Marvel Studios' run of interconnected movies based around Marvel comics superheroes has proven to be one of the most successful movie franchises ever in a relatively short amount of time, with the latest movie focussing on their superteam, The Avengers, breaking major box office records.
It hasn't all been smooth sailing, however, and, while both fans and critics have remained as generally upbeat as the movie's themselves, there have been some duds in relation to the heights of the series' successes. With the MCU's latest movie, Black Widow, currently sitting with a score of 68 on review aggregator site Metacritic, it just escapes the rankings for the 10 lowest-rated movies from the franchise. Others have not been so lucky. But what is considered to be the worst MCU movie?
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) - 67
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Despite massive successes, the MCU is yet to truly shake the image of being cursed by the sophomore slump when it comes to their movie series, even though their sequels are almost always financial and critical hits.
The sequel to 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy was a huge success on release, yet it was a softer hit with critics who didn't rank it as highly as the more spontaneous and surprising first installment.
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) - 66
● Available on Disney+
The first Captain America movie is, though not without its passionate cheerleaders, generally the old-fashioned underdog of the trilogy. It's plucky without quite achieving the high box office or critical marks as what followed for the character.
Joe Johnston's introduction to the character encompassed their long-standing history and spun it into an old-fashioned adventure yarn that set up the first Avengers movie very nicely without yet finding the franchise's signature style.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) - 66
● Available on Disney+
The lowest-rated of the Avengers movies suffers from many of the same problems as many of the MCU's other sequels, containing a much less straightforward plot than the original which can ultimately feel like filler to pad the time between more ambitious projects.
Though it's beginning to change now, the MCU has never had a good track record for retaining directors past a few projects, and Joss Whedon's second, and final, Avengers movie simply disappointed in terms of critical and box office response when viewed in relation to his first.
Captain Marvel (2019) - 64
● Available on Disney+
One of the more controversial entries into the MCU overall, though not because of any content in the actual movie really, Captain Marvel debuted the titular character on the big screen and marked the arrival of the MCU's first truly female-centric movie.
Released months before the record-shattering success of Avengers: Endgame, the movie more than lived up to expectations in terms of box office popularity itself. However, a solid number of positive reviews were impacted by a sizable number of mixed reviews according to Metacritic's rankings, with the movie still holding an unusually low user review score for an MCU movie.
Ant-Man (2015) - 64
● Available on Disney+
Released just after Avengers: Age of Ultron, the first Ant-Man movie had a famously disharmonious production process in parts, replacing original director Edgar Wright at a relatively late stage. This perhaps played in part in softening its impact on critics.
Wright's distinctive fingerprints can still be clearly seen all over the final product but Metacritic's calculations say that critics stayed fairly consistent with the general reaction to Age of Ultron and rank it in the lower half of the MCU's back catalog.
Iron Man 3 (2013) - 62
● Available on Disney+
Another of the MCU's movies that remains somewhat controversial and divisive with fans, partially due to its tone and its plot twists, Iron Man 3 released as the first movie of the MCU's 'Phase Two' after the first Avengers movie and was a huge box office success.
Whilst delivering a semi-conclusive ending to Robert Downey Jr.'s hugely popular run as the titular hero, there was some controversy surrounding the portrayal of the fan-favorite Marvel Comics character The Mandarin. Though it looks as if the controversy surrounding the villain could be rectified in the upcoming MCU movie, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
The Incredible Hulk (2008) - 61
● Available for purchase on Prime Video
Considered for a long time to be the only real forgotten movie of the MCU, despite William Hurt remaining in franchise continuity as General Thaddeus 'Thunderbolt' Ross, Kevin Feige's second attempt at a solo Hulk movie, and first in the MCU, didn't quite recapture the magic of Iron Man for critics, who ranked Tony Stark's debut much higher.
Edward Norton is in the role of Bruce Banner in the movie and does a typically great job yet would not make it to the first Avengers movie, in which he was replaced by Mark Ruffalo. There were, however, several hanging threads left by the story, with the movie's villain, Abomination, also set to return in Shang-Chi.
Iron Man 2 (2010) - 57
● Available on Disney+
Jon Favreau's sequel to his hit MCU-starting Iron Man movie was the usual letdown for excited fans who wanted something that would surpass the first installment and quickly developed a reputation as a bomb within the franchise despite that not really being true.
RELATED: 5 Reasons Why Iron Man 2 Isn’t As Bad As People Say It Is (& 5 Reasons It Is)
Though Iron Man 2's critical score is much lower than most movies in the MCU, it's still much higher than most franchise movies and committed the universe to some of its biggest goals. Critics were, nonetheless, unimpressed compared to the reaction to Iron Man, with the sequel frequently appearing at the bottom of rankings of all the MCU movies.
Thor (2011) - 57
● Available on Disney+
Kenneth Branagh's introduction to Chris Hemsworth's iconic take on the God of Thunder has its fans but has always been rated more lowly than critics than both Chris Evans' and Robert Downey Jr.'s debuts in the MCU, with famed critic Roger Ebert specifically citing the original Iron Man as a superhero movie that had set a higher standard.
The movie introduced iconic mainstay characters and actors, such as Tom Hiddleston as Loki and Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, not to mention setting up a great deal of the incredibly successful first Avengers movie. Despite all of this though, Metacritic's calculations find enough mixed and negative reviews to place it near the bottom of the MCU's overall output.
Thor: The Dark World (2013) - 54
● Available on Disney+
Alan Taylor's sequel to Thor, which incorporates story elements left over from the first Avengers movie also, is often put forward as the worst of the Thor movie trilogy. Even Chris Hemsworth himself has gone on record in an interview with GQ saying that he wasn't very fond of The Dark World.
Though by no means a film devoid of positive qualities, the character wouldn't truly find solo success with critics until Taika Waititi's very highly-rated threequel, Thor: Ragnarok, in 2017 and the character is due to appear again in Waititi's follow-up, Thor: Love and Thunder.