Iron Man: Ranking All Of Robert Downey Jr.'s MCU Performances From Worst To Best

It may be difficult to remember now, but there was a huge amount of skepticism leading up the release of Joss Whedon's The Avengers. Coming off of Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger (none of which were as unanimously warmly received at the time as they are now), there were genuine questions about whether Marvel could pull this cross-over off. Even people inside of Marvel Studios, such as Jon Favreau, were openly talking about how they weren't really sure that mashing up all these different characters and tones was really going to work.

And then, of course, it came out, received the best reviews of the franchise so far and made all of the money at the box office and no one ever questioned it again. But one of the biggest surprises of The Avengers is just how excellent Downey is as Stark here. After the lukewarm Iron Man 2, he came out hungry and swinging once again here, positively ripping into Whedon's dialogue and giving his strongest performance as-of-yet as the character.

Whedon's script weaves the character arcs of each character so wonderfully into the plot, but perhaps none are as well done as Stark's. This allowed Downey to explore the depths of the character's frustration and despair at their failure and channel that into a performance that was both rousing and emotionally affecting in the third act. It is all-around brilliant and cemented his legacy as one of the MCU's most powerful assets.