Weakest MCU film?

After seeing Black Widow and Shang-Chi, my answer is still Thor: The Dark World. That movie seems destined to forever remain at the bottom for me.

 

I'm always surprised how vehemently hated Captain Marvel is on a lot of Internet corners. I genuinely enjoy that movie a lot.

 

I was mildly disappointed the first time I watched it, but never more than that. Since then I've found it more and more enjoyable on every rewatch and I would now count it in my top 10 MCU films.

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As for the thread, my answer for worst MCU movie has always been and so far still is Iron man 3.

 

I think a lot of the characters and actors involved are great. I loved seeing Coulson again and the movie is definitely still fun at times, but the script is just incredibly weak for an MCU movie.

It was fun to see more of Carol after reading some of her stints in X-Men comics back in the day, but things like the badly though-out Skrull plottwist, the whole 'Vers' thing, Fury losing his eye, the awkward first draft scene for the Avengers Initiative etc. were all moments that reminded me a bit of X-Men Origins: Wolverine to be honest. It's not bland like Thor: The Dark World, but it's one of those movies that cheapens the universe a bit for me.

That said, I'm still looking forward to Ms. Marvel and The Marvels and I hope they do right by the actors and characters next time. And it's definitely a case of 'to each their own'. If you enjoyed the movie, more power to you!

 

The vitriol towards Captain Marvel is really unwarranted. I think it's a middle of the road MCU movie but it's not bad at all. I'm just still scratching my head as to how it grossed $1 billion when the reception from critics and audiences was pretty lukewarm compared to something like Ragnarok, which didn't hit the billion dollar benchmark. I guess it mainly had to do with Endgame hype?

 

*cough* My take on Captain Marvel remains that its biggest problem? The movie has two plots, and it can't decide which one to do. . . so it does both of them, and as a result neither is any good. "The Origin Story of Carol Danvers" or "Captain Marvel, Hero of the Kree" could both have made perfectly good movies. . . but they needed to pick *one* to do. Doing both resulted in a movie that gave both plots short shrift. In particular, it undercut Carol's introduction as a hero ( since your entire first look into the life of Carol has her being unlikable, deliberately so, due to being a brainwashing victim ), and also the undercut the "sexism is the villain" theme ( because the main villains of the movie only really have to do with allegorical sexism in a really tangential way ).

By contrast, if they did pick one plot per movie, you could have an entire first movie that is about Carol's struggles and triumphs, striving to become and then becoming the ace pilot she wanted to be, against various allegorical and literal sexist headwinds. The audience understands and sympathizes with her because no one likes to be told "you can't do that". Then, after grabbing the opportunity to become a superhero with both hands, she becomes Captain Marvel, faces off against some supervillainous manifestation of Offended Macho Privilege ( rival test pilot or such who can't stand her becoming a superhero rather than him, and then does something really stupid and/or ruthless to exceed her; allegorically, "Guy can't tolerate being outdone by a woman, cheats and gets violent" ), and queue the credits with a departure into the stars. Then, the *sequel* opens with starfaring Captain Marvel, smiling and heroically serving. . . the Kree. Which the audience is now properly queued to find creepy and unsettling for reasons *other* than metaknowledge, because they know who Carol is fully beforehand. You can keep most of the overall plot here the same, since as a sequel it doesn't matter as much if the allegorical sexism is less foundational, because those thematics were covered in the first movie. The Kree don't need to be ubiquitously structurally sexist for thematic purposes, Yonn-Rogg can just be an uncomfortable manipulative *******.

Is Captain Marvel the worst movie in the MCU? No, I would still say Incredible Hulk is measurably worse, and Thor 2 is about as bad ( worse structure and main villain, better characters in general ). It doesn't need to be The Worst Ever to be disappointing, however.

 

Endgame hype didn't do anything for Ant-man and the Wasp. And the Endgame bump only gave Spider-man 250m extra for FFH compared to Homecoming - if you take 250m off Captain Marvel's gross, she still made more money than Ragnarok.

 

Ant-Man and the Wasp came out two months after Infinity War compared to a month and a half before Endgame like Captain Marvel. Infinity War's post credits scene also built more hype for Captain Marvel whereas Ant-Man and the Wasp was part of a pre-established Marvel franchise with the lowest stakes of any MCU film prior or since which made it less of an event film.

 

And Spider-man is the biggest superhero in the world and had the massive hype of being the first look at the post Endgame MCU.

There is no logical scenario in which Captain Marvel magically went from a 500-600k movie or less to a 1.1B movie just because of the hypothesized Endgame bump. In the worst possible scenario, it still is on the same level of popularity as Thor Ragnarok.

 

Yeah. It helped, but not anything close to half a billion helped. I think people turned out for CM for a lot of different reasons. It got good hype, the timing was good WRT MCU popularity, it was the first female led MCU movie, MCU was/is a popular brand and people were curious about how it would turn out.....etc.

You can't really put your finger on this sort of thing.....some follow ups make more, some make less, some make about the same. After the fact, it's easy to point to certain factors. Beforehand? Not so much.

 

Ant-Man and the Wasp might not have been closed to a billion. But boX office wise, there was growth. Just like Thor The Dark World after Avengers.

 

Every MCU sequel has done better at the worldwide box office than its previous film with the sole exception being Age of Ultron, but that's still nothing to sneeze at since it grossed $1.4 billion compared to The Avengers' $1.5 billion. If the pandemic is more under control by then, Love and Thunder will be the first Thor film to pass $1 billion based on how popular Ragnarok was.

 

That's a good point WRT sequels doing better. That being said, MCU was in a growth stage and I'm not sure that's the case anymore. TDW did better even though IMO it was an inferior movie because of The Avengers; which I think really established MCU as must see movie going. Post pandemic will be difficult to gauge, but I could see CM2 and BP2 doing worse than the originals.

 

The hate mostly comes from incel losers who are butt hurt over Brie Larson's various statements which they deem as misandric.
There are also some people who soured on the movie because they think it made a mockery out of Fury's eye loss (not MCU's finest moment, I'll admit that).

 

I was more okay with Fury losing his eye like that than I was with the vast change in his personality compared to every other appearance of his. Sure, he's fired off a quip every so often in the MCU but in Captain Marvel he acted like a goofball jokey dad which didn't fit the established hardass future director of SHIELD that we had come to know by that point.

 

I never even noticed, but I'm kind of like that. When I go to a movie, it's pretty simple for me....was I entertained? And, I'm easily entertained. I guess thinking about it, I would say that WAS Fury back then before he lost his eye (which I thought was a sorta lame way to lose it, but it didn't bother me much) and became the hardass we know.

IMO, CM wasn't anywhere in the vicinity of the worst MCU movie.

 

I don't find it particularly strange that Fury's personality was lighter all the way back in 1991. Mine was pretty different 20 years ago, too, and his level of responsibility and knowledge was way less at the time than in the 2008 onward era. In addition to the fact, of course, that his previous appearances had always seemed to me like a clearly constructed personality anyway. He calculates the way he should present himself for maximum authority and intimidation - which is something he probably wouldn't have as much reason to do back when he was a lowly agent in a world where aliens and gods didn't actually exist.

As for the eye itself - any attempt at coming up with a 'serious' background for how he lost his eye would've always been doomed to feeling underwhelming to any fan who takes that stuff seriously and boring to most of the rest. Making Goose do it was exactly the kind of solution the MCU has always looked for to this sort of problem and it worked just as well here as anywhere else. My only real problem with it is it's a stupidly large distraction from the literal climax of Carol's movie. It should've been a post-credits scene instead of the 'picking out a new eye' scene.

 

... i actually thought Iron man 3 was by far the most action packed and of the series
and it did not bored the crazy heck outta me like the 2nd one did,
The Mandarin twist was actually a surprise twist, but i thought they couldve explain the burning fire beings better .

The origin of Iron Man as with the first will always rate ahead in the series, but the destruction of
Stark building, the "8 monkey in a barrel " rescue from 60,000 ft...armorless Stark invading Mandarin's lair , ... the mass number of IM drones taking down the fire beings, Stark's sole battle with the lead fire master, ..and Heather coming to Stark's rescue ...i tipped my hat off to director Shane Black's masterful work .
.

 

i voted for Thor Darkworld ... something about the pace, the storyline, the character development, surrounding that didn't sit well with me with ..and i became disinterested .. it just did not stand out

it's bad when i cannot recall much from the movie after a couple months. i went to Disney Plus to rewatch it again to recall some elements of it. ... and i couldn't finish it.

 

Captain Marvel, Iron Man 2 was the only bad movie in the MCU before that

 

INB4 Eternals

 

@TheVileOne seems to think Eternals is the weakest mcu film.

 

Black Widow for me.

 

Iron Man 2.

Though I'm starting to dislike Black Widow more and more.

 

IM3
They built up the Mandarin and the delivered an actor and a mad scientist, whose feelings were hurt by Tony at a millennium party.
Haven’t watched Shang Chi yet, but it looks like they redeemed the Mandarin after 8 years.