8. Tony Stark's PTSD - Iron Man 3
In stark contrast (pun intended) with the mishandled mortality anxiety and daddy issues of the deeply flawed Iron Man 2, it was Iron Man 3 that finally allowed Robert Downey Jr to scratch all the way through Tony Stark's overconfident exterior to the vulnerable man beneath. While the circumstances around his trauma (surviving a near-death experience after carrying a nuclear missile through a wormhole in space to stop an army of alien invaders) couldn't be more fantastical, the film's treatment of the psychological fallout is considerably more down to earth. Retroactively refreshingly less concerned with setting up future Marvel movies than many of the films the studio have released since The Avengers, Iron Man 3 keeps the focus squarely on Stark, whose refusal to slow down barely masks his inability to cope emotionally. All the scenes dealing with Stark's PTSD pack a punch, but to my mind the most heartbreaking is his early panic attack in a bar, when the crowds closing in around him send Stark running away in a flood of anxiety - but unable to escape the root of his own distress.