Ranking the Franchise - The Avengers

I’ve already rewatched and ranked the “Iron Man” and “Thor” series, so now it’s time for the assembly: The Avengers. And however I did rewatch them, again, it’s not a punishment because all the movies have so much to love. If I had to rank all the MCU movies, they would probably all make it to my top 10. But just between the four of them, here is my official ranking (and like with “The Lord of the Rings”, there really isn’t a bad one).

4. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
An entertaining sequel to “The Avengers”, in which heroes Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Black Widow and Hawkeye, supplemented with a bunch of sidekicks, have to save the world from evil again. This time it’s Ultron, voiced excellently by James Spader. He is a runaway supercomputer that manifests itself as a robot army. The formula hasn’t changed much, especially the relativizing humor remains fun. Maybe the more calm an personal moments feel a bit out of place and take the tempo out of it, which make it my least favorite of the bunch. But I still love this film.

3. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
The creators of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which started in 2008 with “Iron Man”, promised us to end the first decade with a resounding, emotional climax. And they kept their promise. The Marvel recipe of action, drama and humor is very well-balanced. After the grim cliffhanger of “Avengers: Infinity War”, the remaining heroes do everything they can do to undo the victory of super villain Thanos. Ingenious time leaps and references to previous films give the story a ‘greatest hits’ of characters. It’s long, but for the fans an extremely satisfying farewell to an era.

2. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
“Avengers: infinity War” was an epic film, with a lot of ambition. It did the almost impossible. Dozens of Marvel characters come together in an epic battle that has been going on a long time. In this film the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy compete against their greatest opponent to date: Thanos. He wants to use the Infinity Stones to wipe out half of all life in the universe. A mission in which he spares nothing and nobody and is willing to do anything. The build-up is great and I love seeing all these different heroes from all the franchises come together.

1. The Avengers (2012)
Can you even remember being excited about the fact that the Avengers assembled for the first time, when it was still just the six of them? We’ve been spoiled with all these epic assembly battles, but when it was just Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye these battle were epic on a smaller scale. And that this is still satisfying after seeing all those bombastic battles in the later films, make it an unforgettable film and modern day classic. I simply cannot fault this movie. Where the other three are all close to perfect, “The Avengers” that started this superhero team-up is perfection. From them meeting, trying to figure out how to work, struggling to work together, colliding and eventually saving New York City. Still my favorite of the four.