, measure up to the 32 movies that have come before it? Here The A.V. Club offers our comprehensive ranking, from worst to best, for every Marvel movie to date, going all the way back to Iron Man in 2008. Like the studio, we wouldn’t dream of spoiling our endgame, but here’s a hint: Ed Norton fans, this won’t be your day of vindication.

This list was updated on November 10, 2023.

31. Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Chris Hemsworth spoke for all of us when, Thor himself dismissed The Dark World as “the second one.” Sandwiched between Iron Man 3 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the entry benefits from its clean, handsome direction, but stagnates thanks to a toothless villain, a perfunctory romance, and oodles of mythological mumbo-jumbo. Its greatest sin, though, is in not capitalizing on the Hemsworth flexed in the God Of Thunder’s first outing and doubled down on in The Avengers. Here, Hemsworth’s Thor feels more dutiful than dashing, and not even Tom Hiddleston’s reliably sly Loki can subvert the film’s self-seriousness. Speaking of Loki, though, The Dark World does deserve credit for helping transition the trickster god , an archetype he’d play to perfection in Thor: Ragnarok. [Randall Colburn]