4. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
The Score: 3 StarsThe Avenger's Role: Okay, so admittedly this is a
slight twist of the rules here. Tony Stark made no appearances in Captain America's origins film beyond his cameos in the Avengers teaser trailer staged after the credits, but his father had a small role to play within the World War Two narrative. Howard Stark was one of the chief scientists of the Super Soldier Project that Steve Rogers found himself a part of, and he hooked up with military forces and SHIELD agents as the narrative progressed. Ultimately, Stark was unable to find Rogers' body in the wreckage of the Red Skull's armada, but Tony's father did at least stumble upon something which Loki had deemed "worth a look" in the post-credits sequence of Thor, the mysterious Cosmic Cube, better known as the Tesseract...
The Review: Where Iron Man side-stepped many of the dull tropes of superhero origins movies gone by, particularly in its use of the WW2 setting The First Avenger sadly falls prey to some of those same pitfalls. Thankfully, Chris Evans is an extremely likeable protagonist and Hayley Atwell's Penny is a brilliant, criminally underused character who we'll cherish within the ranks of superhero love interests. Dominic Cooper channelled his inner Robert Downey Jr. brilliantly too, echoing much of the same outlandish nature of his character's son in the days of war.