Ranking the Marvel 50: The bad, the good, ‘Wakanda Forever’ and the movie for people who think they hate superhero movies
What we have here is a ranking of every single TV show and movie that’s a part of the 14-year-old Marvel Cinematic Universe, which will continue long enough to bury you and me. I’m doing this because it’s an online rite of passage to rank Marvel. Also, because I’m correct. What follows is the one true ranking. Forget Vanity Fair and Vulture. Unlike those rankings, you are not free to debate my choices. I have found the Infinity Stones of Journalism and when I snap my fingers — SNAP! — it shall be written.
You are free to ask questions:
Is Marvel destroying cinema? (Filmmaker Martin Scorsese says yes.)
Is Marvel saving cinema? (Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson says yes.)
But facts are facts: “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” now playing, is the 50th live-action installment of the MCU juggernaut, which includes streaming TV series on multiple networks. Part of the unease with the MCU (beyond its unending flood of stuff) is that it created a third species, neither TV nor film, but an ongoing, interconnected narrative that requires both. My criteria for inclusion here is simple: Was it intended as a part of the MCU? That means ranking TV and film together. (But not including animation. Or the Oscar-winning “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” Or Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man; any Deadpool, Fantastic Four, X-Men film — all of which were made before the formal MCU or by other studios.) The MCU began formally with “Iron Man” in 2008, and for a lumbering corporate beast, it’s been an achievement, an adaptation of an entire medium. Considering that scale and scheme, there’s lots of mediocrity. And dumb things. But also, lots to admire, a few gems, and many thoughtful moments.
50. “Iron Fist” (2017-2018): As reflexive as “problematic” can sound, this unintentionally hilarious martial-arts series centered on a rich white dude (Finn Jones) who travels to Asia and returns to New York a god — yet less skilled than the fighters around him. The battles are endless, the aesthetic early-’90s Skinamax, and even the powers are nuts: Iron Fist melds his “thoughts” into a mystical gun.
49. “Inhumans” (2017): I wanted to love this comic book as a kid. I never did. Nobody ever did. A royal family of genetically
