Whenever you watch a Marvel movie, there’s one thing you can be sure of: It’s going to have at least a couple of great fight scenes.
The latest installment, Captain America: Civil War debuts Friday, September 2 on iTunes, with a new exclusive “Expanded Extras Experience” (everything from “making of” featurettes to gag reels to deleted scenes). Fans will be treated to behind-the-scenes moments from a film with memorable dust-ups pitting friend against friend, hero against hero, and will be forced to choose a side in this raging conflict with hugely impactful ramifications.
In celebration of the release of Civil War and in anticipation of upcoming Marvel film Doctor Strange (whose debut also gets teased with the never-before-seen video, Open Your Mind: Marvel’s Doctor Strange on the Civil War iTunes release), here’s our ranking of the seven most epic battles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (so far).
7. Thor Vs. Malekith – Thor: The Dark World
After Thor (Chris Hemsworth) uses Loki’s trickery to draw out the dark elf Malekith (Christopher Eccleston), a brawl ensues across multiple dimensions while they battle for the very fabric of reality itself. With Malekith fueled by the ancient power of the Aether, and Thor doing everything he can to try and stop him, it’s a nonstop display of mind-bending, otherworldly power whose scope simply can’t be contained to a single world. (That includes the dynamite, last-minute save by his hammer, Mjölnir.)
This epic battle is also not without its charming moments. Like the time when, amid the massive, reality-altering battle, Thor patiently boards the subway back to Greenwich in order to catch back up with Malekith mid-fight.
6. The Battle Over Xandar – Guardians Of The Galaxy
Armed with one of the all-powerful Infinity Gems, Ronan The Accuser (Lee Pace) descends on the planet of Nova Prime with the intention of destroying it. Meanwhile, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), has managed to rally the Nova Corps, Yondu (Michael Rooker) and The Ravagers, and the rest of the Guardians, all under the promise that he’s not “100 percent a dick.”
As Ronan’s ship, the Dark Aster, slowly breaches Nova Prime’s atmosphere, there’s a showdown between sisters Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gillan), a surprising display of Groot’s (Vin Diesel) branch-growing ability, (along with a slightly improved vocabulary), and an impromptu dance-off between Quill and Ronan that ends up saving the day — albeit indirectly.
It’s a soaring, swashbuckling, over-the-top spectacle unlike anything we’ve seen on Earth (or Asgard, for that matter). Not bad for a movie about a bunch of ragtag intergalactic criminals whose upcoming sequel has already got us excited.
5. The Elevator Fight – Captain America: The Winter Soldier
A number of the MCU’s biggest brawls have spanned time, space, and other worlds, but this sequence in The Winter Soldier proves you can thrill fans with an ingeniously staged action scene in a small space with the right kind of choreography.
With SHIELD collapsing and quickly being overrun by hundreds of sleeper HYDRA agents, everyone’s allegiance is called into question. Well, everyone except Captain America’s (Chris Evans), who starts an elevator ride solo before each stop finds him increasingly surrounded by his newfound enemies.
“Before we get started… does anybody want to get out?” asks Cap, just after the third stop, having figured out what was going on long before anyone made a move against him. What happens next is a brilliant, Bourne-like burst of kinetic energy, showcasing Cap’s raw skills as he takes down his assailants one by one, showing everyone that he doesn’t need a lot of legroom to get the job done effectively.
4. Hulk Vs. The Hulkbuster – Avengers: Age Of Ultron
It’s common knowledge by now that Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) brings a huge degree of liability to the table. It was a crucial aspect to Loki’s master plan in the first Avengers movie, not to mention the fact that Banner’s absence during the events of Civil War were a huge sticking point with General Ross (William Hurt).
Still, for as many problems as Banner had caused thanks to “the big guy,” we don’t really see the true extent of his destructive wrath until Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) gets control of his mind, setting him off on a rampage through the city of Johannesburg. Luckily for everyone in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) has a plan for such an eventuality, formally called “Veronica,” but more commonly known as The Hulkbuster Armor.
As the two proceed to punch one another across the city, and ultimately all the way through a skyscraper in mid-construction, it starts to look like even Stark’s best-laid plans might not be enough. It isn’t until Hulk emerges from the rubble and sees the look on peoples’ faces that he begins to realize, and regret, the kind of terror he’s capable of. That flash of humanity also gives Stark a much-needed opportunity to get the upper hand. While Stark’s armor helps end the destruction of Johannesburg, it leaves Banner with a real sense of foreboding that might not be so easily shaken.
3. Ant-Man Vs. Yellowjacket – Ant-Man
It’s the movie that proves you don’t need to think big to have an impressive battle. Wayward criminal Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is recruited by scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) to help recover his Pym Particle technology from his old company, fearing it would end up in the wrong hands. Just as Lang is about to pull off the heist, their plans are thwarted by Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), Pym’s old protégé who, it turns out, has used Pym’s technology to develop a shrinking suit of his own. As Cross dons the mantle of Yellowjacket, the fight between him and Ant-Man takes place on two very different scales, spanning everything from the inside of a helicopter to the inside of a suitcase, culminating on a toy train in the bedroom of Lang’s daughter, Cassie (Abby Rider Fortson).
Among the highlights of this monumental clash of the tiny titans includes Siri hearing Yellowjacket’s threat of “disintegrating” Ant-Man as a request to hear The Cure’s “Disintegration,” a gigantic Thomas The Tank Engine-like train bursting its way out of a house, and a dog-sized ant that ends up as the family pet. Things even get a little cerebral when Ant-Man goes sub-atomic to defeat Yellowjacket and save his daughter, nearly shrinking out of existence as a result.
It’s also arguably the foremost representation of what the MCU does best, balancing edge-of-your-seat action against tongue-in-cheek absurdity.
2. The Battle For New York – The Avengers
Both the dramatic apex of the MCU’s Phase One, and the battle that showed these characters how to work together as a team, the Battle For New York is just about as good as it gets. After Loki opens a portal that unleashes wave after wave of Ch’tauri soldiers onto midtown Manhattan, our heroes quickly realize that the only way they’ll make it out of this is together.
Screenwriter/director Joss Whedon bounces between the battle’s numerous moving parts effortlessly, giving each member of The Avengers a chance to earn their nickname as Earth’s mightiest heroes. It’s so well-orchestrated that it even manages to make its non-superpowered characters, Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), a vital part of the action.
All the teamwork and heroism aside, as the battle unfolds, the shadowy powers that be launch a nuclear strike against Manhattan despite Nick Fury’s (Samuel L. Jackson) efforts to stop it. While Iron Man is able to divert the missile back through the portal, (risking near-certain death), it nonetheless introduces a fundamental dynamic that still weighs heavily throughout the MCU to this day: the question of who’s ultimately held accountable.
1. The Tarmac Fight – Captain America: Civil War
As the amount of collateral damage caused by superhero battles continues to mount, the government decides to intervene, a decision which divides the Avengers into two opposing factions with one group standing behind Iron Man and the registration effort and the other rallying behind Captain America, who shows he’s willing to go rogue in order to protect his friend, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan).
Things come to a head on an airport tarmac, where the former allies lead their respective teams into battle. Sure, they may be pulling punches (some of these guys saved the world together, after all), but the spectacle of so many heroes, now torn apart by their conflicting ideals, is an epic one. The Russo brothers deliver an all-out, high-octane spectacle that’s full of surprises. Oh, and as a bonus it introduces Spider-Man (Tom Holland) into the fold.
Honorable Mention:
In the interest of fairness, we really shouldn’t have two scenes from the same film on the list but Civil War really has two iconic battle scenes that are worthy of inclusion and if these films have taught us anything it’s that sometimes you need to bend the rules to do what’s right, so…
Once the tarmac fight was over, and Cap manages to escape with Bucky, Iron Man is close behind. Tracking them down to an old HYDRA base in Siberia, Stark learns an unsettling truth about the death of his parents 25 years earlier. A brutal fight ensues between Iron Man, Cap, and Bucky, and due to Stark’s sudden desire for vengeance, their punches are no longer pulled. It ends with Iron Man’s armor disabled, Bucky losing his robotic arm, and Steve Rogers, no longer sure what he’s fighting for as Captain America.
That’s our take on the greatest fights in the Marvel cinematic universe. What’s yours? Whose side are you on?
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On Sept. 2, Captain America: Civil War is available on iTunes with an exclusive Expanded Extras Experience which lets you “Choose Your Side” — Team Cap or Team Iron Man — granting you access to an interactive superhero universe with team video introductions, team-oriented galleries and Marvel-ous amounts of curated bonus material.
