In 1939, pulp magazine editor Martin Goodman decided to give the new medium a chance. He called his company “Opportunity”. Its first publication was a series called Marvel Comics.
Over time, the company’s main title became its name, and Marvel Comics has become synonymous with superheroes around the world. Although Marvel became one of the two dominant forces in comics in the mid-1960s, it took another 20 years before Marvel managed to put a movie in theaters, and almost 20 years before these adaptations came close to capturing the energy of Marvel literary Universe. 20 years after that, Marvel reached the top of the Hollywood food chain, releasing several films every year – at least in the years without global pandemics – and claiming the most successful box office title in history.
In the eight decades between Marvel Comics # 1 and the construction of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, more than 60 large-screen films were made from the company’s hundreds of properties. (This figure doesn’t include things like 1994 The Fantastic Four that was produced but never released, or several animated features straight to video, like Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow.) The list below contains them all, classified from the most brutally impossible entertainment to the most superhuman. It will be different from other lists like this based on the author’s personal prejudices (he is the guy who wrote an entire book about Spider-Man, after all), but it is nonetheless supported by a lifetime of research in this extremely stupid field.