The Only Three Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies In The IMDb Top 250 List

The Marvel Cinematic Universe might be having a rough go of late, but it remains the biggest blockbuster franchise of all time. 2024 was a chance for Marvel to fix the MCU before it was too late, and, to that end, the company certainly took some bold swings. For one, Marvel Studios announced the return of Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr. in the forthcoming "Avengers: Doomsday," in which he'll be playing legendary Marvel villain Victor Von Doom. The company also released just a single movie in 2024, the box office-obliterating "Deadpool & Wolverine," suggesting studio head Kevin Feige finally got the message about over-saturation and so-called superhero fatigue.

If the MCU does manage to turn things around, it will be a major comeback. But returning to the highs of the MCU's golden years isn't going to be easy. Whether you're a fan of the saga or not, its decade-long box office domination culminated in some of the highest-grossing and most culturally influential films of modern times, bringing the Infinity Saga to a close and kicking off the Multiverse Saga in the process. Since then, films such as "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" and streaming series such as "Secret Invasion" have seriously degraded the franchise's standing, leading to Marvel's current quandary.

With the MCU in recalibration mode, then, we can finally take a moment to assess its cultural impact, with books such as "MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios" signaling that enough time has passed for us to try to understand this juggernaut franchise in the context of recent history. While we're taking stock of the MCU's impact over the past decade or so, we had a look to see if any of the films managed to crack IMDb's list of the 250 best movies. As it turns out, three of them made the cut.

You might already have an idea of which movies made the IMDb list, but you might also be surprised to learn that the Marvel movie with the highest score on Rotten Tomatoes is nowhere to be seen. Instead, we have the films that managed to cause something of a cultural stir when they debuted, coming as they do from the apex of the MCU's success. It's worth noting that we're not talking about non-MCU movies here, so no "Spider-Verse" or Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU) films in general are being considered here.

If you guessed the final two "Avengers" movies in the Infinity Saga would make the cut, you'd be right. Both films managed to crack the top 100, with "Avengers: Infinity War" coming in at number 61 with a rating of 8.4 stars out of 10, while "Avengers: Endgame" hit number 77 with the same 8.4 score. Why are two films with the same rating so far apart? Well, typically you'd expect the difference to be based on how many user votes make up the overall scores, but since both films have 1.3 million votes it remains a bit of a mystery. These IMDb lists are compiled using ratings from the website users, and based on that logic, both "Avengers" movies should be side-by-side, considering there are several films between the two with the same overall score and fewer total ratings. Either way, Kevin Feige can rest easy knowing the MCU managed to get two films into the top 100.

So, what other MCU movie managed to rank in the IMDb top 250? You might expect "Iron Man," the film that launched the whole franchise and changed Hollywood forever, to be in there somewhere. Or perhaps "Captain America: Civil War" with its historic fracturing of the Marvel hero alliance. Well, it's neither of those.

Coming in at number 172 on the IMDb list is 2021's "Spider-Man No Way Home," which has an 8.2 rating based on 925,000 votes. Another "Avengers"-level event movie, "No Way Home" became its own cultural phenomenon worldwide when it hit theaters, making almost $2 billion in the process. In fact, all three MCU movies on the IMDb top 250 list are some of the saga's highest-grossing movies of all time.

"Avengers: Endgame" is the second highest-grossing movie of all time, with $2.8 billion in box office receipts, while "Avengers: Infinity War" is the sixth highest with a $2,052,415,039 worldwide gross. Meanwhile, "No Way Home" is right behind the "Avengers" movies, ranking as the seventh highest-grossing film of all time. In short then, the three MCU movies in the IMDb top 250 best films are the same three MCU movies in the top 10 highest-grossing films of all time. What that says about the movies, or IMDb for that matter, isn't entirely clear, though it seems to reinforce the idea that the MCU is at its best when it delivers these event films — all of which is just evidence in favor of my long-held belief that these are the only type of movies Marvel should ever put out if it wants to rekindle the magic.