Two thousand and eight was a great year. China hosted the Summer Olympics, the United States elected its first Black president, I moved to Salt Lake City to pursue my passion in short track speedskating, and Hollywood introduced us to Iron Man and The Dark Knight. For myself, and doubtless many others, this was the point at which my fascination with comic book adaptations began. Sure, I had watched Saturday morning cartoons of Batman and Spider-Man, and I enjoyed X-Men and Fantastic Four as much as anyone can enjoy those movies, but they hardly made me want to delve further into the source material. Then along came Robert Downey Jr. and Heath Ledger, and your girl was in love.
Okay, obsessed, but sometimes that can feel like love.
Through my wild fangirling over a dead guy and an older man, I learned the distinction between DC and Marvel comics, where Jack Kirby and Stan Lee came from, the convoluted, soap opera-esque storylines of each character’s love, betrayal, death and rebirth; the disappointing realization that there are too many series and interconnecting comics to just pick one and read beginning to end, and the seemingly colossal undertaking for Marvel to make a huge movie franchise, with Iron Man as its flagship. I remember being in disbelief that so many movies were going to spawn from a superhero I had never even heard of before, and over such a huge span of time. It was difficult to wrap my teenage head around.
Fast-forward nine years, and I’m walking out of the third installment of Thor feeling high on life. It’s the 17th feature-length film Marvel Studios has released to date, with Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 highly anticipated for 2018, not to mention the numerous Netflix series, TV shows, and other Phase III and post-Phase III films yet to come. Marvel has grown into a behemoth that DC can barely hope to compete with, and as I replayed Chris Hemsworth’s shorn and staticky Thor in my head I found myself thinking, How did we get here?
No, seriously. How did we get here? There’s so many fucking movies now I can barely keep track of what’s going on anymore (God bless the Internet for answering all my Infinity Stone questions, btw). I don’t remember the Hulk flying off into the sunset in Age of Ultron. I completely forgot Loki was the central force in Avengers, only recalling floating cyborg worm-things and armies of flying orcs ravaging New York City (and shawarma). And when was I told the Red Goop of Death in The Dark World was the Reality Stone? And what happened to it at the end of the movie??
That’s when I decided I needed a full refresher. Every Marvel movie released from Iron Man onward. In chronological order (according to this handy CNET list that includes TV series spin-offs).* A massive Marvel movie marathon—a Marvelthon. Because what else is a fangirl to do while she waits for the next one to come out, read the actual comics?! Nah.
And since I’m going through all these movies, I’ve decided to rank them in order of best to worst, while they’re all still fresh in my head. This is going to be fun, right? Right.