10 Criminally Low IMDb Movie Ratings You Won’t Believe

10. Captain America: The First Avenger

IMDb Rating: 6.8

There's a danger going forward with the incredibly popular (and, post-Avengers, rightfully so) Marvel Cinematic Universe that people's affections for Groot and Ultron will retroactively cause people to wrongfully re-evalutate the more middling early entries.

It's easy to forget, but, until The Avengers, Marvel hadn't really hit it out of the park. The central conceit of a shared superhero universe was a questionable one, and they seemed to be more than happy churning out serviceable blockbusters, than anything all that groundbreaking. Go watch the original Iron Man and be ready for a big surprise - outside of the novel opening, it's straight out of the superhero formula rulebook, but because of that short post-credits scene everyone loves it. How long is it until someone starts calling Iron Man 2, which committed all of The Amazing Spider-Man 2's major issues half a decade earlier, a misunderstood masterpiece?

Before the team-up, Captain America: The First Avenger was far and above the series' best. It a fun throwback that showed the world the most hokey of the central Marvel line-up wasn't the tacky patriot everyone dismissed him as, with a final reveal punctuated the typical superhero love interest sub-plot with meaning. Joe Johnston had always seemed to be obsessed with aping Spielberg, but here that worked; as referenced in a throw-away comment, The First Avengers has a MacGuffin link to Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

And yet it's the lowest rated Marvel movie, not just of Phase 1, but the whole enterprise. Yes, even Iron Man 2 - that has a pretty respectable 7.1.