The Marvel Cinematic Universe is building to a climax this April, as every movie that has come out thus far has been leading towards The Avengers: Infinity War. While the hype for that film is at absurdly high levels thanks to several recent beloved MCU films (Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, and more), it’s not like the MCU has never made any missteps.
Some film scenes are just so odd that they take you out of the movie entirely. There you were, enjoying your time in the theater, when out of nowhere, some weirdness completely distracts you. These scenes can range from a writer simply not understanding one of the characters to running gags that were never funny to twists that didn’t succeed, but they all have one thing in common: they were all jarring.
In general, superhero movies do not belong to a genre that benefits from taking the audience out of the world of the film. It’s not a genre that benefits from the audience thinking critically about the merits of a scene overall.
But some scenes are just so off-putting that they demand to be discussed. These are those scenes. These are 16 Jarring Scenes That Took Us Out Of MCU Movies.
Iron Man—Dancers on the private jet
The very first entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man doesn’t strike quite the same tone as the rest of the films. The first third of the movie spends its time establishing Tony Stark as a billionaire playboy who doesn’t really care about anything or anyone—and while this is important to Tony’s character, the movie takes it just a bit too far.
As Tony flies in his private jet with his friend James Rhodes, his flight attendants are revealed to be drinking champagne and dancing around stripper poles. Especially now, in the days of #MeToo, this comes off as pretty tone-deaf. One night stands with journalists are one thing, but are we really supposed to relate to a guy who makes his own employees do sexy dances for him?
Captain America—Peggy shoots at Cap
For the most part, fans love Hayley Atwell’s portrayal of Peggy Carter, Captain America’s WWII-era love interest. Smart and direct, this incarnation of Peggy helps make their relationship all the more touching and tragic.
One scene that sticks out in the film, however, occurs when Cap is looking through potential shields to use in battle. Howard Stark shows him a vibranium prototype shield, and Steve holds it up and shows it to Peggy. After asking her what she thinks, she turns around, picks up a gun, and fires four rounds into the shield, as Cap cowers behind it.
In the scene prior, Peggy had caught Steve engaged in a lip-lock with another woman and was understandably jealous. While the scene is meant to convey Peggy’s blunt, confident personality, it winds up being quite distracting.
What sane person shoots live rounds at their allies when they’re just looking at shields? While it may influence the power dynamic in her favor, the scene actually undermines any sense of pragmatism the audience may get from Peggy.
Spider-Man: Homecoming—Aunt May
The decision to cast Marisa Tomei as Peter Parker’s Aunt May was met with some raised eyebrows, to say the least. Aunt May is typically depicted as quite old, so seeing an extremely attractive woman in her early 50s was something of a jolt.
We could have gotten past that fact, though, if Spider-Man: Homecoming hadn’t played up the dynamic even more than Civil War did in her introduction. Multiple male characters in the movie all talk about how attractive May is, not the least of whom is Tony Stark himself.
After the first few “your Aunt is hot” jokes we were mostly done laughing, but the movie keeps it up way past its welcome. No one was really against the casting of Tomei as Aunt May, but when Marvel kept throwing this one facet of her character in our face, it’s hard not to think it was done for the wrong reasons.
Thor: The Dark World—Ian the intern
There are more than a few elements of Thor: The Dark World that feel superfluous, but it’s hard to find one that feels more out of place than Ian the intern. The first two Thor movies already suffered when they tried to bring in “relatable,” normal human characters, but Ian was another level entirely.
Ian, whose main contribution to the plot is to carry things, gets equal (possibly greater) amounts of screen time than most Asgardians in Thor: The Dark World. Like most efforts by the film to be quirky and funny, Ian falls flat, mostly because he’s too boring to make any real impact.
Not to mention that the audience is constantly wondering why they have to watch him say stuff, when they could be watching Chris Hemsworth hit things with a hammer.
The Incredible Hulk—The Abomination
2008’s The Incredible Hulk is mostly too bland to have any scene that stands out so much to wind up on this list, but there is one exception: the design of The Abomination. This film came out before Marvel Studios had really figured out the visual effects for the Hulk (that wouldn’t come until Joss Whedon took over on The Avengers).
The Abomination looks even worse than the Hulk, and it doesn’t help that his creation doesn’t make a ton of sense.
Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) becomes the Abomination because of a vaguely expressed desire to be the strongest, and Dr. Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) only helps him because he’s a coward. The result is an ugly gray mess of a desig. The Abomination should inspire terror, and instead it just looks greasy, transparent, and gross.
Iron Man 2—Pepper Potts’ strawberry allergy
Iron Man 2 is another low point in the history of the MCU, so underwhelming that critics actually wondered if it might spell the end of the Iron Man film franchise. Much like Thor: The Dark World, Iron Man 2 suffers from awkward attempts at comedy. A prime example of this comes when Tony Stark goes to the Stark Industries office to reconcile with Pepper Potts, picking up strawberries along the way.
The problem is, Pepper is allergic to strawberries. In a stunted, boring scene, Tony attempts to give Pepper some strawberries as an apology and it becomes clear he’s completely forgotten her allergy.
Compounding the problem is a cameo from former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly in the same scene— the same O’Reilly who was recently fired in the wake of multiple harassment lawsuits. The result is an awkward, uncomfortable mess of a scene that no one wants to watch.
Guardians of the Galaxy—The Collector and his servant
Marvel Studios has been building up Thanos and the Infinity Stones as a source of conflict for a long time now, to the point where it frequently feels like a forced reference instead of an organic part of the story. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Guardians of the Galaxy, where the plot pretty much takes a break so The Collector (Benicio Del Toro) can talk about how big a deal this Infinity Stone is.
A distracting little subplot plays out where one of The Collector’s abused servants causes an explosion to destroy him.
The scene is already jarring because we only just met these characters, but then it turns out it was all useless anyway. The Collector is later revealed to have survived despite the blast, making the scene completely pointless.
Avengers: Age of Ultron—Black Widow thinks she’s a monster
Almost certainly the most controversial element of Avengers: Age of Ultron was this scene, in which Black Widow talks to Bruce Banner about their so-called similarities. Nat thinks she’s a monster, just like the Hulk, because she… can’t have children. Yeah, really. Natasha Romanoff, an otherwise completely normal human being, thinks she’s comparable to the Hulk because she can’t have babies.
Naturally, the stupidity of that statement combined with its internalized sexism lit a fire under many fans. Instead of enticing fans with Widow’s star-crossed romance with Bruce Banner, this scene took a large part of its audience completely out of the story.
Natasha Romanoff, steely assassin, is so hung up about being infertile that she compares herself to a literal monster? The unlikeliness of that angle made fans question whether Joss Whedon knew that character as well as he thought he did.
Captain America: Civil War—General Ross gives orders to the Avengers
Captain America: Civil War is a film about conflicting ideologies, and so it stands to reason that the superheroes would make some mistakes during the course of the story. As it happens, one of these mistakes comes pretty early on in the movie, as William Hurt’s General Ross shows up to dictate terms to the Avengers.
A member of the United States military delivering an ultimatum to the Avengers isn’t all that surprising. What is surprising is that Ross is the one they chose, given his track record with certain members of the Avengers.
Ross is an antagonist in The Incredible Hulk, and his whole motivation is to get superpowers under government control.
His presence is therefore very jarring— although the filmmakers did this intentionally, to raise a red flag in viewers’ minds about how good an idea these Sokovia Accords really were.
Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2—Drax keeps insulting Mantis
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is a strange movie, one of the few in the MCU to be written and directed by the same guy. While some enjoy the sequel’s greater emotional punch, others feel that it lost some of the charm and humor of the first film.
This latter group occasionally points to Drax’s depiction as an example of the lack of charm in the sequel, as Drax becomes much less engaging. Perhaps the clearest example of this is how his relationship with Mantis is off-putting from the beginning.
Mantis is shy and polite and she speaks with Drax often, so it’s jarring to see Drax continually insult and belittle her throughout the film. Nowhere is this clearer than in one of their first scenes, where he repeatedly makes it clear that he finds her physically repugnant. Not cool, Drax.
Thor: The Dark World—Erik Selvig refuses to put on pants
Chances are, when audiences settled in to watch Thor: The Dark World, they paid for a ticket because they wanted to see Thor engage in a desperate battle for the fate of the universe. While that’s mostly what they got, they also had to see several scenes where instead of big budget action or romance, they got a character named Erik Selvig, without pants.
Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) is a scientist friend of Thor and Jane Foster. He appeared in the first Thor film and The Avengers, and in the latter he had the misfortune of getting mind-controlled by Loki. Using this justification, the writers of Thor: The Dark World have Selvig appear repeatedly without pants, because “it helps him think.”
There’s no other reasoning behind this– Selvig is just kind of crazy now, and the movie seemed to think this was hilarious. Audiences, however, just found it off-putting.
Thor: Ragnarok—The play within a play
One of the most energetic and fun entries to the MCU, Thor: Ragnarok was instantly beloved by critics and fans alike. The one thing it was criticized for, however, was its occasionally distracting emphasis on humor. Since director Taika Waititi thought of the film first and foremost as a comedy, audiences can expect some scenes to rely on a jarring effect for the jokes to work.
Case in point: the play within a play scene, which takes place when Thor returns to Asgard to find Loki masquerading as Odin.
Loki has actors portraying his heroic death (actors played by no less than Luke Hemsworth and Matt Damon) in a funny, glorifying way. This scene is intentionally jarring for the sake of humor, but have celebrity cameos ever not taken you out of a film?
Iron Man 3—The Mandarin reveal
While some would argue that the infamous twist of Iron Man 3 was actually brilliant, the internet would not agree. As soon as filmgoers saw the big reveal at the heart of the film, that the supposed terrorist leader The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) was actually a fake, a riot ensued online.
Instead of an evil terrorist, The Mandarin is actually just a dopey actor named Trevor hired by the real villain, Aldrich Killian, to stoke fear in the American public. This is obviously not true to the comics, and fans were shocked to see this reveal. The MCU is normally very strict with keeping somewhat close to comics canon, and director Shane Black was allowed to throw away the rulebook for this one.
Avengers: Age of Ultron—Thor goes to a cave
Like another scene on this list, this sequence finds its way here because it’s another effort by Marvel executives to shoe-horn in a reference to the Infinity Stones. In the middle of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Thor flies away from the rest of the group, visits the Cave of Norn, has a vision, then immediately returns.
It’s a pointless scene, serving only to remind the audience that the Infinity Stones exist.
It’s also evidence that Joss Whedon didn’t get along so hot with Marvel executives, as reportedly they forced him to put the scene into the movie. Not only that, but the scene was originally going to be longer. Thankfully, test audiences didn’t like that, so we didn’t have to sit through that interminable version in theaters.
Ant-Man—Hank Pym’s trust issues
At the beginning of 2015’s Ant-Man, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) is looking for a hero. He needs someone with willpower, skills, and spirit, and so he turns to a burglar, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd).
The thing is, Pym had his perfectly capable daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) standing next to him the whole time. Hope is familiar with the technology, has plenty of fighting skills, and yet Pym refuses to give her his superpowered shrinking suit.
Pym explains this to Lang by saying that he’s expendable, and she’s not. So this whole roundabout, nonsensical plot mechanic is explained away because Pym loves his daughter too much? Not only does that make no sense, it’s flat-out insulting to actress Evangeline Lilly, who had to sit on the sidelines in the first movie and wait till the upcoming sequel Ant-Man and The Wasp for her chance to play a superhero.
Civil War—Cap kisses Sharon Carter
Starting in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers has developed a romance with Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) in recent films, culminating with a smooch in Civil War. This is in line with comics continuity—Sharon is Steve’s biggest love interest in the comics—but it’s also super weird.
See, Sharon is the grand-niece of Peggy Carter, Steve’s love interest in his first film. Their first kiss happens shortly after Peggy’s funeral, while Steve’s best friends Sam and Bucky are sitting in a car, watching.
Their romance is crossing some odd, multi-generational, and creepy lines, and Hayley Atwell (who played Peggy Carter) is not having it. Saying that Peggy would turn over in her grave if she heard the news, Atwell went on to tear apart the new romance: “I wouldn’t want to date my great aunt’s guy. It just feels like it crosses a… boundary. And Peggy just died. That’s even more disrespectful, right? It’s like, ‘don’t touch that.’ You can’t tap that!"
What scenes jarred you out of MCU movies? Let us know in the comments!
