Marvel varies too much to score as one franchise, so we score three films: Thor (72, Spiritually Safe), Guardians of the Galaxy (33, Caution), and Doctor Strange (23, Avoid). Doctor Strange has the clearest spiritual problem, and later films add LGBT content.
Marvel Studios has built an interconnected franchise of films and series since Iron Man in 2008, and the quality, tone, and content vary enormously from one title to the next. A single verdict on "Marvel" would mislead, so this guide scores three representative films one at a time, Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange, and Thor, against Plugged In's detailed reviews, and then lists the documented LGBT content in later entries so parents know where the franchise has moved. Each card above is a separate film with its own score, and none of them is a score for the whole franchise.
Plugged In calls Guardians of the Galaxy a violently chaotic movie, with countless casualties who are shot, stabbed, skewered, blown up, or thrown around, though the tone swings between serious and slapstick. The language is the heaviest of the three: three s-words, stand-ins for the f-word such as "frickin'" and "what the f...?", a scattering of milder profanity, and God's name used inappropriately about a half-dozen times. Peter Quill brags about his conquests, leers at Gamora, and another character calls her a crude name. Against that, Plugged In finds real heroism: Peter risks his life for Gamora, Groot serves his friends sacrificially, and Drax moves from pure revenge toward something worth fighting for. Spirituality appears only glancingly, as when Peter's dying mother says she is going to a better place.
This is the film with the clearest spiritual problem, and Plugged In puts it carefully. It calls the film deeply spiritual, built on a reality that science cannot touch, and then says everything is blanketed by vague Eastern mysticism, magic, and the occult. The film tries to make the magic sound naturalistic, as energy drawn from the multiverse, and no one prays to a foreign god or conjures a real demon. But the practices are still called spells, their users are sorcerers, the Ancient One holds the title Supreme Sorcerer, the library holds a grimoire, and characters travel in an astral form. Kamar-Taj resembles a Buddhist monastery with a touch of Taoism, and chakras appear in the diagrams. Strange begins by insisting there is no such thing as spirit and learns otherwise. The language is lighter than Guardians, with three s-words, and the violence includes an off-screen beheading, deaths from falls, and a destroyed Hong Kong.
Plugged In finds Thor mostly constructive. Stripped of his power, Thor learns humility, grieves, and finally breaks the Rainbow Bridge to save another world at the cost of seeing the woman he loves, which Plugged In reads as a radical transformation. The film recasts the Asgardians as aliens from a place where science and magic are one, in an effort to explain away the murky spirituality of Norse myth, though Loki is still called a sorcerer and the character is hard to separate from his mythological roots. Language is mild, with d-word, a-word, and h-word uses and God's name misused about a half-dozen times, and the battles are intense but not particularly bloody. The romance stays at a kiss, and a young intern's flirting is played for comedy.
The franchise has since added LGBT content that earlier films did not carry, and the documented examples are specific. Eternals (2021) introduced Phastos, played by Brian Tyree Henry, as the first openly gay MCU hero on screen, with a husband named Ben and a son, and Twinfinite notes it included the first gay kiss in the MCU. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) shows America Chavez wearing a pride pin and reveals in her backstory that she was raised by two mothers, as Newsweek reports. In Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), Korg describes his husband and, according to Out, Valkyrie is shown to have lost a girlfriend in battle. We found no support for the claim sometimes made that the film states Thor himself is bisexual. We have not scored those three films here, because each is a separate title, but a family should know the content is there before pressing play on later entries.
Two questions run through these films, and Scripture speaks to both. The first is the nature of the supernatural. Moses told Israel not to practice divination or sorcery, interpret omens, or cast spells (Deuteronomy 18:10-12), which is why a film that presents spells and sorcerers positively, even in a naturalistic wrapper, deserves caution. The franchise as a whole imagines a universe of many powers and no God, against the claim that the LORD is God and there is no other (Isaiah 46:9). The second is what the heroes model. Sacrifice and perseverance are genuinely praised in Scripture, since suffering produces perseverance and character (Romans 5:3-4), and there is real moral seriousness in Thor's humility and Groot's loyalty. Paul's instruction to take no part in the fruitless works of darkness but to expose them (Ephesians 5:11) asks us to enjoy the good and say plainly what we cannot endorse, and that is how we scored these three films.
We score the films, not the franchise. Thor scores 72/100, Spiritually Safe, because its humility and sacrifice arc is strong and its language and violence are the mildest of the three. Guardians of the Galaxy scores 33/100, Caution, held down by heavy language, chaotic violence, and crude sexual banter despite its real heroism. Doctor Strange scores 23/100, Avoid, because its central subject is sorcery and Eastern mysticism presented as true, a problem no amount of well-made action offsets. Teens and adults can watch the Marvel films with discernment, but the three films here show how widely they differ, and the later films with LGBT content need to be checked one at a time.
Guardians stars an actor who speaks about his faith publicly, which our guide to Chris Pratt examines. For the studio behind these films, see Is Disney anti-Christian?, and for the actress who plays MJ in the Spider-Man films, see Zendaya. For the far more extreme end of superhero storytelling, read our review of The Boys. Our Christian discernment guide explains how we weigh a story's strengths against its content, and the Christian movie reviews hub lists every film we have scored.