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> DIVA ranks MCU Characters & Media, > first FIVE are out (movies/media)
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diva thin muffin
post Mar 2 2021, 12:25 PM
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For any fans of the MCU I've taken on a strange but exciting task of ranking all of the characters within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. To prepare for this I've watched every single feature movie starting with Iron Man (2008) and ending with Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). I have rated all notable characters at the end of each movie based on how much I liked them in said movie, then I have given them a rating from 1 to 10 based on how important to the movie I feel they are. 1 means it's just a Cameo (end-credits scenes, unnamed characters, famous actors in tiny roles, etc), 2-3 means minor role (characters that have names and talk, maybe established characters in only a handful of scenes, etc), 4-5 means side character (someone who's somewhat important to the plot or somewhat prominent), 6-8 means secondary which is basically just the last tier before the main heroes and villains which are 9-10. These scores are part of a complex formula I've made that ranks the characters altogether taking in every appearance they've made no matter how big or small but weighing their bigger roles more than their smaller roles.

I also have added in the five Marvel One-Shots that were made in 2011-2013 as they are generally considered canon as well as Wandavision which is just wrapping up its first season next friday after which I plan on starting the countdown for real. A lot of the characters on the list are irrelevant and will have short write ups but I'll try to include pictures for each of them to help you remember who they are. If you enjoy the MCU like I do feel free to comment your thoughts on the characters and whether you agree with me. I'll also include a ranking of the Movies, Episodes and One-Shots. Perhaps even starting with that before I get into ranking the characters themselves.

To those who watched the ABC / Netflix / Hulu TV Shows .. are there any you recommend watching after I finish Wandavision? I'm kinda sad that I've finished all of the movies now as it's been so much fun rewatching these movies now in such a short time and finally kind of understanding everything but I admittedly have never watched any of the shows. After watching the One-Shot about Agent Carter I'm kind of intrigued about that so might give it a chance. I watched the first episode of Agents of SHIELD but didn't like it and apparently it went into non-canon territory at some point so maybe doesn't matter that much lol.

Also wondering if I should add in X-Men and Deadpool since they're apparently canon now?

With twenty-three MCU movies, one TV show and five one-shots I'll post the write-up for #29 later today. Feel free to speculate what's in last place!

MOVIES & TV SHOWS
2008 // Iron Man
2008 // The Incredible Hulk
2010 // Iron Man 2
2011 // Thor
2011 // Captain America: The First Avenger
2012 // The Avengers
2013 // Iron Man 3
2013 // Thor: The Dark World
2014 // Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2014 // Guardians of the Galaxy
2015 // Avengers: Age of Ultron
2015 // Ant-Man
2016 // Captain America: Civil War
2016 // Doctor Strange
2017 // Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2
2017 // Spider-Man: Homecoming
2017 // Thor: Ragnarok
2018 // Black Panther
2018 // Avengers: Infinity War
2018 // Ant-Man and The Wasp
2019 // Captain Marvel
2019 // Avengers: Endgame
2019 // Spider-Man: Far From Home
2021 // Wandavision

ONE-SHOTS
2011 // The Consultant
2011 // A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Thor's Hammer
2012 // Item 47
2013 // Agent Carter
2013 // All Hail The King


It should go without saying but there are going to be SPOILERS in this thread! If you haven't watched a movie with a particular character and you plan to, be warned that I might spoil something about them. I will put everything that regards the future of the MCU in spoiler tags but things that have happened in the movies will not be spoiler tagged so read at your own risk.


This post has been edited by diva thin muffin: Mar 2 2021, 07:05 PM
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Dexton
post Mar 2 2021, 02:48 PM
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rip in peace Dickston
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The Netflix shows are good watches although I haven't seen all of them just yet but I plan to. I've seen Daredevil seasons 1 & 2, Jessica Jones season 1 & 2, Luke Cage season 1, part of Iron Fist season 1 and The Defenders. I couldn't get into Iron Fist so I gave up after a couple of episodes but I did like his character in The Defenders so maybe he gets better over time tongue.gif I fully recommend Daredevil over any others though followed by Jessica Jones. It's definitely possible to watch The Defenders before anything else tbh

As for the other television shows I've actually only seen Agent Carter so far ohmy.gif Which I wholeheartedly recommend. Peggy Carter is a fantastic character and the supporting cast are also great. I'd love to see her return to the MCU - perhaps a season 3 of the show on Disney+ featuring when Captain America returned to her in Endgame?

I read the premise of Runaways and it didn't really grip me tbh, and th same goes for Cloak & Dagger and Inhumans. Helstrom I had no idea was even a thing laugh.gif

I'm excited for this maybe it'll encourage me to do my own! Last place has to be Thor 2 right? tongue.gif
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diva thin muffin
post Mar 2 2021, 03:29 PM
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QUOTE(Dexton @ Mar 2 2021, 02:48 PM) *
The Netflix shows are good watches although I haven't seen all of them just yet but I plan to. I've seen Daredevil seasons 1 & 2, Jessica Jones season 1 & 2, Luke Cage season 1, part of Iron Fist season 1 and The Defenders. I couldn't get into Iron Fist so I gave up after a couple of episodes but I did like his character in The Defenders so maybe he gets better over time tongue.gif I fully recommend Daredevil over any others though followed by Jessica Jones. It's definitely possible to watch The Defenders before anything else tbh

As for the other television shows I've actually only seen Agent Carter so far ohmy.gif Which I wholeheartedly recommend. Peggy Carter is a fantastic character and the supporting cast are also great. I'd love to see her return to the MCU - perhaps a season 3 of the show on Disney+ featuring when Captain America returned to her in Endgame?

I read the premise of Runaways and it didn't really grip me tbh, and th same goes for Cloak & Dagger and Inhumans. Helstrom I had no idea was even a thing laugh.gif

I'm excited for this maybe it'll encourage me to do my own! Last place has to be Thor 2 right? tongue.gif

Hey Dexton, thanks for the comment! Happy to hear you recommend Agent Carter as I'm seriously debating giving it a shot especially since it doesn't seem to suffer from the same problems that Agents of SHIELD seems to have (too many episodes per season, production value not on par with the movies, flat/unexciting characters) so I might just check it out!

The Hulu shows also didn't really excite me and AFAIK they aren't exactly fan faves either. Out of the Netflix shows I definitely want to check out Jessica Jones and The Punisher, might feel the need to watch all of them for a sense of completion lmao.

I realised I forgot to add Spider-Man 2 to the list above so last place is 29th and not 28th but I can tell you that gasp it's not Thor 2 (but don't worry, it's not ridiculously high haha).
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diva thin muffin
post Mar 2 2021, 03:51 PM
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29. The Consultant
29. marvel one-shot



>> Release Date: September 13, 2011
>> Running Time: 4 Minutes
>> Media Rank: 5th out of 5 One-Shots (Last Place)

I contemplated putting my least favourite movie here because there is one MCU movie I thought was just SO BAD it would have been deserved, however I couldn't in any way justify putting a full movie behind this 4-minute scene which is basically just Phil Coulson and Jasper Sitwell discussing what to do with Emil Blonsky / The Abomination from The Incredible Hulk. This movie came out after the first Thor movie as part of the DVD package and it's the first Marvel One-Shot. They certainly became better and more informative after this one but this wasn't a great start. While it's interesting what they're discussing it ultimately amounted to nothing since ten years later we still haven't seen The Abomination again and part of this short film is just the post-credits scene from The Incredible Hulk. This felt a bit strange as a companion to Thor as it's referencing a movie that came out three years prior that hasn't really been relevant since. It was nice to get some more development for Jasper Sitwell who's been in four movies and two one-shots but still feels a bit unknown to me as a character. This doesn't really add anything to Coulson's depth as a character though as we've seen far more of him in other appearances. While Tony Stark and Thaddeus Ross appear in this it's basically the same scene as in the post credits for The Incredible Hulk so I didn't rate them here.

RATED CHARACTERS
There are two characters that appeared in this One-Shot that will appear on the character ranking. Neither of them are appearing for the first time in the MCU.
  • Jasper Sitwell portrayed by Maximiliano Hernández
  • Phil Coulson portrayed by Clark Gregg
Hint for 28th: It's a movie.


This post has been edited by diva thin muffin: Mar 2 2021, 03:54 PM
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Dexton
post Mar 2 2021, 04:13 PM
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Oh yeah I forgot that existed thats fair laugh.gif The Abomination is supposedly returning in the She-Hulk series btw which will be an interesting tie-in

Agent Carter has a lot of interesting characters indeed, including Edwin Jarvis who was Howard Starks butler (and also Howard Stark played by Dominic Cooper!) and a character who trained in the same place as Natasha as a Black Widow
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diva thin muffin
post Mar 2 2021, 04:38 PM
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28. The Incredible Hulk
00. feature film



>> Release Date: June 13, 2008
>> Running Time: 112 minutes
>> Box Office (WW): $264.7 million (23rd in the MCU / 573rd all time)
>> *Media Rank: 23rd out of 23 Movies (Last Place)
>> *Character Rank: Avg. Score is 4.10 out of 10 // 29th out of 29 entries (Last Place)
>> *Franchise Rank: 1st out of 1 Hulk movies

The first movie to fall was never going to be any other movie. This may be because I was already used to Mark Ruffalo as The Hulk before watching this and I never actually saw this movie when it came out thirteen years ago, but also because Edward Norton just feels off as the green monster and while he wasn't cut because he did a bad job in the movie, the fact that he was hard to work with and wanted to change the script was just a blessing in disguise so we could get a proper Hulk in three years time (although I didn't really warm to Mark Ruffalo's Hulk until a bit later). The movie isn't exactly an origin story as the movie fully takes places AFTER Bruce Banner becomes The Hulk and as someone who doesn't really know much about this character's history it's left me a bit confused about him for the majority of the MCU films in which he appears. I just know it's something to do with gamma radiation and Thaddeus Ross hates his guts.

Norton is certainly a different take on the character. Ruffalo's version is more comic relief while Norton portrays a more serious version of Bruce Banner and it just doesn't do it for me. I was mostly unsympathetic towards Banner in this movie because I just didn't care enough. I already knew they'd change the character the next time he showed up and the CGI is kinda bad so I was just not feeling it. The Hulk has historically not been great as the featured hero in these types of movies and I don't think it's a coincidence they haven't tried again after this although as a secondary hero Ruffalo was great in Thor: Ragnarok. The supporting cast, while undoubtedly filled with some big names and great actors, fails to compel me to feel the story too. Liv Tyler's Betty Ross is a strange character and while I usually love her acting I didn't like her portrayal here. The fact that Betty Ross hasn't appeared or even been mentioned since (although it's revealed in a tie-in comic that she was apparently a victim of Thanos' snap) is also quite bizarre and it's like the MCU is pretending they were never a thing despite her dad appearing on numerous occasions again. Hopefully there will be some kind of explanation in the She-Hulk series but I'm not holding out too much hope.

The villains of this film were Betty's father Thaddeus Ross and Emil Blonsky who later becomes "The Abomination" (which is an appropriate description of the CGI behind this character). While Ross never goes full villain and is more just an antagonist because of what Banner did to his daughter in the actual origin story (which we never really see) it's Emil Blonsky who is the big bad of this film. As a villain he's quite unconvincing. He's just power hungry and therefore decides to become this weird CGI monster and it's just all quite badly executed and frankly already overdone as a plot line way before this movie happened. Hopefully we'll see a redemption arc for him as a proper villain in She-Hulk where Tim Roth has been confirmed to return to play the role. If not story-wise then at least CGI-wise lol.

Other notable characters in this movie all suffer from the same problem. Tim Blake Nelson as Samuel Sterns is quite quite a cartoony representation although it's probably one of the few characters I did somewhat enjoy in this movie. Ty Burrell as Leonard Samson was also alright but that mainly comes down to my love for Ty as an actor. I do feel that his character was mistreated by the age old "new boyfriend bad" trope and while the movie tried to make me hate him I didn't feel that in the end and completely understood why he did what he did. Martina was another character that the movie kind of failed as they set her up as some kind of major character and then just left her in Brazil to deal with the aftermath of Banner's actions. He saved her from the predatory guys at work but then after that she was just irrelevant so she didn't serve as anything other than a plot motivator for Bruce. Also mistreated was poor Ricky, Banner's dog that was just left behind. At first I thought the attack team killed him but apparently they just tranq'd him but either way Banner left him there after the movie established their relationship and poor Ricky probably never knew why.

Ultimately it feels weird rating Norton's version of Banner as the same character that Mark Ruffalo portrayed in all of the subsequent films but it also would have been strange to rate him as a different character altogether. On average the characters of this movie got a score of 4.10 which is the lowest of all the movies and in fact lowest out of all media represented here (even below The Consultant). There's a handful of unnamed or minor characters I did not rate here mostly because I just didn't remember them at all. Tony Stark appeared in the credits scene talking to Thaddeus Ross to discuss putting a "team" together which was pretty cool.

RATED CHARACTERS
There are twelve characters that appeared in this Movie that will appear on the character ranking. All but Tony Stark are appearing for the first time in the MCU.

MAIN CHARACTERS
>> Betty Ross portrayed by Liv Tyler
>> Bruce Banner / Hulk portrayed by Edward Norton
>> Emil Blonsky / The Abomination portrayed by Tim Roth
>> Thaddeus Ross portrayed by William Hurt

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
>> Samuel Sterns portrayed by Tim Blake Nelson

SIDE CHARACTERS
>> Kathleen Sparr portrayed by Christina Cabot
>> Leonard Samson portrayed by Ty Burrell

MINOR CHARACTERS
>> Joe Greller portrayed by Peter Mensah
>> Martina portrayed by Débora Nascimento
>> Stanley Lieber portrayed by Paul Soles

CAMEOS
>> Roger Harrington portrayed by Martin Starr
>> Tony Stark / Iron Man portrayed by Robert Downey, Jr.

Hint for 27th: It's another one-shot.

* Media Rank means where this entry ranks among the other entries of the same media (movie / tv show / one-shots). Character Rank means where the movie ranks based on average character score (each character is rated from 0 to 10) although this score only considers the score of characters in a main or supporting character role. Finally Franchise Rank means where the movie ranks within its featured hero's franchise. As The Incredible Hulk is the only Hulk movie it's both first and last.


This post has been edited by diva thin muffin: Mar 2 2021, 06:20 PM
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diva thin muffin
post Mar 2 2021, 04:41 PM
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QUOTE(Dexton @ Mar 2 2021, 04:13 PM) *
Oh yeah I forgot that existed thats fair laugh.gif The Abomination is supposedly returning in the She-Hulk series btw which will be an interesting tie-in

Agent Carter has a lot of interesting characters indeed, including Edwin Jarvis who was Howard Starks butler (and also Howard Stark played by Dominic Cooper!) and a character who trained in the same place as Natasha as a Black Widow

Yeah I saw that the other day about The Abomination! Will be interesting to see how that goes and apparently it'll be the same actor too! The character was quite poorly represented in The Hulk movie so hopefully it'll get a more interesting storyline in She-Hulk. Regarding Agent Carter it sounds like I may have found something to watch now that I'm done with the MCU movies haha. Thanks!
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diva thin muffin
post Mar 2 2021, 05:42 PM
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27. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer
00. marvel one-shot



>> Release Date: October 25, 2011
>> Running Time: 4 minutes
>> Media Rank: 4th out of 5 one-shots
>> Character Rank: Avg. Score is 5.03 out of 10 // 26th out of 29 entries

First of all I decided to edit the character rank filter here which usually only considers main or supporting characters because this 4 minute short film only has one character that fits this bill: Phil Coulson. Everyone else doesn't even have a name so I think it wouldn't make sense to give them anything more than side character status but I needed to include them to get an average score consisting of more than one character. Now, this short film follows Agent Coulson as he heads over to New Mexico to appear in the Thor movie but at a gas station he accidentally runs into a robber-in-progress by nameless Robbers portrayed by Jeff Prewett and Zach Hudson (so I'm calling them Jeff and Zach). The nameless gas station attendant is a young woman played by actress Jessica Manuel (so I'm calling her Jessica). The short film could have done quite a lot with its short run time but all it really seems to be meant for is to hype up Coulson which it doesn't really manage to do for me. The other characters are just props and have absolutely no personality beyond what their reason for being in this location seems to be. Jeff and Zach are your typical run-of-the-mill bad guys while Jessica is just NPC royalty. Coulson kicks names and takes butts and that's really just the entire short film summed up. Thankfully the other three were a tad longer and better produced but idk if I necessarily wanted a longer version of this anyway.

RATED CHARACTERS
There are four characters that appeared in this One-Shot that will appear on the character ranking. All but Phil Coulson are appearing for the first time in the MCU.

MAIN CHARACTERS
>> Phil Coulson portrayed by Clark Gregg

SIDE CHARACTERS
>> Jeff the Robber portrayed by Jeff Prewett
>> Jessica the Store Clerk portrayed by Jessica Manuel
>> Zach the Robber portrayed by Zach Hudson

Hint for 26th: It's got something to do with Iron Man.


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diva thin muffin
post Mar 2 2021, 06:08 PM
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26. All Hail The King
00. marvel one-shot



>> Release Date: February 4, 2014
>> Running Time: 14 minutes
>> Media Rank: 3rd out of 5 one-shots
>> Character Rank: Avg. Score is 5.89 out of 10 // 24th out of 29 entries

Obviously the majority of these one-shots aren't going to be all too high on the list but maybe eliminating three in the first four cuts is a bit excessive. However, this feels right even though the increase in quality between All Hail The King and A Funny Thing Happened.. is massive. Not only is this 10 minutes longer but it actually feels like it serves a purpose. The short film follows Jackson Norriss, a reporter who is interviewing Trevor Slattery (Iron Man 3's fake villain) as he's in prison paying for his hijinks in the movie. We see there that Trevor has garnered some sort of fanbase in prison among his fellow prisoners and there's something ambiguous here about whether he's truly a bad person or simply a desperate unemployed actor. Trevor's also managed to get himself a personal assistant in jail thanks to his celebrity status and Lester Speight manages to be probably the most entertaining character in this short film. However, not all is as it seems as it turns out that Jackson Norriss is in fact a member of the Ten Rings sent there on a mission to take Trevor as a prisoner for making a mockery out of The Mandarin name. This reveals to us that a real Mandarin is somewhere yet to come but now that we're not getting any more Iron Man movies I don't know if that will ever come to fruition. While this is a fun little short film it's also kind of stupid and I don't get why Jackson would pretend to be interviewing Trevor when there were obviously loads of Ten Rings agents in the prison to begin with but I guess that was mainly there for a shock moment.

Ben Kingsley is great as Trevor again although they fleshed him out a whole lot more in the actual movie. He's funny and I was actually quite surprised when I found out he wasn't the real villain and he provided some much needed comic relief but here it just kinda serves this basic purpose but there's not a whole lot left to chew on after the fact. In the post credits scene we see Justin Hammer from Iron Man 2 be jealous of Trevor's fame which was kind of funny but what bothered me was the added prison boyfriend as this is truly one of Marvel's only representation of anything even remotely homosexual in the 13 years that the MCU has been a thing and here it's used for a laugh. But more on that later.

RATED CHARACTERS
There are six characters that appeared in this One-Shot that will appear on the character ranking. Justin Hammer and Trevor Slattery have both appeared in previous films but the other characters have not.

MAIN CHARACTERS
>> Jackson Norriss portrayed by Scoot McNairy
>> Trevor Slattery / The Mandarin portrayed by Ben Kingsley

SECONDARY CHARACTERS
>> Herman portrayed by Lester Speight

MINOR CHARACTERS
>> Fletcher Heggs portrayed by Allen Maldonado
>> Justin Hammer portrayed by Sam Rockwell
>> "White P*wer" Dave portrayed by Matt Gerald

Hint for 25th: It's a movie from Phase One.


This post has been edited by diva thin muffin: Mar 2 2021, 06:09 PM
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LewisGT
post Mar 2 2021, 06:27 PM
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I've watched all the Marvel shows apart from Helstom (that's next on the watchlist) and here's what I think smile.gif

Out of the Netflix shows I think they're all brilliant and would recommend them all thoroughly. If you were to skip any I would probably say Iron First & the Defenders.

Out of the ABC shows, I'd say definitely avoid Inhumans. There is nothing good to say about that, complete waste of time. Agent Carter was decent but really forgettable. I can't really remember anything that happened in it. I know you've already said you're not interested in it but Agents of SHIELD is by far the best TV show in the MCU. It's absolute top tier and I would rank it above most of the films too. Season 1 got some pretty average reviews but it gets really great halfway through season 1 and stays brilliant throughout after that. Also it does stick with the cannon of the films (almost too much at times) until maybe the final season but that's the same with all of the shows as they all ignore the snap (apart from Wandavision lol) because they wouldn't be able to make a show otherwise.

Ruaways & Cloak & Dagger are both really underrated shows but certainly not necessary viewing. They can both be a little cheesy and formulaic at times but the casts really work well together.

My overall ranking of the shows would be...

1. Agents of SHEILD
2. The Punisher
3. Daredevil
4. Jessica Jones
5. Luke Cage
6, Runaways
7. Iron Fist
8. Cloak & Dagger
9. The Defenders
10. Agent Carter
11. Inhumans


Basically just avoid Inhumans and you can't go too wrong laugh.gif
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diva thin muffin
post Mar 2 2021, 07:00 PM
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25. Iron Man 2
00. feature film



>> Release Date: April 28, 2010
>> Running Time: 125 minutes
>> Box Office (WW): $623.9 million (17th in the MCU / 151st all time)
>> Media Rank: 22nd out of 23 Movies
>> Character Rank: Avg. Score is 5.00 out of 10 // 27th out of 29 entries
>> Franchise Rank: 3rd out of 3 Iron Man movies

I honestly have no idea if this is a controversial opinion or not but the fact of the matter is I was never a fan of Iron Man prior to Endgame. I had actually never seen the first Iron Man or Iron Man 3 until I started this marathon but for some random reason I had seen Iron Man 2 a while back. I didn't like it then and now upon rewatch I guess I understand why I didn't use to be a Tony Stark stan. This movie definitely showcases the worst version of Tony and the entire movie just feels incredibly dated today. It's filled with boring clichés and tropes such as Pepper disliking ScarJo basically only because she's beautiful and lbr Tony is VERY predatory towards her especially being her boss in this movie. Another thing I hate about this movie is that the villains just don't make sense. They aren't fleshed out properly to make them more complex than to just be bad to be bad or in Justin's case solely to be better than Tony which is just an overdone trope. But lets delve into this all a little bit deeper.

In this movie Tony Stark has become Iron Man and announced it to the world. He's a stupidly smart guy and can make all this technology but still struggles with losing his dad which I enjoyed them exploring in this movie. They also start to truly develop his relationship with Pepper here and by the end of the movie they're finally together, yay. Additionally in this movie we're introduced to Natasha Romanoff, better known as the Black Widow, and while a lot of the stuff surrounding this character in the movie absolutely sucks I feel like Scarlett Johanson delivered one of the best performances in the movie. As previously mentioned though she has to fend off creepy advances from Tony Stark and creepy stares from Happy which is extra weird because Happy's actor (Jon Favreau) directed this movie. They initially push Pepper into the jealous girlfriend cliché territory, despite not being Tony's girlfriend at the time, but by the end they seemingly resolve their differences off-screen. Tony's failing heart pushes him into alcoholism and he decides to push everyone away in turn and it's just a very toxic environment for everybody involved.

The villains are two in this movie: Justin Hammer portrayed by Sam Rockwell and Ivan Vanko / Whiplash portrayed by Mickey Rourke who is this movie's Big Bad™. Justin Hammer is truly quite insufferable as a former protegé of Tony's who is jealous of his success and is willing to do absolutely anything to best Tony including breaking a supervillain out of jail and then being dumb enough to expect him not to do supervillain things. My main issue with Justin as a character is that he doesn't make sense. There is absolutely NO way whatsoever that someone so incredibly stupid would ever become as successful as he is because not only is he lacking brains and a basic sense of judgement but additionally he's not even remotely charming and no one seems to believe anything he says but still he manages to convince the U.S. Army and Rhodey to let him build obvious rip-offs of the Iron Man suit. This was also my least favourite incarnation of Rhodey because him selling Tony out like that was just a real low point and as a friend he should have tried to help Tony instead of doing him dirty like that despite whatever happened at the birthday party.

Ivan Vanko on the other hand was maybe not as unbelievable as Justin but just incredibly one-note. Whiplash obviously only had one role and that's all he delivered. This character was a big meanie and there was literally nothing else to him. His backstory was that his father used to work with Tony but Howard Stark fired him and ruined his life or something but for some reason Whiplash decided to get revenge by killing Tony Stark a whole nineteen years after Howard died because ... because why? Iron Man was completely Tony's idea and had nothing to do with his father and even besides that who was he even trying to punish here? He'd seemingly never met Tony before and it was just such a bizarre reason to go on a killing spree. There was no depth to this character and his reasoning didn't really make sense. Also his villain look was just awkward and lame so he wasn't even cool while doing all this shit. The whole Formula 1 incident was just all kinds of weird and his whips seemed very selective about what they managed to cut through so I just felt like this movie was rushed and not very entertaining at all.

There was also the thing with the cameos here that was a bit disappointing to watch so many years after the movie's release. First of all I think it was kind of funny how Marvel added a while later that the kid Tony saved at the Expo was actually supposed to be Peter Parker, making this effectively the first time the character appeared in the MCU (six years before officially debuting in Civil War) and it feels more like an afterthought but seeing as they didn't have the rights to Spidey at the time maybe it was always supposed to be Peter in the hopes that they'd eventually get the rights back. There were some other cameos like Olivia Munn as news reporter Chess Roberts and Leslie Bibb in a minor role as her IM1 character Christine Everhart (who was also $l*t-shamed by Pepper in a scene that has not aged well) but my biggest what-could-have-been issue with this movie was when they introduced Kate Mara, who I love, as an U.S. Marshall bringing Tony a subpoena (IIRC). This was such a strange scene, to bring in an actress who had already proven herself to be a well known name at that point in time, only to not even give her character a name. Kate was never seen again in the MCU but unfortunately signed onto the awful FantFOURstic Four reboot which was just a career low and Marvel could have saved her from this awful fate if they just did something more with her character (which apparently they had planned to do).

Overall, Iron Man 2 isn't an awful movie but it's easily my least favourite out of all the Non-Hulk movies. They could have and should have waited for a bit with this because it was released only two years after Iron Man 1 and we just got a bit too much of Tony Stark in such a short time. Iron Man 3 was a much better movie and would have worked as a sequel better than this one. But Marvel felt they needed to strike while the iron was still hot so that's why we got this sad excuse of a sequel. I wish I could say they learned from this mistake but only a few years later they managed to screw up another sequel so bad that it almost ruined everything. More about that later though.

RATED CHARACTERS
There are seventeen characters that appeared in this Movie that will appear on the character ranking. Eight of those characters had already appeared in the MCU prior but most of the minor characters, as well as Howard Stark, Ivan Vanko, Justin Hammer and Natasha Romanoff appear here for the first time. Depending on who you ask this was also Peter Parker's first appearance in the MCU albeit played by a different actor.

MAIN CHARACTERS
>> Ivan Vanko / Whiplash portrayed by Mickey Rourke
>> Justin Hammer portrayed by Sam Rockwell
>> Pepper Potts portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow
>> Tony Stark / Iron Man portrayed by Robert Downey, Jr.

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
>> James Rhodes / Iron Patriot portrayed by Don Cheadle
>> Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow portrayed by Scarlett Johansson

SIDE CHARACTERS
>> Happy Hogan portrayed by Jon Favreau
>> Howard Stark portrayed by John Slattery
>> Nick Fury portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson

MINOR CHARACTERS
>> Christine Everhart portrayed by Leslie Bibb
>> J.A.R.V.I.S. portrayed by Paul Bettany
>> Phil Coulson portrayed by Clark Gregg
>> Senator Stern portrayed by Garry Shandling

CAMEOS
>> Anton Vanko portrayed by Eugene Lazarev
>> Chess Roberts portrayed by Olivia Munn
>> Peter Parker / Spider-Man portrayed by Max Favreau
>> U.S. Marshall portrayed by Kate Mara

Hint for 24th: It's a sequel.


This post has been edited by diva thin muffin: Mar 2 2021, 07:09 PM
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diva thin muffin
post Mar 2 2021, 07:05 PM
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QUOTE(LewisGT @ Mar 2 2021, 06:27 PM) *
I've watched all the Marvel shows apart from Helstom (that's next on the watchlist) and here's what I think smile.gif

Out of the Netflix shows I think they're all brilliant and would recommend them all thoroughly. If you were to skip any I would probably say Iron First & the Defenders.

Out of the ABC shows, I'd say definitely avoid Inhumans. There is nothing good to say about that, complete waste of time. Agent Carter was decent but really forgettable. I can't really remember anything that happened in it. I know you've already said you're not interested in it but Agents of SHIELD is by far the best TV show in the MCU. It's absolute top tier and I would rank it above most of the films too. Season 1 got some pretty average reviews but it gets really great halfway through season 1 and stays brilliant throughout after that. Also it does stick with the cannon of the films (almost too much at times) until maybe the final season but that's the same with all of the shows as they all ignore the snap (apart from Wandavision lol) because they wouldn't be able to make a show otherwise.

Ruaways & Cloak & Dagger are both really underrated shows but certainly not necessary viewing. They can both be a little cheesy and formulaic at times but the casts really work well together.

My overall ranking of the shows would be...

1. Agents of SHEILD
2. The Punisher
3. Daredevil
4. Jessica Jones
5. Luke Cage
6, Runaways
7. Iron Fist
8. Cloak & Dagger
9. The Defenders
10. Agent Carter
11. Inhumans
Basically just avoid Inhumans and you can't go too wrong laugh.gif

Thanks for the answer Lewis! Maybe I judged AOS prematurely. I might give it a shot after all although what's holding me back is the far too excessive amount of episodes as I don't generally enjoy shows with 20+ episodes per season (I often feel the production value suffers at the expense of making the most dough - i.e. quality at the expense of quantity). I will promise to leave Inhumans alone at least, I also heard awful things about that so I'm not surprised it's last here laugh.gif I'm curious to see how you'd rank the movies!
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Tafty³³³
post Mar 2 2021, 10:24 PM
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OMG.

I'm gonna follow this, but just wanted to comment and say that I am very much looking forward to reading everything! I'm far too tired to concentrate atm, but I'll be around!

Also; Daredevil 1-3, Jessica Jones 1 & the first half of Luke Cage 1 are great. Punisher 1 is good! I recommend them! (I've not seen Jess Jones 3, Luke Cage 2, Iron Fist 2 or Punisher 2)
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diva thin muffin
post Mar 2 2021, 10:42 PM
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QUOTE(Tafty @ Mar 2 2021, 10:24 PM) *
OMG.

I'm gonna follow this, but just wanted to comment and say that I am very much looking forward to reading everything! I'm far too tired to concentrate atm, but I'll be around!

Also; Daredevil 1-3, Jessica Jones 1 & the first half of Luke Cage 1 are great. Punisher 1 is good! I recommend them! (I've not seen Jess Jones 3, Luke Cage 2, Iron Fist 2 or Punisher 2)

Thanks for the comment Tafty! Hope you enjoy reading this when you find the time!

I think I might have to give the Netflix shows a chance based on all of your comments! I don’t quite know why I didn’t at the time haha.
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diva thin muffin
post Mar 3 2021, 02:41 PM
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24. Thor: The Dark World
00. feature film



>> Release Date: October 30, 2013
>> Running Time: 112 minutes
>> Box Office (WW): $644.8 million (16th in the MCU / 142nd all time)
>> Media Rank: 21st out of 23 Movies
>> Character Rank: Avg. Score is 6.33 out of 10 // 20th out of 29 entries
>> Franchise Rank: 3rd out of 3 Thor movies

This may be a controversial opinion as I know Thor 2 is by many considered the worst Marvel movie and while I don't necessarily disagree with you I don't agree either. For me Thor: The Dark World was a decent movie to watch but also absolutely awful in many ways. I do think that Marvel screwed the pooch by firing original director Patty Jenkins as it seems that a lot of the issues I have with this movie were things Jenkins did not intend to include. First and foremost my biggest gripe with this movie is how they absolutely ruined Jane by making her the ultimate damsel in distress. In Thor 1 Natalie Portman established her character as a strong and independent woman who did not need Thor to come and save her and she was more than able to hold her own but in this movie she's absolutely useless. It does indeed seem like Natalie Portman agrees with me here because supposedly the firing of Patty Jenkins was the reason why she did not want to return to the MCU for a while (but she finally will in Thor: Love & Thunder).

Turning Sif into the jealous type and the supposedly "right one" for Thor by Odin's standards was a huge misstep because I don't think there was absolutely any reason to push her character in that direction. Watching Thor 1, I didn't feel like there was anything other than friendship between Thor and Sif so making this change to her character not only didn't make sense but also just felt like an afterthought and a misuse of a great female side character that we of course haven't seen since. The only female characters they didn't manage to ruin they still either murdered (Frigga) or added a random uninspired love interest at the very end (Darcy).

The same issues plague the title character played by (my ultimate celebrity crush) Chris Hemsworth. His growth throughout the MCU has been nothing short of impressive but honestly taking out Thor 2 would not have changed much outside of the effect that his mother's death had on him. I feel like in the sequel Thor was mostly just a lovesick teenager and The Dark World just turned into something of a rom-com with superheroes and cheap villains. While Thor is generally a character that I like I was not I don't fault anyone who thinks this is the worst movie because it's definitely up there, however I do feel like it has some redeeming factors.

Darcy has always remained one of my favourite side characters in MCU history and I think that (despite that weird scene with her intern in the end) she managed to showcase why she was worth bringing back here despite the awful script but I suppose that's mostly to Kat Denning's credit rather than the writers'. I was so happy to see her come back in WandaVision because she's so likeable and funny and she has some really funny moments in this movie. Another character who managed to shine a somewhat positive light on this movie was Loki whose redemption arc mostly started in this movie although it obviously could have been done better it was among the few highlights of the movie when he showcased why he's still one of the best villains in MCU history. Loki and Thor's relationship with their mother was also one that was highlighted in this movie and Frigga's untimely death was really sad but something I feel has proven to be a necessary motivator for Thor since.

Thor: The Dark World suffers from a similar issue as Iron Man 2 though in the fact that the villain is bad. Obviously he's meant to be bad but he was probably never meant to be so unconvincing but Malekith is just that, an unconvincing caricature that wasn't designed in any way to be even remotely interesting. He just wants to make everything dark because .. idk he likes the dark? I did somewhat enjoy Kurse although he also failed to get even a little backstory and ultimately I just didn't care for a lot of these characters. Odin was also a bit of a dick in this movie and not in the fun snarky Anthony Hopkins kind of way but moreso just in a boring "we need an excuse for a conflict" kind of way. I also can't comment on characters that the movie failed without mentioning Erik Selvig who was suddenly just comic relief because his character was losing his mind after being mind controlled. It wasn't funny and it was a disservice to a character that didn't deserve this treatment and I hated seeing poor Stellan treated this way. They also decided to swap out the actor for Fandral to Zachary Levi (from "Chuck") for seemingly no reason since he got little airtime in Thor 2 and the next time he appeared on screen he was swiftly discarded by Hela within 3 seconds of appearing lol.

Overall I think this movie isn't complete trash but it's a huge step-down from Thor 1 and pales in comparison with the follow-up. I don't think it was necessary and I feel like Marvel could and should have waited more than two years between movies focused on Thor even though I find the whole Asgard saga very interesting coming from one of the countries where Norse mythology originates from. There were a lot of great characters mistreated here and even the best characters weren't that great and most of their greatness comes from the actors and not the writing or direction so I'd say Thor: The Dark World deserves the flack it gets. The post credits scene introduced Taneleer Tivan (The Collector) and his assistant Carina who we'd meet properly in the first Guardians of the Galaxy to come a year later, it was an interesting scene in which Sif and Volstagg brought the Aether to The Collector for safekeeping so that they wouldn't have two Infinity Stones in their possession. This is a nice little set-up for what was yet to come but as I had no idea what the Infinity Stones were at the time I saw this movie for the first time this all flew completely past my head lmao.

RATED CHARACTERS
There are nineteen characters that appeared in this Movie that will appear on the character ranking. Most of these characters, or twelve of them, had already appeared in the MCU but this was the first time we met Darcy's intern Ian Boothby, Kurse, Malekith and Jane's random date Richard Madison among others. The post-credits scene is also the first time we see Taneleer Tivan and Carina.

MAIN CHARACTERS
>> Jane Foster portrayed by Natalie Portman
>> Loki Laufeyson portrayed by Tom Hiddleston
>> Thor Odinson portrayed by Chris Hemsworth

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
>> Darcy Lewis portrayed by Kat Dennings
>> Erik Selvig portrayed by Stellan Skarsgård
>> Heimdall portrayed by Idris Elba
>> Malekith portrayed by Christopher Eccleston
>> Odin Borson portrayed by Anthony Hopkins
>> Queen Frigga portrayed by Rene Russo

SIDE CHARACTERS
>> Fandral portrayed by Zachary Levi
>> Hogun portrayed by Tadanobu Asano
>> Ian Boothby portrayed by Jonathan Howard
>> Lady Sif portrayed by Jaimie Alexander
>> Volstagg portrayed by Ray Stevenson

MINOR CHARACTERS
>> Algrim the Strong / Kurse portrayed by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
>> Bor Burison portrayed by Tony Curran
>> Richard Madison portrayed by Chris O'Dowd

CAMEOS
>> Carina portrayed by Ophelia Lovibond
>> Taneleer Tivan / The Collector portrayed by Benicio del Toro

Hint for 23rd: It takes place after The Avengers (2012).


This post has been edited by diva thin muffin: Mar 3 2021, 02:42 PM
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Tafty³³³
post Mar 7 2021, 03:00 PM
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I can't remember much about the one-shots so I'm going to skim past them (I really should rewatch them though).

'The Incredible Hulk' being last is not a surprise, but I will say I am an apologist for this film and although I don't rank it too much higher, I find it to be a bit under appreciated. In fact, it avoids the bottom 5 for me lmao. I just find it more enjoyable (although I do agree that it's dated).

'Iron Man 2' is my least favourite. Largely for the reasons you have explained above, despite this movie introducing Black Widow amazingly! (Her scenes >>) I feel like they completely WASTED the Whiplash character and it's a shame, because in that one scene at the racing track, he shows SO much promise to be a bigger baddie who also has potential to be a badass... but they do nothing with him after that? He's just wasted and I herd Mickey Rourke was fuming because he apparently had (and shot) a much larger role. I agree about Sam Rockwell's character too. It's a shame coz I reckon Sam would've been excellent as an antagonist with a better character!

'Thor 2'... I prefer this to 'Thor 1' lmao ooooops. This one has a bit more going for it and similarly to 'The Incredible Hulk'... although not too much higher in my ranking (it's still bottom 5 for me too) it feels under appreciated a bit and I don't quite get how people are more harsh on this one than they are on the (good but) bland 1st one. Low-key, Thor has never been my fave character though.

Loving this so far DIVA wub.gif

---

Oh and btw, I have a VERY unpopular opinion as to what I ranked as the 2nd worst MCU movie lmao, so I'm intrigued to see where it places for you.
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