How to Watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies in Order

Back in 2008, Robert Downey Jr. kickstarted the franchise with Iron Man, a hugely influential movie that basically established the comedic tone and colourful aesthetic of the MCU. If you’re a fan of RDJ in general (or have only seen him in later instalments, like his great performance in Avengers: Endgame), we recommend going back to see him put on the suit for the first time.

Co-starring Jeff Bridges as the main antagonist, the movie charts Tony Stark’s journey from being an arms-dealing, playboy billionaire to becoming the eponymous superhero… if also still a playboy billionaire.

The Incredible Hulk is a bit of an outlier as it’s basically the only blip in the continuity of the early MCU movies. This is one of the only times that Marvel had to recast one of their heroes, so if you’re curious what the world would look like if Mark Ruffalo never took on the role of the big green smashing machine, you might want to check it out. 

The only standalone Hulk movie in the MCU stars Edward Norton as Bruce Banner and Tim Roth as Abomination; you might be keen to see his first appearance in the role if you also enjoyed Roth’s performance in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.

Downey Jr. really got to sink his teeth into the role with Iron Man 2, a classic follow-up movie in which the hero faces a crisis of confidence in the face of a new and more powerful foe—think Spider-Man 2, Rocky III, Toy Story 2 and so on and so on.

This is the movie that boasted both Scarlet Johansson’s first appearance as Black Widow and Mickey Rourke’s return to big-budget cinema after his comeback success with The Wrestler. If you’re a fan of the actor’s work, seeing him camp it up here as the villainous Ivan Vanko is a blast. 

It’s strange to imagine now, but it actually took a few years before the MCU discovered that Thor was inherently funny. Regardless, there’s still plenty of fun to be had with this origin story from 2011, not least for the fact that it’s the film that introduced Tom Hiddleston’s Loki to the world—and if you like how that character has been developed in recent years, it’s really worth going back to remind yourself just how deliciously conniving he used to be in the early years of the MCU. 

Thor was also directed by the prestige-y filmmaker Kenneth Branagh, so if you liked his recent, very personal film, Belfast, you might also be interested in seeing him working on this kind of scale. 

Steve Rogers’ first appearance in the MCU, Captain America: The First Avenger, is, IMO, the best of the early run of establishing movies. It’s set during the Second World War, focusing on how Rogers got his abilities and became a national hero—so those who appreciate the kind of superhero movies that take place during tumultuous historical events (think Wonder Woman and Days of Future Past), will definitely enjoy it.

While also introducing Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), the movie perfectly established Cap’s earnest, unironic and steadfast heroism—providing the perfect Ying to Stark’s Yang for years to come.

For all of The Avengers’ incredible ambition, it’s amazing how light on its feet the movie is. Joss Whedon might not be the most popular filmmaker these days, but no one can claim he didn’t absolutely nail the tone of the first MCU team-up movie. If you like the MCU movies for the playful banter between heroes (usually of comically varying abilities), they don’t get much quippier or more finely balanced than this one. 

This is the movie that introduced Ruffalo’s Hulk and Renner’s Hawkeye and gave Hiddleston some of his juiciest scenes. It’s a classic of the genre.

Entering Phase 2, after risking his life in the battle of New York, the MCU simply had to give Tony Stark another crisis of confidence in Iron Man 3. Thankfully, they also brought in RDJ’s old collaborator Shane Black to write and direct—and if you appreciate Black’s work on movies like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys, you’ll easily warm to the cool, Hollywood tone of this one. 

Iron Man 3 also features one of the more controversial antagonists in the MCU—but if you’re willing to get past the diversion Black takes from the comics with him (no spoilers), he’s also one of the most fun.

Thor: The Dark World is one of the worst-reviewed movies in the MCU, but I think it’s better than you might remember it. Hiddleston’s performance as Loki, in particular, offers the first glimmers of the antihero we’ve come to know, and the brotherly conflict between him and Thor leans interestingly towards its Greek tragedy roots—watching it upon release, I was reminded a bit of Golum’s story arc during the Dead Marshes sequences in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

This is also the first movie that seemed to realise the character’s comedic potential—the images of Thor simply riding the London underground or trying to find somewhere to hang Mjolnir still make me chuckle.

The Russo brothers' first entry in the MCU, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, remains a high watermark for the franchise—a movie that drew from the paranoia of 1970s classics like The Parallax View and All the President’s Men to tell a story about spies, surveillance and conspiracies.

The final showdown remains one of the most outlandish and bombastic in the whole MCU, but the earlier sequences (including one phenomenal car chase and an incredible close-quarters fight in an elevator) raised the bar for superhero action scenes. 

By the time the MCU got to making Guardians of the Galaxy, their tenth movie in just over six years, fans had started to wonder what would happen when they ran out of familiar stories to tell. James Gunn, as we all now know, had all the answers—and if you’re a fan of the energy that he more recently brought to The Suicide Squad and Superman, you’ll want to go back and check this one out. 

Introducing Rocket, Groot, Gomorra and Drax as if we’d known them all our lives, the movie was an enormous, eye-poppingly inventive success and confirmed the deep bench that Marvel had at their disposal—both in front of and behind the camera.