20. Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff in “The Avengers” (2012)
In her first appearance in “Iron Man 2,” Natasha Romanoff felt like kind of a stiff, mostly there for Scarlett Johansson to flip people into furniture with her thighs. But again, Joss Whedon was the one who really found an effective take on her, making her surprisingly central, and surprisingly funny, in “The Avengers.” From her opening scene, wisecracking while tied to a chair, through the brilliantly acted centerpiece scene with Loki, through to Johansson’s dry delivery of “I don’t see how that’s a party,” she’s probably the movie’s breakout, with the actress really finding a groove that she’s carried on through the subsequent movies.
19. Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” (2014)
Of all the casting coups that Marvel have pulled off, the most impressive might be getting Robert Redford, an indie-minded screen legend (the Sundance Kid himself!) who doesn’t act all that often for anyone, let alone a big blockbuster in which he plays a Nazi bad guy. As SHIELD bigwig Alexander Pierce, a seemingly avuncular good guy authority figure who turns out to be a HYDRA traitor, Redford expertly plays with his own image, and seemingly relishes the chance to play a bad guy, as well as bringing a ton of gravitas to a movie that needs it when the airships start to exploding in the background.
18. Tom Hiddleston as Loki in “Thor: The Dark World” (2013)
Marvel’s most frequent villain at this point is Loki, the Norse god of mischief as played by your Tumblr boyfriend Tom Hiddleston, having been the principal bad guy in both “Thor” and “The Avengers.” But actually, he, and Hiddleston, are at their best in a movie when he’s given a more ambivalent role, the otherwise-forgettable sequel “The Dark World.” The film’s plot sees Loki and Thor forced to team up to take on the Dark Elves and avenge their mother’s death, and more than in the other movies, Hiddleston relishes the chance to be a wild card, keeping you on your toes while still giving some complications and complexities to a character who’d earlier been a little too straightforwardly malevolent.
17. Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner in “Avengers: Age Of Ultron” (2015)
Of the three Hulks we’ve had in the last 13 years, Mark Ruffalo is easily the best of them, despite not yet headlining his own movie. And while he might have stolen the show in “The Avengers,” bashing Thor across a room and treating Loki as a ragdoll, Mark Ruffalo’s performance was, if anything, better in the sequel. The actor’s laid-back energy makes him a counterintuitive but inspired choice to play a man with a giant green rage monster bubbling inside him at all times, and Ruffalo finds new notes of sadness to play in “Age Of Ultron,” particularly with a romance with Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha played up. We’d love to see him get a solo vehicle one day, but this’ll do for now.
16. Stanley Tucci as Abraham Erskine in “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011)
It’s almost easy to forget that Stanley Tucci is part of the MCU: His Dr. Erskine, the creator of the super-soldier formula, is dead before the end of the first act of the first “Captain America” movie. And yet Tucci makes such an impression in his brief screen time that it’s actually almost impossible to forget him. A man infused with melancholy by the great character actor, Erskine is almost the first to see the potential in Steve Rogers, and his own basic decency — from a man who Tucci suggests has already lost so much to the war — proves to be a driving force for Cap long after he’s gone.
15. Benedict Cumberbatch as Stephen Strange in “Doctor Strange” (2016)
Confession: We were not that psyched to see Benedict Cumberbatch in “Doctor Strange” — ever since “Sherlock” blew up, it’s slightly felt that the actor was repeating himself a bit, and the idea of an arrogant cosmic wizard didn’t exactly seem to head into new territory. But actually, Cumberbatch gives quite a distinct performance, and he’s arguably the best thing in the movie. Yes, Strange shares some DNA with Sherlock or Alan Turing — i.e., he’s kind of an asshole — but Cumberbatch plays him as less brittle and on-the-spectrum, and more of a guy who’s a bit of a dick and self-obsessed, but still kind of makes you laugh (even though he’s, quite deliberately, not funny). It’s a very physical performance, and the change he pulls off, going from swagger, to being a broken man, to an almost regal poise, is very impressive.
14. Mahershala Ali as Cottonmouth in “Luke Cage” (2016)
Unlike the first two incarnations of “Marvel’s Joyless Dimly-Lit Corridor Punch-Up Hour” on Netflix, “Luke Cage” doesn’t have one consistent villain across the season, something that it rather suffers for, particularly once rubbish old Diamondback turns up in the second half. But it does still have one great bad guy, in the shape of Mahershala Ali’s Cottonmouth. The “Moonlight” star initially seems like he’s just going to be the umpteenth riff on Stringer Bell, albeit brought to life by a gifted actor, but it becomes richer and richer as it goes on, showing the gangster to be, firstly, not very good at being a gangster; and secondly, to be a lost, wounded little boy who was forced into this life. It’s an inspired take on this sort of archetype, one that Ali fills with pathos, and the show’s lesser for his absence in the second half.
13. Chris Hemsworth as Thor in “Thor” (2011)
The Australian star might have had the trickiest job of the first wave of Marvel movies: Unlike the relatively relatable Tony Stark, Bruce Banner or Steve Rogers, he was a god and a space Viking, a six-foot-plus barbarian with a giant hammer. And while “Thor” isn’t perfect, Hemsworth takes to a near-impossible gig and makes it sing. In the more otherworldly, swords-and-sorcery segments of the film, Hemsworth is imposing and charismatic, with a brash brattiness that makes him more than just a He-Man analogue. But when he’s on Earth, the actor decides to play up some slightly buffoonish qualities in a deeply satisfying way that really makes him connect. Across his three subsequent appearances, those have remained the best bits, so that the comedically minded Taika Waititi is directing “Thor: Ragnarok” is very promising indeed.
12. Dave Bautista as Drax The Destroyer in “Guardians Of The Galaxy” (2014)
“Guardians Of The Galaxy” features performances from Oscar winners and nominees Benicio Del Toro, Glenn Close and John C. Reilly, and yet one of the oddities of the film is that they’re all out-acted by a WWE wrestler with only a couple of movie appearances to his name before. Drax is a hulking brute, a physical presence first and foremost, and yet Dave Bautista turns him into someone strangely lovable, a man who’s been left lonely by grief and who embraces this new surrogate family more readily than you might imagine. And displaying a surprisingly great sense of comic timing, his literal-mindedness also makes him the source of some of the film’s biggest laughs.
11. Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer in “Iron Man 2” (2010)
Perhaps even more so than “The Incredible Hulk” and “Thor: The Dark World,” “Iron Man 2” might be the unloved, red-headed step-child of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a movie few will stand up for, and which people are mostly happy to gloss over as teething problems. But amidst the sloppy story and the uninteresting action and Mickey Rourke’s parrot, there is one piece of true greatness, and that’s Sam Rockwell as devious Tony Stark rival Justin Hammer. A fellow arms dealer who teams with Rourke’s Ivan Vanko to take Stark down, he’s like an evil mirror to Tony (in fact, Rockwell came close to landing the lead in the first “Iron Man” before Robert Downey Jr. beat him to it), slick and slightly over-compensating and fast-talking, and every moment that he’s on screen is one where the movie comes to life. Other than a tiny cameo in a One-Shot short, he’s not been seen since, but we’d love for him to return at some point.
