The Marvel Cinematic Universe is at a strange crossroads. Sure, we've had a slew of decent telly hits on Disney+ WandaVision, Ms Marvel, Loki stand out from the pack) but since Avengers: Endgame we've endured a pretty rubbish run on the big screen for the world's preeminent superhero stable, with the likes of Thor: Love and Thunder and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania sign-posting pronounced creative fatigue in the Marvel writers' room. People are still paying for tickets, so it's too early to say the genre is done, but fuckin' hell, would it kill them to get a bit inventive?
With the recent release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the worst of the lot by far, we’ve decided to appraise the newest arrivals to the fold, resulting in a comprehensive ranking of all 39 Marvel Studios releases. Were the Thor movies pre-Ragnarok really so bad? Is Endgame the best Avengers movie? We’ve sorted the Infinity Wars from the Incredible Hulks.
We're certain that there'll be plenty of righteous anger in response to our list, as there's been enough between the writers (the first Ant-Man being one sore point in particular). Here goes, don’t @ us…
39. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
The Marvel Cinematic Universe reached a new nadir with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, committing the cardinal celluloid sins of being deeply, deeply boring and — this of a film series which brings back audiences in droves with its model of interconnectivity — almost meaningless for the franchise at large. Here's what happens in the Ant-Man threequel: Paul Rudd's Ant-Man and his family are zapped down to the punch-size Quantum Realm, come to blows with Jonathan Majors' Kang for a bit, there's lots of ugly VFX and then they manage to return to the human world. The needle barely shifts; fine, it establishes Kang as the next big bad for the universe to fear post-Thanos, but otherwise its stakes are microscopic, characters forgettable, quips annoying (stop with the fucking quips already) and the plot goes nowhere. The only redemptive quality sans Majors' performance is its truncated runtime at two hours and four minutes, a welcome break from the recent trend of blockbusters that overstay their welcome. That's hardly enough though, eh? JK
38. Iron Man 2 (2010)
It wasn’t just Mickey Rourke and his electrified whips. But Mickey Rourke and his electrified whips were a big part of it. That Iron Man 2 lost its way after a very decent first film was a surprise, but in hindsight, it seems like it was too much too soon for the franchise – parallel underwhelming storylines about a gruff Russian villain exacting revenge on Tony Stark and the US government trying to appropriate his Iron Man technology for its own uses smothered the vim and pep of the first film. Stark’s barely believable “palladium poisoning” arc wasn’t welcome, either (turns out it’s not hugely entertaining to watch someone pretend to have heartburn for two hours). The result was a mess that suffered all the more for comparisons with its far superior predecessor. Like Stark, we felt close to death for most of the film’s runtime. TB
37. The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Not my Hulk! Edward Norton’s turn as the big green guy has been forgotten almost entirely. It was hit with such bars as “more like, the adequate hulk” (AO Scott in the New York Times) upon its release and it hasn’t gained a cult audience since. It’s very much in the “clunky” camp, showing us Bruce Banner on the run after radiation exposure (how else?) gave him his uncontrollable alter-ego. The early-stages CGI Hulk was asked to do dramatic heavy lifting it couldn’t quite handle and Norton was just a little unlikeable as Banner. The film’s greatest offence? Keeping us from a Ruffalo-led film, which would surely be a delightful Black Widow-Hulk romcom. BA
36. What If…? (2021)
What if, in a thinly veiled attempt to plump up Disney+’s Marvel offering, the house of mouse fast-tracked a smart-sounding premise into production with hollow, near-parodic scripts? What if the voice actors – some reprising their roles, some eerily replaced – phoned in their performances and the animators brought to life uncanny 3-D renderings of characters we know and love? What if we turned it off after episode one, shuddered and never returned to it again? The possibilities are endless. BA
35. Captain Marvel (2019)
With a bit of distance we must face the fact that Brie Larson’s introduction to the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a dud. Time will not be kind to it. The plot was so convoluted and deeply uninteresting that very few people who have seen the movie could actually recite it to you – something about shapeshifting aliens at war with each other? – and the central character was so lifeless that she couldn’t be saved even by an actor of Larson’s talent. It was particularly unfortunate because there were so many misogynist trolls who wanted it to fail (which it did not: it pulled in more than $1 billion at the box office). In spite of all of this, we have great hopes for the Nia DaCosta-directed sequel, after Captain Marvel showed plenty of personality in Endgame. BA
34. Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Visually muddy (“dark” is not an acceptable mood board concept), slow moving and with easily the most forgettable villains of any Thor film (go on, name them without looking it up), The Dark World was Thor at his gloomiest. Supposedly, director Alan Taylor was inspired to bring the mood of his work on Game Of Thrones to the film, which is certainly… a decision. In the end, we didn’t get a superhero Red Wedding, nor was there any twincest, but, hell, perhaps that would have made proceedings a little bit more fun. TB
33. Moon Knight (2022)
Despite the talent involved, there's very little to recommend about Moon Knight. Our faves Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke both put in admirable performances, but they can't lift a script bogged down by exposition and hard-to-follow plotlines about Egyptian gods that skews more toward Scorpion King than Avengers both in quality and vibes. You have to give them credit for trying something new (and for getting these two indie faves to dip their toes in the Marvel ocean), but it's got absolutely nothing on Legion, which did the unreliable, mentally unstable narrator thing far better.
32. Iron Man 3 (2013)
Following the trash fire that Iron Man 2 turned out to be, Iron Man 3 felt superfluous from the very beginning. Stark had already gotten the girl (Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts) and his Avengers team-up had shown us that he works best as part of a crew (his shtick for two hours straight can be a bit much). Downey Jr and director Shane Black clearly had a lot of fun in making it, but the quips aren’t up to much and the ill-thought-out terrorism plot – Stark turns into Jack Bauer when a series of bombings orchestrated by villain Mandarin take place around the globe – is extremely dull. BA
31. The Falcon & The Winter Soldier (2021)
We said from the outset that it was going to take a lot of work for Marvel to convince us that second stringers Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Sam Wilson (Falcon) were ready to step up to the big leagues. While the series did manage to carve out some intrigue in Wilson’s imposter syndrome at assuming the mantle of Captain America, it was baggy, uneven – no doubt partly down to its script having been hastily rewritten during the pandemic – and often just downright boring. Not even the late introduction of Julia Louis-Dreyfus could save these boys. If this was some sort of Avengers audition… we’ve seen enough. Next! BA
30. Thor (2011)
We… had to google this one to remember what happened in it. Today, Thor himself is a mainstay character of the MCU, helpfully spanning the charisma gap between Tony Stark’s tech billionaire fizz and Steve Rogers’ earnest righteousness. That’s all well and good, but it wasn’t always that way. The first Thor was dour and often ponderous, as was its lead. What it did get right – very right – was Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, who pretty much saved this from total obscurity amid much better MCU offerings before and since. TB
29. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Notable only for the introduction of Sam (Anthony Mackie, Falcon) to the MCU. In it, Steve Rogers, alongside Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanov, faces off against Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldier, an old army friend turned sleeper agent for terrorist organisation Hydra. The movie owes a debt to 1970s conspiracy thrillers and tries to say something about the surveillance state. It’s when these movies try to speak to the real world that they seem most ridiculous… BA
28. Eternals (2021)
The first Avengers-level Marvel movie in the fourth phase was always going to be a tough one to get right. After Endgame wrapped up phase three so nicely, and quickly defined the ensemble superhero genre, how would Marvel respond? With a pretty clunky story that introduced way too many new characters in one go, apparently.
It’s a beautifully-shot film, and the cast brings the complicated story to life with the help of some soulful writing, but when you’re up against such admired heroes and a narrative framing that a generation of moviegoers has grown to know and love, you’re fighting a losing battle. Eternals is like the new girlfriend coming over for Christmas: your mum is always going to compare her to the more established article. We have high hopes, however, for future films involving the Eternals, and director Chloé Zhao’s indie-driven filmmaking approach. It doesn’t feel like a Marvel film, but that could signal the beginning of an interesting stylistic shift. DT
27. Ant-Man (2015)
Phase two of the MCU wrapped up with Ant Man, whose production pre-dated even the first franchise film by a couple of years and which undeniably suffered from what might be described, in diplomatic studio speak, as “differing creative visions”. Edgar Wright had been attached to the film for years, writing the script alongside Joe Cornish before leaving the project to make way for Peyton Reed in 2014. Not helped much by a hero who could hardly be described as a household name (who’s Scott Lang compared to Bruce Banner or Peter Parker?), Ant-Man ended up as a camel of a film, designed by committee. Though it still made more than half a billion dollars. TB
26. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022)
It was bloody slow to start, but She-Hulk ended up being a fun little case-of-the-week romp led by an energised Tatiana Maslany (the eponymous green superhuman). Got much better towards the end; highlights included the will-they won't-they dynamic with Charlie Cox's Daredevil and the very meta finale. Put it on when you're chucking together your Friday night stir-fry, or something. JK
25. Loki (2021)
Hailing from the mind of a Rick And Morty writer and teased as a journey through time and space with the titular god of mischief, Loki promises a lot. It follows a neutered, alternate reality version of Loki (the one who made off with the tesseract in Endgame), a “variant” who is captured by the Time Variance Authority (TVA), a mysterious, perhaps sinister force committed to keeping an infinite amount of parallel universes from interacting with one another. After an ungodly amount of exposition and fast-tracked character development in dimly lit rooms, Loki teams up with TVA agent Mobius (a committed Owen Wilson) to track down a parallel version of himself and things start to get a bit bonkers, but perhaps not quite as bonkers as anyone who has seen Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse might have liked. It is fun in fits and starts – Richard E Grant! Alligator Loki! – but, in truth, it never really hits the heights its premise suggests it might. BA
24. Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015)
If you’d told me, back in 2015, that the two characters in this film that would wind up with their own TV show would be Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen’s villain with a dodgy Eastern European accent) and Vision (Paul Bettany as a boring, sentient robot), I would not have believed you. And yet, here we are! Age Of Ultron is the weakest of the Avengers films, with a convoluted plot and a bottom-tier villain (Ultron, Tony Stark’s Frankenstein). But that scene where they all try to lift Thor’s hammer is good! BA
23. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Captain America has always been a bit of a hard sell on this side of the pond. The mythology of the character and the all-American values he embodies are a shade too earnest, and the nostalgia factor of the character doesn’t quite translate. Despite being slightly hamstrung as a result, Captain America was a totally passable film. The 1940s period setting was a welcome visual change after the previous four films in the MCU all took place in broadly similar modern settings (Asgard in Thor notwithstanding) and Chris Evans began carving out what would become a comfortable niche in the Marvel ensemble. Otherwise, was it hugely memorable? TB
22. Ant-Man And The Wasp (2018)
Paul Rudd’s charm and that recurring gag where Michael Peña narrates an exaggerated story elevate this movie from “boring MCU filler” to “pretty good MCU filler”. It’s also quite nice to see Evangeline Lilly get her dues as The Wasp. It may only exist to facilitate the big-time travel plot in Endgame, but that’s OK. It’s a romp! BA
21. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
The film that probably suffered the most from a pandemic-enforced reshuffle, which saw Spider-Man: No Way Home, the other big multiverse movie which was initially scheduled to be released after it, come out six months prior. The plot had to be retconned to follow the version of the multiverse that Jon Watts constructed with No Way Home. The result is a bit of a mess, with big swinging cameos that feel more shoehorned than earned. Special mention, though, has to go to Elizabeth Olsen, who kills it as a villainous Wanda. BA
20. WandaVision (2021)
We had nearly written WandaVision off entirely. But, after a fairly turgid start bogged down by a series of meticulous but unengaging retro sitcom send-ups, the series scuttered into life in its fourth episode when the post-Endgame real world came back into the fold. As the story – Wanda Maximoff had taken over a small town in New Jersey and turned it into a comfort TV-inspired fantasy land in which the love of her life, Vision, was still alive – unspooled in the back half of the series, it became utterly captivating, thanks in large part to a menacing and comedic performance from Kathryn Hahn (Agatha Harkness) and the faint suggestion that the MCU’s multiverse might be just around the corner. Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda) and Paul Bettany (Vision), too, managed to telegraph a surprising amount of emotional gravity. No small feat for a show about the doomed affair between a witch and a robot. BA
19. Hawkeye (2021)
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. You’d expect a series headlined by the almost-antihero Hawkeye would be a gritty, dark watch. You’d also be shockingly far off the mark, which is the thing that makes Hakweye work so well. Clint Barton, alias Hawkeye, is at his Scrooge-inspired best throughout, as he fights the enemies of his past in order to make it home for Christmas. The chemistry between Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye and Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop is phenomenal, and the action sequences include a large helping of fun, making Hawkeye a warm, no-stress detective romp through a snowy New York City that also serves as an audience introduction to Steinfeld’s character. Dare we say it’s a Christmas series? Well, who are we to argue with Andy Williams? DT
18. Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
They didn’t even bother trying to make the plot plausible. The Rugrats had a more believable reason for going to Paris than Peter Parker and his whole class did here. The villain (Jake Gyllenhaal, brilliantly slippery as Mysterio) managed to find him anyway! The thing is, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is so damn endearing and affable that they could have just done just about anything and had us hook, line and sinker. Zendaya, JB Smoove and some trippy visual effects did enough to keep us interested throughout. And that cliffhanger... BA
17. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
It was never going to be quite as good as the first movie, having lost the element of surprise. And yet a strange, nothing plot — which sees Kurt Russell play… a planet? Who also happens to be Starlord’s dad? — doesn’t distract too much from the fun stuff we loved in the first film. The tunes still slap, the jokes still land and there’s a surprisingly emotional ending, which hits pretty hard too. And that opening musical sequence with Baby Groot? Gold. BA
16. Doctor Strange (2016)
Magic and superheroes don’t really mix. Normally, within the MCU and superhero films more widely, the explanation for the wondrous powers bestowed on our protagonists are explained away through technology (“Tony Stark is a genius inventor”; “Wakanda has access to a priceless, versatile mineral”) or some sort of loose science (“Peter Parker’s genes mutated because he was bitten by a radioactive spider”). Out-and-out magic is the realm of fantasy, while superheroes come under the sci-fi umbrella. Not so with Doctor Strange, whose arcane arts gave Marvel and its small army of special effects supervisors a whole new palette of weirdness to work with, to great effect. Via sling rings and Inception-style city-bending, we were introduced to the hypnotically arrogant Steven Strange; we can’t wait for his return to centre stage in next summer’s Multiverse Of Madness. TB
15. Black Widow (2021)
David Harbour chewing scenery. Ray Winstone’s hilarious Russian accent. Florence Pugh’s ascendancy. There really is a lot to love about Black Widow, which is surprising given its status as an after-thought prequel about Scarlett Johansson’s now dead Avenger. But, in truth Johansson’s Natasha Romanov shares the movie with Pugh’s Yelena Belova, her adoptive sister from a The Americans-style spy family scenario in the 1990s who resurfaces somewhere between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. We’ve almost certainly seen the last of Johansson in the MCU (lest we forget last year's out-of-court settlement), but if Black Widow is anything to go by, Pugh is more than ready to pick up the mantle. BA
14. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was the blockbuster film 2021 needed. It’s a great comic-book movie, Marvel astutely picking a story with great source material that's different to anything we’ve seen so far. It doesn’t reach the heights of Black Panther or Thor: Ragnarok, but for another superhero flick that involves daddy issues — and Shang-Chi’s are very much an immediate issue in his life — the unique origin story and star treatment manage to bring a second-tier character into the same realm as the Avengers. Dizzying fight scenes and a solid script make Shang-Chi a great debut for a hero that we’ll no doubt see much more of. DT
13. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
It was never going to surpass the heights of Thor: Ragnarok, and it probably loses marks in comparison. But Love and Thunder is a very enjoyable and funny Marvel film elevated significantly by the return of a bulked-up Natalie Portman. Having been more or less sidelined in the old school “love interest” role in her previous Thor appearances, she gets to do some proper acting – and proper superhero stuff – as Mighty Thor, fighting alongside the titular hero against Christian Bale's Gorr the God Butcher. It's a surprisingly affecting film, with shades of romcom and a brilliant cameo appearance from Russell Crowe – debuting an absolutely ridiculous Greek accent – as Zeus. BA
12. Ms Marvel (2022)
Currently the best-reviewed MCU project thus far, and for good reason. Skewing a little younger than a lot of the other projects, Ms Marvel introduces the franchise's first Muslim superhero, teenager Kamala Khan, a vlogger and Avengers stan, who develops the power to shoot energy beams out of her hands (it's cooler than it sounds, we swear). Khan is played beautifully by newcomer Iman Vellani, who imbues the character with a huge amount of wit and charm. It's a hugely enjoyable coming-of-age tale, and hopefully just the beginning for Khan in the MCU (she's due to link up with Brie Larson's Captain Marvel in The Marvels next year). BA
11. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
With Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, director Ryan Coogler was shouldered with a seemingly impossible task. Not only would he have to successfully follow up the only Marvel movie to get an Oscar nomination, the sequel would need to strike a difficult balance between reverence for passed franchise lead Chadwick Boseman and the action-y Marvel-y stuff fans have come to expect. It doesn't quite nail the landing, being a touch too long and stylistically overdone for its eulogic content, but Wakanda Forever is an enjoyable follow-up which, at its best, strikes the strongest emotional chord of any Marvel project. JK
10. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
By the time the gargantuan Endgame rolled into view in 2019, moviegoers thought they knew what to expect from Marvel films. But the Russo Brothers’ three-hour, $356 million behemoth of a movie managed to surpass what was expected of it nonetheless. Left to deal with the devastating “snap” ending of Infinity War, Endgame managed to negotiate the minefield that is movie time travel and plausibly save the previously doomed heroes, all without making that plotline feel like a cop-out. It didn’t have the same cold, visceral impact Infinity War did, of course, for that very reason – it didn’t end with half the cast looking like they had been scraped out of a toaster – but it was a satisfying and smart ending to a run of Avengers films that numbered, by then, a mind-boggling 22 films. That’s no mean feat. TB
9. Captain America: Civil War (2016)
A movie that features its fair share of men shouting at each other in rooms – it sees Captain America and Iron Man falling out over whether or not to nationalise the Avengers – Civil War succeeds by leaning towards the “war” bit rather than the “civil” bit. It’s an Avengers movie in everything but name, with a larger crew of superheroes involved than anything that came before it (not to mention the first appearance of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man). For the first time, consequences come for our superheroes after they had inadvertently destroyed a large part of fictional Sokovia and killed innocent civilians in Lagos. It’s got some interesting ideas, but who are we kidding, we’re mainly in it for that big fight scene at the airport where they all run at each other. BA
8. Iron Man (2008)
Would the MCU have succeeded if it had launched with, say, Thor? Or even Captain America? Something about Iron Man was irresistible in 2008 and Tony Stark’s first outing made an easy £400m plus change as Robert Downey Jr reaffirmed his status as the most charismatic man in Hollywood. Iron Man had wit in bags, it had spectacle (the entire sequence when Stark escapes his terrorist captors with the homemade Iron Man suit remains a highlight of the whole MCU franchise) and it set the whole deal up nicely. Bonus points for being the only film to manage, somehow, to make arms dealing seem romantic. TB
7. Black Panther (2018)
On top of being the first family-friendly blockbuster to feature a song on the soundtrack with the lyrics “slob on my knob” on it, Black Panther is also a near-perfect film. Absolutely every component hits, from Ludwig Göransson’s percussion-heavy score to Ryan Coogler’s deft hand behind the camera and the late Chadwick Boseman’s talismanic central performance. It is a world-building movie that never labours its point; Wakanda comes to life so seamlessly, the result of brilliant collaboration in front of and behind the camera. And, lest we forget, Michael B Jordan’s Killmonger is perhaps the best villain of the entire franchise to date. The box office receipts (it took in $1.3b worldwide) do not lie. BA
6. Avengers Assemble (2012)
Surely you remember the moment, because we certainly do: the Avengers theme swelled, the camera swung 360 degrees through a burning New York City and The Hulk, Iron Man, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye and Thor stood defiantly back to back as heroes who finally shared a common world. After years of preparation, origin films and crossover planning, Joss Whedon’s Avengers Assemble was the moment the entire MCU project really clicked – proof in celluloid form that what had until then only been conceived of in paper could, and would, work. This was the birth of the first billion-dollar “cinematic universe” of the modern era and blockbuster filmmaking hasn’t been the same since. TB
5. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2018)
To understand the scale of Tom Holland’s impact on the MCU, you only have to look at the frenzied casting around Spider-Man: No Way Home. By the time the credits rolled on his first full-length instalment as Peter Parker, Holland was well on his way to supplanting Robert Downey Jr as the golden boy of the Universe and for good reason. Spider-Man: Homecoming hit the perfect balance between typical high school genre beats (15-year-old Peter fumbling his way through agonising science classes and pining after girls) and Spider-Man’s public role as defender of New York City. As a result, Homecoming was smart, heartfelt when it needed to be and an entirely modern take on the superhero film. TB
4. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
The snap heard around the world. The greatest cinematic cliffhanger of all time. However you dress it, one thing is certain: the child in the Spider-Man costume, who bawled his little eyes out as his dad carried him out of the screening I attended after watching his hero turn to dust, is still traumatised. The power of cinema!
The decision to kill off half of the heroes of the MCU at the end of this movie, meaningless as we all knew it was, was very brave for a gigantic family movie franchise. And despite this grim conclusion, Infinity War is arguably the most entertaining film out of the bunch, thanks in no small part to Taika Waititi and James Gunn, who helped to carve out its comedic tone. The interplay between the Guardians and Thor is delightful, and there’s a climactic battle that far outstrips the one in Endgame. BA
3. Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
That Hulk reveal gets Thor: Ragnarok into the top half of this list on its own, but throw in the rest – from romping, acid-trip humour to a banging Led Zepp soundtrack to a generous helping of silky Jeff Goldblum – and the film is one of Marvel’s best. Taika Waititi jammed as many different genre aesthetics as he could into the 130 minutes he had to play with, as Norse god Thor was stranded on a neon-steampunk-Mad Max-type planet where he had to deal with a load of aliens before he could get back to Asgard to defeat the dreadfully creepy Hela. That absolutely doesn’t sound like it should work as a Marvel film, but it did. An experiment in creative freedom that paid off, Ragnarok looked good, moved fast, somehow drew on Tron and Gladiator in equal parts and was generally a wonderful bit of art. TB
2. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
We thought we’d seen the best from Tom Holland’s Spider-Man with Homecoming, but Spider-Man: No Way Home has elevated the character to never-before-seen heights. Welcoming back the brilliant Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina as Green Goblin and Doc Ock respectively, along with Jamie Foxx as a rebooted Electro, No Way Home is a highly ambitious film that resolves Peter Parker levels of narrative strands from two decades of movie history, offering something that will please everyone. It’s heaven for fans and a reward for anyone who has followed the character’s journey.
Spider-Man is one of the greatest comic book heroes ever conceived, a superhuman character that sticks to his community’s roots: to paraphrase creator Stan Lee, it could be anyone under that mask. That most-human, unassuming, friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man is the central character in one of Marvel’s biggest and greatest movies. DT
1. Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014)
The Guardians Of The Galaxy was the skeleton key to the all-important back third of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first 23-film run. Writer/director James Gunn injected so much humour and life into the film series with a bunch of rag-tag, bottom-of-the-pile comic book heroes and, in Starlord, created the archetype for the endearingly incompetent leading man that would carry the series forward. The role they would play in Avengers: Infinity War – where they wound up with more screen time than the majority of the name-brand Avengers – is evidence of their speedy rise to the top.
And yet, as a stand-alone movie, it is the best of the lot too. A group of alien loners are forced to team up to take down a villain. There’s a heist, some scuffles with bounty hunters, a couple of spaceship getaways... It’s Star Wars with a better sense of humour. The core cast – a star-making performance from Chris Pratt, Bradley Cooper as a talking raccoon, Vin Diesel as a talking tree – are as close to perfect as you’re likely to find in a modern-day blockbuster. And then, there are the tunes. Starlord’s mixtape, packed with disco bangers from the 1970s and 1980s, is one of the great movie soundtracks of the 21st century. BA
