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The Marvel Cinematic Universe may have had a tough time of late, but it remains the biggest blockbuster franchise of all time. 2024 was a chance for Marvel to fix the MCU before it was too lateand to that end the company has certainly taken some bold steps. For one, Marvel Studios announced the return of Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr. in the upcoming “Avengers: Doomsday,” in which he will play iconic Marvel villain Victor Von Doom. The company also only released a single film in 2024, the box office hit “Deadpool & Wolverine,” This suggests that studio head Kevin Feige has finally gotten the message about oversaturation and so-called superhero fatigue.
If the MCU manages to turn things around, there will be a major comeback. But returning to the heights of the MCU’s golden years won’t be easy. Regardless of whether you’re a fan of the saga or not, its decades-long dominance at the box office culminated in some of the highest-grossing and culturally influential films of modern times, bringing the Infinity Saga to an end and the Multiverse Saga beginning the process. Since then, films like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and streaming series like Secret Invasion have significantly weakened the franchise’s standing, leading to Marvel’s current predicament.
With the MCU in recalibration mode, we can finally take a moment to assess its cultural impact, with books like “MCU: Reign of Marvel Studios” This signals that enough time has passed to try to understand this juggernaut franchise in the context of recent history. As we take stock of the MCU’s impact over the last decade or so, we looked to see if any of the films managed to break through IMDbis the list of the 250 best films. As it turns out, three of them made it.
Two MCU films made it into the IMDb top 100
You may already have an idea of which films made the IMDb list, but you might also be surprised to learn this the highest-scoring Marvel film on Rotten Tomatoes is nowhere to be seen. Instead, we have the films that managed to make a cultural splash upon their debut, as they were made at the height of the MCU’s success. It’s worth noting that we’re not talking about non-MCU films here, so “Spider-Verse” or Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU) films in general are not considered here.
If you guessed that the final two Avengers films in the Infinity Saga would make it, you’re right. Both films managed to crack the top 100, with “Avengers: Infinity War” coming in at number 61 with a rating of 8.4 out of 10, while “Avengers: Endgame” came in at number 77 with the same score of 8.4. Why are two films with the same rating so far apart? Now, normally you would expect the difference to depend on how many user votes make up the overall score, but since both films have 1.3 million votes, this remains a bit of a mystery. These IMDb lists are compiled based on site user ratings, and based on that logic, both Avengers films should be next to each other, considering there are multiple films between the two with the same overall score and fewer overall ratings. Either way, Kevin Feige can rest easy knowing that the MCU managed to get two films into the top 100.
The only other MCU film to make IMDb’s top 250 list
So which other MCU film managed to land in the IMDb top 250? That’s what you might expect Iron Man, the film that launched the entire franchise and changed Hollywood foreverto be in there somewhere. Or maybe “Captain America: Civil War” with its historic break from the Marvel hero alliance. Well, it’s none of those.
Coming in at number 172 on the IMDb list is 2021’s Spider-Man No Way Home with a rating of 8.2 from 925,000 votes. “No Way Home,” another “Avengers”-level event film, became a global cultural phenomenon when it hit theaters, grossing nearly $2 billion. In fact, all three MCU films on the IMDb Top 250 list are among the highest-grossing films in the saga of all time.
“Avengers: Endgame” is the second-highest-grossing film of all time, grossing $2.8 billion, while “Avengers: Infinity War” is the sixth-highest-grossing film of all time, grossing $1.5 billion $2,052,415,039 worldwide gross. “No Way Home” is now right behind the “Avengers” films and is the seventh highest-grossing film of all time. In short, the three MCU films in IMDb’s top 250 films are the same three MCU films in the top 10 highest-grossing films of all time. What this says about the films or IMDb isn’t entirely clear, although it does seem to reinforce the idea that the MCU is the best at delivering these event films – which is all just evidence of my long-held belief that this is the one are the only type of movies Marvel should ever release if it wants to recapture the magic.
