SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers for any and all MCU movies to date may follow.

Avengers: Infinity War is coming out in just a few days. There’s some debate on whether or not it’s the most ambitious crossover event in history, but with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) being the highest grossing film series, there’s no doubt that this is a big deal. On a personal level, over the 18 movies in the MCU so far, it’s probably not an exaggeration to say I’ve spent days watching these movies and I can’t remember ever being so excited to see a movie before (and that includes Star Wars movies). So I hope you’ll indulge me and join me as I look back at 10 years, 18 movies and over $14.7 billion of global box gross that changed the way people look at comic book movies and shared universes.

But before I go on, let’s watch that trailer one more time:

Rankings

Since rankings and lists are all the rage, let’s start off with some data. Below are the 18 MCU movies to date (as defined by Wikipedia). Essentially, it’s the movies that take place in the shared universe that Marvel (and then Disney) began creating with 2008’s Iron Man. The X-Men movies (produced by Fox) and pre-Homecoming Spider-Man movies (produced by Sony) do not count. Included with the name of each movie below is the date the movie was released, its Rotten Tomato score and how I personally ranked each film from best to worst.

As you can see, I had quite a few differences of opinion with the venerable Rotten Tomatoes. This was a hard list to make, especially the middle tier. Ask me to rank the movies again in a week and you could easily find a completely different order for movies 6 through 13. How does one compare the hilarious and unique Guardians of the Galaxy to the deep and emotional Black Panther? How about the quietly competent Doctor Strange with Avengers: Age of Ultron, which aimed for the stars and fell just a bit short? Full disclosure: I actually never saw The Incredible Hulk, so ranking the movie dead-last is unfair, but there was no better place to put it.

Rotten Tomatoes has some more stats and information on 10 years of MCU movies. It’s worth a read, especially if you agree with their rankings over mine. If you do prefer RT’s ratings and think mine are crazy, though, please indulge me and let me see if I can convince you why I am right and Rotten Tomatoes is wrong on two of the bigger discrepancies:

Why Thor: Ragnarok is Overrated

I laid out my mixed thoughts on Thor: Ragnarok in my review, but for those who can’t be bothered to click on a link or read so many paragraphs, I can sum up everything wrong with the movie in a few sentences. In essence, the movie seemed pathologically incapable of providing any moments that had legitimate drama. Instead, it was a long, drawn out series of jokes that performed a disservice to the characters that we had grown to care about over the previous 2+ movies (particularly the ones who were killed off). In many ways, Ragnarok should’ve been one of the darkest MCU movies to date. Multiple characters from the previous movies are killed off (including the Allfather), Thor loses an eye, Banner worries about losing himself to the Hulk, and the ending “victory” is as pyrrhic as they come, with Thor essentially sacrificing his entire homeworld to stop his murderous sister. At no point, however, does the movie slow down to let the audience appreciate the impact of what is happening. Every moment is punctuated by some slapstick physical comedy or sarcastic quip. Guardians of the Galaxy proved that you can have a hilarious movie that doesn’t take itself seriously while still having somber and touching moments. Think of Rocket tearfully (and drunkenly) telling Peter that he didn’t ask to be made, or Groot’s sacrifice, or Peter taking his mother’s hand at the end of the movie after running away from her at the beginning. Comedy does not at all need to be at odds with having emotional and impactful moments in movies1Editor: In fact, humor can heighten those dramatic moments and vice versa..

Also, and in going with the theme, I was a little annoyed by how much of a joke they turned Loki into. This was the big bad who so threatened the Earth that it required assembling Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to stop him?

Why I Ranked Doctor Strange so Low

It’s not so much that I dislike Doctor Strange. In fact, I quite enjoyed it. I just thought it was done better 8 years earlier when it was called Iron Man.

Look, I know that origin stories mostly follow the same template and, after introducing a certain number of heroes, there is bound to start being some overlap. Still, all throughout Doctor Strange, I couldn’t help but feel like I had seen this movie before. A wealthy, super-talented, arrogant, goateed white male suffers a sudden hardship and goes on a journey of self-discovery in a remote part of Asia. Thanks to the wise influence of a character (who subsequently dies) that was Asian in the comics but had their ethnicity changed for the movies, he realizes his true purpose in life and saves the day by defeating an enemy with similar powers to his own.

The similarities to Iron Man aren’t the only things that bothered me. The existence of the time stone (and the powers it has) felt a little problematic from the very beginning. An artifact of such power was just laying around for any rookie sorcerer to stumble upon and potentially use? Time travel is always a tricky thing to introduce into a universe as it opens up a Pandora’s Box going forward. The next time any significant character dies, the question has to be asked: Why not use the Time Stone to save them? The ability to manipulate time is incredibly powerful, and it’s going to be difficult explaining away any future conflicts that Doctor Strange can’t solve simply by calling upon the time stone’s power.

Lastly, Doctor Strange was the first MCU movie where it really made me wonder where these heroes were during previous movies. There is an off-hand reference about how the Avengers protect the world from physical dangers while the sorcerers protect it from more mystical threats. Loki’s magical powers and possession of an Infinity Stone in his staff would definitely seemed to have qualified the alien invasion from The Avengers for magical intervention. And considering how easily Doctor Strange dispatched Loki in Thor: Ragnarok, it’s pretty obvious some sorcerers could’ve been very useful in the battle of New York.

Some Thoughts on MCU Romances

I really just wanted to use this space to rail against two huge romantic screw-ups in the MCU so far. It’s not the weird tendency for love interests to disappear (I’m looking at you, Jane Foster and Betsy Ross).

No, this is about the long, strange, romantic journey that Black Widow has gone through.

The first Avengers movie seemed to tease a possible Hawkeye/Black Widow romance:

• There was that look on her face when Coulson tells her that, “Barton has been compromised“
• Later, she confronts Loki about Hawkeye’s fate, referring to it as “red on her ledger” (even Loki inquires if it’s love)
• They later share a tender moment after Hawkeye’s “cognitive re-calibration”

However, all that hinting and build-up apparently turned out to be a retroactively awkward fake-out since we later learn (in Age of Ultron) that Hawkeye is (and has been) a happily married family man.

That’s okay, though, because as luck would have it, that left Natasha Romanov available for an even better match. Somebody who complements her and is good for her just as much as she complements and is good for him.

I’m speaking, of course, of Steve Rogers.

Before I make my case, let me just speak to how awful and forced this attempt at a Bruce Banner/Natasha Romanov romance is. I think it’s one of the biggest missteps in the MCU right now and I really hope they decide to change directions in Infinity War (although based on the trailers so far, that doesn’t seem to be the case). For starters, it’s too soon for both characters. We still haven’t gotten any kind of resolution at all to the Bruce/Betty romance from The Incredible Hulk (despite the casting change and virtually no carryover from that movie, it is considered to be a part of the MCU). As for Natasha, the romance with Banner is the third romantic-style relationship wiith an Avenger that has been alluded to for her in three consecutive films!

That’s not the worst of it, though. The worst of it is how the romance was developed (or more specifically, not developed) on-screen. There’s zero build up to it at all. There’s nothing from the first Avengers movie to indicate any kind of mutual attraction between them. Yet suddenly, in the second movie, we get an incredibly awkward and out-of-character scene filled with corny dialog where Natasha is heavily flirting with Bruce. There’s no explanation as to where this came from or how it developed. The romance essentially goes from zero to sixty completely off-screen. That kind of lack of development is hard for me to accept. I need to be shown evidence as to why two people might fall for each other and not simply be told that they have (it’s worth noting that the Steve Rogers/Sharon Carter romance suffers from the same problem, in addition to the creepiness of Steve also having been in love with her aunt).

Natasha’s actions are also incredibly out of character. As Steve Rogers notes immediately after the aforementioned scene, Natasha isn’t “the most open person in the world”. Her over-the-top flirting feels much more like a facade that she is putting on and is more reminiscent of her interrogation scenes from the first Avengers movie (both with the Russian and Loki) where she pretended to be an overly emotional and vulnerable woman to get the information she needed.

Contrast this with the relationship between Natasha and Steve in The Winter Soldier. Even though it’s only barely hinted at, with none of the “I’m going to openly state my feelings to the camera” scenes that the Natasha/Bruce relationship had in Age of Ultron, it makes for a far more believable romance. Allow me to explain why.

It’s a slow build-up with actual development. From the beginning, it’s clear from their banter that Steve and Natasha have been spending a lot of time working together on missions for S.H.I.E.L.D. And yet, their back-and-forth seems far more like that of friends or close coworkers than any kind of overt flirting. In fact, Natasha even pokes some fun at Steve’s (lack of a) love life and suggests people he could ask out.

However, a lot of life-altering things start going down that shake up their relationship. Even ignoring their distraction tactic kiss, Fury’s death and the revelation that Hydra had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. clearly had Natasha shaken as she questioned if she really had turned her life around. This is clearly evident in the touching bedroom scene (which, it should be noted, was far better than the over-the-top and awkward bedroom scene that Banner and Natasha shared in Age of Ultron) where Natasha looks genuinely vulnerable when confiding to Steve that she feels like she just traded the KGB for Hydra and she looks touched when Steve tells her that he would trust her to save his life. There was a lot more weight to her asking him, “Who do you want me to be?“, than her entire spiel to Bruce overtly stating that she liked him. Natasha’s interactions with Steve feel like real moments of emotion between two close friends instead of some carefully choreographed dance like the Natasha/Bruce romance. At the end of the movie, Natasha even kisses Steve (again!) after asking him to ask out the nurse. Who does that!?

Natasha and Steve work because they complement each other so well. He needs somebody who can show him that strict adherence to principles and rigidly sticking with what you believe in doesn’t always end up with the best result. She needs a north star to guide her out of the world of shades of grey that she lives in. In some ways, the story of The Winter Soldier is all about the character development that both of them go through in terms of appreciating what each other can do to help them. Steve gains an appreciation for Natasha’s spy skills and her ability to work outside of the law and Natasha is saved from an existential crisis of faith by Steve’s unwavering faith in her.

Lastly, I think it’s pretty telling that in Civil War, she shows up to Peggy Carter’s funeral. She’s not there to try to convince Steve to sign the accords. She’s merely there to comfort a friend in need. It’s a completely extraneous scene whose only real purpose is to show how close Steve and Natasha have become. There’s more chemistry in that one scene than nearly all the ones between Steve and Sharon.

So Marvel, you’ve wasted far too much time trying to make Bruce and Natasha happen. It’s time to drop that and give the people (i.e., me) what they want.

Give us Steve and Natasha.

Going Forward

I know the tone of this article has probably been strangely negative, considering how much I claimed in the intro to love the MCU movies. I don’t have a good reason why, other than that it’s easier to nitpick and criticize than to just keep repeating for a dozen movies how great they are. As the saying goes: “It’s easier to tear down than to build up”. Despite what I said, I really did enjoy Doctor Strange and can’t wait to see his interactions with the other Avengers in Infinity War and other movies going forward. For all of its flaws, I have to admit that Thor: Ragnarok was a hilarious movie. And my extended diatribe on the romantic relationships of Black Widow and Captain America come from a place of love (in more ways than one). The MCU has given me 10 years of consistently high-quality movies, which is more than most franchises can say. Here’s hoping for 10 more.

And for Infinity War to seriously kick some ass.

Paul Essen

Founder and Chief Discourse Officer at Rampant Discourse

Proud geek. Trekkie. Browncoat. Entil'Zha. First human spectre. Hokie. Black belt. Invests Foolishly. Loves games of all types and never has enough time to play as many as he wants. Libertarian who looks forward to the day he votes for a winning presidential candidate. Father to two beautiful daughters.