10 Movies Rated Fresh On Rotten Tomatoes That Would Be Rotten If Released Today

10. Iron Man 2

Forget the erroneous claims of Marvel paying off critics - the reason MCU films are so widely praised is because they tend to be pretty good. If you go back to the pre-Avengers Phase 1, however, it's not as assured as things are now. The Incredible Hulk actually does have a Rotten rating (it's pretty much ignored by all but purists though), and if we were to get everyone to reassess the early entries of the series stalwarts we'd likely see Iron Man 2 joining it.

Iron Man 2 came in that superhero sweet spot where the original love of the basic idea of comic book movies was waning, but treating it as a genuine, nuanced genre, thanks to the 2008 doubly-whammy of Iron Man and The Dark Knight, was all the rage. On the back of that, a sequel to the former was treated with undue (and ultimately unfair) reverence.

There is stuff to like in the movie - Robert Downey Jr. is still great as the lead - but it's a bit of muddle, with a lazy, convoluted plot and desperate over-reliance on setting up The Avengers. The Batman V Superman parallels are potent, and while it's nothing close to that trainwreck, ten Marvel movies later critics would be unlikely to be as willing to let that stuff slide.