19. The Incredible Hulk
“You know, I know a few techniques that could help you manage that anger effectively—”
A pretty nice popcorn movie that you don’t have to think hard about. Bruce Banner is running around and he gets to find the Abomination. Honestly, this could easily be ranked below Iron Man 3 but I just enjoyed this movie a little bit more.
Edward Norton does a good job of making you forget about Eric Bana’s version – oh god, the Ang Lee Hulk was bad. All I remember was crazy-ass Nick Nolte biting a power cable and that’s our big villain showdown at the end of that movie.
18. Iron Man 2
“Give me a phat beat to beat my buddy’s ass to.”
Iron Man gets a sidekick in War Machine although they fight about it first. It’s sorta a thing, Avengers have to fight each other. Speaking of War Machine – I like how Rhodey appears, new actor and all, and he says all cool and relaxed “It’s me, I’m here, so get over it and move on,” kind of a way to tell us nerds to relax about the replacing of Terrence Howard.
Whiplash was an alright bad guy that I bet you completely forgot about. The real star of the movie is Justin Hammer who does a sweet dance at the Stark Expo stage.
Wait, whatever happened to the Stark Expo in the MCU?
17. Captain America: The First Avenger
“Yeah. I knocked out Adolf Hitler over 200 times.”
I actually liked the First Avenger more than a lot of people I know. It has a throwback charm with its WWII setting. Steve Rodgers is a goody goody two-shoes dude who punches Hitler and eventually gets stuck in ice.
You know, part of my attraction to this movie is the fact that I watched the 90’s Captain America movie a dozen times and loved it even though I knew how bad of a movie it was. By comparison, the 90’s Cap’ movie makes this one look like The Godfather Part II.
16. Ant-Man and the Wasp
“You can do it. You can do anything. You’re the world’s greatest grandma.”
Why does Ford willingly give Hank a means to finding his lost lab when it served in Ford’s best interest to have Hank not find the lab? How did they know Hank was building the quantum tunnel? How did the shady henchmen know about it? Was Hank Pym just horrible at keeping his products secret?
Despite all my questions, I still enjoyed it. This is one of those movies you have to turn off your logic and hope these questions don’t pull you out from the movie but the action is really great.
15. Avengers: Age Of Ultron
“Fury, you son of a bitch!”
This one had a lot of hype going for it. It had to double down on the awesomeness of the first one and build for the big eventual battle with Thanos. It’s kind of a mess when they do try to jam-fist in the Infinity stuff… Thor deciding to take a random bath in the middle of everything to en”VISION” the Infinity stones makes no sense. But that circle shot in the climax is nerdtastic.
14. Spider-Man: Far From Home
“The world needs the next Iron Man.”
After Tony’s heroic Endgame sacrifice maybe we all needed a little something lighthearted to refill our little MCU hearts – what better way than to have our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man back in the mix?
I can nitpick at all the little details of this movie that didn’t work but after watching this movie like 3 times in the theater I think it’s a strong entry into the series, for both Marvel and Sony. Mysterio was a cool character and any comic geek would know how Spidey and him teaming up would turn out. Still a little overly dependent on the Iron Man-angle but by the end I think they set it up enough for Tom Holland Spider-Man 3 to not talk about Iron Man every 15 minutes again, but I could be wrong.
13. Ant-Man
“I think our first move should be calling the Avengers.”
Another movie I did not expect to be so cool. Kind of genius to make Ant-Man into a heist movie to make it stand on its own in an already crowded superhero movie market. Probably one of the funniest MCU movies IMO, which is expected of a movie with Paul Rudd at the lead.
12. Iron Man
“Iron Man. That’s kind of catchy. It’s got a nice ring to it. I mean it’s not technically accurate. The suit’s a gold titanium alloy, but it’s kind of provocative, the imagery anyway.”
For a lot of people, me included, this was the introduction to Iron Man. Before that, he was that cool looking dude in a robot suit on the Avengers roster to me. He was the cheap character in Marvel Vs. Capcom with that cheap proton canon super that fills up the entire screen.
But yeah, when this movie hit the theater it was like, wow, they really pulled it off. They made Iron Man cool. And they picked the perfect actor to be Tony Stark. Bravo.
11. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
“I’m Mary Poppins, y’all!”
I feel really bad this one got pushed outside my Top Ten.
Yondu’s sacrifice hits pretty hard, especially the ravager funeral. I get a little choked up just thinking about it. Music was great although I think the first one was a little better at the soundtrack than this one. Baby Groot was extremely cute. I don’t have a whole lot of bad things to say about GotGv2, it’s just fun. And it’s not reliant on the whole Infinity Saga. In fact, you can watch Guardians 1 & 2 and not even realize there’s an Infinity Saga going on if you have to.
My favorite thing about this movie is Drax. He’s already avenged his family and now he’s in a good place enjoying life and having a sense of humor.