The 10 Most Beautifully Designed Locations In The MCU, Ranked

One of the most underrated aspects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and it’s a much-praised franchise, so there aren’t many underrated aspects) is its world-building. The MCU has slowly built its own version of our world.

It’s a world where a race of Viking aliens lives in Norway and a cosmic warlord wiped out half of all life in the universe using six magical gems and a team of superheroes used the same six gems to undo it. Considering this franchise started out in a cave, with a box of scraps, that’s pretty impressive. So, here are The 10 Most Beautifully Designed Locations In The MCU, Ranked.

10 Sakaar

The visual style of Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok was heavily influenced by Flash Gordon. The Thor movies should’ve always been this zany and colorful and fun. The previous two movies had been mostly boring pastiches of dull Shakespearean drama. Waititi shook things up with a wacky slapstick comedy.

The source material is a comic book about a Viking warrior who flies across the cosmos and battles mythical creatures, so Waititi actually came closer than the previous films to capturing the spirit of the quintessential era of Thor comics from the ‘60s. Sakaar is the junk planet ruled by anarchy where the Grandmaster enslaves gladiators, including his “champion,” the Hulk.

9 Hell’s Kitchen

It’s tough to decide whether or not to include the Marvel/Netflix series in the official MCU canon anymore, since they’ve all been canceled and Disney+ has made them redundant. But they’re still great shows that embodied a darker side of the franchise than we got to see on the silver screen, so it’s worth at least considering them.

Those shows have depicted their own version of New York’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. In real life, Hell’s Kitchen is the home to many struggling actors and young Wall Street brokers. But in the MCU, it’s the seediest, most crime-ridden corner of New York, protected – or, rather, “defended” – by Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Iron Fist.

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8 Kamar-Taj

Kamar-Taj is the ancient land where Stephen Strange is trained in the Mystic Arts by the Ancient One. In the comics, it’s described as “a hidden land high in the Himalayas,” although its Tibetan placement was changed in the 2016 Doctor Strange movie – and the Ancient One was depicted as a Celtic woman, as opposed to a Tibetan man, which generated some controversy.

In Scott Derrickson’s film, Kamar-Taj is given a beautiful air of mysticism and intrigue. The movie’s main selling point is its crazy visual effects, but Kamar-Taj was at the center of all the VFX involved in Strange’s training.

7 Knowhere

Accompanied by the sounds of David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream,” Knowhere bursts onto the screen in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie as the titular team arrives to sell the Orb to the Collector. Located inside the huge, floating, severed head of a Celestial, Knowhere is a reminder of just how massive the MCU’s fictional world is, with gigantic beings wandering around space that are basically gods.

Knowhere was wiped out in Avengers: Infinity War as Thanos arrived to take the Reality Stone from the Collector, but we might see how it was first created in the upcoming Eternals movie.

6 New Asgard

At the end of Thor: Ragnarok, Asgard was destroyed, leaving the surviving Asgardians without a home. So, they headed to Earth. But then, their ship was intercepted by Thanos and the Black Order, and most of the surviving Asgardians were killed before they even reached their new home.

The survivors of the survivors, who managed to avoid Thanos’ wrath – including fan favorites like Valkyrie and Korg – escaped and made it to Earth after all, establishing New Asgard in Tønsberg, the Norwegian town where Odin exiled himself before quietly dying. The shooting location has since become a popular tourist spot for MCU fans.

5 Ego’s planet

In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Peter Quill finally met his biological father, and found that he was a “living planet” – James Gunn even showed him as a planet with a face, like in the comics, at one point in the sequel’s third act – who gave him dormant cosmic superpowers.

Ego’s planet is the embodiment of everything Quill expected from his father. They play catch with a beam of light. The surface is beautiful and surreal, while the catacombs are hiding the skeletons of Ego’s millions of dead children. Ego’s planet is beautiful in parts and disturbing in others.

4 The ruins of Titan

The third act of Avengers: Infinity War is non-stop action as Earth’s mightiest heroes desperately (and futilely) tried to prevent Thanos from wiping out half of all life in the universe. While the unfocused, choppily edited battle in Wakanda left a lot to be desired, there was plenty of excitement in the battle on Titan.

On Titan, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, and the Guardians of the Galaxy fought Thanos himself. The setting had a thematic link to the story, since it’s the decimated, off-kilter remains of Thanos’ planet – a wasteland left behind by the Titanians who refused to listen to Thanos’ genocidal ideas.

3 The Quantum Realm

After the monumental gut-punch of Avengers: Infinity War, some fans felt it was an odd choice to follow it up with Ant-Man and the Wasp that summer. “Where is Ant-Man?” was the last question on fans’ minds. But as it turns out, Ant-Man and the Wasp was placed very specifically after Infinity War, to set up the Quantum Realm’s pivotal role in Avengers: Endgame.

As a microverse that exists between time and space, the Quantum Realm is a really trippy part of the MCU, and it has all the surreal imagery – like a kaleidoscope with infinite depth – to hammer that home.

2 Asgard

Thanks to the groundwork laid down by Kenneth Branagh’s initial Thor movie, Asgard is one of the most richly detailed locations in the MCU. From Odin’s throne room to Heimdall’s all-seeing control of the Bifrost to the murals hiding dark historical secrets from other murals, Asgard feels like a real place (well, as real as the Death Star or Mordor – speculative, but real in terms of in-universe mythology).

In The Dark World, Asgard was raided and partly destroyed, and then in Ragnarok, it was completely destroyed by Thor’s own doing. We learned that Asgard isn’t a place, but a people.

1 Wakanda

T’Challa had the advantage of being introduced in Captain America: Civil War before getting his own movie, but the nation that he rules over didn’t have that luxury. Ryan Coogler had to realize Wakanda’s tribes, cities, ceremonies, technology, fashion, music, armed forces, and daily life all while telling T’Challa’s origin story in 2018’s Black Panther.

It was one of those rare cases where the world-building weaves in and out of the plot without distracting from the character arcs. The Afrofuturistic aesthetic on display in Black Panther’s Wakanda-set scenes made it stand out among other big-budget sci-fi spectacles, and take on a feel of its own.

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