For a lot of people, the Marvel Cinematic Universe more or less ended with 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. This is a case of both obvious denialism and an understandable checking out. After all, when you call a movie Endgame, bring virtually all of your major characters from 20 or so movies together, and market it as a sort of big-screen series finale, people will listen to the cues and maybe consider the matter settled (though they will probably attend a Spider-Man-themed postscript like Far From Home). Add in a global pandemic kicking off in 2020 and delaying the next round of Marvel movies a full year, and there’s an accidentally perfect jumping-off point.
And frankly, it’s fine that some people did indeed jump off. Before this century, movie series generally weren’t presumed to last forever, and superhero domination is not necessarily good for the many other movie genres that have been subsumed by their success. That accounts for a sense of fatigue among hardcore film fans, and it’s hard not to wonder if some of the anger toward Marvel from within their fan circle has to do with people who refuse to branch back out into other types of movies for their big-screen entertainment. If you see just a few big movies a year, and one of them is Captain America: Brave New World where it used to be Captain America: The Winter Soldier, obviously that might color your perception of how hard and fast Marvel has fallen.
That said, if we really are sick of cinematic universes and superhero continuity, then it’s only fair to look at the post-2020 Marvel movies as individual works. On that level, some of them fail spectacular — worse than anything that came before them, even! It’s hard to imagine ever watching Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ever again, not least because it’s a sci-fi/fantasy/adventure movie that’s an extraordinary eyesore.
At the same time, there are also some Marvel movies that, freed from (or only tangentially related to) a clear run-up to an all-star culmination, actually work pretty well on their own terms as sci-fi/fantasy entertainment — sometimes just as well as the movies in those now-romanticized first ten years. What follows are five (well, okay, six) Marvel movies that actually exceed the franchise’s tarnished post-2020 reputation. Based on the varying box office numbers, plenty of people skipped plenty of these; now that they’re all kicking around Disney+, maybe they’re worth circling back with less bombastic expectations!
A note: People obviously love the Spider-Man movies, so I’m not going to include them here despite the majority of them coming out after Endgame. Spider-Man: No Way Home made almost as much money as Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day is poised to do similarly massive business; no one needs an in-case-you-missed-it rec to check out what Spider-Man is up to. Brand New Day in particular would certainly climb toward the top of this list, and what’s good about it – it’s a stand-alone adventure with a non-crappy visual sensibility and a bunch of fun established characters bouncing off each other – is also what’s good about many of the titles that follow.
Photo: Everett Collection
Look, I’m not going to pretend that Taika Waititi doesn’t seem increasingly insufferable. It may be a thin line between the goofy charm of The Hunt for the Wilderpeople for the sentimentally forced whimsy of Jojo Rabbit, but he has undeniably crossed it. That said, Waititi is pretty well-suited to direct superhero movies of a certain semi-irreverent tone, and having rewatched both of his Thor movies recently, I’m willing to make the argument that the line between the beloved Waititi-helmed Ragranok and seemingly loathed Love & Thunder may be even thinner than the one separating Wilderpeople and Rabbit.
Love & Thunder is a somewhat worse-looking film, suffering from some rushed-looking, janky visual effects, and a few of the comic runners just don’t pay off as well as Waititi seems to assume. But it has a strong bad guy (Christian Bale’s vengeful god-killer), some visually striking sequences (including an extended climactic bit mostly in black-and-white), a chummy sense of silliness, and an affecting Natalie Portman performance as Thor’s ex-girlfriend Jane Foster. The seriousness of Jane’s storyline and Bale’s performance sometimes clangs against Waitit’s shtick addiction, yet there’s no mistaking this movie for anyone else’s work, which in plenty of other MCU entries seems to be the goal.
Stream Thor: Love & Thunder on Disney+
Photo: ©Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection
Another much-maligned (and far less-attended) MCU entry is this sorta-sequel to 2019’s inexplicably popular Captain Marvel. Brie Larson returns to the role here and forms a powers-and-place-switching mini-team with Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani). The brisk pacing is accompanied by the sense that this movie was chopped down in the editing room; director Nia DaCosta reportedly had a frustrating experience getting it to the finish line. The movie itself, though, is a charming romp driven by the central trio’s energetic performances, especially Vellani’s delightful Ms. Marvel.
Moreover: Did you know that comic books are often read by children? Or at least, they were, before the superhero market became overwhelmed by arrested-development dudes over 40? The Marvels isn’t exactly a children’s movie, but it is by far one of the most kid-friendly MCU projects, especially to any young fans who might get tired of seeing female characters shunted off to the side (or killed for dramatic effect, later-period Avengers movies!). If these movies aren’t going to be especially sophisticated entertainment for adults (and most of the time, they won’t be!), they should at least be something that works for the kids. Trust me, this one does.
Stream The Marvels on Disney+
©Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection
I feel like not enough people appreciate the fact that Sam Raimi made one of these MCU movies. And no, it doesn’t feel quite as distinctly Raimi-ish as his Spider-Man trilogy that helped launch Marvel into the movie business in the first place — but in Raimi’s telling, all of these movies are more studio gigs than ripped-from-the-soul pet projects. For that matter, Raimi’s Dr. Strange sequel has a ton of recognizable Raimi flourishes, especially in its bonkers climax that includes resurrecting a Zombie Strange, complete with a hand bursting out from a grave. While the multiverse-centric Spider-Man movie that preceded this one used that concept to provide surprisingly resonant follow-ups to pre-MCU Spidey movies, Raimi’s multiverse adventure is mostly gleeful reality-bending and horror-adjacent mayhem. It’s about ten times more fun than the movie it’s sequelizing, and not just because it has a Bruce Campbell cameo.
Stream Dr. Strange in the multiverse of madness on disney+
Photo: Disney+
Before James Gunn blasted off from Marvel to head things up at DC Studios, he completed his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy and — unlike the first entry, burdened with a bunch of semi-extraneous master-plot crap about Thanos — wound up with one of the movies least tethered to the rest of the MCU lore. And to the extent that it is (Zoe Saldaña’s Gamora not being the “real” Gamora from the first two movies thanks to the stupid events of Avengers: Infinity War), Gunn wrings a fair measure of pathos from the situation. Chris Pratt is the most tolerable he’s been in ages, Gunn shows a visual imagination that far exceeds many of the film’s corporate siblings, and the characters are allowed to come to a natural and emotionally effective conclusion without killing them off willy-nilly. By that end, it’s clear that Guardians of the Galaxy is the MCU trilogy that truly considers to be treated as such.
Stream Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 on Disney+
Photo: ©Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection
Cheating here with a double feature: One a prequel/flashback narrative released as a fond farewell to Scarlett Johansson’s character following her death during Avengers: Endgame, and the other a de facto sequel to that movie following Yelena (Florence Pugh), Black Widow’s adoptive lil sis (plus David Harbour’s Russian Captain America bootleg Red Guardian, very funny in both). Given how commonplace later Marvel movies have made their more cosmic/out-there aspects, it’s a relief to check out a couple of movies that are plenty comic-book-y without raising their stakes to fate-of-the-universe level. Black Widow in particular is really just a heightened spy thriller, with solid action sequences and typically strong work for Johansson, a consistent highlight of these films. Pugh has filled that role ably since then; every time she turns up, she’s a delight, and Thunderbolts places her center stage. The idea that these morally gray misfits might form a New Avengers is sort of a gag, but honestly? I’d be way more excited about Thunderbolts: Doomsday.
Stream Black Widow on Disney+
