Avengers: Infinity War build-up – the top 10 Marvel Cinematic Universe movies so far

With Avengers: Infinity War around the corner, it’s beginning of the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's (MCU) Phase 3. In the comics, the Avengers weren’t the most popular characters by any stretch of imagination. Their fame was easily outstripped by Justice League and X-Men, but the movies have certainly made them the most-talked about superhero team in pop culture.

What Marvel has achieved is unprecedented. It was the first time a mega-franchise managed to showcase a shared universe running through 18 films with some of world’s biggest actors donning lead roles. As our heroes gear up to face Thanos, we look back at the top 10 movies we’ve seen in this franchise so far:

10) Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

It’s a testament to Marvel’s ingenuity, not to mention faith in its craft and the attention span of its audience, that it felt brave enough to make a movie with some of its most obscure characters. Yet, such was the movie’s success, that the likes of Star Lord, Rocket, Groot, Gamora and Drax became as mainstream as Hulk, Thor, Captain America and the rest of the MCU.

James Gunn’s space opera, with a heady mix of 70s tunes, ravagers, space-ship chases and all-conquering aliens earned it the sobriquet of this generation’s Star Wars.  

The movie also highlighted the thread that held together the MCU, as we are introduced to the idea of Infinity Stones – six gems which together grants its user omniscience and omnipotence. It’s the task to collect them that drives Thanos.

From the mouth-watering prison break sequence to the idiosyncratic dance-off in the ending, the movie had everything including Marvel’s fatal flaw – an uncompelling antagonist. Ronan, for all his talk of destroying Xandar, simply doesn’t excite the audience. But other than that, GOTG is the space opera we can always turn to for a laugh.

9) Avengers: Age of Ultron

The second full-scale rendezvous of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes couldn’t live up to the hype. When Thor, Iron Man, Captain America and Hulk finally get together, you expect sparks to fly.  While it did manage to create a formidable foe in Ultron (brilliantly portrayed by James Spader), the movie felt like a juggling act too hard for Joss Whedon, who went into hibernation after finishing the film.

Even though the movie had mind-staggering action set pieces we’ve come to expect from the MCU, most it felt like deja vu – a blue beam shooting into the sky, a faceless army with no emotional stakes and generic destruction of cities.

Don’t get me wrong, it was fun, particularly the showdown between Hulk and Iron Man’s Hulkbuster armour, but it lacked the emotional pull that made us root for our heroes in the original Avengers movie.

8) Doctor Strange

It’s a testament to the box-office clout and mainstreaming of superhero movies that a thespian of the vintage of Benedict Cumberbatch could be roped in to play its lead.

 However, the plot and even the characterisation felt too similar to the first Iron Man. Cumberbatch is adequate as Doctor Strange, a narcissistic intellectual played by a famous Sherlock Holmes actor with a weird goatee. Doctor Strange was created in the psychedelic heyday of the 60s, by nerds on an acid trip, and that is captured in the movie, but only if you watch it on the big screen.

But events of Doctor Strange raises major questions about the MCU. Where were the magicians when aliens had attacked the earth during the first Avengers? Wasn’t it their job to guard the realm?

7) Spider-man: Homecoming

Somehow, despite two Spider-mans, and five movies, this is the one where you feel like Peter Parker has actually been brought to life.

 Tom Holland is the most believable and age-appropriate actor to play the web crawler, and we get a decent flick in the post-Civil War world with Tony Stark taking over the role of the uncle in absentia. Peter Parker has all the trappings of a millennial with the attention span of a goldfish, and he’s certainly more believable in the role than either Toby Maguire or Andrew Garfield.

The movie has the cast and feel of a high-school musical masquerading as a superhero movie. Michael Keaton, playing his third-winged super-powered character is menacing as the Vulture and one of the better MCU villains. Also, the movie is a reminder of just how dependent the MCU is on Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark to do the heavy lifting and hold the narrative together. That being said, fans of Spider-man and the MCU, will cherish this outing.

6) Captain America: Civil War

A full-blown Avenger reunion with the exception of Thor and Hulk, Civil War promised to raise the stakes in the MCU with Cap and Iron Man squaring off.

Tony and Steve disagree on whether the Avengers should follow the government’s rules and regulations for superheroes leading to the group splitting down the middle. To toe or not to toe, soon becomes an excuse to bash each other up, but since it’s Marvel, it’s clear that there will be no lasting stakes.  

The movie is also the last one in which Steve dons the Captain America outfit, giving up the Shield since it appears he can no longer be comfortable with the idea of the government telling him what to do.

That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have its highs, and the airport sequence with a giant Ant-Man remains one of the MCU’s best action set-pieces.

5) Captain America: The Winter Soldier

This is a strange movie in the sense that it’s more full-blown noir spy-thriller than a superhero flick. Dealing with contemporary real-world issues like mass surveillance (hello Mark Zuckerberg), the movie has its share of thrills as Captain’s long-lost buddy Bucky Barnes returns as a dreaded assassin, albeit one who’s mind-controlled by his handlers at HYDRA.  

The movie also shows us more of machinations of SHIELD and HYDRA, and also Nick Fury who has been on the periphery of the action so far. What works for the movie is Captain America’s holding steadfast to his beliefs in a morally-corruptible world, a soldier in a world of double-tongued spies. The Winter Soldier feels like the long-lost love child of John Le Carre and Stan Lee and that’s quite an interesting combination.

4) Thor: Ragnarok

It took three outings and an indie director (Taika Waititi) but we finally got the Thor movie we deserve, not to mention the only Planet Hulk movie we’ll probably ever get.

Thor, a god, is reduced to a slave when he is cast out of his homeland and his hammer is destroyed by sister Hela. Fan favourite Loki returns as well, and as usual Hiddleston elevates the drama whenever he is onscreen. Cate Blanchett is petrifying as Hela but it’s non-reverential humour track which keeps this movie going. Jeff Goldblum has the most Goldblumy role of all, as he plays the Grandmaster, the host of the Contest of Champions which sees Hulk and Thor face off.

Waititi, like George Lucas and other talented directors march to their own beat without following a formula. Only Waititi’s mind could come up with the idiosyncratic scenes like Hulk fighting a giant wolf or Thor trying to sing a lullaby to bring back Bruce Banner. It was the first time that it felt like that a Marvel movie had literally jumped up from the pages of a comic book.

3) Black Panther

The highest grossing film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe undid many wrongs that have plagued superhero movies since the dawn of time including its diversity problem.

 It finally gave us a nuanced superhero movie with complex characters who aren’t all – to borrow a phrase from James Cameron – hypogonadal white males. Black Panther shows a rich African kingdom which must come to terms with the plight of its brethren across the world and questions real-life issues of race and subjugation.

Black Panther has a complex plot, diverse characters, a villain you empathise with more than the hero, visually dazzling set-pieces and an afro-futurist approach which is unlike anything that’s been seen onscreen till now. And for Indian fans, there’s a beautiful tribute to Hanuman, which sadly is beeped out by our all-knowing CBFC.

2) Iron Man

In case we forgot, the Marvel Cinematic Universe kicked off in Afghanistan in 2008 with AC/DC’s Back in Black blaring in the background as Tony Stark shows off his Jericho missiles.

The MCU, with its multi-billion-dollar business and millions of fans, wouldn’t have been possible without the success of the original movie.And it’s almost perfect, with Robert Downey looking like he’d been born to play a hedonistic genius and playboy with a Messiah complex. From the script to the storyline to the action sequences, Iron Man was the era-defining movie that would create a new blueprint for the superhero genre.

Since then the universe has expanded to include all kinds of movies including space operas (Guardians of the Galaxy), stoner flicks (Doctor Strange and Thor: Ragnarok) and spy thrillers (Captain America: Civil War) but it all began with Iron Man.

1) The Avengers

While there were many who were disappointed with this movie, for the author it was the perfect superhero ensemble that showed that the World’s Mightiest Heroes could share screen space without stepping on each other’s toes.

The movie had everything that studios want to replicate but can’t (hello DC) – the big-ticket action set piece, an enduring villain (Loki), great dialogues, unending quips and the kind of comic book camaraderie that looks almost impossible to replicate onscreen.

The final action sequence, where Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow and Hawkeye, face off against Loki and his army was the pinnacle of cinematography. Avengers, for the first time, showed that superhero movies could be compelling, emotionally driven and appeal to a wider base than just comic book nerds. Comparable to classics such as The Godfather and The Matrix, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers will always live on as the first superhero movie that brought a team together that made magic.