Despite being backed by an aggressive marketing campaign and the lure of seeing Kang’s performance on the big screen, there was no escaping a cold, hard reality: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania stinks! That’s according to critics, who collectively gave it a rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes, and fans, who slapped the 31st MCU movie with a low B rating via Cinemascore (Marvel movies typically get grades in the “A” range). “, so a B for them is very bad).
But just how awful is the third Ant-Man movie? There aren’t many genuinely bad Marvel movies, but after 15 years, it’s impossible for any studio not to do something bad from time to time. Using Rotten Tomatoes as my guide, I rank the worst MCU movies to determine where how many It finally ended and answered the question many moviegoers have been asking since the movie came out: is it the worst MCU movie?
Note: Sony’s Spider-Man spin-offs don’t count, as they were made without creative input from Marvel president Kevin Feige. Otherwise, this list would be nothing more than Sony movies like Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
4. The Incredible Hulk (68%)
It says a lot about the high quality of Marvel’s production that the fifth worst MCU movie isn’t bad at all. In fact, it’s perfectly fine and there’s nothing wrong with it. This second attempt at a Hulk movie after Ang Lee’s underrated 2003 film Helmet sees a new Bruce Banner (Edward Norton, even better than Marc Ruffalo and Eric Bana) trying to find a cure for his Hulk rage. Along the way, he encounters a new threat, The Abomination (Tim Roth, so good at playing the bad guy), whose similar gamma-powered abilities may hold the key to a cure.
Although it does not break new ground, The incredible Hulk makes for an entertaining ride thanks to Norton’s charismatic performance and her, er, incredible chemistry with Liv Tyler, who plays Betty Banner. Yes, the CGI is a bit weird, and the climactic battle is like any other final duel in a comic book movie, but The incredible Hulk it’s a better film than its initial critical reception suggests.
3. Thor: The Dark World (66%)
Thor: The Dark World it doesn’t have a bad reputation as much as it has almost no reputation. The curse of her was that she was forgettable, and I really can’t disagree. Following the events of the first Thor, which relied heavily on its fish-out-of-water premise and Hemsworth’s charisma, the sequel sees the God of Thunder take on an ancient race of elves in both Asgard and London. Instead of fighting notable foes like the Enchantress or the Absorbing Man, Thor is tasked with taking down… Malekith, who looks like every other villain in any other comic book movie (seriously, he could be the brother of Justice League’s Steppenwolf, and that’s not a good idea). stuff).
I held The dark world In low esteem for years, but on a second review, I found that it was surprisingly not horrible. It’s a low bar, and maybe Sony’s Spider-Man spin-offs like Morbius It gave me an idea of how much a superhero movie can really suck, but The dark world she has her charms, chief among them being Portman’s Jane Foster, who is smarter and more cunning than your average damsel in distress; Rene Russo’s Freya, who gives the film some dramatic weight; and Jamie Alexander’s Sif, who kicks some serious butt. The women of The dark world keeping it from becoming completely unwatchable, which makes it better than most DCEU movies.
2. Thor: Love and Thunder (63%)
wait another thor movie? I thought Taika Waititi solved the God of Thunder franchise problems with ragnarok, who killed most of Asgard, gave Thor an amazing haircut, and didn’t take himself too seriously? Well, he did, but that created another problem: oversteering. Love and Thunder’s problems are representative of Phase Four’s central problem: the directors had too much power to do whatever they wanted.
With love and thunderWaititi made not only one decent follow-up film, but three mediocre ones: Guardians of the Galaxy 2.5 with Thor as its fact0 leader, a wacky rom-com that mined the offbeat humor seen in the director’s previous work, and a cancer story with Jane taking on herself very oh really. The result is a tonal hodgepodge that doesn’t work at all. What is unforgivable in love and thunder it’s that if Waititi had calmed down and picked one thing to focus on, this could have been a great MCU movie. Instead, Portman’s Jane Foster’s heroic journey is wasted, and Christian Bale’s compelling villain Gorr the God Butcher is completely wasted.
1. (tie) Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (47%)
Yeah love and thunder‘s cardinal sin was that he had too many ideas and not enough discipline to carry out any of them, so how manyThe main flaw of is that it tried to do too much with the wrong property. Forgoing the cool, low-stakes vibe of the first two Ant-Man movies, how many thrusts the everyman hero and his family into a high-stakes plot that sounds like it was ripped from an old Star Wars script that George Lucas dumped in the Marin County trash can years ago.
I have written extensively about the flaws of how manySo I’ll just say that the movie shows how world building and franchise expansion can come at the expense of audience enjoyment. It’s like Marvel forgot to tell a story with the third Ant-man movie, or even why people liked the character to begin with. Instead, the focus is entirely on building Kang as a Thanos-level big bad, and he doesn’t even get it right. How can someone be intimidated by someone who is beaten by a horde of ants? Thanos would have kicked Kang’s ass in a heartbeat. It is not surprising how many (tied with another movie) is now the worst Marvel movie ever.
1. (tie) Marvel Eternals (47%)
why the hell was eternal even done? The characters were never popular, even among comic book fans. Most of them were forgettable copies of other better heroes and villains, and their backstory was convoluted at best. Those who have followed Marvel Studios since its inception know that Feige originally wanted to do inhuman as a feature film, but that property was taken and turned into a hilariously awful miniseries, so he decided to make eternal instead.
Big mistake? Well, it’s complicated. Although eternal got a lot of bad reviews, not the worst. it’s just the most bored Marvel movie ever made. It’s too long, there’s barely any energy, and the characters seem disconnected from themselves, each other, and their adopted homeworld. Director Chloe Zhao knows how to compose a flashy shot, but she takes the material too seriously. How many lingering shots of the cosmos can an audience take? The result is a Marvel movie that looks pretty, but feels empty. It’s a crime for such a talented cast to go to waste (Barry Keoghan! Angelina Jolie! Brian Tyree Henry!). With how many, eternal it’s the worst-reviewed Marvel movie of all time, a dubious distinction that will likely never be undone.
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