9 most disappointing Marvel movies, ranked
8. Eternals
While many fans were worried for the MCU’s future after Avengers: Endgame premiered, it seemed Marvel had no intention of slowing down. After Phase 4 was announced, two projects caught everyone’s attention: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Eternals. After all, they would introduce brand-new heroes on the big screen and they were also the perfect opportunity for Marvel to prove they could still tell entertaining stories without characters like Iron Man or Captain America.
Fans were skeptical in the beginning, but news regarding Eternals quickly started to roll out. First of all, it was announced that Chloé Zhao signed as the movie’s director. That surely alleviated some of the worries, especially considering Chloé is an amazing filmmaker who had just won an award for her exceptional work in Nomadland. Shortly after that, Kevin Feige said the Eternals pitch was the best he’d ever heard out of all of the superhero projects he’d worked on. That statement blew everybody’s mind. If the leading man behind the MCU had such high praise for the Eternals, then maybe Marvel was set to create something unique with it.
Even if Phase 4 started a little bit clumsy with Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings premiered to amazing critical reception. Its great success made audiences optimistic about the MCU’s next project, and wouldn’t you know it, that was Eternals. The movie, which was filled with an all-star cast, was slowly gaining more and more excitement. After all, Marvel had a history of making great films about an unknown group of superheroes in the past. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to assume that was set to happen once again.
Unfortunately, Eternals couldn’t quite hit the mark. It was Marvel’s first true miss on Rotten Tomatoes and the first sign that maybe Phase 4 wasn’t shaping up to be all that great. Worse of all is that the film truly felt unlike anything Marvel had ever done before. Maybe if it had been a success then more risks would’ve been taken with projects such as Thor: Love and Thunder or Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. But even if the film’s script and pacing were the true culprits behind its underwhelming reception, maybe Marvel just decided to play it safe from that point onwards.