Jeremy Renner's 5 Best Marvel Movies, Ranked

This is number one because Avengers: Endgame gives Jeremy Renner the fullest, heaviest, most emotionally layered Clint Barton in the MCU. The movie starts by tearing his life apart in seconds, and when we see him again, he’s spiritually burned down. Ronin Clint is grief turned into motion. Renner plays him like a man who has run out of places to put his pain, so he’s pouring it into violence and calling that a mission. The Tokyo sequence works because he moves like someone who’s exhausted, lethal, and past the point of wanting to be saved.

Then Endgame keeps giving him material, and Renner keeps cashing it in. His scenes with Natasha on Vormir are heartbreaking because the fight over sacrifice comes from love, guilt, and shared history. There’s no winning in the moment like a stereotypical cringe. Instead, he’s trying to protect the last person who still knows who he was before all this. When she dies, Renner plays the aftermath with the kind of grief that goes quiet and ugly. And by the final battle, Clint feels exactly like what this version of the MCU needed: not the strongest Avenger, not the flashiest, but one of the most wounded and one of the most worth rooting for.

This is the movie that makes Hawkeye feel dangerous. Really dangerous. The Avengers takes Clint, puts him under Loki’s control, and suddenly he becomes a one-man problem for everybody. The mind-controlled version of him is so good. And that’s because Renner strips away the warmth and leaves pure mission efficiency, cold focus, no wasted words, all kill-shot energy. He turns Hawkeye into a horror element for a stretch of the movie, and it rules. You believe this guy can break S.H.I.E.L.D.’s day in half with a bow and some planning because Renner sells the competence so hard.

Then the movie gives him his team energy back, and that switch matters just as much. Once Clint is himself again, Renner brings the wit and trust back into the rhythm, especially in his scenes with Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson). Their history gives the movie texture without forcing a bunch of exposition. By the final battle, Hawkeye feels essential because he’s doing what a great tactician does in a disaster — seeing angles, creating openings, keeping pressure where it matters. Renner makes all of it feel effortless. He’s like Legolas (Orlando Bloom) from LOTR of Avengers.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is one of the most important Hawkeye movies because it finally lets Clint feel like a person with a life instead of just an arrow guy in formation. Renner gets to bring out Clint’s dry humor, his battlefield focus, and his role as the most grounded Avenger in the room. The farmhouse reveal works so well because it instantly reframes him. Suddenly this isn’t just the sniper with good aim. This is a husband, a dad, a guy who built something real away from all the chaos.

And Renner absolutely owns the motivational side of Clint here. The Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) speech is one of his best MCU moments because it sounds like something Clint would actually say under pressure: blunt, practical, weirdly reassuring, no theatrics. “The city is flying…” energy. That whole stretch is peak Renner, funny, tired, competent, and deeply human while robots are trying to end the world. Ultron has bigger headlines, but Clint’s presence gives it a heartbeat.

Renner barely gets any time in Avengers: Infinity War, and somehow his opening still lands like a punch. Clint Barton starts the movie in family mode, and the scene moves so fast from peace to horror that it feels cruel in exactly the right way. No speech. No dramatic buildup. Just confusion, panic, and that sickening realization that the people he’s calling for are gone. Renner plays it raw and immediate, and the movie gets massive emotional value from a short stretch because he makes the loss feel domestic and personal.

That opener also does something really smart for Clint’s place in the MCU: it reminds you that his stakes are different. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) loses a world, Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) loses a protégé, Steve (Chris Evans) loses a fight for the soul of the team and Clint loses his family in his backyard. Renner’s face carries that shock in a way that sticks with you through the rest of the movie, even while he’s offscreen. Minimal screentime, maximum damage. That’s why it belongs here.

The funniest thing about Clint in Thor is how little screen time he gets and how instantly he still feels like a real person. He’s perched up with the bow, watching chaos unfold around Mjolnir, and Renner gives him that perfect professional overwatch vibe — calm, observant, mildly annoyed, ready to act the second someone gives the word. It’s basically a cameo, but it works because he plays it like Clint already has a life, a job, and opinions about the idiots on the ground.

That matters. A lot. Because this tiny appearance sets the MCU Hawkeye tone before Hawkeye even gets a movie-sized role. Renner makes him feel precise and dry instead of flashy, which ends up being the character’s whole advantage in team movies. You don’t leave Thor thinking “wow, huge Hawkeye arc.” You leave thinking, “Wait, who was that guy, and why did he feel so locked in?” And that’s a great first impression, especially in hindsight.