The cinematic landscape seems to be heading towards a world where the only movies that get theatrical releases are based on Marvel Comics. This has irked filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, but the audiences aren’t doing the industry any favors. And neither are Marvel, continually turning out great movies filled with both things the fans want to see and things they didn’t realize they wanted to see. Kevin Feige has cracked the formula, but before he came along, there were some really terrible movies made out of Marvel Comics properties. So, here are The 5 Best (And 5 Worst) Marvel Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes.
Best: Logan (93%)
It’s no wonder that James Mangold’s Logan became the only comic book movie to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The director took the themes, motifs, and basic structure from the classic Western Shane and transplanted them into an R-rated Wolverine movie about an antihero running from a dark past who reluctantly takes on one last villain. Logan was Hugh Jackman’s farewell to a character that he’d been playing for two decades, and it was beautiful. It took one of Marvel’s most cynical and pessimistic characters and ended his story on a tragic, but hopeful note.
Worst: Man-Thing (17%)
Most Marvel fans outside of diehard comic book readers have never even heard of Man-Thing, and that can partly be attributed to this movie adaptation giving the character a bad name. Director Brett Leonard got off on the right foot when he conceived this character’s big-screen outing as a horror movie revolving around a Louisiana sheriff investigating various mysterious deaths in a swamp, but from there, the execution of what should’ve been a direct-to-DVD film is nothing but a disservice. This movie was so bad that, despite costing $30 million to produce, it only managed to scrape $1 million at the box office.
Best: Thor: Ragnarok (93%)
Thor’s solo movies had been pretty middle-of-the-road before Taika Waititi came along to shake things up. These movies should’ve been zany space adventures from the beginning, since the comics are surreal odysseys into Norse mythology and alien warfare, but Kenneth Branagh made the first movie as a straight-faced Shakespearean drama and Alan Taylor made the second one as a mediocre episode of Game of Thrones.
Inspired by Flash Gordon, Waititi made the third one as an all-out comedy, combining the impending destruction of Asgard with the beloved “Planet Hulk” storyline. Chris Hemsworth clearly relished the chance to play Thor more comedically.
Worst: Howard the Duck (15%)
Although movies based on Marvel Comics characters would eventually go on to dominate the multiplex, they got off on quite the wrong foot back in 1986. Howard the Duck was the first theatrically released feature film adapted from Marvel Comics and it’s often included on lists of the worst movies ever made. Oddly enough, George Lucas was an executive producer on the film.
The character looks really weird, and that’s because Howard the Duck was planned as an animated movie and was forced to be made in live-action by a contractual obligation. Contractual obligations aren’t usually the first step towards creating a timeless masterpiece.
Best: Avengers: Endgame (94%)
Earlier this year, Avengers: Endgame managed to topple Avatar as the highest grossing movie ever made, and it was hardly a surprise. Over the course of 11 industry-changing years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe hooked in more and more viewers, intoxicating them with lovable characters and interconnected plotlines.
All of those characters and plotlines converged in Endgame, which plays like an incredibly satisfying series finale. It has all the ingredients it needed to please longtime fans whose expectations were sky-high: an opening-act bombshell to throw audiences off-kilter, a final-act sacrifice that feels incredibly earned, and lots and lots of fan service.
Worst: Elektra (11%)
Elektra was as good as anyone could expect from a spin-off of the Ben Affleck-starring Daredevil movie. In the years since Elektra was released, Jennifer Garner has said that she didn’t want to make the movie at all and only agreed to do it out of a contractual obligation, and producer Avi Arad has admitted that Marvel rushed it to release. Along with Halle Berry’s Catwoman movie, Elektra is credited with delaying the success of female-led superhero movies for more than a decade. It would be awesome to see another Elektra movie starring Élodie Yung’s badass incarnation of the character from Netflix’s Daredevil series.
Best: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (97%)
Just when Spidey fans had lost all hope in Sony, they bestowed upon us Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, one of the most beautiful movies in recent memory. Shameik Moore shines in the lead role; his charming, awkward, vulnerable performance establishes Miles Morales as an icon out of the gate.
Into the Spider-Verse’s mesmerizing, immersive, unique animation style feels like the experience of flicking through a comic book, brought to life with 3D environments and camera movements. The characters and their relationships feel real, too, from Hailee Steinfeld’s snarky, yet honest portrayal of an alternate-reality Gwen Stacy to Jake Johnson walking the line between funny and sad to give us a miserable thirtysomething Peter Parker.
Worst: Fantastic Four (9%)
Before 2015’s Fantastic Four reboot — marketed with the asinine title Fant4stic — it would’ve seemed impossible to make a Fantastic Four movie that was worse than the ones starring Ioan Gruffudd and Jessica Alba. But somehow, Josh Trank and the Fox executives, who recut his dark, David Cronenberg-esque body horror movie when they got cold feet about his vision, managed it. This movie’s tone is all over the place (and so is Kate Mara’s hair), thanks to an abundance of painfully obvious reshoots. The pacing is off-kilter, Doctor Doom isn’t really Doctor Doom, and the whole viewing experience is just miserable.
Best: Black Panther (97%)
It might have taken Marvel Studios a full decade to give fans a movie with a non-white lead, but at least when they finally did, it was a groundbreaking masterpiece. Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther has it all. Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan make for a pair of compelling leads, the Wakandan landscapes are breathtaking, and the plot is brilliantly paced.
Black Panther’s antagonist, Erik Killmonger, fixed Marvel’s “villain problem” before Thanos showed up. Killmonger has a personal connection to the hero, he has understandable motivations with questionable methods, and most importantly, he feels like a real threat to T’Challa.
Worst: Captain America (7%)
Long before Chris Evans would become the definitive on-screen incarnation of Steve Rogers in the MCU, Matt Salinger (the son of reclusive Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger) played a disingenuous and instantly forgettable version of the character in 1990’s Captain America. The film was made too cheaply, with too thin a script, and with too little vision to do Rogers justice on the big screen. And with subtitled scenes and shockingly brutal moments of violence, it can’t even be enjoyed by kids. It’s hardly a surprise that the $10 million movie only made around $10,000 at the box office.