MCU Movies Ranked

I'm not going to count down my favorite Marvel Studios movies because, while I'm fairly sure of what goes to the bottom of the scale, the top part tend to shift every so often for me.
As a rule of thumb the crew of the Marvel studios have done an amazing job at creating a coherent cinematic universe and 8 of 10 times they nailed the casting of the actors. Unfortunately their winning streak tend to stop at some point and this is something big I need to tackle head on which is the damning factor of many Marvel movies, especially since the beginning of phase two (i.e. movies produced after Avengers): villains.
In his review of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan Roger Ebert said: "Each film is only as good as its villain. Since the heroes and the gimmicks tend to repeat from film to film, only a great villain can transform a good try into a triumph". This is a very inspired consideration, but one that too many Marvel Studio production seem to miss. While it's a fact that comic book villains tend to be hammy -- either by being too grandiose (like Doctor Doom or Thanos) or too silly -- phase one Marvel movies were able to deliver some interesting ideas and characters, even taking some bad concept and turning them good. Stane in "Iron Man" is a great example; he's a great villain because he has a understandable motivation (making money), a nice connection to the main character -- which allows plenty of screentime without it feeling forced -- he's not gimmicky and has good screen presence. A similar premise is true for Loki in the first Thor, as convoluted as his plans and behaviour is it's actually possible to understand him -- as personal note I love the fact that they have played his trickest aspect right.
Most of the phase 2 villains fail in one or more senses, they seem to be just these big crazy-ass bastards bend to fuck up the universe as much as possible. Their connection with the main character is often tenous at best (Aldrich Killian from Iron Man 3 is a pretty terrible example of this) down to the nonexistant. While in some instances this works (Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man) it's far more common that it doesn't.

Given all that I'm going to provide some comments.

The Incredible Hulk
In many ways the most cautious and predictable movie of the bunch, not a bad one for sure. This movie played and felt like an attempt to get away from the provious questionable production direct by Ang Lee and it worked. The story played very much like a crossover between "The Fugitive" and "Godzilla", which is the perfect tone for a Hulk movie. A lot of seeds were planeted in this movie, although none has seen the light so far (thank you Universal). In spite of her hotness Liv Tyler remains among my least favorite actresses of all time, she has a single expression most of the time and even that one is wooden to the point of sillyness; Ed Norton was brought in as a star power decision -- a pity since I tend to like Mark Ruffalo best for this role -- but delivered a solid performance, although not as lively or dramatic as I hoped; Tim Roth is great because for the first 3/4 of the movie he's not the main villain, but barely the dragon to general Ross, his final upgrade gave the movie its climax, but it's the previous fights between the military and the Hulk that sell the whole thing: they're loud, destructive and yet strangely believable.
A great start and a very enjoyable movie, which I skipped at the cinema to my shame.

Iron Man
If Hulk started the whole machine, it was Iron Man that sealed the deal. RDJ was an incredibly inspired casting choice, although he's much more grandiose than the comic book Stark, he absolutely sells the idea of the billionaire playboy. I'm less keen on Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper because the basic stitch of pepper was to be cute, rather than hot, still not a bad choice. Stane, as mentioned above, is one of my favorite villains, has a great screen presence and, most of all, a clear and understandable motivation and Jeff Bridges delivers a spot on performance as a solid and cynical businessman, opposed to the flamboyant and tormented Tony.
When I entered the cineman I was hesitant -- Iron Man is an old favorite of mine -- but when I exited I was sold.

Iron Man 2
In many ways IM2 plays on the strength of it's predecessor without taking too many risks. I love the fact that the movie tackles one of the classic conundrums of Iron Man as a character: the idea that the armor isn't a lifesave to Tony just a compromise allowing him to live on borrowed time. Both Whiplash and Hammer are really nice villains, neither is a credible alone -- Whiplash doesn't have the means, Hammer doesn't have the guts -- but together they sell the movie. The big problem of the second half of the movie is that it moves away from the action to dabble in Stark's personal demons, but simply there's not enough time to do it well. There were nice touches, like the video from Howard Stark, but overall it felt like they tried to compress the "Demon in the Bottle" storyline -- possibly one of the best ever done with Iron Man -- in half a hour and the result was sub-par.
Still a movie I enjoyed, which developed its main character in a decent way and tops it off with a varied and interesting supporting cast.

Iron Man 3
Why? In the name of Jack Kirby, why did they do this?
Of all the storyline they could choose to work with why did they choose "Extremis"?
Full disclosure, I hate Extremis with passion. I consider it a half-assed storyline with a crappy handled villain, a crappy gimmick and a lackluster storytelling. Surprisingly the movie delivered exactly that for me. It doesn't help that most of the movie is RDJ doing a one man show. What EE felt it was IM2, I felt here. I'm not questioning RDJ performance -- although it pales next to Ben Kingsley -- but I felt like he was trying to be superfun even when the scene called for a more drammatic moment, his wide eyed face during the 'panic attack' made me laugh rather than feeling preocupied. Admitedly the character growth was nice and I like the idea that Stark was suffering from some kind of PTSD after Avengers (given that he was the least trained character of the bunch), but all the premises from the last movie -- the existence of second working copy of the ARC reactor, the goverment having access to the War Machine -- called for the "Armor Wars" storyline, not this.
I have probably more nitpicking on this movie than on any other, in general this rank among the bottom of the scale to me.

[PS: as much as I liked Pepper supergirl edition, I found that scene unecessary to say the least]

Thor
What I think works best in this movie is that there's no real villain. I know that Loki is supposed to be, but in the end I didn't felt like he was evil, rather he felt misguided, he was a child crying for love from his father, which is surprisingly faithful to some representations of the character. Kenneth Brannagh has put his considerable experience and love for the comic book to excellent use here and the result is a very well balanced movie for me. The Earth part is both heartwarmingly fun and drammatic, with Chris Hemsworth managing to look both stupidly hamfisted -- in a way that reminded me of Brian Blessed -- and bombasticly tragic. Natalie Portmann is not terrible, but kind of forgetable in many ways and she tend to disappear next to the rest of the cast. Tom Hiddleston might not be 100% on spot with his role, but he deliver a performance that balances Hemsworth very well. I'm not so keen on Anthony Hopkins as Odin, but he knows the ropes and handles himself pretty damn well. Jamie Alexander, for the few minutes she's on screen in dead on to her character.
It might not be my favorite, but I loved every minute of this movie.

Thor: The Dark World
Okay this is where the shit its the fan for me. Dark World is a movie that is great for the franchise, but sucks on its own. I know that the Asgardians are supposed to be aliens, rather than mystical beings, in the Marvel universe, but why they had to be so in your face with it? One of the strong narrative and visual points of the first Thor was the subtle merge of magical and technological element in it, Asgard was a monument to the third law of Clarke done right, until they had to drop flying ships, elves in giant spaceships in the middle of it. Most of what I said about the actors in the first movie remains true, although the change of director was far too evident and overall performance felt less inspired and certainly less funny. Unfortunately all falls apart once you consider the villain, Christopher Eccleston delivers a good performance, but it's apparent -- to me at least -- that he has to work with a lackluster script and even more lackluster villain. Due to the small and self-contained nature of the Marvel cinematic universe, it lacks the feel of width of the comic book version. The whole plot of an old opponent of Odin coming back has merits, but the lack of any meat to the background of this conflict made the whole deal feel unreal. On the positive side this movie advance the franchise meta-plot like none else, they crammed in more revelations and informations here than in any other movie, with the only possible exception of Guandians of the Galaxy, and set the stage for many things to come.
As a stand alone movie Dark World is really among the taillights of the franchise, given its role in the grand scheme I can cut it a tiny bit of slack more. And I loved the final plot twist even if I saw it coming from miles away.

Captain America: The First Avenger
This is a movie that I hate to love, I can find as many plusses to this movie and I found minuses. Joe Johnston learned from Spielberg and sometimes it shows more than it's necessary, still he has the 40s aestetics down to an art, the use of filters, camera angles and cliffhanger moments was downright perfect. Chris Evans was really not in the role and yet he managed to pull out some good moment, especially when playing the fish out of the water. Hugo Weaving was simply a giant and managed to make the Skull rightfully terrifying, I mean I felt more empathy for the skinned inhuman red face than the human skinned version. While he's one of those grandiose villains in the context of a war he works well. Halley Atwell nails one of the best performance of the movie, she's tough, smart and totally unconcerned about how her gender affects the people around her. The romance between Steve and Peggy is very good and flow very naturally across the whole story. The rest of the cast does a good job, although I'm not so keen of TLJ as the general.
What makes me cringe about this movie is that it's a good and bad origin movie at the same time. Captain America is a character that is defined by his skills more than his powers, this was compeltely absent from the movie, the apparent logic was "serum = instant skills", still they nailed the personality of Cap pretty damn well and the camraderie moments with the Howlers were spot on.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Remember my introduction about villains. Scrap it. This movie works exactly for the opposite reasons than those I provided above. Castor said that the re is never the feeling that Cap is in danger, but that's kind of the point of this movie: there's no clear threat in it, nothing that Cap and the Widow can punch and call it a day, it's a game of smoke and mirror where the big question is who do you trust? The answer is "trust Cap" because in a world of double agents and conspiracies he's still the one honest, and naive, man around. Evans is still not 100% on the character, but he has grown into the role pretty well and everyone else provide exactly the right delivery for their role. Robert Redford tend to dominate the scene, but this doesn't detract from the final result. The various comic book references are extremely well placed (I didn't even realized that Crossbones was Crossbones until the end). The combination of the storylines "Winter Soldier", "Nick Fury vs SHIELD" and "Tomoorw you live, Tonight I die" (perhaps the apex of the Lee/Steranko handling of Fury) is almost seamless and flows really well on screen.
It might play and feel more like an action/Thriller, but this is certainly the most solid movie of the bunch.

Avengers
Let's go for the big one. I didn't even think it was possible to do this, but they pulled out in style. What makes the Avengers different from any other team movie are two things: first, they worked with character that were already established, so they could devote the first half of the movie to team-building and the second to action, whereas a normal team movie devotes the first half to characterization and the second to action having team-building somewhere along the way; second they really raised the bar here, this movie is about a war and not in the "First Avenger" style, where two teams of supersoldiers fight a semi-secret war, this is all-out warfare. The chemistry of the cast is excellent, although Evans struggles to come out as a charismatic leader having to contend with the cumbersome presence of RDJ. Whedon makes good use of the extra room from having most of the main characters established to provide us some very nice moments and some extra characters (Cobbie Smoulders as Maria Hill was a perfect addition).
What surprised me more about the main fight scene was how smooth it played, often in big cast action flicks they tend to focus on one of two characters and use the rest as props, here everyone has 5 minutes into the spotlight and the camera flows very naturally among from one scene to the next.
This was the first huge chance to do or die and Whedon definetely did it.

Avengers Age of Ultron

For these next two final entries I'm very insecure because they're recent movies, so I haven't digested them as much as the others.
Age of Ultron was an abitious movie, which collapsed under the weight of its ambition and expectations. Too much was crammed in, too many characters to establish, too many details to polish, too many ideas one after another. I'm happy that they gave Hawkeye the chance he deserved, but Scarlet and Quicksilver felt sadly underdeveloped. The romance between Widow and Hulk had good premises, but felt flat in the end. Like Steve and Peggy in "First Avenger" it's an unfinished story, but with the bitter aftertaste that it ended not because of the world taking the lovebirds apart, but because of them being idiots. Ultron works as a villain, but only to a point, I can buy that being a newborn in many ways he lacks a developed personality, but in many ways he condense most of the flaws of phase 2 villains together.
Not a terrible movie, but definetely not what I hoped for.

Ant Man
Oh boy, I so wanted this movie to work and it did, but not how I was hoping. Like "First Avenger" this is a movie I hate to love. If "Winter Soldier" is a thriller with superheroes, this is a heist movie with superheroes. On the positive side, this movie showcased how devastating a shrinking character can be, this is often a maligned power in the comicdom because it's pretty damn rare to find an author who knows how to handle it. The big issue here is that the movie felt a bit dragged, I like the fact that there was a nice preparation segment and the final climatic battle was really great to watch, but I think that a good 20 minutes could be shaved off the movie without hurting it too much. The visuals are great and clearly show how much special effects have improved if compared to "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids", pretty much a staple for size changeing movies.
Michael Douglas is good, but not as great as I hoped, he carries the role with skill and charm, but felt somewhat lesser than other big names involved so far. Paul Rudd is weak casting choice in my eyes, I understand that they were going for the scruffy ex-con look, but he really doesn't work, especially when he tries and fails to be funny. Scott Lang is character I like a lot in the comics and I felt that this version was very untrue to the idea of a good man who did bad things out of necessity. Evangeline Lily works as a female lead and manage to look competent, so competent in fact that I read various commentaries about how stupid it was to held her back for the entire movie, personally I disagree with that, there was a bloody good reason for that, emotional rather than rational, but it was there for everyone to see. Pym was doing fathering badly, but he was doing what his heart told him and, as imple as this is, I think it worked. Unfortunately this movie suffers from not having a good villain, Corey Stoll plays what is, in the end, a batshit crazy version of Stane but without the charm of the original. He does a decent job, but the character fails to make an impact. I have to give credit to the writers for trying, considering that Ant Man pretty much doesn't have a rogue gallery to work with, but the end result is unconvinging.
Ant Man isn't the disaster some people feared, but it's not the great movie I hoped it could be.

[Also: why in the 9 pits of hell they decided to include that final kiss between Scott and Hope? There was nothing in the entire movie that made that scene necessary, except the convention that in any action movie the male and female lead must do it at some point.]

Guardians of the Galaxy
The great thing of Guardians is that it's batshit insane and it doesn't make any excuse for it. When I heard of the project I wondered how could they make it through and they did by taking every expectation and using it against the audience. Guardians is one of the most weak and obscure IP from Marvel Comics, so the movie crew had ample latitude to work and the result is a visually impressive story that plays well. Most of the characters are stereotypical (scruffy scoundrel, soft-hearted bad girl, tough big guy, psycho sidekick etc.), but they are played with enough class to make the interactions interesting and fun to watch. It's very much a comedy, but has enough serious moments that are well spaced, so that the mix remains fresh. Chris Pratt is a great comic lead and an unexpected surprise; Zoe Saldana isn't that great but she can deliver some excellent one-liners; Bautista is the surprise of the bunch, he turns a stone-faced performance into a perfect delivery of a weird symphatetic character; Groot and Rocket are perfect complement for each other. Ronan isn't a terrible villain per-se, he's not the intended villain. Like the Emperor the the original Star Wars movies he should be more of a threatening presence, but we don't have three movies her, we got only one, so Ronan is showed into action too early for his own good. Unfortunately this hurt Nebula as well, who has little chance to shine as an individual character.
Visually impressive, great delivery and with a great feeling of immensity, Guardians did the impossible again after Avengers, but set the bar even higher.