Since its inception in 2008, The Marvel Cinematic Universe has provided some of the biggest
and best moments in film.
But not every Marvel movie is part of the MCU.
And the ones that aren't are often terrible.
Here's a countdown of the ten crappiest movies starring Marvel characters, going from best
of the worst, to the worst of the worst.
The third and final installment of Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man trilogy has one thing
going for it: it's the least bad of the very worst Marvel movies.
Overstuffed with too many characters and plotlines, 2007's Spider-Man 3 also veered straight into
camp with some truly weird and hokey scenes.
And the best parts are basically just rehashes of better moments from the first two Spider-Man
films.
Watching this, it's pretty easy to understand why the studio rebooted the franchise.
A solo Wolverine movie starring the beloved Hugh Jackman seemed like a no-brainer.
And that's exactly what 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine had: no brains.
For instance, the decision to include Deadpool but literally sew his mouth shut so he couldn't
make jokes deprived the character of, you know, his only actual purpose for existing.
And the rest of the film was even less fun, with an unrelentingly grim and tedious slog
through Logan's backstory.
This is one of the rare cases where the first entry in a trilogy was by far the worst.
Just ask Ryan Reynolds.
"hey!
It's me!
Don't scratch, just cleaning up the timeline!"
Speaking of movies that just aren't fun, Ang Lee's 2003 examination of Bruce Banner's tortured
psyche was kind of the opposite of a summer popcorn movie.
Lee's Hulk also featured some very iffy CGI at a time when the technology clearly wasn't
ready to do what they needed it to do.
Eric Bana did fine in the lead role, but the best thing that can be said for this one is
that it's failure helped pave the way for Marvel to get the film rights back to the
Hulk.
Before Chris Evans played Captain America, he was the arrogant yet suave Johnny Storm
in the first two installments of the Fantastic Four franchise.
So it's just as well that 2007's Rise of the Silver Surfer was such a dud that they never
made and released a third film.
Otherwise Evans wouldn't have been available to play Captain America.
What was so bad about it?
Well, beyond the boring CGI Silver Surfer himself, the movie featured a terrible version
of Doctor Doom and an even worse version of Galactus.
He should have been even scarier than Thanos, but instead, he was a giant cosmic space fart.
"That's gross."
Before Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel hit the scene, the comic book movie world was
severely lacking in female-led films.
Why?
Well, the craptacular 2005 flop Elektra is a big reason.
Nominally a spinoff of the 2003 film Daredevil, Elektra featured Jennifer Garner gamely wading
through a convoluted and tedious plot about an assassin for hire.
It was kind of like John Wick, except really bad in just about every way.
It earned a generous 11 percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and absolutely bombed
at the box office, convincing Hollywood for the next decade that fans didn't want to see
movies about female superheroes.
But we did!
We really did.
We just wanted those movies to be, y'know, good.
Ghost Rider
The 2007 stinkbomb Ghost Rider might not even make the top ten worst Nic Cage films.
But it's right up there with the worst Marvel movies ever.
How bad is it?
Signs point to terrible.
Some would argue that the sequel is even worse, but since that never would have existed without
this thing, the original still gets lower marks.
Thankfully, fans of the Ghost Rider character finally got a decent version when he appeared
on the TV series Agents of SHIELD.
Seriously, just watch that instead.
Calling the 2015 reboot of Fantastic Four a train wreck is a gross disservice to wrecked
trains.
Director Josh Trank and the execs at Fox reportedly clashed over the film from day one.
They were allegedly so unhappy with what he delivered that the studio commissioned rewrites
and reshoots without his involvement.
Trank claims they ruined his film, while other reports claimed he was disruptive and erratic
on set.
The film was such a colossal failure in every way that Disney allegedly fired Trank from
a planned Star Wars spinoff based just on what they had heard about Fantastic Four before
it was even released.
Ouch!
Adults today who can recall seeing Howard the Duck when they were kids might be surprised,
upon watching it now, just how creepy this movie truly is.
And not just for the scene where an anthropomorphic duck has adult relations with Lea Thompson.
"Maybe it's not a man you should be looking for."
"You think I might find happiness in the animal kingdom, ducky?"
No, there's plenty of other creepy stuff in this one too, which helps explain why this
was such a massive box office disaster.
Still, Howard the Duck has its cult followers, which explains why the character has made
cameos in MCU films like both Guardians of the Galaxy movies and Avengers: Endgame, and
why Thompson herself has talked about making a new Howard the Duck movie.
What a strange world we live in.
Long before Samuel L. Jackson donned the eyepatch and played Nick Fury for the MCU, Marvel's
top secret agent was played by another famous face: David Hasselhoff.
Yes, the Baywatch star and international singing sensation played the lead role in the 1998
TV movie Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
It featured incredible lines of dialogue such as this:
"i'll get that vampire's blood if I have to suck it from her neck!"
To say this version of Fury was a disaster is an understatement.
It earned a dismal 16 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and the series that the
movie was meant to launch never went forward.
There's one person who thinks it was good though: David Hasselhoff, who told movieline
in 2012
"I love Sam Jackson, but you know… my Nick Fury was the organic Nick Fury that was written
and discussed with Stan Lee before anyone got in there to change it."
"...score one for the free world."
Here it is, the worst of the worst: 1990's Captain America, which was so bad it's theatrical
run was cancelled before it could ever hit theaters.
Starring Matt Salinger, son of reclusive author J.D. Salinger, this cinematic loaf has earned
a lowly 7 percent critics score and 16 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Why?
Well, the production values are non-existent, the Red Skull was switched from German to
Italian for no apparent reason, and Captain America, the Sentinel of Liberty himself,
twice ditches his friends by pretending to be violently carsick.
"would you please pull over the car?
I am going to get sick."
"Are you okay?"
All of America thanks you, Chris Evans.
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