10: Thor
Now we start getting into the nitty-gritty, because Marvel’s films generally have a baseline, for what stories they tell and to a degree, the quality they are. The question becomes, does the individual do what it set out to do well or is is compromised in some way? That’s the issue when it comes to Thor, two films attached together at birth. In the first film, there is the epic Shakespearan drama of Asgard, where a genuine dick gets his comeuppance from his morally-ambiguous but sensitive brother. In the second, there is some boring Earth stuff in a New Mexico town that looks suspiciously like a studio backlot and some arbitrary lesson learning.
Whether through budget or script problems, the film loses much of its momentum at that point and becomes more like Iron Man 2, serving future narratives. Still, there is something to be said for director Kenneth Branagh taking the previously “realistic” world of Iron Man and the Hulk and adding Norse Gods-who-are-actually-aliens without skipping a beat. For whatever reason, The Dark World deigned to spend more time on Earth while the upcoming third film Ragnarok appears to have learned this lesson, keeping Thor in outer space.
