Every Marvel movie and show from Phase 4, ranked worst to best
By Daniel Roman
The past few years have been interesting for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After the grand finale of Avengers: Endgame, the architects behind the MCU were faced with the challenge of continuing to grow their media empire, both at the box office and on the streaming platform Disney+.
Marvel Studios has always divided the sections of its vast interconnected story into “phases,” typically with an Avengers film (or two) serving as the capstone. Phases 1-3 told the story of the Infinity Saga, which culminated with the epic battle against Thanos. But with Thanos defeated and major players like Robert Downey Jr (Iron Man) out of the picture, Phase 4 felt different. There was no big team-up of superheroes to mark its end. Instead, each movie and show is tied together by the theme of grief and moving on from the devastating events of the Infinity Saga.
During San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel announced that Phase 4 would culminate with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Now that Ryan Coogler’s follow-up to the award-wining Black Panther is out, we’ve seen all there is to see of Phase 4. So let us do the only reasonable thing nerds can do in such times, and rank all 16 movies and shows that make up Marvel’s Phase 4. Starting with the runt of the litter…
17. Eternals
It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly went wrong with Eternals. On paper, it should be a total slam-dunk: it has a stellar ensemble cast that includes Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Kumail Nanjiani, and Game of Thrones veterans Richard Madden and Kit Harington; it was helmed by Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao; and it promised to dive deep into an unexplored part of MCU lore while also telling a grand tale spread over centuries. Eternals seemed like a sure thing.
Unfortunately, the movie was much less than the sum of its parts. While the actors were excellent, many of them were criminally underutilized, which is perhaps inevitable with a cast this big. Eternals introduced the Celestials and Eternals into the lore, but they’ve hardly been mentioned since. And perhaps most bafflingly of all, the visually gorgeous Eternals was just kind of boring, which is hard to stomach for two hours and 38 minutes.
As of this writing, Eternals is the lowest rated Marvel movie on Rotten Tomatoes and the only one that’s considered “rotten,” which means it has an aggregated score of under 60%. Not even Kevin Feige can win ’em all.