The recent blockbuster hit film, Avengers: Infinity War, marks the 10th anniversary of Marvel Studios, the bold gambit that saw Marvel take control of its own intellectual property and say, "Hey, we can do the best movies about our own characters." The Marvel Cinematic Universe has only gotten bigger and better since Disney took control of Marvel, becoming one of the most dominant film franchises in movie history, with its top films now routinely hitting a billion dollars at the box office. What is especially remarkable about the success of the MCU is how long it took for films about Marvel's heroes to even become a regular thing at all!

There is an infamous story about how Marvel tried to throw pretty much the entire basis for the current MCU into its Spider-Man deal with Sony, with a Sony executive essentially mocking the offer, noting that Spider-Man was the only character worth optioning from Marvel. Billions of dollars later, there has rarely been a more foolish statement in film history. Still, there have been a bunch of Marvel movies made over the years outside of the MCU, primarily from the Fox X-Men deal and the Sony Spider-Man deal. Here, we will rank the 30 non-MCU Marvel films from worst to best.

30 CAPTAIN AMERICA

The very first film to be based on a Marvel Comics property was also likely the worst. In the late 1930s, Republic Studios, famous for their B-Movie westerns that launched the careers of John Wayne, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, also got into the lucrative serial business. Serials were short weekly films that would tell a continuous story. They were essentially the television shows of the pre-television era. Republic adapted a number of comic characters like Dick Tracy and Captain Marvel into the serial format.

Republic's final superhero serial adaptation was Captain America from Timely Comics (now known as Marvel Comics). The adaptation was beyond "loose," as Captain America was no longer soldier Steve Rogers, but was district attorney Grant Gardner, who has to fight against the mysterious Scarab, secretly a museum curator trying to collect a number of super weapons. Beyond the fact that the movie changed the set-up for Captain America entirely -- to the point where it is quite possible that this was intended to be another character and they just changed the name and costume to Captain America -- the movie was awful in and of itself. Actor Dick Purcell was out of shape and ended up dying of a heart attack soon after the filming concluded.

29 FANTASTIC FOUR (2015)

The film that might have effectively ruined the chances of Fox ever having a real Fantastic Four film franchise, 2015's Fantastic Four reboot was a true disaster. Director Josh Trank was coming off a surprise success with the "found footage" superhero film, Chronicle. It also starred Michael B. Jordan, so Trank included him in the film as the Human Torch -- possibly his only good move. The movie was ostensibly based on the Ultimate Fantastic Four comic book series, which had a different origin for the Fantastic Four than the normal comics, but the translation was a poor one.

The characters were paper thin and the film really suffered from the drastic reshoots that followed when the studio was aghast at the original version of the movie. Complete plot points from Trank's original version were dropped completely. There are moments in the film where it becomes obvious that you are watching two very different movies -- the original Trank version and the hastily put together re-shot version. Neither are any good. It is a complete train wreck. We can say this much -- Kate Mara and Jamie Bell, who played the Invisible Woman and the Thing, at least got married after meeting during the filming, so the movie was not a complete waste of time!

28 ELEKTRA

One of the strangest things about 2005's Elektra is that it was a spinoff of a film, Daredevil, that was not even much of a success on its own! It is very rare that you actually see a disappointing film given its own sequel, let alone a spinoff film. Elektra was likely done on a small budget, or at least we should say that we hope that it was done on a small budget because that is certainly what it looks like. Elektra is essentially a TV movie quality movie blown up into a feature film.

The movie tries to mix in mystical drama with traditional superhero flair, but it fails at doing so. Jennifer Gardner, sadly, is not given a whole lot to do in the film besides look pretty. The fight scenes are so bad that it almost looks like Garner's stunt double is doubling for her in the acting scenes, as well. We mentioned Republic Pictures before; well, this is the modern day equivalent of the B-Movie films that Republic used to churn out every week back in the early 1940s. Goran Visnjic, at least, gave a respectable performance as Elektra's love interest in the film. The movie did not even have Daredevil cameo in it!

27 GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE

Whatever charm that was leftover from Nicolas Cage's over-the-top performance as Johnny Blaze in the first Ghost Rider film was lost in this sequel, which wasted a strong performance by Idris Elba early in the film as an alcoholic priest who brings Blaze into a supernatural conspiracy. There are a few scenes where Cage and Ciaran Hinds, who plays the devil, seemingly try to see who can go further over the top in their interactions with each other. There are no winners in these matches, especially not the audience.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of this sequel, which came out five years after the first Ghost Rider film, is the fact that the special effects budget was dramatically reduced from the first film. When you have a character whose default state still requires some elaborate special effects, as the Ghost Rider's skull is constantly on fire, then when you reduce the budget from $110 million to $57 million, that reduced budget is blatantly obvious in how bad the movie looks at times. When you combine an almost non-existent plot with terrible special effects, you end up with a film that was so bad that Cage announced it as his last time playing the role of Johnny Blaze, despite the movie actually doing pretty well at the box office.

26 PUNISHER

In the late 1980s, Marvel seemed poised to actually see a few of their characters make it into movie theaters, but ultimately, both 1990's Captain America, starring Matt Salinger, and 1989's The Punisher, starring Dolph Lundgren, ended up being direct-to-video movies. What's amazing, though, is when the Punisher finally made his major motion picture debut in 2004's The Punisher, it really was not all that more impressive than Lundgren's by-the-books original version. The big difference is that producers of the 2004 version at least knew that they had to include the Punisher's famous logo on his chest, something that Lundgren's version inexplicably dropped.

Otherwise, though, the new take on the Punisher as a former FBI undercover agent mostly missed the mark, taking the character far enough away from his original premise that it did not feel like a Punisher story. What is crazy is that the set-up for the Punisher is so simple and easy to achieve, so it is shocking how often filmmakers fail to make it work. Thomas Jane, though, was more than game as the lead character. He certainly did his share in making the movie as good as it possibly could be. John Travolta's scenery-chewing villain was not a good move, though.

25 GHOST RIDER

In many ways, the original Ghost Rider film was like a souped-up version of the disappointing sequel. Nicolas Cage gave a very similar acting performance in both films, but the manic energy that he brought to his acting fit better in the overall more "professional" film. Cage was so pumped about the role that he got himself into shockingly good shape to play Johnny Blaze. This is what made it all the stranger when the filmmakers still chose to use computer graphics to mold Cage's bare chest in some topless scenes. He was ripped in real life and yet they still made him a little more buff with special effects.

Beyond the much stronger special effects in the first film, perhaps the biggest difference between the two films came in the female lead. Eva Mendes is a strong actress and her chemistry with Cage was great and really made the material better than it could have been in the hands of lesser actors. The movie also had a strong supporting cast, from the villainous Wes Bentley to Blaze's allies, played by Sam Elliot and Donal Logue. Peter Fonda played the devil in the film and he managed to be slightly more restrained in the role than his replacement, Ciaran Hinds, in the sequel.

24 FANTASTIC FOUR (2005)

Like Captain America and the Punisher, there was also almost a Fantastic Four film in the theaters much earlier than you would have expected, but the Bernd Eichinger and Roger Corman-produced Fantastic Four was ultimately pulled from release before it would have come out in 1994. Eichinger was, in effect, paid off by Marvel to not release the low-budget film. The thought was that it would be too embarrassing to Marvel. Luckily for Bernd Eichinger, producing it allowed him to maintain his rights to the property and in 2005, he released a big-budget version.

This new version of the Fantastic Four was certainly an upbeat film, and it was clearly not ashamed of the comic book origins of the characters. At the same time, though, it never seemed to really go anywhere, either. There was not that much direction overall, and it suffered from a dearth of action sequences. There were some strong performances in the movie, especially Chris Evans as the Human Torch and Michael Chiklis as the Thing, but they also had the woefully miscast Jessica Alba as the Invisible Woman, bringing down every scene that she is in. Luckily, there was a brighter future for this cast.

23 PUNISHER: WAR ZONE

The closest that we have come to seeing the "true" vision of the Punisher on the screen was Punisher: War Zone, which sadly also ended up becoming the biggest box office flop in the history of films based on Marvel Comics characters. Produced on a relative small $35 million budget, the Lexi Alexander-directed film grossed only $10 million in the theaters.

This is not to say that the film did not have problems, as it clearly did. Even Alexander would note that the final product did not meet her true vision of what the film should look like. There were some tonal issues and some of the performances were a bit off. Ray Stevenson was a decent Punisher, but he did not stand out. However, the most important thing about the movie is that it did not feel like a generic action film with the Punisher's name thrown onto it. It felt like an actual Punisher story, including the strong use of Micro in the movie (Wayne Knight did a great job as Punisher's partner in crime). Dominic West chewed the scenery well as the villainous Jigsaw. It was the Punisher/Jigsaw confrontations that really made the film seem like a comic book movie and not just a typical "shoot 'em up" film.

22 X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE

Wolverine in front of the cast of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Taylor Kitsch is a fine young actor, which he proved over a number of seasons on Friday Night Lights. He has also done well in his acting performances in the years since, but man, it really seems like he is just cursed when it comes to the projects that he chooses. His first major starring role was in the financially disastrous John Carter, he co-starred in the season of True Detective that nearly got the show canceled at HBO and he played Gambit in the worst film featuring Wolverine, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

The movie is also infamously known as the film that handled Deadpool disastrously, with producers deciding he needed to have his mouth sewn shut. Yes, the character who is specifically called "The Merc With A Mouth" was given no mouth. Try to wrap your mind around how bad of an idea that that is. However, the film also had some strong performances in it, as well. Hugh Jackman was good, as always, but Liev Schrieber was also excellent as a far more cerebral version of Sabretooth. So while the overall film was a disappointment, there is a lot more to like about it than people sometimes think. The Deadpool thing, though, is just so derided that it obscures all of the good things.

21 FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER

The sequel to 2005's Fantastic Four, 2007's Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, managed to maintain the upbeat attitude of the first film while also adding a bit more seriousness to the story, with the introduction of the Silver Surfer, the herald of the world-devourer, Galactus. The Silver Surfer is a true stand-out in the film, with the brilliant Doug Jones providing the movements and Laurence Fishburne doing a striking piece of voice acting, taking his performance to areas you likely never expected to hear the accomplished actor go. One of the great aspects of the Silver Surfer in the comics was the way that his innocent outlook on the world saw the best in humanity, and that was absolutely palpable.

However, the movie also had some problems with editing and the performances of some of the other actors continued to disappoint. The attempts at comedy mixed in with the film were mismatched, especially a wacky scenario involving the team's powers switching with each other due to the Human Torch's molecules being altered by the Silver Surfer. Andre Braugher has a surprisingly powerful small role in the film as a general who will do anything it takes to take the Surfer down, even if it means making a deal with the devil (well, Doctor Doom, but same difference).

20 BLADE: TRINITY

Blade Trinity

It's rare that the star of a film appears disinterested in the film itself, and yet that is exactly what seemed to occur with the finale of the Blade trilogy, Blade: Trinity, which saw the series writer, David Goyer, step up to become the director of the film. Star Wesley Snipes did not like the idea of Goyer becoming the director of the movie, so he put as little effort into the film as possible, remaining in his trailer throughout most of the movie.

The result is a disappointing end to the first Marvel superhero film franchise. The film was clearly designed to set up a new film series starring Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds as the Nightstalkers, but while the younger actors gave it their best shot (especially Reynolds), there was just no chemistry to be had between them and Snipes' Blade, so any spinoff plans came to a screeching halt with this film. Perhaps the worst part of the movie was Dominic Purcell's take on Dracula. He was far too low key to be taken seriously as the "ultimate" vampire. There was a little bit of a twist with the idea of the FBI treating Blade as one of America's Most Wanted, but that aspect did not go that far.

19 HOWARD THE DUCK

Amazingly enough, if you discount Captain America as being technically a Timely Comics film and not a Marvel one, the first major motion picture based specifically on a Marvel Comics character was somehow not a superhero at all, but Howard the Duck. Another interesting point is that this was George Lucas' first film that he produced after completing the original Star Wars trilogy! This movie came out only a decade after Steve Gerber's hilarious duck character first received his own ongoing comic book series.

The concept of a "duck trapped in a world that he didn't know" was a strong set-up for a movie and the movie translated Gerber's set-up well, with Broadway legend Chip Zien doing a wonderful job of voice acting as Howard and Lea Thompson excelling as Beverly Switzler. Where the film fell apart a bit is not even the fault of the movie itself, but rather the era in which it was made. In the mid-1980s, the only way to do a movie like Howard the Duck was to have a little person wear a duck costume and the effect just did not translate well at all. If this movie was made today, with a CGI Howard the Duck, it would probably do much better. Interestingly, Thompson's daughter, Zoey Deutch, has become a popular young actress, so she would be perfect for a CGI remake!

18 DAREDEVIL

The biggest problem of 2003's Daredevil is that there are two practically polar opposite stories at play in the movie, and neither works well with the other. There is a dark, character-heavy exploration of Catholic guilt in the person of Matt Murdock, a tortured young lawyer who finds himself forced to work outside the law as a vigilante. Then there is the light, costume-driven action film featuring Daredevil doing lots of cool action sequences.

Director Mark Steven Johnson seemed more interested in the former while the studio wanted the latter; the end result was a disheartening mixture that failed fans of either approach. Ben Affleck is particularly wooden as Matt Murdock, but the film luckily is aided by a number of strong supporting character performances. Jon Favreau is great in the small role of Foggy Nelson, but Colin Ferrell and Michael Clarke Duncan shine in particular as the two main villains of the movie, Bullseye and Kingpin. Jennifer Garner's Elektra is also there, but she does not add a whole lot to the overall film. The movie serves mostly as an ode to the Daredevil work of Frank Miller (who makes a cameo), but it is not a very good ode to his work.

17 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2

You would think after so many examples showed the folly of overloading your film with villains, that movies would stop doing it. However, Amazing Spider-Man 2 is just the latest in a long line of superhero movies that had way too many villains for any one to stand out from the crowd. This almost certainly revolved around a studio desire to ultimately get to the point where they could do a Sinister Six film. However, as we have seen from many studios who have tried to speed things up to reach their destination instead of taking their time like the Marvel Cinematic Universe did, it falls flat.

It did not help that the movie also tried to get Peter Parker involved in some ill-considered conspiracy involving his parents and the genetic testing that led to him becoming Spider-Man. It also did not help that Jamie Foxx's Elektro was a terrible constructed character who did not have a single reasonable piece of motivation for his villainy in the film. Mixed into all of this, the movie also tossed in the downer ending of killing off the best part of the series, Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy. This was just a dark, depressing mess of a film. Luckily, Stone and Andrew Garfield are still good enough actors that it remains just interesting enough to still watch.

16 X-MEN: APOCALYPSE

One of the strangest decisions that the X-Men prequels made was the idea that each film would take place in a different decade. The reason that that is so silly is that the actors in the films do not change, so you end up in a scenario where you have three films separated by five years or so in real life and yet over two decades are supposed to have passed for all of the characters in the film. It is such an absurd conceit. Speaking of absurd conceits, X-Men: Apocalypse introduces the villainous Apocalypse, who awakens in the present and decides to destroy the world to build it over with mutants in charge and Apocalypse in charge of all mutants. He then recruits four mutants to serve as his Four Horsemen. Unfortunately, we never really get an explanation for why they have joined him. It's just like, "Yeah, sure, screw the world, I'll join you."

Jennifer Lawrence, by the way, returns to the franchise but mostly tries to avoid actually using her shape shifting powers throughout most of the film, due to her desire to avoid putting on all of that blue makeup. That's a rather halfhearted approach to making a film, no? New additions Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner and Kodi Smit-McPhee do a good job as the new versions of Cyclops, Jean Grey and Nightcrawler, though.

15 BLADE

When you look at the history of Marvel's dominance in the world of superhero films, the movie that almost never gets as much credit as it deserves for helping to lead to a whole new generation of superhero movies is 1998's Blade. Remember, when Blade was released, there were very few superhero movies in theaters throughout the 1990s. The last one was Batman and Robin, a movie so bad that it essentially destroyed the Batman film franchise for almost a decade. Things looked bleak for the future of superhero movies.

Then Blade came around and it not only showed that there was still a market for superhero movies, but it proved that a superhero did not have to be as famous as Superman or Batman to still appeal to a mass audience. Blade was a relatively minor character in the Marvel Universe in the years since The Tomb of Dracula ended, where he was one of the regular cast of vampire hunters trying to kill Dracula. Yet, his set-up as a vampire hunter with most of the powers of vampires themselves was a compelling one and it ended up translating to film better than it ever translated to comic books.

14 X-MEN: THE LAST STAND

The first X-Men film to not be directed by Bryan Singer was also one of the more disappointing films in the franchise, especially since it was tied into two critically acclaimed story arcs from the X-Men comic book series. Namely, these were Joss Whedon's opening arc from Astonishing X-Men about a mutant "cure" and the legendary "Dark Phoenix Saga" from John Byrne, Chris Claremont and Terry Austin.

The problem, as it were, is that they simply could not serve two stories that big in just a single film. As a result, nearly every character in the movie ended up getting short shrift when all was said and done. This was complicated even further by Halle Berry's contract demands insisting that she get a bigger role in the finished film. The final film saw Cyclops' death barely even register and the love triangle between Rogue, Iceman and Kitty Pryde become practically non-existent. Rogue's plot, in general, was edited down to near nothingness. Still, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine and Famke Janssen's Jean Grey got a few great scenes, including a memorable sequence. Also, Ellen Page's Kitty Pryde had one very memorable fight sequence against the Juggernaut... though that may be more infamous than anything.

13 SPIDER-MAN 3

A popular movie poster for Spider-Man 3 showcasing Peter in the black suit.

A general rule of thumb for any superhero movie director going forward should probably be, "If the studio forces you to feature a character that you don't want to use, it is probably better to just walk away than to do less than your best work." That was clearly the case in Spider-Man 3, when Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy had a sadly weak ending due to him being forced to work Venom into the film as one of the main villains. Raimi had no interest in the villain and his attempt to get the alien symbiote into the movie fell flat, especially in the infamous sequence where the symbiote-possesed Peter Parker does... evil dancing?

The villains Raimi wanted to use in the film worked much better, like Thomas Haden Church's Sandman, who did a great job as a man who just wanted to see his daughter again, and James Franco's Harry Osborn, who seeks revenge on his best friend, Peter, for the death of his father, Norman Osborn. Raimi was so good at getting to the heart of the characters that it was such a shame that he had a character like Venom shoe-horned into the narrative. Topher Grace is not a bad actor, but he was given little in terms of motivations for making us care about his Eddie Brock as he merged with the symbiote to form Venom.

12 X-MEN

As we mentioned earlier, it is important to note the role that Blade played in making it clear that there was a market out there for superhero films. Blade, though, was always a bit different from a standard superhero character and thus, the argument could be made that the success of a Blade film said little in terms of how more typical superhero characters would translate to the screen. That is why the release of 2000's X-Men was such a big deal, as there were still plenty of film executives who felt that superhero teams were just too silly for fans to buy into in a big way.

When X-Men was a smash hit, that proved that fans were okay with "silly" ideas like a team of mutant heroes, so we saw an outpouring of superhero movies in the decades since. Now, being the first outright superhero film, X-Men has a lot of problems, mostly in terms of the fact that the action scenes are minimal and stilted, but just the fact that they worked at all was a huge success. In addition, the three main actors in the film, Patrick Stewart as Professor X, Ian McKellen as Magneto and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, all brought their A games and gave great performances.

11 BLADE II

Wesley Snipes posing for Blade II

Theoretically, sequels of all films should be a matter of taking what worked with the original and doing it a little bit better, since you now know what worked with the original and you typically will have more money to work with on the second. That's how it should work in theory, but that does not always turn out to be the case in practice. Luckily, Blade II was one of the few films where it followed that established blueprint to a tee.

Blade II captured the action-packed nature of the first film, with Wesley Snipes continuing to be a charismatic lead, but the second film added director Guillermo del Toro, and his directing wizardry gave the sequel a whole new look that made it stand out. The set up for the second movie is that there is a new breed of vampires that are feeding on humans and vampires alike, so Blade has to set aside old differences and team up with his enemies to take down the new, greater threat. It is a real visual treat, although it is extremely violent, which might put some people off. However, it's a movie about a vampire hunter, and you really should be expecting to see some blood.