(Photo by © Marvel / © Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection. (Deadpool & Wolverine.))

All Marvel MCU Movies, Ranked by Tomatometer

It takes a lot of effort to get audiences the world over to believe that the fate of the universe should be entrusted to a talking tree and a sarcastic raccoon. First of all, you can’t just jump straight into it – you’ve got build up to it. Begin with a story of the repentant millionaire playboy who builds an iron suit with a nuclear heart from a box of scraps in a cave. Toss in a super soldier thawed from ice after 70 years. How about a magic hammer man from space, or the turncoat Russian spy who loses her accent real quick? It’s a good start – just add a few dozen more characters, mix and match them across multiple serialized movies, and as the physics-defying superheroics pile up, all of a sudden, putting all your faith in a trigger happy trash panda makes plenty of sense in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Not a bad world to build up for Marvel Studios, which originally had to put up the rights to Captain America, the Avengers, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, and more as collateral just to get the funding to make 2008’s Iron Man. Clearly, the movie bet of the century paid off, as an empire of 25 films (and counting) has flourished under Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige. The MCU has allowed generations of comic book fans to ascend to the highest throne in pop culture, while allowing millions more who have never visually connected comic page panels together to become versed in Wakandan politics as well as where to find the bathroom at the Sanctum Sanctorum. Iron Man, Guardian of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier are classics of the genre now, while Thor: Ragnarok, Captain Marvel, and Black Panther, and now Shang-Chi demonstrate superhero movies remain capable of reinvention for new relevancy.

The first 11 years of the MCU have spanned three so-called Phases, and the third closing after the epic battle royale of Avengers: Endgame and epilogue Spider-Man: Far From Home. The franchise barreled forward in a pandemic world with Black Widow, Eternals, Shang-Chi, and Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021 alone. In 2023, we kick off Phase 5 with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which is drawing some of the weakest reviews of the franchise. The whiplash continued with a bit of a spring-back for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, before the critical split of The Marvels.

2024 was a promised pump-breaking in the wave of interconnected movies and shows, with the entire year’s spotlight reserved for just Deadpool, who’s sucked into the MCU through the corporate wormhole created by Disney’s acquisition of Fox. And he’s bringing a guest in Deadpool & Wolverine, an R-rated meta road comedy that critics have called a bloody, hilarious good time. It’s Certified Fresh, with a Tomatometer score putting it in the thereabouts company of Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Captain America: The First Avenger, and Captain Marvel.