All MCU Movies Ranked 2024: The "Not Good" MCU Movies (D Tier)
These movies aren’t the worst, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re good. These films fall into the D Tier for one of two reasons: they met my low expectations, or they fell far below my high expectations. With these reasons in mind, I’ll admit I was surprised at some of the titles that ended up falling into this tier. But when reflecting on them I felt that this was the right ranking for them. Let’s see if you agree!
Worst in Tier: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
Another tier, another Ant-Man movie at the bottom of the tier. Quantumania only gets a boost because it’s better than Ant-Man and the Wasp and it ultimately met my low expectations.
Kang was a decent villain for this story, though it now seems irrelevant given the new direction Marvel is going. However, I did find the concept of the Quantum Realm intriguing and it allowed the MCU to explore different types of beings, for better or worse.
As I write this, I realize it probably should have been in the F tier, since I don’t have too much good to say about it. But in the context of some of the other movies and series Marvel put out around this time, I felt like Quantumania wasn’t the worst thing ever so in D Tier it stands.
The Marvels (2023)
Another movie that perhaps many would put in F Tier, but again, I felt this movie met my low expectations. It was generally entertaining, and I did find it creative the way the powers of the three characters blended together, causing them to find themselves in swapped places at the most inopportune times.
I also appreciated that Nick Fury bounced back in this film from whatever was going on with him in Secret Invasion. He’s better as Director Nick Fury who has a handle on everything so let’s stick with that. That said, I don’t think there was much substance to this film and the villain left a lot to be desired. That’s going to be a common trait we see with some other titles in this tier.
But I found Kamala’s family entertaining to watch and Goose is always fun, especially when you add even more flerkens to the mix.
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Yet another victim of a bad villain in this tier. I suppose they can’t always be good, but Malekith seemed like he should have been bigger and better than he was. Also the whole story seemed to move slowly and they still hadn’t mastered the right tone for Thor at this point. The main highlights in terms of entertainment were the interactions between Thor and Loki but that didn’t raise the bar of this film too much.
The one important factor in this movie was the introduction of the Reality Stone. I do appreciate how all the stones are slowly intertwined throughout the series, but you don’t know what their full purpose will be until Infinity War.
The stone and the convergence allow for some creative action sequences through realms and space which make for good action, but the underlying issues with the villain and tone of the movie remain. Despite the potential for great action and a great story, the movie at times feels like a slog as Thor and company slowly move through the plot without the wittiness and intrigue we’ve become accustomed to in the MCU by this point.
Thor (2011)
A direct build off of my commentary on The Dark World, this movie was slow. It’s a bit painful to watch a 1500 year old+ man take so long to learn his lessons. You’d think after all that time Thor would have been humbled in such a way before Odin stripped him of his hammer in this film. He spends a lot of time learning from Jane and her friends which is a nice sentiment, but doesn’t exactly drive the story along quickly at all.
The only thing that raises this movie above the sequel is Loki’s backstory which is both interesting and complicated. We spend a lot of time in Thor movies learning how messed up Thor’s family is and that all is evident right from the start with Loki’s Frost Giant history. It’s funny how this family has been around thousands of years but all of a sudden has all these issues in the span of a few years during the MCU timeline, but I digress.
Ultimately, Thor is an origin story and those are always hard to get right, especially for a hero that is technically already established in their world. But considering this is the first time we get the full introduction to the God of Lightning, it’s a bit disappointing to say the least.
Deadpool and Wolverine (2024)
I almost didn’t put this movie on this list since it’s so new and is in a confusing space between the MCU and X-Men Universes. But Marvel lists it as part of the MCU, unlike its two prequels, so I decided to put it on here. Unfortunately though, it’s just not my kind of movie.
I don’t love the glorified grotesque action in the Deadpool movies, and I also don’t find Ryan Reynold’s sense of humor in them all that funny. That’s a pretty negative double whammy since those are the two main features of Deadpool. However, it was cool to see the cameos in film with some long-forgotten heroes making a comeback that made audiences interested in them again. It’s also nice to see Deadpool working in a team for a change.
Another plus for the movie was the return of Wolverine, a character many fans have followed for a long time. However, I felt he had a perfect send off in Logan and the way they characterize him in this movie is clearly to fit the Deadpool tone which doesn’t really fit Wolverine. They even poke fun at how bringing him back is disingenuous to Logan, but that doesn’t make it any better.
Lastly, I feel this movie relied too much on its gimmicks rather than content. I can only take so much of Ryan Reynolds breaking the fourth wall to say something dumb about Marvel or go on a long swear-filled rant that doesn’t move the story forward at all. It’s fun once or twice, but it gets old really fast in this movie.
I also felt the villain in Deadpool and Wolverine would have been a far more interesting one for an X-men movie with Charles and Magneto.
Captain Marvel (2019)
I firmly believe the first female lead MCU movies we got should have featured Black Widow, or at the very least Wanda Maximoff. These were characters introduced early in the series that didn’t get a chance for their individual story until far too late. I also believe their powers (or in Natasha’s case, hand-to-hand combat) would have made for more interesting action and storytelling. Because Captain Marvel’s powers are…bland.
Carol’s powers come directly from an infinity stone, which we know tends to make the wielder some leveled of overpowered. However, we see Wanda’s powers evolve over time as she adds more to her toolkit, making her more than a one-trick pony. Likewise, the feats Dr. Strange can accomplish with the Time Stone seem endless and constantly creative. That can’t be said for Captain Marvel. Even Loki uses the Tesseract powers in a more interesting way than Carol.
Now, this lack of creativity isn’t fully the movie’s fault because they’re working off of the comics and have to use the powers given to Captain Marvel there. But what made this dynamic so much more prominent was the timing of this movie. It’s introduced between Infinity War and Endgame, and it's abundantly obvious the Avengers could have used Carol in their fight against Thanos in Wakanda, but she was not part of the MCU yet. When we do see her in Endgame, she gives a vague excuse why she wasn’t there helping fight Thanos, there are other planets I guess, but it doesn’t make logical sense for her to be on a different planet when the biggest threat to the universe was on earth. And when we see her entrance at the end of Endgame when she takes down a whole spaceship in two seconds, you can’t help but think even more that she could’ve taken down Thanos single handedly if she had just been there in the first place. But she wasn’t. And that would have been fine if they didn’t introduce her until after Thanos, but they pushed this movie out at a strange time right before Endgame.
Spider-Man Far From Home (2019)
I’m sure many people will object to having any Spider-Man movie ranked so low. But that’s the thing, this is a Spider-Man movie, and it deserves to be held at a higher standard. This movie doesn’t meet that standard.
The first thing this movie suffers from is the ever constant Marvel problem of a bad villain. I didn’t love the whole plot line they went for with Mysterio being a knockoff, villainous version of Tony Stark. It didn’t hit the mark, especially considering Tony had just died in the previous movie.
Which brings us to the next issue of how Far From Home handles the fallout of Endgame. They gloss over the “blip”, almost making it seem like a funny situation, a minor inconvenience. I can’t see how in any way that is realistic, and luckily we do see the negative impact of the blip on a more emotional level later on in things like WandaVision. But it was terribly obvious that they were trying to keep the tone of Spider-Man young and light, which I get in concept, but not in the context of Endgame which came out just a few months before.
Speaking of Endgame, there is the obvious elephant in the room of Tony’s death. They do an okay job with how it affects Peter overall, but I hate the fact that they immediately start talking about who is going to replace Iron Man in the very next movie. Yes we all had an Iron Man shaped hole in our hearts after Endgame, but do we really need to try to fill it right away? Can the MCU just let us appreciate a character for what they were before replacing them? Again, I know this theme of quickly replacing a hero is directly from the comics, but it feels like Marvel has consistently rushed the push from old to new characters since Endgame.
Best in Tier: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
This was one of the Marvel movies I was most excited about, but ultimately the most let down by.
There’s a few things wrong with this movie. Dr. Strange feels like a secondary character in his own movie, which I would have been okay with if we saw him team up with Wanda, or at least have a good fair fight sequence with her. We didn’t get either. If they used Strange Supreme from What If? at least he had more of a chance against the Scarlet Witch.
We also have the issue of America Chavez. Her powers are intriguing and her character is fine except that she is again a recent MCU victim of lack of development. The “just believe in yourself” solution to her problems at the end just made this even more obvious.
But the most glaring issue is how they use Wanda’s character. We spent months following Wanda’s story and growth in WandaVision and saw the complexities they had created in her character. Only for all that character development to go out the window in Multiverse of Madness. Yes, there was obvious darkness in Wanda shown in WandaVision and her treatment of Westview, but it was portrayed in a way that made sense on a human level. She had lost just about everything in her life at that point, and it seems natural that if you have the power to change that, you probably would. But the series ends with her being the hero, taking down Agatha and releasing Westview.
Obviously she still has a troubled past, but I didn’t see her becoming the mad Scarlet Witch that destroys entire universes just months later. It’s one thing if in the movie we see her become more and more evil, and the reasons behind it. But instead the movie jumps in with her already having fallen far from where we just saw her in WandaVision. It’s a dramatic shift, and feels insulting to a character with such great development until that point, something that is unfortunately rare for females in the MCU.
We’ve seen the last second crazy mad queen shift before in Game of Thrones. We didn’t need it again here.
Alright, the D Tier is done! Now we’re finally getting into the good stuff in our next tier. Leave a comment below if you agree or disagree with this list!
Ranking the MCU in 2024
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