Handsomely mounted by Creed’s Ryan Coogler and starring an enviable slate of black actors that makes cameoing comics godhead Stan Lee almost seem lost, Marvel’s best movie, pound for pound, is provocative and satisfying in ways that are long overdue—like its ornate, culturally dense production design and the deeper subtexts of honor, compassion and destiny.
Over the past decade and a half, it’s often seemed like the Marvel Cinematic Universe is, well, the only cinematic universe. Since officially kicking off in 2008 with the introduction of Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man – apologies to Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Ang Lee’s Hulk – new instalments arrive like dandelion spores, and the whole planet lines up to consume each one. It’s a testament to the obsessively detailed world-building within the franchise – and, of course, the inescapable branding that goes along with it.
But that doesn’t mean all MCU flicks are created equal. Far from it, in fact. For every monolithic, box-office-shattering event picture, there’s an Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Thor: Love and Thunder – inessential space-fillers that seemingly exist only to fill a quota on a studio’s release slate. And frankly, the latter seems to be occurring more frequently than the former these days.
Against that complicated backdrop The Marvels has arrived and the picture looks no less muddy for the Marvelverse. With rumours of a return for Robert Downey Jr and one or two other OG Avengers, is Kevin Feige on the verge of hitting the big reset button? As our ranking of the 32 MCU flicks released so far demonstrates, the glory days are still where the gold/vibranium lies.
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