Marvel's Infinity Saga: Every MCU Movie Ranked Worst To Best

6. The Avengers (2012)

Someone once said that with great power comes great responsibility. It's also fair to say that with great success comes both great responsibility, great power to be more bold and great expectations. That's very much the tale of The Avengers.

With some pretty huge expectations on the first team-up, Joss Whedon proved himself more than capable of doing the job, and his restraint in using Loki as the main villain and allowing the Avengers the space to grow as a team was an inspired move. Sure, the addition of the Chitauri in the third act feels like a bit of a conceited move to escalate the drama falsely, but it's forgivable in the context of the rest of the film.

Whedon's eye for spectacle is one thing but it's his flair for balancing more human stories (inevitably with a tragic pay-off thrown in to tick his favourite box) that really makes the film soar. Even with the over-arching story being "let's save the world," we also get focus on Tony's personality issues and superiority complex, Cap's sense of alienation, the hints at Black Widow's history and the Hulk's split personality. Hawkeye's a little screwed, but someone had to be.