The Marvel Cinematic Universe may have had a bumpy ride lately, but it remains the biggest blockbuster franchise of all time. 2024 was Marvel's chance to fix the MCU before it was too lateand, to that end, the company has certainly undertaken some bold changes. First, Marvel Studios announced the return of Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr. in the upcoming Avengers: Judgment Day, in which he will play legendary Marvel villain Victor Von Doom. The company has also released only one film in 2024, "Deadpool & Wolverine" which destroys the box office, suggesting studio head Kevin Feige finally got the message across about superhero glut and so-called fatigue.

If the MCU manages to turn things around, it will be a major comeback. But returning to the heights of the MCU's golden years won't be easy. Whether you're a fan of the saga or not, its decade-long dominance at the box office has culminated in some of the highest-grossing and most culturally influential films of modern times, bringing the Infinity Saga to a close and launching the Multiverse Saga in the process. Since then, movies like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and streaming series like Secret Invasion have severely degraded the franchise's standing, leading to Marvel's current dilemma.

With the MCU in recalibration mode, then, we can finally take a moment to assess its cultural impact, with books like "MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios" signaling that enough time has passed to try to understand this juggernaut franchise in the context of recent history. As we take stock of the MCU's impact over the past decade or so, we took a look to see if any of the films managed to break through IMDbList of 250 Greatest Movies. As it turns out, three of them made the cut.

You may already have an idea of ​​which movies have made the IMDb list, but you might be surprised to find out the highest rated Marvel film on Rotten Tomatoes it is nowhere to be found. Instead, we have the films that managed to cause something of a cultural stir when they debuted, as they have since the height of the MCU's success. It's worth noting that we're not talking about non-MCU movies here, so no Spider-Verse movies or Sony Spider-Man Universe (SSU) movies in general.

If you guessed that the last two Avengers movies in the Infinity Saga would do the trick, you'd be right. Both films managed to break into the top 100, with Avengers: Infinity War coming in at number 61 with a score of 8.4 stars out of 10, while Avengers: Endgame came in at number 77 with the same score from 8.4. Why are two movies with the same rating so far apart? Well, normally you'd expect the difference to be based on how many user votes make up the total scores, but since both movies have 1.3 million votes, that remains a bit of a mystery. These IMDb lists are compiled using ratings from the website's users, and based on that logic, the two Avengers movies should be next to each other, given that there are several movies between the two with the same overall rating and less total marks. Either way, Kevin Feige can rest easy knowing that the MCU managed to land two movies in the top 100.

So what other MCU movie made it to the top 250 on IMDb? You might expect Iron Man, the movie that launched the entire franchise and changed Hollywood foreverto be there somewhere. Or maybe "Captain America: Civil War" with its historic breakup of the alliance of Marvel heroes. Well, it's neither of those.

At No. 172 on IMDb's list is 2021's Spider-Man No Way Home, which has an 8.2 rating based on 925,000 votes. Another Avengers-level event movie, No Way Home became its own worldwide cultural phenomenon when it hit theaters, grossing nearly $2 billion in the process. In fact, all three MCU films on IMDb's top 250 list are some of the highest-grossing films of all time in the saga.

Avengers: Endgame is the second-highest-grossing film of all time, with box office receipts of $2.8 billion, while Avengers: Infinity War is sixth with $2,052,415,039 world gross. Meanwhile, No Way Home is right behind the Avengers films, ranking as the seventh highest-grossing film of all time. In short, then, the three MCU movies in IMDb's top 250 best movies are the same three MCU movies in the top 10 highest-grossing movies of all time. What that says about the movies, or IMDb for that matter, isn't entirely clear, though it does seem to reinforce the idea that the MCU is at its best when delivering these event movies — all of which is just evidence in favor of my long-held belief that this are the only type of movies Marvel should ever put out if they want to rekindle the magic.