What is the best film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

[jimmy olsen]

Phase 2 is over, so it's time to take stock.

I couldn't decide between Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy , so everyone gets two votes!

[Hamilcar]

I've seen a few of them on planes, and TBH they all sort of blend together.

[Hamilcar]

Uh huh

[Liep]

I've seen a few of them on planes, and TBH they all sort of blend together.

[jimmy olsen]

I've seen a few of them on planes, and TBH they all sort of blend together.

Wrong. The best of them like Guardians of the Galaxy and The Winter Soldier will be remembered 30 years from now, like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Others like Iron Man 2 have already been thrown onto the trash heap of history.

[The Brain]

If only there were more of them in the works for the coming years.

[DontSayBanana]

Guardians is a hands-down choice.  Thankfully, nobody in the cast was so big that they were playing a caricature of themselves (*coughrobertdowneyjrcough*).  The Winter Soldier was good, but it felt like a 2-hour lead-in to the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D.  For capping storylines, I much preferred Iron Man 3, with Tony having the arc reactor removed and tossing it in the ocean after the House Party Protocol.  I also preferred that the writers remembered Tony is fallible and not supposed to be an ideal hero, dealing with a clear case of PTSD after the Chitauri invasion.

Completely agree that Iron Man 2 was crap, though.  War Machine was the only good thing to come out of that movie.

[dps]

Oh no, is Timmay going to start doing movie reviews?  That'll be worse than Ide doing them.

Well, not literally worse, of course, in that nothing is worse than Ide's tastes in movies, but worse in that if Timmay gets on a reviewing kick, he'll do a lot more of them than Ide does.  Or he'll just cut and paste 20,000 word reviews from dubious internet sources.

[DontSayBanana]

Oh no, is Timmay going to start doing movie reviews?  That'll be worse than Ide doing them.

Well, not literally worse, of course, in that nothing is worse than Ide's tastes in movies, but worse in that if Timmay gets on a reviewing kick, he'll do a lot more of them than Ide does.  Or he'll just cut and paste 20,000 word reviews from dubious internet sources.

He'll either cut and paste Rotten Tomatoes with a couple words about how he agrees or disagrees, or he'll do the same with IMDB user reviews.

[Ideologue]

Oh no, is Timmay going to start doing movie reviews?  That'll be worse than Ide doing them.

Well, not literally worse, of course, in that nothing is worse than Ide's tastes in movies, but worse in that if Timmay gets on a reviewing kick, he'll do a lot more of them than Ide does.  Or he'll just cut and paste 20,000 word reviews from dubious internet sources.

You probably hate Sidney Lumet just as much as Joan Robinson does.

[Zanza]

I found all those comic films dull and repetitive after the first three or five I watched on planes. I skip them these days. I guess I liked X-Men best, but they are not in this poll. Maybe they belong to the other comic brand?

[Syt]

I found all those comic films dull and repetitive after the first three or five I watched on planes. I skip them these days. I guess I liked X-Men best, but they are not in this poll. Maybe they belong to the other comic brand?

They're all Marvel, but Marvel doesn't have the movie rights to them. Same with Fantastic Four and Spiderman.

Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are borderline cases - in the comics they're Magneto's kids and obviously mutants. However, they were also active on the Avengers, so Marvel got to use them in Age of Ultron. Except they needed a new origin, because Marvel can't use mutants in their movies.

[Ideologue]

I guess Hami's right in a certain way, though.  They're distributed on a pretty standard curve.

12. Captain America: Winter Soldier (5/10)
11. Iron Man 3 (5/10)
10. Captain America: The First Avenger (6/10)
9. The Avengers: Age of Ultron (6/10)
8. Incredible Hulk (6/10)
7. Iron Man 2 (6/10)
6. Thor: The Dark World (6/10)
5. The Avengers (7/10)
4. Iron Man (8/10)
3.  Guardians of the Galaxy (8/10)
2.  Ant-Man (9/10)
1.  Thor (9/10)

Love that Ant-Man and Thor.

I found all those comic films dull and repetitive after the first three or five I watched on planes. I skip them these days. I guess I liked X-Men best, but they are not in this poll. Maybe they belong to the other comic brand?

After the troubles at Marvel in the late 1990s, Fox got the rights to X-Men and Fantastic Four, and Sony got Spider-Man (in a bit of trivia, last I heard Universal has the rights to Namor).  Fox has successfully prosecuted their X-Men franchise, so that'll remain separate for what amounts to forever, which I think is absolutely the best case scenario (even if the shared universe in the comics has arguably been a net positive, the mutant stories and regular Marvel superhero stories have always existed in a kind of tension with each other).

Really, I'm kind of surprised Fox hasn't followed Sony's lead and reached a co-production agreement with the FF, given their bizarre inability to do anything worthwhile with the characters.  They'd also fit perfectly well into Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe.

[celedhring]

I found all those comic films dull and repetitive after the first three or five I watched on planes. I skip them these days. I guess I liked X-Men best, but they are not in this poll. Maybe they belong to the other comic brand?

They are Marvel characters, but they were released by Fox, not Marvel. I agree they are better films overall, I also like the first two Raimi Spider-Mans a lot.

I would go with Guardians among the films listed. Both Cap films and the first Thor are pretty good, though.

Disclaimer: haven't seen Ant-Man.

[dps]

I found all those comic films dull and repetitive after the first three or five I watched on planes. I skip them these days. I guess I liked X-Men best, but they are not in this poll. Maybe they belong to the other comic brand?

No, you're correct.  X-Men (and Spiderman as well) are Marvel, but Timmay for some reason didn't include them in his poll.

And I'd agree with you that X-Men is the best film version of a Marvel comic, at least of the one's I've seen.  But I haven't seen most of them.

EDIT:  Ah, Ok, I see.  It's not film adaptations of Marvel Comics, it's the one's produced by Marvel.  Largely a meaningless distinction for the viewing audience.