Tom Jolliffe casts a slightly MCU-fatigued eye over the catalogue to provide a Top 10 list…
I’m sure you’ll have seen many a ranking list or top 10 focused on the MCU. There have been so many films now since Iron Man kicked off the whole shebang that they’ve been separated into phases. We’re coming to the end of a rather tepid and uninspiring Phase Four, which wasn’t without its highlights but couldn’t match the final stages of the previous phase.
Here’s an admission. When Martin Scorsese came out and said Marvel films were more like theme park rides than cinema, he of course was taken hugely out of context, but his point was somewhat valid. It wasn’t quite the old man yelling at a cloud hyperbole of Francis Ford Coppola, but still, Scorsese took some flack.
I’m not a huge fan of the relentless, slightly interchangeable MCU machine. I watched Black Widow, which at times would refer back to Iron Man 2 which came out over a decade ago and has long since dispersed from my memory, and referenced films in the canon I’d skipped. Point is, die-hard fans love these films and no doubt get the references. Me? I just shrug and wait for them to move on to propelling the current story forward.
Entire green screen sequences leave me cold. Relentless and lengthy set pieces get tiresome as the CGI bombards me. I just long for the meat and potatoes of old-school practical effects driving action scenes but must contend with the fact that, aside from a few last bastions of practical like Tom Cruise, Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino, those techniques are dead.
Then as someone who isn’t so interested in cross-pollination, it begins to irk me when a film diverges from its own story to fit in cameos or subplots put in place to set up an upcoming Marvel movie for another character. Spider-Man and Ant-Man crammed into Civil War for example. It’s cool for fans. For me? I’m watching the clock wishing they’d get on with it.
Still… that’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed and invested in some of the MCU films. Sometimes if a film is so crazily huge as to be unmatched in CGI spectacle, I can almost go along with it. My problem lies in those times where I’ve seen it all before, or the CGI feels rushed and not as polished as it should be in a $200 million opus.
At this point, even some fans are questioning whether the sheer gargantuan scale and universe ending stakes of the Avengers saga were the peak of Kevin Feige’s ambitious project. The set pieces since have often paled hugely. The emotional stakes less powerful, and some of the rosters of Phase Four have felt like barrel scrapers. Time will tell if Marvel can match the high points of the first three phases, but until then here are the top ten MCU films, according to a Scorsese camp member.
10. Spider-Man: No Way Home
Okay, this is a gigantic mess. There’s never a clear grip on the multiverse mechanisms or threats. Characters keep interjecting, “By the way, if you do this, this will happen…” (repeat ad nauseam). It bounds from scene to scene, cramming in a lot of characters, who all seem to have the same sense of snarky and irreverent humour (an MCU staple). Tonally it’s very jumpy too.
We open on Parker outed as Spider-Man and painted as a public menace. It should be a deep dramatic emotional moment to open on but gets derailed by a need for making jokes and physical comedy. So the drama is often undercooked because of the erratic pacing (the death of an established character falls flat because it kind of happens and then we move on quickly). However, there’s enough enjoyment from the villain squad dynamics as well as the Peter Parker trio (with Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire donning their outfits once more) to make this worthwhile.
The three Parkers segment feels like a great short film wedged into an otherwise so-so film, whilst the set pieces feel oddly lacklustre. Tom Holland was always the most well-suited Parker but perhaps the weakest performer. If the film shows one thing, it’s how good Maguire could do puppy dog pathos, and likewise, how Garfield’s gravitas can elevate lightweight drama to have actual resonance. He steals the Spidey show, whilst Willem Defoe steals the whole thing at a canter.
9. Spider-Man: Homecoming
Tom Holland’s first outing as Parker was breezy and enjoyable. He felt perfectly suited to the role, not least because he was a suitable age. Maguire conversely was in his 30s by the time he was performing dance sequences in Spider-Man 3. That said, Holland doesn’t feel nerdy enough, even though he does the affable comedy pretty well. It may be the simplicity of the writing, but his performances as Parker feel a little two-dimensional.
Robert Downey Jr. helps to elevate the film with his brief mentor role as Tony Stark, but Michael Keaton gives the film an engaging and complex villain that is all too rare in the MCU. It’s been a consistent weakness that the films, even some of the better ones, have lacked a decent villain. It’s no Spider-Man 2, but it’s the next best Spidey film and way better than Spider-Man: Far from Home (which was kind of mediocre in truth).
8. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
This one was a lot of fun. It wasn’t too pre-occupied with forcing cameos, and the readily established MCU characters who reappear are used in a way that feels necessary to the story, particularly a reappearing Ben Kingsley (as Trevor Slattery) who goes from being one of the worst characters ever committed to the MCU, to one that becomes endearing.
Shang-Chi takes the usual formula for comic book intro movies and fuses it with old-school Hong Kong Wuxia fantasy. This could have been made in the 80s by Tsui Hark. It never sets its bar too high, but it has enjoyable set pieces and a great cast. The action-packed finale set pieces lose a bit of that hand-to-hand intimacy and also become more CGI driven, but this is still packed with great fights.
Additionally, Tony Leung is superb, marking himself as one of the best antagonists of the MCU. He brings huge gravitas and masses of charisma. Throw in Michelle Yeoh and this film is really blessed with wonderful character actors and icons of Asian cinema.
7. Thor: Ragnarok
When Taika Waititi could do no wrong, he made Thor: Ragnarok. It’s a quirky film dripping with colour and Waititi’s brand of goofy humour. It’s all wrapped up in a package that feels like a throwback to daft fantasy adventure films of the 80s. In many ways, from the colour-drenched worlds and sprawling fantasy, this film represents just what a great He-Man film could be. Despite the bombardment of broad humour, it still manages to have some dramatic moments within.
This was the one where Chris Hemsworth really felt like he’d found his approach. Thor suddenly felt fresh and fun, and there’s a good double act with Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk/Bruce Banner. This was Waititi almost unfettered, dialled up to 10. Sadly, the follow-up cranked him up to eleven and the whole formula exploded under the weight of overindulgence. Thor: Love and Thunder was too much, too far and a total mess. Ragnarok is probably weaker in the final third because it starts to adhere to the formula, but at the same time, you need that formula. Sometimes an auteur still needs to tick a few MCU boxes.
6. Avengers: Endgame
The battle to end all battles. Picking up after the previous film which ended on a bombshell, Endgame really goes huge. Is it too long? Is it almost aggressively CGI-heavy? Yes. Exhausting? Definitely, but as I say, if you’re going to watch a CGI-driven spectacle you might as well watch the biggest one ever made.
Many MCU-ites might have ranked this higher, but there are a few reasons I haven’t ranked this (spoiler alert) higher than Avengers: Infinity War. For one, the post-snap escapades aren’t quite as interesting or nail-biting as the quest to stop Thanos from snapping his finger in the first place. The dramatic moments don’t quite have the same weight. Stark (RDJ) and Rogers (Chris Evans) do have good sendoffs, but Romanoff’s (Scarlett Johansson) final sacrifice didn’t have that kind of impact, in part because her side quest with Hawkeye slowed the pacing a little.
The Back to the Future 2-esque time travel stuff is fun, if (like BTTF2) convoluted. It’s huge, it’s enjoyable but there’s just too much going on and some characters have never felt comfortable within the MCU (Captain Marvel for one). They get awkwardly shoved in and then drop out again. For me, I felt a lot more from the previous instalment. This has a satisfying end that feels as if you’ve been on an epic journey, and in truth, everything since has felt oddly small in comparison (even when they go for big moments).
5. Iron Man
The OG. The one that kicked off a revolution (for better or worse) in cinema. Robert Downey Jr. was a revelation. He came with a very distinct persona that almost felt at odds with mainstream blockbuster cinema. He had the one MCU character which fit and he injected the film with his off-the-cuff humour. Iron Man began a trend, and from here on in, every big headliner which followed seemed to adopt the RDJ style of humour, a mix of snark, sarcasm, pop culture references and sardonic dryness.
This is another slight issue for me. RDJ’s strengths and his gift at these kinds of quick-fire throwaway lines worked brilliantly. His delivery essentially became a blueprint everyone else followed. Every character since has been something of a gag-smith purveyor of wry humour. If the OG lacks anything, it’s the kind of barnstorming finale that future Avengers films would bring in, but it’s also delightfully focused, lithe and Jeff Bridges is a suitably reliable villain, even if his character feels a little small time in the grand scheme of MCU world/universe enders.
4. Guardians of the Galaxy
Whilst the MCU was well underway with Earth-set adventures featuring A-list comic characters, Guardians of the Galaxy brought a less renowned property into the fold and proved that as long as you have the MCU banner and you nail your landing, you’ll have a hit.
What worked so well here was that the Guardians took the adventures out into deep space, exploring different corners of the Universe to good ol’ Earth. It felt fresh from that perspective, and also wonderfully quirky. I went in with no idea who these characters were but such is the casting and James Gunn’s enjoyable script, I came out having enjoyed myself immensely. The film has issues, notably one of the worst villains in MCU history, but Zoe Saldana’s morally conflicted character provides some complexity and the heroes themselves are a great mix.
Chris Pratt was inspired in the first film, though he’s felt distinctly undercooked since then. The trio of oddball aliens, Rocket (Bradley Cooper), Groot (Vin Diesel) and Drax (Dave Bautista) are also hilarious. Sometimes the humour in the MCU can feel too much, or out of place, but in part that’s often a tonal inconsistency where the film has clearly switched between writers and implementations of studio notes. Guardians felt very much a Gunn film, his baby, and it feels consistent because of that.
3. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Captain America: Civil War frustrated me for some reasons stated above. It also felt weighted down with political posturing, lots of pace-killing dialogue with characters pitched in a seated battle of ideologies that all feel one note. Okay, you might say that probably adeptly represents modern social media debate, but the prospect of Cap vs Stark became bogged down with too much one-note drama before the aforementioned cramming of new characters and overblown set pieces (and also it feels in retrospect like Infinity War-lite). The ideological duels of Stark and Chris Evans feel like you’re a fly on the wall at a middle school debate club.
Winter Soldier however, feels lithe, more focused and has some dramatic weight. You’ve got Rogers contending with his own guilt, loss, his displacement in a time unfamiliar, dealing with the political ramifications that become too heavily focused in the next one. Then there’s Bucky which makes for an interesting battle of former friends. Evans has always been great as Cap, imbuing his simple heroism with some depth and an easy grinning charm. Like RDJ, he’s elevated what could have been a two-dimensional role.
Elsewhere, though the film has requisite CGI set pieces, this also has a pleasing amount of meat and potatoes action. Lots of practical work, some great chases and stunts and some cracking one-on-one battles. As an out-and-out action film, it’s the most grounded of the entire MCU lore.
2. Black Panther
I kind of get that someone like Spike Lee had issues with this being heralded as a kind of black cinema trailblazer. For that level of money, it certainly was and in terms of pop cultural reach, but from a cinema perspective, it doesn’t say as much as Lee’s own trailblazing work or films like Boyz in the Hood did. All told there are well-worn themes here and it only manages to scratch the surface of social and cultural issues (because ultimately, it’s still a fantasy blockbuster tasked with delivering spectacle foremostly).
What Ryan Coogler’s film does well is create a film that feels fresh and unique in its field. The late great Chadwick Boseman is very good here as the titular character, but more interesting is Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger the film’s complicated, tragic antagonist. Talk of Oscars was a little far-fetched but if anyone was close it was probably Jordan. From an action perspective, the film is a little let down though. It feels like this was left by the wayside somewhat with some sub-par CGI and set pieces which feel awkwardly clunky. The blockbuster default is normally that the action exceeds the drama. This was the reverse. Had they nailed both, this would have been number one.
What Black Panther does well, it does very well indeed and the MCU has always been best when we have morally complicated villains driven by personal tragedy (Jordan, Keaton, Brolin, Leung for example).
1. Avengers: Infinity War
As a kind of ode to Greek Mythology and Shakespearean Tragedy, Avengers: Infinity War sets its stall out early. Thanos is the misguided villain who still manages to retain shades of sympathy. His goal is to eradicate half of the lifeforms across the universe with the snap of a finger. The set-up is simple, but throw in family drama within the Thanos stable, and then on the Avengers side the slow repair of Stark and Rogers’ relationship as they have to unify to save the universe.
When it came out, Infinity War felt gargantuan. The adventure is enthralling but the payoff, even though it wasn’t entirely unexpected, really did stun. Okay, the consequences and stakes in comic book films often feel thin, and even knowing that the snap would inevitably be reversed in the follow-up, it still felt ballsy to annihilate so many iconic characters (not least a pretty freshly reintroduced Peter Parker) with the snap of a finger.
The quest itself as the Avengers try to beat Thanos to the Infinity Stones is more focused and intense than that of Endgame. The scale of the action too is impressive. One particular reason this one works better is it isn’t bogged down by an extra 30 minutes that Endgame carries and the ending is suitably impactful. It left audiences stunned, having to wait an entire year to see RDJ and co find a way to undo Thanos’ handiwork.
What are the top 10 MCU films? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Tom Jolliffe is an award-winning screenwriter and passionate cinephile. He has a number of films out on DVD/VOD around the world and several releases due out in 2022, including, Renegades (Lee Majors, Danny Trejo, Michael Pare, Tiny Lister, Nick Moran, Patsy Kensit, Ian Ogilvy and Billy Murray), Crackdown, When Darkness Falls and War of The Worlds: The Attack (Vincent Regan). Find more info at the best personal site you’ll ever see here.
