The Bottom of the Barrel of The MCU

Hello fellow Marvelites. In this post, I will be talking about the lowest of lows in terms of quality in the MCU. The stinkers and the mediocre. Up to date, there are 66 released projects by Marvel Studios and Wonder Man will be project 67. As this is a subjective list, roughly 9% of the projects they’ve released in my opinion are subpar and I am going to talk about them in detail from best to worst. There are 6 films and shows I am going to talk about so strap yourselves in. Excelsior!

Secret Invasion

The one that had the most potential of all these is Secret Invasion. They had the whodunnit tone and the political thriller vibes starting strong. Ben Mendelsohn’s performance helped give it a leg up and I personally felt treated by Olivia Colman as Sonya Falsworth. Emilia Clarke was okay. Ben-Adir as Gravik was okay. The gripes are seeing Nick Fury old and broken and pathetic and the love story between him and his Skrull wifey. Snooze. You can definitely see that the show had great potential but somewhere it just mellowed out and stayed meh. It’s a mixed bag. The series is less than decent making it mediocre. It doesn’t have the strongest plot but it’s not quite all over the place either. I used to find the last episode a lot more ridiculous than I did on my 3rd watch. I don’t think it’s as silly now but still ridiculous how Gi’ah quickly adapted and used her powers for the sake of plot and yes……girl power.

Brave New World

Let me say first off that I think that putting Captain America, Hulk characters, and an Eternal-related plot device together obviously shows that the creativity for this film was non-existent and it was very uninspired. Sam Wilson and by extension Anthony Mackie, are not lead men. It doesn’t help that Wilson got his ass kicked. Doesn’t inspire me to want to root for him. I cared not at all for Falcon Jr. aka Joaquin Torres as the new Falcon and I don’t think I would’ve been affected if he died. Much as I like Isaiah Bradley, he’s just there and don’t get me started on Ruth Bat-Seraph. I don’t care if she is an ex-Black Widow, a girl of her stature ain’t taking down men twice as tall and three times as heavy. Not believable. Thunderbolt Ross being played by a different actor makes it feel like a different character. Who actually thought that would be a good idea? Seeing Giancarlo Esposito is nice but let’s not kid that he was wasted. Sterns as the villain was decent. Could’ve been better with better writing and plot. The last thing is the marketing for this movie was poorly done. Marvel Studios was probably so afraid that it’d fail that they revealed Red Hulk in the trailer and adamantium in a clip. Brain-dead moves there. Sam Wilson ain’t no Steve Rogers as President Ross so metafictionally says so.

Thor Love and Thunder

Thor is at his goofiest no thanks to Mr. Taika. He took what worked with Ragnarok and amped it up, albeit to the film’s discredit. Thor is just an aimless goofball travelling with the GOTG until he receives a distress call from Sif about Gorr the God Butcher. Speaking of Gorr, he’s downplayed and takes a backseat to Thor and Jane’s love story hence the subtitle of the movie. Are you all starting to see a pattern here? It feels like they’re making movies and shows for obligatory reasons and just to release content. Quantity. And it may truly be the case. The movies goes overboard with humour including those damned goats, Zeus and his ridiculousness, and Mjolnir being jealous of Stormbreaker? What in the actual fudge? When in the MCU has it ever shown or implied that Thor’s weapons are sentient? Odin’s spear and Zeus’s lightning bolt might as well be too. The fact that the film was focused on Thor and Jane’s love story instead of giving fans an actual comic-book or superhero-related was a huge waste of money, plot, and time. The Necrosword, a very powerful weapon in Marvel comics was just used as another one-time object and was unjustly portrayed, nowhere near the threat it posed from the source material. Gorr should have been much more developed and a much greater threat, this is effing Christian Bale we’re talking about! That’s a top-tier actor you don’t waste and expect the fans to forgive or forget. Nothing is to be taken seriously in this film, especially since they just brush over Gorr killing gods so we can Thor and Jane have their moments who the real comic-book fans do not care about. Thor makes stupid jokes about Asgardians eating kids in the past and also about the kidnapped kids not having to worry since they’ll probably all go to Valhalla. Why should we care about any of the gods? The stakes don’t feel real or serious enough. If watching this movie as part of a marathon or binging it, I can invest more with the characters and the story and Jane’s cancer but otherwise, alone, it’s bad. We’re going from mediocre into bad territory with this one. This one is on the line. This film jumps from plot point to plot point. More of a kids MCU film than for adults. Omnipotent City is just cringe. The god of dumplings? Seriously? Zeus is an outright joke. Utter stupidity. Remember this is only the 3rd movie out of 6 on here so this isn’t even the worst one! Thor is a clown fest my friends. Hopefully the Russos will redeem him in Doomsday, I trust them. Let me just finish this one by saying I didn’t feel for Korg when he died at all. Talos’s death had actual impact, not Korg. Lastly, what’s with the forced LGBT rainbow comment from Jane the Mighty Thor? Ugh.

The Marvels

What makes The Marvels lower than Love and Thunder is that L&T had more of a plot. That’s it. The Marvels is just wonky. As if Ms.Marvel wasn’t already kind of hard to keep up with because of thin explanations (still a good show, not on this list) this movie goes even thinner. All the female superhero protagonists with light-based powers become quantumly entangled for plot reasons. The craziest fact about this film is that this is only the 3rd time Carol Danvers has shown up since her superpower origin in 1995. She showed again in 2023 for the Battle of Earth and now 30 years later in 2025. The plot has to be the thinnest of all MCU films. Baddie Kree-girlie-boss Dar-Benn wants to fix her homeworld of Hala so she’s going around using one Quantum Band to jump across the galaxy/universe to steal an atmosphere, water, and a sun. All this because Carol’s actions offing the Supreme Intelligence caused a civil war that somehow, VERY INEXPLICABLY, caused Hala’s sun to die??? This is a very weak plot and you know it’s weak and bad when they can’t even explain what actually caused it. Hey guys, let’s make a movie and write a less-than-half-assed plot and just get it done with so we can say we made a movie that had Carol Danvers who is not even the main character so can it really be considered a sequel to Captain Marvel? Dar-Benn is a goofy villain and is not intimidating or a threat whatsoever. The fight choreography and CGI is abysmal. The movie is cheesy and corny and very clearly for girls but in a bad way. Hey, Agatha All Along is also for women but that one is done right as is Ms. Marvel, and Echo. The same cannot be said for the number 1 on this list. It’s convoluted and the Aladna chapter is so bad. Just why? I don’t know anyone who cares about the main cast because Brie did not sell it let alone Teyonah Parris or Iman Vellani. I’m sorry but it’s not a surprise it failed at the box office and after watching it a few times, you can see that it’s deserved.

Quantumania

The penultimate entry. This would be the worst-existing movie if not for the pointless existence of the first. Right off the bat, Cassie Lang’s characterization is awful. She’s intolerable. Who does she think she is talking to Scott like that? You know what I’m talking about. What has she done for the world? He’s saved her life and helped save the world from Thanos. Cassie is conveniently a genius for the plot’s sake but to be very fair…..I don’t know Cassie’s character in the comics so it may have truly translated. This is one film I can’t take seriously even more than L&T. Why? Because it tries to take itself so seriously that it falls flat. Love and Thunder is an actual circus with clowns all around. I can tolerate Thor 4, but not this. It’s so silly and brainless. Drinking the ooze? Come on. Taika may have gone overboard with the humour but Jeff Loveness just went off the rails here. You can tell he’s a hippie who takes too many drugs. The Kang thing actually works against the MCU because it connects to the very complex. complicated, and convoluted plot of Loki which, if I’m honest, doesn’t make sense and even diehards need to work their brains just to try and make sense of it and still get nowhere. I still like Loki and tried my hardest to make it sense, especially season 2. Quantumania is just bad. What is with the music when Bill Murray comes in? Is that supposed to tell us that he’s a cool character, because he is not. All we know from him is that he and Janet screwed. Ok then. MODOK, fucking MODOK, is an absolute joke, there’s no need to even go into that. I used to be annoyed on how it was unexplained how Kang was so powerful but on my last rewatch and after revisiting Victor Timely, I understood- he’s an inventor, makes sense. Whether watching chronologically or sequentially, why are we supposed to be afraid that Kang can control time? He hasn’t shown or demonstrated that he can do anything dangerous with it. I guess this is the film that teased what he was going to be capable of in Kang Dynasty but we all know that ain’t happening no more. Either way, I don’t feel anything menacing from him when he asks Scott if he’s killed him before. That supposed to be your biggest flex bruh? You getting beaten by ants and your aesthetic don’t help. Majors gives a good performance, probably the best in the movie, but the greatest tragedy is you can see the potential of the idea of pitting someone who manipulates time in a realm where time is irrelevant- I just think it was too complex for them to juggle and it shows. It was also an inspired move to pit two tech-based characters against each other. It should not be surprising that since Marvel Studios likes all their movies done a certain way, why it ended up the way it did. I don’t care about the oppressed Quantum Realmers but did feel bad for the guy who shoots light beams from his head when he died. The movie is easily forgettable, not rewatchable, and Hank, Janet, and Hope were all wastes. Shoehorned into the movie and many of the jokes don’t land. This is supposed to be the darkest, most serious Ant-Man and they still tried to make it funny because it’s an “Ant-Man” movie.

She-Hulk

Alright friendos, the bottom scraps of the barrel. The last remnants to scrape off with a chisel. She-Hulk itself. Let’s thank Jessica Gao for this tripe. It’s goofy. Cartoonish. Misandrist. We are to believe this garbage is canon? Skaar is canon? Where the hell is that going? Somebody please tell me. The Emil Blonsky subplot is odd, best way to say it and it’s character assassination. Gao seemed to think that because it’s a meta show that touching on woke topics would be a good idea like how many misogynist men are asking what the point of a female Hulk is when the male version already exists. There are many stupid and pointless subplots in that I won’t waste my fingers typing on. The things that people do care about in this are a joke. The CGI on She-Hulk is the worst I’ve seen in any MCU project. The Intelligencia, a braintrust group of the smartest villains in the comics, are turned into a social media hate forum. Anyone who compares Deadpool to this has half a brain. Deadpool is funny and doesn’t attack a demographic to appease to specific group. The 4th wallbreaking in this show is stupid. The whole thing is stupid. Nuff said guys.