Hawkeye has been revealed as the most valuable member of The Avengers. That is not to say that Clint Barton is more powerful than Thor or can flex his brain muscles like Iron Man, but based on certain real-world metrics, Jeremy Renner’s character is, quite literally, the most valuable here in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Though, that does come with some major caveats.
This information comes from the folks at Film Franchise Showdown. The site focuses on compiling data to determine the value of popular franchises. As they explain it, the site “breaks down the ten highest-earning movie franchises of all time, looking at budgets, box-office earnings, critic scores and awards of each installment, to reveal which films really come out on top.” They use two main metrics to determine the value of a franchise; ROI (return on investment) and a critic score. The former is determined by looking at how many times the box office earnings exceeded the budget. This is particularly important for the Hawkeye findings. The critic score is calculated looking at IMDB ratings and votes, as well as Metacritic scores and awards.
The study looked at the ROI for each hero in the MCU. Hawkeye has appeared in Thor, The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Endgame. Infinity War was also included, since Clint gets a brief mention. It was determined that Hawkeye has an ROI of 5.3 per installment, which edged out the likes of Thor and Captain America. Here is how they break it down.
“Hawkeye has appeared in six MCU installments to date, claiming an average ROI of 5.3 per film. In comparison, each film that features Thor has an average ROI of 5.06, Captain America has an ROI of 4.9, and Iron Man has an average ROI of 4.8 per appearance.”
Star-Lord and Black Widow were ranked at two and three, respectively, with Captain America and Iron Man rounding out the top five. Though that is quite revealing. Much like Hawkeye, Star-Lord and Black Widow have only appeared in team-up movies, which have become massive pop culture events that generally generate greater box office. This provides a unique way to look at the data, but it’s all relative.
Black Panther has been ranked as the best MCU entry overall, given its huge take at the box office, coupled with its widespread critical acclaim. On the flipside, The Incredible Hulk was ranked as the worst, as it has the lowest box office of any movie in the franchise and was met with mixed results critically. We have included the full list of the top 10 most valuable Avengers, per the study,k for you to check out. This news comes to us via Film Franchise Showdown.
- Top 10 Most Valuable Avengers
- 1. Hawkeye
- 2. Star-Lord
- 3. Black Widow
- 4. Captain America
- 5. Iron Man
- 6. Thor
- 7. Nick Fury
- 8. Hulk
- 9. Black Panther
- 10. Doctor Strange
