9 most disappointing Marvel movies, ranked
7. Iron Man 2
It may have been released long ago, but we haven’t forgotten about it.
Iron Man 2 could be considered the first major MCU disappointment ever. Granted, The Incredible Hulk premiered before it, and it can be argued Edward Norton’s first and only go as Bruce Banner had a worse reception than Iron Man’s second stand-alone adventure. However, the big difference between those two projects was the amount of expectations people had before entering the theater.
The very first Iron Man movie was an incredible success and a refreshing surprise for audiences around the world. In a time when superhero movies weren’t as popular as they are today (and Iron Man wasn’t a household character either), Jon Favreau needed to craft an amazing and unique film for Marvel to use as a foundation to build a universe of interconnected stories. Fortunately, that’s exactly what he did. Everybody fell in love with the reckless billionaire, and we were all eager to see where his adventures would take him next. After all, sequels can expand on the things that worked right the first time around and fix whatever mistakes were made along the way.
Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 and X-Men: United proved it was more than possible to create a successful follow-up to an already excellent superhero movie, so it wasn’t a surprise many expected Iron Man 2 to go down that road. Unfortunately, the movie couldn’t quite reach those same heights. Instead, it went the opposite way and delivered a narrative that didn’t turn out to be memorable even if it wasn’t necessarily bad. It was just… disappointing.
Iron Man 2 couldn’t decide if it wanted to double down on Tony’s alcoholism, on the world-building, or on the storyline that saw the government try to get its hands on the Iron Man armor. In the end, it tried to be many different things without succeeding in most aspects. Even when the film itself isn’t as bad as people say, we can’t deny it didn’t meet the high expectations it had on its shoulders either.
Every character and plot line felt undercooked and without enough depth to be memorable. The villains didn’t have any redeeming qualities whatsoever, and how could they? We barely spent any time getting to know them or their motivations. And even though we were introduced to key characters such as War Machine and Black Widow, neither one of them was a major driving force behind the movie’s story. Instead, their roles mostly came down to beating down bad guys and, occasionally, Tony himself. This is one of those instances when the motto “less is more” could’ve proven to be right.