Have Marvel movies gotten worse since Avengers: Endgame? Yes and no, I did the math.

6 min readNov 12, 2023

The conventional wisdom with fans is that the quality of Marvel movies have suffered mightily in recent years, particularly with the transition from Phase 3 to Phase 4 which marked a turning point from Endgame’s conclusion of the Infinity Saga to the beginning of the Multiverse Saga. Phase 4 is also when Marvel’s output essentially doubled with the introduction of the Disney+ series.

Well as a nerd, I wanted to look into the actual data to be as objective as possible instead of just taking social media hot takes at face value.

Methodology

I’ll concede that it is somewhat absurd to attempt to objectively measure the quality of comic book movies, which are large-scale artistic endeavors, but I’m going to do it anyway.

I took all of the MCU movies and Disney+ TV series and put them in a spreadsheet along with their Rotten Tomatoes scores and crunched the numbers. I also included Metacritic and IMDB scores in my dataset, but Rotten Tomatoes is the most popular metric and the conclusions are the same when compared to Metacritic. I trust IMDB scores the least because it’s clear that female-led titles fare much worse in that arena.

I included the Disney+ series because unlike previous MCU TV, they are produced by Marvel Studios, so they have more bearing on how stretched the studio has become. Also, they are more-or-less produced just like Marvel films (though that will be changing).

Phase 1

Number of titles: 6
Average RT Score: 80.2
Number of titles above 90: 2
Number of titles above 70: 5
Number of titles below 60: 0
Top Rated: Iron Man (94)
Lowest Rated: The Incredible Hulk (67)

The MCU started strong with one of its top-rated titles ever, Iron Man, then capped it off with The Avengers which while also highly regarded it also made $1.5B at the worldwide box office. The franchise’s initial phase also garnered a respectable 80.2 TM score, a level of consistency that no other comic book property had achieved to this point other than The Dark Knight Trilogy.

Phase 2

Number of titles: 6
Average RT Score: 81.2
Number of titles above 90: 2
Number of titles above 70: 5
Number of titles below 60: 0
Top Rated: Guardians of the Galaxy (92)
Lowest Rated: Thor: The Dark World (67)

Marvel’s sophomore class of films is remarkably consistent with its debut slate. Thor 2 was widely viewed as a disappointment, but Guardians of the Galaxy showed that audiences had come to trust the brand enough to make this little-known band of misfits into a huge hit.

Phase 3

Number of titles: 11
Average RT Score: 89.2
Number of titles above 90: 6
Number of titles above 70: 11
Number of titles below 60: 0
Top Rated: Black Panther (96)
Lowest Rated: Captain Marvel (79)

The studio reaches its zenith both critically and commercially in Phase 3. Despite nearly doubling its output (though now over the course of four years versus three in Phase 2) Marvel’s average RT score increased to 89.2! All 11 films scored higher than 70 while only one scored less than 80.

Phase 3 includes Marvel’s highest grossing film ever (Avengers: Endgame) with a $2.8B worldwide gross that currently stands as the second highest gross of all time behind Avatar.

Black Panther is Marvel’s highest scoring film (if you don’t include TV) and the first comic book movie nominated for a Best Picture Oscar (though to be fair, it owes a debt to The Dark Knight, whose lack of nomination is believed to be the reason the Academy has expanded the number of Best Picture nominees).

Phase 4

Number of titles: 17
Average RT Score: 84.0
Number of titles above 90: 8
Number of titles above 70: 15
Number of titles below 60: 1
Top Rated: Ms Marvel (98)
Lowest Rated: Eternals (47)

There are three major pivots between Phases 3 and 4:

The Infinity Saga ends
Covid-19 causes the planned release schedule to shift
Disney+ launches

The number of titles increases again to 17, but they are released in the span of only two years, so Marvel completionists go from 18 months with no new content thanks to the pandemic, to a new movie or TV series launching every six weeks on average.

Phase 4 also experiments with animation (What If…?), blending of genres (WandaVision and Werewolf By Night), and using the Multiverse as a plot device to create team-ups that delighted fans (Spider-Man: No Way Home).

Does the quality suffer? There is certainly a drop from Phase 3, though that level of quality is hard to maintain for any studio, but the numbers suggest that it is still consistent with the first two phases. Critical consensus was greater than 90% for eight titles during this period, proving that Marvel is still capable of great quality, though it’s worth mentioning that only two of those were films (Shang-Chi and Spider-Man: No Way Home).

Ms Marvel is Marvel’s highest rated title of all time on the Tomatometer, though Metacritic places Black Panther at number one and IMDB gives that distinction to Loki Season 1. Black Panther is also RT and IMDB’s highest rated title if you only count movies.

Phase 4 did break the streak of freshness Marvel had enjoyed up to this point with Eternals landing decidedly in rotten territory.

Phase 5 (So Far)

Number of titles: 5
Average RT Score: 65.0
Number of titles above 90: 0
Number of titles above 70: 2
Number of titles below 60: 2
Top Rated: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 (82)
Lowest Rated: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (46)

It doesn’t really seem fair to include Phase 5 given the fact that it’s only halfway complete with five titles, however the pattern we see here is clearly troubling.

Already there are two titles below 60 and The Marvels is only slightly above at 62. The bright spots are Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 (82) and Loki Season 2 (81), but thus far this is the only phase that hasn’t yielded a single 90+ score (yet).

Conclusion

I was originally inspired to write this post and crunch the numbers after hearing complaints that Marvel had gone downhill in the post-Endgame/Disney+ era of the studio, but I believe that this gives Phase 4 a bad rap. Marvel released some of its best content in 2021 and 2022, however the increase in output also resulted in the studio’s quality floor reaching a new low.

What must be causing Kevin Feige and Bob Iger to press the panic button is the critical and commercial performance of Phase 5. 2023 is the year where the Marvel Studios brand has lost enough of its luster where audiences won’t show up to consume everything adorned with the Marvel logo. Quantumania grossed only $215M in the US ($476M worldwide), the lowest domestic gross since 2015’s Ant-Man. The Marvels has only started its theatrical run, but its opening domestic weekend was $47M, Marvel’s lowest ever and the previous low-water mark was The Incredible Hulk which opened to $55M 15 years ago.

Thankfully there is reason to be optimistic about Marvel’s future. Iger has stated publicly that Marvel needs to refocus on quality over quantity going forward (in part to get Disney’s streaming efforts into the black) and many projects have been canceled or delayed in an effort to ensure what does get released delights audiences (and critics) more consistently than what we’ve seen recently.

Even with big franchises, perhaps less is more.