Avengers: Might have been expecting a little too much. It wasn't bad but it definitely doesn't rank up there with the top comic book movies. A little long but I'm not really sure they could have shortened anything; the story was already pretty thin. Hawkeye might be the worst superhero ever. 3/5
Agreed. It was entertaining but I think it made so much money because of the perfect storm it walked in to. Not much else to knock it from the box office, a wide range of lead-up films to build the audience. But I thought both Iron Man's were better on their own, thought Thor was as good, and had little use for Captain America.
I watched Thor over the holidays as I wanted to see it before Avengers, and ended up watching Avengers the next day. In the grand scheme of comic book/superhero movies, I liked Thor a good bit, possibly most of all because it felt like it took itself less seriously than the rest of the genre for the most part. As for Avengers, why wouldnt it rank up with the best of the bunch? Once again for the genre, I loved it. My biggest complaint with Thor would probably be that I found Loki, or at least the actor playing him, pretty bad and not believable at all (this is the guy keeping Thor off the throne?!). So seeing him as the primary villain in Avengers was disappointing, and I think made for a weaker plot with less backstory (and is my biggest complaint), but using Loki/Thor's realm made for a great final half hour and the best action I recall from any of these movies.Now I consider Nolan's Batman films to be on a whole other level than the rest of the genre so I wont bother ranking them, but if I were to rank the rest of the comic book movies off the top of my head Id say something like:
Avengers
Iron Man
X-Men First Class
Spider Man 2
Blade
Blade II
Spider Man
X-Men 2
Iron Man 2
X-Men
The Incredible Hulk
Hulk
Thor
Hellboy
The Punisher: War Zone
Blade: Trinity
Captain America
The Punisher
Spider Man 3
Wolverine
X-Men: Last Stand
Superman Returns
...and then the truly awful ones like Green Lantern, Daredevil, Fantastic Fours, Ghost Riders, etc
I think thats most of whats been made in the last 10-15 years. I left Watchmen out because Id like to see it again as I dont remember much from it, but it was at least in the middle group.
ETA: a few movies I left out as I was re-arranging my order