Even as a Marvel Fan, I Think These 8 Projects Are Objectively Bad

Loving Marvel doesn't mean loving everything Marvel puts out. In fact, being a longtime admirer often makes the disappointments sting harder—simply because you can see exactly what could have worked. At its best, the Marvel machine delivers character-driven spectacle, emotional payoff, and stories that feel both mythic and human. At its worst, it mistakes noise for momentum and brand recognition for storytelling.

The projects below aren't listed out of spite or internet pile-ons. They're here because each one represents a breakdown somewhere in the process—whether that's wasted potential, tonal confusion, rushed execution, or a fundamental misunderstanding of what made these characters compelling in the first place. Many had great casts. Some had fascinating premises. All of them, unfortunately, fell apart when it mattered most.

8 'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania' (2023)

On paper, this superhero threequel had a clear objective: turn Ant-Man from the MCU's low-stakes comfort food into a major multiverse player. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and his family are pulled into the Quantum Realm, where they encounter Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors)—a figure positioned as the next great existential threat to the MCU. It's a huge swing for a series previously defined by small-scale charm.

Sadly, the problem is that in chasing "epic," the film abandons everything that made Ant-Man work. The Quantum Realm is visually loud but emotionally hollow, filled with CGI creatures that never feel meaningful. The collective family dynamics are sidelined, the humor feels forced rather than organic, and even Kang loses his menace through muddled writing and narrative overexposure. Instead of feeling like a bold new chapter, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania plays like connective tissue stretched far past its breaking point.

7 'Thor Love and Thunder' (2022)

After Thor: Ragnarok struck a near perfect balance between humor and heart, Thor: Love and Thunder feels like a parody of success. The film leans so hard into jokes that it forgets to let any emotional moment breathe—even when its tale deals with heavy themes of grief, mortality, and god-killing vengeance.

Christian Bale's Gorr should've been an all-timer villain (as his performance naturally demands)—but sadly, he's sidelined in favor of increasingly frantic, Marvel-like comedy. Jane Foster's (Natalie Portman) cancer storyline is powerful in theory, but rushed in execution, while Thor (Chris Hemsworth) himself becomes less a character and more a running gag. What once felt fresh now feels indulgent, almost as if the creatives refused to hear that the joke's gone on too long. Hopefully, this characterization changes in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday—especially with what the teasers have hinted at.

6 'Kraven the Hunter' (2024)

Kraven has always been one of Spider-Man's most fascinating comic-book villains—primal, obsessive, and terrifyingly disciplined. So the decision to make him an antihero (without Spider-Man) already placed Kraven the Hunter on shaky ground. Making matters worse, the film compounds the problem by never clarifying what it wants to say about the man himself.

Sure, there are flashes of brutality and intensity, but they're undercut by a script that mistakes violence for depth. Without a meaningful moral conflict or strong emotional throughline, Kraven's (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) journey feels hollow and forgettable. It's a movie that wants gravitas without doing the narrative work to earn it. If only Taylor-Johnson had more time as the MCU's Quicksilver.

5 'Madame Web' (2024)

Set within Sony's increasingly confusing Spider-Man-adjacent universe, Madame Web follows Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) as she develops clairvoyant abilities and becomes entagled with the futures of several Spider-Women. Positioned as a grounded origin story steeped in fate and inevitability, the film sounds intriguing on paper. In execution, it's a mess.

The dialogue is stilted, the performances feel completely unguided, and the plot barely functions as a story. Instead of featuring grounded, psychological tension, the film offers tonal whiplash and unintentionally hilarous moments that undercut any sense of stakes. While it's undeniably campy (and meme-worthy), Madame Web ultimately feels like a film assembled by committee rather than crafted with intent.

4 'Marvel's Inhumans' (2017)

Following a military coup led by Maximus (Iwan Rheon), the royal family of Attilan—a hidden civilization of superhero beings—is forced to flee to Earth. Separated, depowered, and stripped of their authority, Black Bolt (Anson Mount) and his family must survive among humans while attempting to reclaiming their throne.

From its baffling early-IMAX rollout to its bargain-bin production values, Inhumans feels like a project Marvel wanted to rush through and forget. Key characters are flattened, visual effects are shockingly poor, and the narrative never justifies why these characters deserved their own standalone series—especially when Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D had already integrated the Inhumans far more successfully. Frankly, it's a rare Marvel outing that feels fundamentally broken at every level—concept, execution, and intent.

3 'Morbius' (2022)

Dr Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) is a brilliant scientist suffering from a rare blood disorder who experiments on himself in a desperate attempt to survive—only to transform into a vampire-like creature with superhuman abilities. It's a classic tragic-monster setup, and one that should have lent itself to psychlogical horror. Instead, Morbius wasn't only weird, but strangely lifeless.

The film feels stitched together from outdated superhero tropes, incoherent editing, and baffling tonal choices. Leto's sub-par performance never really finds an emotional center, the stakes feel artificial, and the world-building collapses under its own self-seriousness. It's not memorably terrible so much as aggressively hollow, which may be an even worse crime—though its accidental camp has at least secured it a bizarre afterlife online.

2 'Dark Phoenix' (2019)

Adapting the Dark Phoenix saga is no easy task (as they already know)—especially while also closing out Fox's long-running X-Men franchise. This film follows Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) after a cosmic incident amplifies her powers, destabilizing her psyche and the X-Men themselves. Unfortunately, Dark Phoenix repeats the exact mistakes of X-Men: The Last Stand, only with less urgency and conviction.

Emotional beats are rushed, villains are underwritten to the point of irrelevance, and Jean's descent into darkness never feels earned. Rather than being a tragedy about power and loss, Dark Phoenix plays like contractual obligation cinema—visually flat, emotionally hollow, and painfully aware that the franchise is already on its way out. It's such a shame this film falls into the pits of mis-characterizations and poor formulaic structuring. It's cast deserved better.

1 'Secret Invasion' (2023)

On paper, Secret Invasion should've been one of Marvel's most gripping projects. A paranoid thriller about Skrulls secretly replacing key figures on Earth—it promised high-stakes intrigue, gritty espionage, moral ambiguity, and a Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) story that actually reckoned with trust and consequence. Instead, the series unfolds as a strangely inert slog, where revelations land with a thud and the supposed infiltration rarely feels urgent or dangerous.

What makes Secret Invasion sting the most is how much potential it wastes. The Skrulls never feel threatening, major deaths land ithout impact, and paranoia is replaced by exposition dumps and rushed twists. Worst of all, the show fundamentally misunderstands its premise—secrecy and suspense are sidelined in favor of bland plotting and a messy CGI-heavy finale. If you want a genuinly effective "Secret Invasion"-style arc, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D season 4 handles the concept with far more tension, emotional weight, and narrative clarity with its LMD-pod.

Next: 10 Superhero Movies That Deliver Everything You Want from the Genre