Saturday, November 24, 2018

Avengers Movies Roundup!

Super trite post here, but I've been wanting to do this for a while, just to think through why I like the ones I like, and which ones have been weaker.  And of course, I'm going to state a lot of things as fact here, but it is all definitely just opinion.



#20 Avengers: Age of Ultron
The only Avengers movie I may have enjoyed less than Age of Ultron was The Incredible Hulk.  However, I'm ranking Age of Ultron dead last because it should have been better.  It had rubbery CGI, a gimmicky villain, dumb sub-plots, the list goes on.  There are positives for it, but I think they are outweighed by the damage it did to the franchise (although it survived just fine).  Also, the end-credits scene where it turned out this was all just Thanos' evil plot all along really irritated me by taking away any real wrong that was done by Tony Stark.

#19 The Incredible Hulk
I enjoyed the Incredible Hulk when it first came out in theaters, but it just did not stand up to the re-watch.  It was just dull, dark, and thin (although I did love Tim Roth as Abomination).

#18 Thor
I actually think Thor did a very good job of what it was trying to do... it just wasn't doing much.  The first half of the movie is basically a goofy rom-com, and it's a lot of fun.  However, it is stapled to the back half of a marvel movie, and because the beginning doesn't really build up the tension necessary the epic climactic battle sequences just come off a bit hollow.

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The movies above this line are ones that I thought were worse upon re-watching.  Everything past this line, I thought was better (assuming I have re-watched it)

#17 Thor: The Dark World
This movie wasn't great.  I ranks this high because it is visually stunning.  I don't think there's anything in particular wrong with it, but it just doesn't do much.  That said, their vision of the Dark Elves is just beautiful, the costuming is great, and I really loved seeing Asgard so much.  It really watches like a high fantasy movie with science fictional and super-hero elements.  So, this one gets a bit of a pass because it is so unique and gorgeous.

#16 Doctor Strange
Doctor Strange has a lot of the same appeal to me as Thor: The Dark World.  It is visually stunning.  They did a great job portraying time travel and "dimensional" travel in an appealing and cinematic way.  I felt that this one rested a bit much on gag humor considering how super seriously Steven Strange's backstory was treated.  My absolute favorite part of this movie was the duping of Dormammu.  My least favorite part of this movie is how abruptly Mordo flips into a villain.

#15 Black Panther
I know there might be some hurt butts from this being so far down the list, but I just wasn't that impressed with it.  I really thought Michael B. Jordan's Killmonger was great (as was Ulysses Klaue), but that wasn't enough to carry the movie.  As much as I loved Black Panther in Civil War, I thought he came off as rather flat on his own turf.  Also, oddly, this movie had some astonishingly bad special effects.  There were very rubbery CG looking fight scenes, and T'Challa's time spent in the spirit realm looked badly photoshopped.

#14 Captain America: First Avenger
Hits all of the right notes, and actually does a great job of setting up for future Avengers and Captain America movies.

#13 Ant Man and the Wasp
I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and I think that it surpassed Ant Man in many ways, but there was a little bit of the soullessness that has been creeping into the more recent Avengers movies.  I really enjoyed both Hope and Janet's characters, both pretty epic incarnations of Wasp.  It was very refreshing that the main plot of the movie was about rescuing somebody (more than one somebody even) rather than being motivated entirely by beating some baddie.

#12 Ant Man
I re-watched this one recently in preparation for Ant Man and the Wasp, and I must say, it was a lot of fun.  I really like Luis, Paul Rudd is a very charming roguish hero, and while the plot is a bit generic, it does a good job of supporting the story that they're telling.  I enjoyed the gags in this movie, they felt natural and made me laugh out loud.

#11 Avengers: Infinity War
Frankly, I have no idea where I should be putting this one in this list.  Infinity War is a frankenstein's monster of a movie, cobbled together from a series of vignettes and held together only by the fabric of the rest of the MCU.  Too many characters in this movie amounted to little more than cardboard standups (I'm lookin' at you Captain America).  Too much of the movie was dedicated to letting Drax and Rocket speak... ZING!  Starlord's writing was offensively bad (risking the universe because somebody made fun of his girlfriend as I recall).  That said, the whole movie was ONLY POSSIBLE because of the framework laid over ten years of hard work.  I have to give them some credit for making it watchable and compelling at all considering the sheer amount of ground that had to be covered.  Also, it's a very pretty movie.  I haven't re-watched it yet, and maybe that will change my opinion, but there it is.

#10 Iron Man
Even though it was pretty much a dead tie, I gave Iron Man the edge over Captain America because of its novelty.  That end-credits scene blew my mind.  I just already happened to be the type of person who stayed til the end of the credits already anyways, so I got lucky there.

#9 Spider-man: Homecoming
Because of origin story baggage, the first movies in these series usually suffer a bit, but Spider-man: Homecoming was on point.  Maybe it's because it didn't worry about origin story so much.

#8 Guardians of the Galaxy V.2
A very silly movie about the importance of family.  Would watch again.

#7 Guardians of the Galaxy
While I mostly like each sub-franchise more as they progress (and I did really like GotG V.2), I liked the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie better than its sequel.  It's very silly, but it has a lot of heart.

#6 Iron Man 3
I really didn't like this movie when I saw it in theaters.  I thought it was too goofy, and didn't make sense.  I later realized that it had an unreliable narrator, re-watched it, and loved it.  If you watch it with a recognition that Tony is just playing up his heroics and is really in a deep depression and suffering from PTSD, but humor is the only way he can cope, it makes so much more sense.  Also, the scene where Guy Pearce breathes fire was only witnessed by Rhodes (it all makes so much sense now!).

#5 Iron Man 2
Yes, the much reviled Iron Man 2.  It keeps getting pushed down the list, but it's one of my absolute favorites.  Maybe it's because it is the first movie to really start exploring the "bigger world" that Nick Fury alluded to at the end of Iron Man.  But also possibly because of Sam Rockwell (I'm eagerly awaiting (in vain I know) the return of Justin Hammer).  Also, Iron Man 2 is the beginning of the sideways trilogy (Iron Man 2, Avengers, Winter Soldier) about Hydra's infiltration of SHIELD.

#4 Captain America: Civil War
This one is excellent.  I'm surprised it got pushed down this far on the list, but so it goes.  While it suffered a little from over-production, Civil War really fleshed out a lot of the phase 1 characters and gave them real depth.  Also, Baron Zemo is one of my favorite super-hero movie villains of all time.  His evil plan actually makes sense, actually works, and reveals character flaws in the heroes themselves.

#3 Thor Ragnarok
I love basically everything about this movie.  It doesn't have the most amazing plot, but it is visually stunning, hilarious, and novel.  Also, while I mentioned that it isn't super deep, that shallowness is only on the surface.  As soon as you delve into the implications of the movie, it's very poignant and unique in that it's one of the few super-hero movies where the hero fails.

#2 Marvel's Avengers
It can't not be right up there at the top.  This movie was always going to be hard to pull off, and nothing quite like it had been done before; but they knocked it out of the park.  So it nearly tops the list.

#1 Captain America: Winter Soldier
This one has hands-down the best plot.  I loved the political thriller style to it.  Nick Fury, Black Widow, and Falcon were great supporting characters.  Also, for me, the humor was really on point in this one.  It felt  more like the type of humor that happens in real life as opposed to movie characters yukking it up while punching each-other.

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