The Rotten Tomatoes rating for every MCU movie, in chronological order

The MCU has redefined what audiences have come to expect from superhero movies while bringing in billions of dollars of box office revenue. As of writing its total haul is an astonishing $30 billion, making it by some distance the most successful movie franchise of all time and leaving Star Wars‘ relatively paltry $10 billion in the dust.

But critical acclaim and financial success are two very different things, so let’s look over the entire MCU movie line-up as of November 2023 and see their Rotten Tomatoes critical and audience scores. Now, a “fresh” or “rotten” score doesn’t necessarily mean a bad movie, though at a minimum it’s a useful measure of how each individual movie was received.

Phase One

• Iron Man (2008) 94% / 91%
• The Incredible Hulk (2008) 67% / 69%
• Iron Man 2 (2010) 72% / 71%
• Thor (2011) 77% / 76%
• Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) 80% / 75%
• The Avengers (2012) 91% / 91%

The early years of the MCU were boosted by the wild success of Iron Man. As you can see, this scored the best reviews of any movie this phase and launched a wave of hype around Robert Downey Jr’s performance that powered the MCU through to the monster success of The Avengers four years later.

The introductory movies for each Avenger were less well-received, though only The Incredible Hulk got anywhere near to “rotten” and, in any event, Marvel Studios quickly changed course by recasting Bruce Banner. All in all a strong start and The Avengers was a promising conclusion to the first era of Kevin Feige’s cinematic experiment.

Phase Two

• Iron Man 3 (2013) 79% / 78%
• Thor: The Dark World (2013) 67% / 75%
• Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) 90% / 92%
• Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) 92% / 92%
• Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) 76% / 82%
• Ant-Man (2015) 83% / 85%

Despite the barnstorming success of The Avengers, Phase Two opened with some skepticism that Marvel Studios could repeat the feat. Thor: The Dark World was a notable early misstep, scoring what for years would be the lowest Tomatometer rating in the franchise.

But the arrival of the Russo Brothers and James Gunn would shape the eventual future and by Age of Ultron the MCU was firmly established as the 800-pound gorilla of the global box office.

Phase Three

• Captain America: Civil War (2016) 91%/ 89%
• Doctor Strange (2016) 89% / 86%
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) 85% / 87%
• Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) 92% / 87%
• Thor: Ragnarok (2017) 93% / 87%
• Black Panther (2018) 96% / 79%
• Avengers: Infinity War (2018) 85%/ 92%
• Captain Marvel (2019) 79% / 45%
• Avengers: Endgame (2019) 94% / 90%
• Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) 90% / 95%

Welcome to the golden age of the MCU. In the three years between 2016 and 2019 Marvel Studios released ten movies and the lowest score received was a still-respectable 79 percent. Over this period most MCU movies opened to projections of a billion-dollar gross, and many of them succeeded. Avengers: Endgame became the highest-grossing movie of all time (for a few years) and it became apparent that the MCU was a phenomenon unlike anything previously seen in cinema.

Perhaps the only worrying note was Captain Marvel being dragged into the culture wars after star Brie Larson made some fairly innocuous remarks about feminism. This saw Captain Marvel being widely review-bombed, so take that 45% audience score with a very large grain of salt, though if nothing else it’s proof that some comic book fans were beginning to turn against the franchise.

Phase Four

• Black Widow (2021) 79% / 91%
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) 92% / 98%
• Eternals (2021) 47% / 77%
• Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) 93% / 98%
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) 72% / 85%
• Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) 63% / 76%
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) 83% / 94%

How do you follow a success like Avengers: Endgame? Well, a global pandemic certainly doesn’t help. COVID ensured that 2020 was the first year since 2007 in which no MCU movies were released, with the franchise eventually returning with the long-delayed Black Widow in July 2021. Shang-Chi gave audiences some hope that the magic was back, but the critical and box office disappointment of Eternals proved that Marvel Studios wasn’t invincible.

No Way Home may have somewhat staunched the bleeding, but sequels Multiverse of Madness, Love and Thunder, and Wakanda Forever all underperformed in comparison to their predecessors. At the same time, Marvel Studios launched their Disney Plus line-up with WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Suddenly keeping up with the MCU became a whole lot more time-consuming.

Phase Five

• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) 46% / 82%
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) 82% / 94%
• The Marvels (2023) 60% / N/A (as of writing)

The awful Quantumania kicked Phase 5 off with a whimper, ending up with the (entirely justified) lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of the MCU to date. Negative rumblings are afoot, particularly as the one Phase Five hit so far was from a director who’s now jumped ship to the DC Universe and The Marvels is now receiving decidedly mixed reviews and poor box office projections.

We still have Deadpool 3, Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, and Blade to come, so perhaps don’t write off Phase Five yet. But, let’s face it, as we head into next year it’s going to be an uphill battle.

The recent Variety article about Marvel Studios shows a studio grappling with outsize Disney Plus budgets, producers being spread too thinly, and the lingering question of what to do with Jonathan Majors given his ongoing legal troubles. Despite all this, we wouldn’t dismiss the chances of a comeback, though 2024 is looking like a make-or-break year for the MCU.