Ranking Every MCU Film From Worst To Best

12. Thor: The Dark World

Given Marvel's track record and Pixar-like agenda to making hit after hit after hit, the chances of them ever making a film as bad as Thor: The Dark World are hopefully slim. 

Despite some good ideas - Loki as Hannibal Lecter, the death of Frigga and the appearance of the Infinity Stone/Aether - the best elements are painfully undercooked and it takes way too long to develop to the point where it's actually entertaining. 

There's just about enough in there for Loki fans to get excited about, thanks mostly to Tom Hiddleston's inevitably scene-stealing performance and Chris Hemsworth still fills the armour well. But for the first time with Thor, the fact that his solo world is a little silly showed: perhaps because Alan Taylor didn't quite embrace the theatricality that Kenneth Branagh had brought to the first film. And it wasn't like the film could fall back on the culture clash element that works so well for Thor's position in the wider MCU, where there's pleasure to be had in his clashes with the "normal world".

Dropped back into his own world with dark elves (another wasted idea), Thor just isn't as interesting on his own. Hopefully, the third film - with its promise of greater stakes and closer ties to the rest of the MCU - will do better.