Originally Posted by
Conch22
My opinion, since I'm seeing the X-Men/ MCU comparison, is X-Men holds up better as superhero team film than The Avengers.
X-Men: The Tragedy of Magneto's backstory, the horror of Rogue discovering her powers, Wolverine shown to be a badass cage fighting, the scene where he has the standoff (claws vs. rifle) Rogue and Logans stories intersect and has prominence with Magneto's plans, which Xavier is determined to stop. Xavier is taken down, Senator Kelley is introduced as part of the moral conflict of the film, making each teams actions less cut and dried. Several brotherhood/ X-Men showdowns (in the snowy woods, train station, statue of liberty gift shop. Utilizing Mystiques ability to add an extra bit of danger, as there's initially uncertainty on who to blast and whether it's actually Logan. Logan calling out Magneto's hypocrisy on victimizing Rogue for mutantkind. Rogue settles into her new home, the love triangle is set up, as is Logans journey and the Xavier/ Magneto dynamic. Great start to the franchise.
Then we've got the Avengers: Ruffalo doing his worst scary guy impression with Black Widow, the cheesy reverse interrogation gimmick that was done better on Burn Notice, fanboy standin Coulson, heretofore an annoying add on character in Ironman, now promoted to Cap fanboy (and your supposed to care, because he wanted Cap to sign those trading cards. And Nick Fury smears his blood on them, the implication being the team are such self obsessed narcissists they'd ignore the end of the world over a mild argument unless Fury defiled poor Coulsons corpse. Got the shadowy organization that are poorly rendered cliches and almost any spy film would give you a better iteration of that trope. Hawkeye isn't so much a character or in costume as a mind controlled pawn for Widow to later bounce some very stiff dialog about being unmade off of. Loki violates Godwins law not even halfway through the film, Thors cheesy "bring the hammer doooown!" line, the obvious fellowship of the rings rip with the sceptre, the incredibly lame misogyny made Loki dumb with Black Widow even though that doesn't fit his character so far and he's been 10 steps ahead until now, the red in my ledger line (maximum mold on that cheesy line), alien army of CGI throwup, drawn out, bland alien sea (air) creatutes tagteam tournament with droning score, ridiculously uneven power set (Thor, Hulk, Ironman, then human Widow and Hawkeye and just above human Cap) punctuate the too long final fight with some meh humor that undercuts the end of the world stakes that should be felt, aliens all deactivate conveniently because apparently they're cyborgs or robots. Tired Schwarma joke.