Every Single MCU Film Ranked From Worst To Best

7. Iron Man 3

When Marvel had a second rocky bump in their MCU plans with Iron Man 2, you could have been forgiven for thinking Iron Man would be shunted into a lesser veteran role in the Avengers movies and taken away from solo movie duty. But then Marvel hired Shane Black - rather ingeniously - and combined him with an exceptional script from Drew Pearce to create a charming, intelligent film that dealt with the fall-out of The Avengers and expanded on key Tony Stark issues organically.

Sure, there's temptation to reduce the entire thing to a single twisty story decision, but Iron Man 3 is far more than its Mandarin conceit. It has heart, threat and spectacle in perfect measures, and it even gives Pepper Potts something to do, which is something Jon Favreau and Joss Whedon had failed to do.

The film takes in buddy cop movie dynamics, humour and Black's usual nostalgic eye for action movie tropes, adds a great villain (and yes that does include the idea of The Mandarin as a false front), and while Marvel were compelled to apologise for the twist, they really didn't need to.