Justice for Hawkeye! Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye, played by Jeremy Renner, may not be the most powerful member of The Avengers but based on certain real-world metrics from a new study, he has been revealed as the most valuable member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
These metrics come from the team at "Film Franchise Showdown", a site that focuses on compiling data to determine the overall popularity of franchises. The site explains that they break down the ten highest-earning movie franchises of all-time by looking at budgets, box office earnings, critic scores, and awards of each installment to determine who comes out on top. The two main metrics used to determine the value of a franchise are the return on investment and a critic score while the former is determined by looking at how many times the box office earnings exceeded the budget. This metric proves to be critical to Hawkeye's value as an Avenger while the critic score is calculated by looking at IMDB ratings as well as Metacritic scores.
Looking at the return of investment for each hero in the MCU, Hawkeye leads each hero due to appearing in THOR, THE AVENGERS, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR and AVENGERS: ENDGAME. Perhaps unfairly, AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR is also included because the character gets a brief mention, even though he doesn't appear in the film. It is then determined that Hawkeye has a return on investment of 5.3 per installment, pulling him ahead of Thor (5.06), Captain America (4.9), and Iron Man (4.8).
The caveat here is that Hawkeye has only appeared in team-up movies so that certainly increases his return on investment. This also helped Star-Lord and Black Widow rank second and third respectively as they have only appeared in team-up movies as well and haven't led their own installments. Had BLACK WIDOW met its planned release date in May and pulled in the expected solid box office and reviews, it's possible Scarlett Johansson would've given Star-Lord a run for his money. As far as individual entries are concerned, BLACK PANTHER was ranked as the best MCU player because of its huge box office and widespread critical acclaim. THE INCREDIBLE HULK was ranked the worst because it's the lowest box office earner of the MCU and it was met with mixed critical reviews.
So this only really comes down to numbers but Hawkeye is actually my favorite of the MCU because he's the most underrated. He may not be as powerful as Thor or as intelligent as Iron Man but he still comes through when it counts. Do YOU think Hawkeye is an underrated member of the team?