15 Highest Grossing Movies Of The Decade: Ranked Worst To Best

9. Avengers: Age Of Ultron

Worldwide Box Office: $1.405 billion

All-Time Ranking: #7

2010s Ranking: #5

How can a blockbuster that is overall entertaining and made almost one-and-a-half billion dollars worldwide be classed as a let-down? When it's from powerhouse Marvel and a follow-up to the biggest superhero movie of all time, that's when.

Age Of Ultron was pitched as The Empire Strikes Back to The Avengers' Star Wars, a high goal it really fell quite short of (even if some reviews actually made that comparison). The film kept throwing in lines that pushed that this was "the end" and that there "was no going back", yet between the muddying of the resolution of earlier movies (Tony Stark was Iron Man again, Thor had given up on his quiet life and S.H.I.E.L.D. had returned in all but name) and leaving most of its own threads hanging it felt like a flippant film, a placeholder while the MCU waited for Infinity War.

It's well covered that the movie was a trawl to make, wearing down the geek-messiah Joss Whedon, and the careless pacing and silly base ideas (Ultron kills Quicksilver after commandeering the Quinjet) certainly attest to that. It's still a nice slice of popcorn fun, especially because this series has nailed its casting across the board, but it could have been so much more.