A Comic Collector's Definitive Post-Endgame MCU Film Rankings

A Journey of Hope and Heartbreak

When was the last time a Marvel movie made you feel like you were seeing the impossible?

I'm not talking about big CGI battles or cosmic stakes—I mean truly seeing the visually impossible, the way Jack Kirby's cosmic energy crackled across the page, Steve Ditko's mystical dimensions warped reality itself, or Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man contorted through impossible positions that somehow felt more authentic than anatomical correctness.

There’s no question that despite the opening weekend success of the Fantastic Four: First Steps, the MCU has seen better days.

I've been collecting comics since the mid-1980s, starting at the Paperback Exchange in Nanuet, NY, where Walter and Louise Simonson would regularly do signings because they were locals. I can still remember the electric anticipation of picking up my pull list, those polybagged issues with trading cards that felt like treasure.

One must keep one’s treasures hidden from plain sight

The 1980’s and early 1990’s were a high watermark in comic book storytelling. Spider-Man got married and was promptly buried alive in “Kraven’s Last Hunt”. Daredevil was taken apart and put back together in Frank Miller’s classic “Born Again”.

The X-Men exploded in popularity - with books like Excalibur, Uncanny X-Men, and X-Factor showing different sides of the Mutant experience. Huge universe shaking events like “Secret Wars” and “Inferno” and “Acts of Vengeance” deepened the interconnected stakes.

Like the MCU’s lead up to Infinity War and Endgame, each issue was a masterclass in world building, adventure and humor.

Then things got really lame.

The best creators fled to Image Comics to own their creations and publishing rights. Marvel storylines spun into irrelevance - with forgettable runs like Spider-Man’s “Clone Saga”, and never-ending series of X-Men reboots.

An unsustainable collector’s market collapsed - as people realized that hoarding 100 copies of the latest X-Men #1, polybagged, foil cover was not going to pay for their kids’ college.

Which is all to say the MCU’s decline feels very familiar. And why I remain hopeful that it can — like the comic books — creatively reinvigorate.

Why I'm Making This Definitive Ranking (And Yes, I Know How That Sounds)

These days, you'll still find me most Wednesdays picking up the latest single issues at LI Comic Shop in Lynbrook—a fantastic store that actually understands pull lists and doesn't judge when you add yet another variant cover to your stack.

Tes and Jim (is it the highest nerd honor to be on a first name basis with the comic book guys?) are also fans from my original era of collecting - and their shop is a great throwback to the days of the Paperback Exchange - when the world of Marvel fandom was a much smaller club.

LI Comic Shop in Lynbrook, NY. The local comic shop is a core center of culture

So I think we all agree that much like Marvel comic books the MCU can also regain its former glory.

After 40 years of collecting, we OG fans have developed a particular set of skills. We survived the '90s comic boom and bust (yes, I still have those polybagged hologram covers). We've lived through Inferno, Age of Apocalypse, House of M, Secret Wars (both of them), The Infinity Gauntlet, Dark Reign, and more multiversal reboots than I can count. We've watched our favorite characters die, return, get replaced by clones, turn evil, turn good again, and get rebooted back to square one.

We know when Marvel's chasing trends versus when they're setting them.

This experience makes us uniquely qualified to judge the MCU's post-Endgame output. We've seen these cycles before. We know the difference between creative risk-taking and corporate wheel-spinning. We can spot when a film understands its source material versus when it's just mining for easter eggs.

And because I'm exactly that kind of nerd, I'll be illustrating these rankings with photos from my own secret stash.

When you've been collecting this long, your shelves become your credentials. Consider it visual evidence from an expert witness in the case of The People vs. Marvel Studios' post-Endgame Output.

Post-Endgame Rankings for True Believers Only

The Merry Marching Marvel Society

1. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) - ★★★★

Tony Leung alone elevates this film into the stratosphere. This is the last peak MCU film—taking relatively obscure source material and making it essential through brilliant casting and cultural specificity. The film fully embraces Hong Kong action cinema aesthetics, giving us actual kung fu choreography instead of shaky-cam nonsense. That underground super-powered, fight club sequence? The MCU at its best. The easter eggs feel organic rather than obligatory.

Perhaps one day Shang-Chi will actually join the Avengers on screen…

This is what Marvel used to do best: make B-listers feel like they've always been A-listers. It respects the source material while bringing something new to the table. More of this, please.

2. Thunderbolts* / New Avengers (2025) - ★★★½

Great performances, solid action, no obvious Volume use, no pink blobby CGI. The film understands its assignment: give us a team of misfits and antiheroes who actually feel dangerous and damaged.

Florence Pugh and David Harbor's chemistry from Black Widow pays off beautifully here, while Sebastian Stan's Bucky brings real star power and acting chops that elevate the entire ensemble. Watching him navigate between reformed assassin and reluctant leader gives the film its emotional core, alongside Yelena’s bored, exhausted killer. The stakes feel appropriate to the characters—no one's saving the multiverse, they're just trying not to die while completing their mission. Was that so hard, Marvel? This gives me actual hope for future films.

When Marvel trusts good actors with solid material and practical action, magic still happens.

3. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) - ★★★½

It's 90% fan service, but it's fan service deployed with surgical precision. The premise—Peter's identity crisis literally breaking the multiverse—actually makes emotional sense. Willem Dafoe returning as Green Goblin reminded everyone why he's still the best Spider-Man villain ever filmed.

We have you now Wall Crawler!

Alfred Molina's Doc Ock gets actual character development two decades later. Even Jamie Foxx's Electro works better here than in his own movie. This is the Sinister Six film by other means, capturing some genuine Raimi magic despite massive plot holes you could swing through. Sometimes fan service IS the story, and that's okay when it's done with this much heart. It understands that nostalgia works best when paired with genuine emotion.

Not Brand Echh…

4. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) - ★★★½

This should have been a masterpiece. Sam Raimi directing Steve Ditko's psychedelic creation? That's the dream match-up every fan wanted. And for about half the runtime, it delivers—the paint dimension, the musical note battle, Scarlet Witch as horror movie villain, zombie Strange. Patrick Stewart's Professor X! John Krasinski finally playing Reed Richards!

But then the third act devolves into the same CGI slop we've seen too many times. The cast chemistry between Cumberbatch, Olsen, and Gomez keeps it watchable, but this might be a tale of what could have been if Marvel had fully trusted Raimi's vision.

5. Black Widow (2021) - ★★★½

Better late than never? Not really, but at least Florence Pugh and David Harbor make this worthwhile. The film works best when it's a grounded spy thriller about a deeply dysfunctional family of Russian sleeper agents.

Watching Yelena and Natasha fight together delivers the sister dynamic that years of MCU films never gave us. Yes, the third act goes full CGI nonsense with a flying fortress, but the character work preceding it earns enough goodwill. This should have come out in 2016, but at least it plants seeds for better things.

6. Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) - ★★★

Believe me when I say I wanted to love this more than anything. The Fantastic Four are Marvel's first family—they deserve to soar.

What works: The period setting, practical sets, the Fantasti-car design, comic-accurate Galactus (finally seeing him tower over everything was genuinely thrilling!), some nice Storm sibling moments, and the Mole Man cameo.

What doesn't: Pedro Pascal plays Reed Richards like he's apologizing for existing. The Thing spends the entire movie moping—why is Ben Grimm a sad chef who hates saying "It's Clobbering Time"? Why gender-swap Silver Surfer just to reduce the character to “love interest” and “mother”? Why does this first family have zero joy?

Behold the power Cosmic!

Save for the climactic battle (90% of which was in the trailers), they literally never fight anyone. These characters shaped Marvel Comics—they deserve a film that better understands their dynamic.

Receives a “No Prize”

7. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) - ★★★

It's fine. Genuinely. Better than most post-Endgame entries, with some effective emotional beats around Rocket's origin. But you can feel James Gunn's attention already shifting to DC—his Superman is a considerably more inspired film. This feels like contractual obligation executed with professional competence.

The High Evolutionary never quite lands as a villain, and the team dynamics that made the first two films special feel more like going through the motions. Still, "fine" is practically Shakespeare as we head down this list.

8. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) - ★★★

The ultimate "what if?" movie, forced to exist under impossible circumstances. It's hard to judge harshly given the real-world tragedy, but this is clearly Coogler's weakest film (especially now that Sinners exists).

The Namor changes work well—making him Mayan gives him cultural specificity the comics never managed. Some sequences are genuinely powerful, particularly anything dealing with grief. But the film feels as lost as its characters without T'Challa. A noble effort that never quite coheres.

9. Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) - ★★★

A perfectly adequate Spider-Man adventure. Some of the illusion sequences work, and Jake Gyllenhaal tries his best, but this feels like MCU homework between bigger events.

The Peter/MJ romance is sweet, the European vacation setting is fun, but there's no escaping that this is placeholder cinema. Mysterio has always been one of Spider-Man's lamest villains conceptually, and nothing here changes that.

Remembered as Fondly as the “Clone Saga”

10. The Marvels (2023) - ★★½

Not the worst MCU movie, but that's damning with faint praise. Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan is genuinely fantastic—Iman Vellani's enthusiasm and love for these characters shines through every scene. The body-swapping gimmick creates some fun action beats. The post-credits scene got legitimate gasps in my theater.

My kids loved it, which reminds me why these stories matter—every generation deserves their entry point into this universe. It just deserves to be better than cotton candy cinema.

11. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) - ★★½

The worst CGI I've seen in a major Hollywood production. Filming the entire thing on the Volume with pink digital goo as your primary design aesthetic makes this film hard to watch visually. MODOK looks like a screensaver. The "city" in the Quantum Realm looks like a Windows 95 wallpaper.

Embarrassing on every level.

12. Eternals (2021) - ★★½

A boring film that wastes a solid cast and director. The ensemble lacks chemistry—you could rearrange their characters randomly and nothing would change. The stakes are simultaneously cosmic and completely weightless. The powers feel underwhelming for beings who've supposedly guided humanity for millennia. Did COVID-era filming break this? Maybe, but it's also fundamentally misconceived.

Hiring Chloé Zhao to make a Marvel movie then stripping away everything that makes her interesting as a filmmaker is a tragedy.

13. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) - ★★½

The quality drop from Ragnarok to this film is a steep cliff. The Volume usage is egregious—you can see the LED walls reflected in their eyes. Treating Jane's cancer as comedy subplot material? Awful. Completely butchering Jason Aaron's incredible Thor run? Unforgivable. The jokes aren't funny. Gorr the God Butcher becomes Gorr the Barely-In-The-Movie. Christian Bale tries but he's acting against nothing in a digital void.

One of the worst pieces of corporate slop in the modern era.

14. Captain America: Brave New World (2025) - ★★

What are we even doing here? This looks bad, is scripted worse, and wastes Harrison Ford slumming for a paycheck. But the real crime? The Leader. Tim Blake Nelson is an incredible actor, and you turn him into... this?

This made MODOK look like James Cameron’s finest work.

I paid opening weekend prices for this. I sat through the entire thing.

15. Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) - ★★

Fan Service: The Movie: The Experience. This is corporate cynicism at its most naked—a film that practically winks at you while picking your pocket.

The movie doesn't even pretend to have a reason to exist beyond "people will pay to see Deadpool and Wolverine together." It's two hours of "remember this?" and "hey, it's that guy!" masquerading as irreverent comedy.

When your R-rated, fourth-wall-breaking anarchist becomes just another content delivery system, spouting references instead of actual jokes, the formula has officially calcified beyond repair. Hugh Jackman tries, but even he seems exhausted by the whole enterprise. The film's contempt for its audience is palpable—it knows you'll watch anyway, so why bother?

The comic accurate X-Men movie we actually want

We deserve better. Marvel can do better—they just need to remember why we fell in love with these stories in the first place.

The Real Best Marvel Movies Right Now? They're Animated

Here's what kills me: while the MCU has spent the better part of 15 features churning out Volume-trapped slop, the best Marvel movies aren't even MCU films. They're Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

These films do the impossible—they don't adapt comics, they ARE comics. Every frame crackles with the energy of turning a page and seeing something impossible. The mixed animation styles—noir shadows, manga speed lines, watercolor washes—create the first truly comic book movies.

They've single-handedly made all of Pixar and Disney's 3D animation look outdated and boring.

People are desperately anticipating Beyond the Spider-Verse not just for story resolution but to see what visual impossibilities they'll achieve next.

That's what Marvel Comics inspire at their best.

Three Films for Fans of Comic Book Cinema's True Potential

If you're a fan of superhero cinema and want to see films that capture the visual boldness and emotional truth of the best Marvel comics, let me share three discoveries from recent deep dives into 1960’s Japan and 1990’s Hong Kong and Hollywood action rarities.

These aren't comic book movies, but they understand what makes the medium magical:

Black Tight Killers (1966)

This psychedelic Japanese ninja thriller from director Yasuharu Hasebe follows a war photographer tangled up with color-coded female assassins. It feels like someone weaponized a box of Skittles on screen—pure "vibe" that operates as the ancestor of every anime and video game that gets it.

Each assassin's distinct color scheme doesn't just identify them but suggests entire worldviews in chromatic form. When urban environments suddenly transform into psychedelic showcases, it achieves what great comic artists do—using visual technique to externalize internal experience.

A Moment of Romance (1990)

Benny Chan's Hong Kong romance stars Andy Lau as a motorcycle-riding gangster who falls for a wealthy student during a botched robbery. This film delivers knife fights and motorcycle stunts where rain pours and explosions bloom every time the characters embrace.

Chan understood what Todd McFarlane grasped when drawing Spider-Man—that exaggeration can feel more authentic than realism when expressing heightened emotional states. The visual audacity doesn't distract from the emotional core but constitutes it.

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

Renny Harlin's action thriller stars Geena Davis as a suburban teacher with amnesia who discovers she was once a lethal government assassin. Her evolution from domestic softness to lethal precision transforms the film's entire visual approach—warmer to colder, stable to kinetic, safe to dangerous.

By the time Davis fully embraces her assassin identity with platinum blonde hair gleaming like a weapon, she has literally transformed the film's visual world through personal evolution. When she applies lipstick while snarling "Life is pain—get used to it," the scene connects beauty rituals to combat preparation with the kind of visual boldness Marvel comics once celebrated.

What's particularly telling is that Samuel L. Jackson's relationship with Geena Davis here—as the scrappy, overwhelmed sidekick to an amnesiac super-soldier—is remarkably similar to his dynamic with Brie Larson in Captain Marvel. But where Captain Marvel plays it safe, The Long Kiss Goodnight delivers raw, visceral action and genuine danger. Jackson's Mitch Henessey feels genuinely vulnerable, making Davis's Charly Baltimore feel genuinely lethal. It's the R-rated, uncompromising version of a story Marvel would later sanitize.

Why I Keep Watching (It's Not Obligation, It's Optimism)

So why do I keep showing up? Why did I pay to see Captain America: Brave New World opening weekend?

Because I'm a collector, and collectors understand that every story is part of a larger tapestry. These characters have given me four decades of stories, and we’ve seen Marvel recover from worse before¹. The X-Men and Secret Wars loom on the horizon. Even the comics themselves cycle—we survived the '90s, we'll survive this.

And honestly? The trend might already be turning.

Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four: First Steps are considerable improvements over Quantumania and Brave New World. I have my issues with the film, but the practical effects, and inventive production design of the FF movie beats the hell out of pink CGI goo and Volume prisons. Thunderbolts delivered actual character work. The X-Men are coming. Secret Wars looms.

Marvel knows how to course-correct. They did it after the comic crash. They'll do it again.

Until then, I'll be at LI Comic Shop every Wednesday, arguing these rankings with Tes and Jim, and remembering why these stories mattered enough to collect for 40 years.

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WHERE TO WATCH

The MCU is available on Disney+

Black Tight Killers (1966)

• Streaming: Available to rent on Amazon Prime

• Physical Media: Radiance Blu Ray (Region A/B)

A Moment of Romance (1990)

• Streaming: Available for Free on YouTube

• Physical Media: Radiance Blu-ray (Region A).

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

• Streaming: Available for rental on Amazon Prime

• Physical Media: Arrow Video Blu-ray, recently reissued with new special features

1. The less said about “Heroes Reborn” the better