The Best And Worst MCU Movies And Shows, Combining Critic And Audience Scores

There is an endless debate with a few different sides to it regarding Rotten Tomatoes that crops up every time a new big movie or show comes out. Either the critics score is the most important because they’re professionals and audience scores can be overtaken by fanboys. Or critics are snobs and the only score that matters is what the audience thinks. Or neither matters, and you should just decide for yourself. But I mean, who has the time to test-watch everything?

I’ve seen all the angles. Sometimes it seems like critics get it wrong. Other times it seems like audience scores are warped by positive or negative mass bombing. But one theory is that if you average the two scores, you get a more accurate picture of where the truth lies. So I’m going to try that.

I am going to rewrite an old list of the best MCU movies and shows (DCEU later) based on what happens when you combine the two scores together. And we’ll see where we are at the end of that. If there’s a tie, I gave it to critics score.

1. Spider-Man: No Way Home – 95.5 (93% critics, 98% audience)
2. Shang-Chi – 94.5 (91% critics, 98% audience)
3. What If…? – 93.5 (94% critics, 93% audience)
4. Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD – 93 (95% critics, 91% audience)
5. Iron Man – 92.5 (94% critics, 91% audience)
6. Spider-Man: Far From Home – 92.5 (90% critics, 95% audience)
7. Avengers Endgame – 92 (94% critics, 90% audience)
8. Guardians of the Galaxy – 92 (92% critics, 92% audience)
9. Loki – 91 (92% critics, 90% audience)
10. Marvel’s The Avengers – 91 (91% critics, 91% audience)
11. Captain America: The Winter Soldier – 91 (90% critics, 92% audience)
12. Daredevil – 90.5 (92% critics, 89% audience)
13. Hawkeye – 90.5 (92% critics, 89% audience)
14. Thor Ragnarok – 90 (93% critics, 87% audience)
15. Spider-Man: Homecoming – 89.5 (92% critics, 87% audience)
16. WandaVision – 89.5 (91% critics, 88% audience)
17. Captain America: Civil War – 89.5 (90% critics, 89% audience)
18. Ms. Marvel – 88.5 (97% critics, 80% audience)
19. Avengers Infinity War – 88 (85% critics, 91% audience)
20. Black Panther – 87.5 (96% critics, 79% audience)
21. Doctor Strange – 87.5 (89% critics, 86% audience)
22. Moon Knight – 87.5 (86% critics, 89% audience)
23. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – 86 (85% critics, 87% audience)
24. Black Widow – 85 (79% critics, 91% audience)
25. Ant-Man – 84 (83% critics, 85% audience)
26. Ant-Man and the Wasp – 83.5 (87% critics, 80% audience)
27. Marvel’s Agent Carter – 81.5 (86% critics, 77% audience)
28. Jessica Jones – 81.5 (83% critics, 80% audience)
29. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – 79.5 (74% critics, 85% audience)
30. Avengers: Age of Ultron- 79 (76% critics, 82% audience)
31. Luke Cage – 78.5 (87% critics, 70% audience)
32. Iron Man 3 – 78.5 (79% critics, 78% audience)
33. Captain America: The First Avenger – 77 (79% critics, 75% audience)
34. Thor – 76.5 (77% critics, 76% audience)
35. The Defenders – 74 (78% critics, 70% audience)
36. Iron Man 2 – 72 (71% critics, 71% audience)
37. Thor: The Dark World – 70.5 (66% critics, 75% audience)
38. The Punisher – 71 (64% critics, 78% audience)
39. Thor: Love and Thunder – 70.5 (64% critics, 77% audience)
40. The Incredible Hulk – 68 (67% critics, 69% audience)
41. Captain Marvel – 62 (79% critics, 45% audience)
42. Eternals – 62 (47% critics, 77% audience)
43. She-Hulk – 60 (85% critics, 34% audience)
44. Iron Fist – 52.5 (37% critics, 68% audience)
45. Inhumans – 27 (11% critics, 43% audience)

So, a few trends. Audience scores are generally higher than critics, but sometimes the two groups agree almost exactly like with What If…?, Guardians of the Galaxy and Marvel’s The Avengers. Everyone seems to agree that Iron Fist and Inhumans are the worst-ever things in the MCU. The top 5 are a little surprising, including Shang-Chi’s bonkers high audience score, which is impressively tied with No Way Home.

Okay phew, this will be much easier with the DCEU.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.