All 37 Marvel MCU Movies Ranked (The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Thunderbolts, Ant-Man)
SEE ALSO: Essential MCU Movies To Watch Ahead Of Doomsday | Marvel Movies & TV Shows In Chronological Order
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 to 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 37 films (and counting) has flourished. 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, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier are classics of the genre now, while Thor: Ragnarok, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, and Shang-Chi demonstrate superhero movies remain capable of reinvention for new relevance.
The first 11 years of the MCU spanned three so-called Phases, with 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 kicked off Phase 5 with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which drew some of the weakest reviews of the franchise even as it expanded the Multiverse storyline meant to replace the overarching Infinity Saga of the first three Phases.
Despite some very public behind-the-scenes troubles, Marvel forged ahead with its Multiverse Saga plans through Phases 5 and 6 but ultimately pivoted away from Jonathan Majors’ Kang to a new villain: Doctor Doom, played by none other than a returning Robert Downey Jr. RDJ’s Doom was introduced in a mid-credits stinger for 2025’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which served as the introduction of Marvel’s “First Family” into the MCU after the characters’ rights were absorbed in Disney’s acquisition of Fox. With the earlier introduction of the X-Men in Deadpool & Wolverine, Marvel’s first R-rated entry, the stage was set for the ultimate showdown in 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday…
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