Marvel Week: The Worst Marvel Has Offered

Marvel Week

Unless you’ve been living under a rock since the release of Iron Man in 2008, Marvel has ruled the movie universe for the last 12 years. Now, as a studio they have pretty much killed it at the box office and set the bar extremely high for anyone following. And that’s a tough statement for me to type because I am a straight up DC fanboy. As comic titles, there’s been some duds in the theaters for sure. Hulk? Bleh. All of the Fantastic Four films? Trash. Three of the first five Spider-Man films? Garbage. X-Men? Who has the time to dissect that back and forth through time nonsense. Luckily for Marvel Studios, Fox and Sony destroyed those properties before their merger with the MCU over the last year.

With that said, the MCU isn’t perfect by any stretch. There’s been some bombs, bad villains, etc. So let’s take a look at what hasn’t worked (spoiler, there isn’t much).

Worst Movie

Iron Man 3

And it’s not even close….maybe? I’m not really sure if it’s even better or worse than Iron Man 2. After coming out of the gates swinging, Marvel kind of went off the rails with the final two solo adventures for Tony Stark. But the bait and switch with the Mandarin was just ridiculous and easily cements Iron Man 3 as the worst film in the entire MCU. When you were expecting a powerful comic adversary for Tony Stark and you got a guy PLAYING a powerful adversary, no thanks. Plus Extremis just added to this mess. Though the version of Iron Patriot in this film was pretty sweet.

Worst Villain

Ultron

I had high hopes for Ultron, as he looked pretty fantastic on film. His origin differed from the comics, but I honestly didn’t care that much. I’m not a stickler for stuff like that unless it’s something completely off the wall. Like, I don’t know, say the Joker killing Thomas and Martha Wayne. Age Of Ultron as a whole is OK as a movie, but I found Ultron and another disposable robot army kind of forgettable.

Worst Member Of A Team

Tie: Quicksilver/Groot

Quicksilver was just “bleh” for the few moments he was around. I didn’t find his character compelling and maybe part of that was because we didn’t get the cool backstory of him being a mutant and Magneto’s son because those were Fox properties at the time or maybe it’s because he just runs fast. Or maybe, in a rare move, the OTHER Quicksilver from the X-Men franchise was done better. Either way, lame and he’s no Flash.

Look, Marvel got me to care about an Earthling living in space, a talking raccoon and a band of space misfits, but I don’t get Groot. Once he was “chopped” down and had to re-grow the character got stale for me. “I am Groot” just isn’t funny after the 4000th time.

Worst Sequel

Thor: The Dark World

The title says it all. It was such a dark and heavy movie and with all that Marvel has done to keep their films semi-light, this one was a miss. It’s extremely forgettable, which is a shame because Thor was great and Thor: Ragnarok was a home run. I get that not everything will be perfect, but this movie didn’t do much for me at all.

Worst Plot Twist

Scared Hulk

So the Hulk got it handed to him at the start of Infinity War. Cry me a river. Watching him not be able to turn into the Hulk was so disappointing to watch. He’s the most powerful hero in the MCU, yet he’s afraid to “Hulk out” after getting it handed to him. I like that they make the Hulk slightly more human as each movie progresses, but he still has to have that rage to be the Hulk. I guess it’s a little give and take as the more human he becomes he’s going to be less savage. I guess I just want both.

So that’s really it for the worst stuff the MCU has delivered and it’s really not a lot. They’ve been so solid across the board it is hard to nitpick any major issues. What are your least favorite parts of the MCU? Comment below!

by Mark Parkinson