Marvel Cinematic Universe (NO SPOILERS ALLOWED!)

[ImprobableQuestion]

The MCU has taken over Star Wars as my favorite film franchise because of its sheer size, scope, and just overall good quality of movies. IMO among the 13 so far, none of them are bad or god-awful. Some are better than others certainly, but I feel none are bad.

My rankings of Phase I and Phase II:

Phase I:
1. The Avengers
2. Iron Man
3. Captain America: The First Avenger
4. Thor
5. Iron Man 2
6. The Incredible Hulk

Phase II
1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. Ant-Man/The Avengers: Age of Ultron
3. Guardians of the Galaxy
4. Thor: The Dark World
5. Iron Man 3

I live in one of the places that got Civil War ahead, so naturally I saw it. I won't spoil of course, but I feel that it's definitely good, great even. But there's one thing that prevents it from being outstanding. Relative to the other two Cap movies, I feel it's not quite as good as Winter Soldier, and it's better than The First Avenger. But it still maintains that the Cap Trilogy is one of the best parts of the MCU.

As far as other MCU stuff goes, I occasionally follow AoS and the Netflix stuff.

I agree with your picks, except I might switch 2 and 3 for Phase II (and sometimes Phase I depending on my mood).

I just finalized my plans to see Civil War tomorrow evening. On principle alone it won't unseat Winter Soldier as my favorite, but I'm glad it's not going to be a travesty.

[JKtheMac]

My all time list changes quite a bit but currently I would rank them thus:

The Avengers
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Captain America: The Winter Soldier / Guardians of the Galaxy
Iron Man
Iron Man 3
.
Captain America: Civil War
Ant-Man / Thor / Iron Man 2
Captain America: The First Avenger
.
The Incredible Hulk / Thor: The Dark World

The breakpoints represent the division between movies I really like, movies I enjoy but have problems with, movies that I think have too many problems to be redeemed (although even those have things I enjoy, ASM2 would be way below either of these). I guess the thing that stands out is the high showing for AoU and IM3 which I seem to enjoy a lot more than most people.

[MindofShadow]

I wanna see CW before I rank them just so I don't have to do it twice, but my list is generally weird as I like the Thor movies way more than most

[JKtheMac]

Chris Stuckman is one of hte few youtube reviews I can (a) stand and (b) agree on enough movies that I will generally watch his reviews

He gave Civil War an A+

It is always good if you can find a reviewer that matches your tastes. I have to say, despite my problems with the film this is quite a good review that I can mostly agree with. Clearly we diverge at overall impressions and we don't agree about The Dark Knight, but the main gist of these opionons I can get behind.

I do think this review provides us a clue as to where the professional critic response is diverging with the public response. The middle segment of non-professional critics are more concerned with their overall impressions of the parts and the whole. That is a valid way of deciding if you enjoyed the experience but is not a good way of deciding if a movie is actually well made or written, or has merit for a wider audience. I have seen pro critics argue this is a great movie and also some arguing that it is reasonably good but they each provide analysis. This review only analyses the character motivations and also uses a rule of thumb 'realism' metric. That is interesting but I would like to see more developmemt of his thoughts on genre and how they really apply to this movie or a more reflective look at the action sequences and how they were employed as story telling as opposed to spectacle and motivation.

[JKtheMac]

I wanna see CW before I rank them just so I don't have to do it twice, but my list is generally weird as I like the Thor movies way more than most

I love the Thor movies because they have Thor in them and all that entails, but a part of me knows they are not great. I would dearly like to see Kenneth Branagh given another shot at that franchise. It really pains me to rank The Dark World as low as The Incredible Hulk, and even as I did that it surprised me, but it is a mess of a movie with lots of glorious fun parts that don't add up to anything. I am pretty sure if we dug out the last time I ranked these films it was higher.

[MindofShadow]

It is always good if you can find a reviewer that matches your tastes. I have to say, despite my problems with the film this is quite a good review that I can mostly agree with. Clearly we diverge at overall impressions and we don't agree about The Dark Knight, but the main gist of these opionons I can get behind.

I do think this review provides us a clue as to where the professional critic response is diverging with the public response. The middle segment of non-professional critics are more concerned with their overall impressions of the parts and the whole. That is a valid way of deciding if you enjoyed the experience but is not a good way of deciding if a movie is actually well made or written, or has merit for a wider audience. I have seen pro critics argue this is a great movie and also some arguing that it is reasonably good but they each provide analysis. This review only analyses the character motivations and also uses a rule of thumb 'realism' metric. That is interesting but I would like to see more developmemt of his thoughts on genre and how they really apply to this movie or a more reflective look at the action sequences and how they were employed as story telling as opposed to spectacle and motivation.

Yeah, there are only 2 youtuber's I will check out anymore... Stuckman and Schmoes. I obviously don't agree with them 100% (especially Stuckman) but well enough that its worth my 15 minutes watching their reviews. And they don't yell at the screen or annoy me so, yay?!

There are definitely different ways to evaluate and critique a movie. For instance, for me, the only measure I really care about is "did I have fun and if so, how much?" Which is why I tend to gravitate to action movies only. For instance, you won't see me watching Oscar bait because I don't go to movies to be bored.

Now, that doesn't mean I don't recognize flaws.. but the fun can overcome the flaws in my book. For instance... The Bay Turtles. There is literally nothing special about that movie. Some of it is extremely head scratching. But... I can have fun with it, it was worth my time.

I love the Thor movies because they have Thor in them and all that entails, but a part of me knows they are not great. I would dearly like to see Kenneth Branagh given another shot at that franchise. It really pains me to rank The Dark World as low as The Incredible Hulk, and even as I did that it surprised me, but it is a mess of a movie with lots of glorious fun parts that don't add up to anything. I am pretty sure if we dug out the last time I ranked these films it was higher.

I can agree with that. I think say... GoG is a miles better executed story than Thor 2... but i've rewatched Thor 2 probably twice as much as GoG. I just like it more lol.

[Username taken]

1. Captain America: Winter Soldier/Avengers
2. Iron Man
3. Guardians of the Galaxy
4. Iron Man 3
5. Avengers: Age of Ultron
6. Thor
7. Ant-man
8. Captain America
9. Incredible Hulk
10. Thor: The Dark World
11. Iron Man 2

[CraigTheCylon]

Mmm, rankings, rankings. Tricky. Never tried it with all the films, but, here we go, in reverse order of quality:

12 - Iron Man 2. If Marvel Studios ever make a film this bad again, that's when I might start taking 'superhero fatigue' thinkpieces seriously. Iron Man 2 just did not need to exist, and the few bits of shared-universe worldbuilding it throws in can't begin to compensate or a story that's simultaneously too complex and too dumb, the typical hallmark of something that was largely made up on-set. Downey Jr. is still fun, but the lame poisoning and daddy issues stories don't push him into any new direction (and the way those 2 stories eventually meld is, in hindsight, one of the biggest WTF moments of all these films to date), meanwhile Don Cheadle gets a fairly dull debut as Rhodey, Paltrow is just sort of there and Black Widow is Action Lady By Numbers without any hint of the moral ambiguity that would come to make the character special. And then there's Mickey Rourke doing whatever the hell he thought he was doing. I still mark out for the suitcase armour every time (I'm not made of stone, come on), but...no, it's just a mess.

11 - The Incredible Hulk. Even with William Hurt returning as Thunderbolt Ross in Civil War, this one's still the redheaded stepchild of the MCU films, and, yeah, it kinda deserves that. Edward Norton was a decent Bruce Banner, Liv Tyler was a pretty good Betty Ross, and I honestly love Tim Roth as the reimagined Emil Blonsky, but the interplay between them all is terribly flat. It's hard to nail down where the exact problem lies, but the whole film just lacks the easy charm that is typically the MCU's hallmark, and since it's not exactly a cerebral experience there's no extra substance to compensate. But, y'know, we got the Hulk using two halves of a car as boxing gloves in a movie. That's something.

10 - Thor. Thor's actually better than this ranking would indicate, it's just up against stiff competition. It's the weakest of the movies I'll willingly watch again, let's say, with the ones beneath it being entries I'll only return to out of completist tendencies. Thor gets plenty right: it nailed the main casting and gave them all space to define themselves (even the relatively minor Sif and the Warriors Three come off well), established the strained melodramatic family matters that fuel all Thor stories to one degree or another, and set up some concrete rules for how otherworldly magic exists within the one-step-into-tomorrow scif-fi world we already knew. It's also really goddang funny. Where it suffers is predominantly in scope; for a film that opens by showing (not telling!) us of ancient conflict between gods and ice beasts on our world, forgotten to history, it sure doesn't feel particularly epic. Nearly the whole thing takes place on the one street of Nowheresville, New Mexico, plus 2 or 3 rooms in Asgard's capital that are shot so claustrophobically they feel like stages for a play, rather than a real, tangible place. Also, Loki's plan is sort of...erratic, and only makes sense if you assume he still super loves Odin (even after screaming at him so hard he goes into the Odinsleep) and yet is unaware of Odin's powers (being near-omniscient while in the sleep, in particular). Still, it built a decent foundation. Terrific score, too.

9 - Iron Man. See what I mean about these rankings not telling the whole story? I LOVE the first Iron Man flick, but it still winds up down here because since 2008, these films have mostly grown for the better. But anyway - it's Iron Man. You've seen it. Of course you've seen it. Downey Jr. is on fire (and lacking the too-relaxed smugness of the sequel), his arc from jackass to hero is studied brilliantly, the score's great, the first and second-act set pieces are small but pitched perfectly, Jeff Bridges is bald and yelling about building stuff IN A CAVE! With a BOX of SCRAPS!! It's great, mostly. The finale lets it down, with Stane's transformation from stressed-out friend to supervillain taking all of 5 minutes, and the resulting smackdown being the least interesting armour sequence in the whole thing, but we all basically forgave that at time of release so why bother stressing now?

8 - Ant-Man. Again, this ranking doesn't really tell the whole story. Saying Ant-Man is the weakest of the Phase 2 movies doesn't make it bad or disappointing - hell, given the circumstances of its creation, it's shockingly good - it's just not nearly as ambitious as the rest. It's basically a Phase 1 movie coming 2 or 3 years behind the curve, a throwback to simpler times, with only a few nods to continuity to keep it up-to-date. By last year I think we'd all sort of moved on from the traditional 'origin story' movies and wanted to embrace something more immediate, something grander. (which does make me skeptical of how Doctor Strange will be received, honestly) Throwback or no, it's a fun movie that successfully merges the tropes and structures of a heist movie with the trappings of the superhero genre and manages to do the whole 'evil guy with shinier version of hero's tech' angle more smoothly and effectively than Iron Man did. No, Yellowjacket's not your favourite villain, but his descent is plotted over the whole movie and he's actually one of the more intimidating foes any MCU hero has faced. Taking over the world is one thing, but breaking into your nemesis' old house just to try and murder his daughter with lasers out of spite? Baaaaad. Elsewhere, Paul Rudd's a less showy presence than most MCU leads but he's immediately likable, Evangeline Lily and Michael Douglas are excellent, and the final scale-warping fight on the train set is easily in the top 3 battles of the whole MCU. Hell, if I hadn't already seen Civil War it might've been #1.

7 - Captain America: The First Avenger. Some days - usually the days when I watch it again - I wanna put this one higher. It just speaks to me in a way the others don't. Maybe I read too many Commando comics back when I had a single-digit age, I don't know, but however much I respect what's been done with Cap since he came into the present day, I can't begin to explain how happy I am that we got at least 1 good movie with him in his element. And The First Avenger's main strength is that it absolutely feels like an old pulp serial - the stirring music, the wacky technology, the hissably evil bad guys, the warm sepia tones, the classic romance...moreso than Thor, this is where the MCU proved it could stretch its wings beyond just being sequels to Iron Man that didn't star Iron Man. If I had to pick some problems with it - and I really don't want to - well, a lot of the greenscreening doesn't hold up so well in hi-def, and I get why some would be disappointed that our first big action sequence with a costumed-up Cap turns out to be an extended montage. (not me, though - I love a good montage and this one rules) It's nowhere near the 'best' film but, somedays, it's the one I love the most. Oh, and lest we forget, this is by far the best use any big movie has made of Tommy Lee Jones since the first Men In Black.

6 - Thor: The Dark World. Looking back at Phase 2, what strikes me most is how each film felt like a deliberate attempt to defy expectations. Iron Man left his armour off for a good long while and deployed his comic arch-nemesis as a shell game that fooled us all, Captain America went from whimsy derring-do to a paranoid spy thriller, Guardians effectively rewrote the book on what a space opera should be, etc. The Dark World, though, was more a case of evolution, not revolution. Not that I mind, though - this is basically the Thor movie I wanted from the start. It's still got the same rock-solid handle on its character relations, and the same cast are killing it (though I am continually annoyed when Hogun just gets dismissed at the start - they're called the Warriors THREE, dammit, you can't just leave one behind and pretend it's the same), but this one actually feels like a movie about gods going to war. Taylor doesn't get a lot of love for his direction, but he shoots with a more assured eye for scope than Branagh, so now Asgard feels like a populated, livable world rather than some fancy sound-stages, and it means something when it comes under attack. Whenever battle breaks out, it feels loud and chaotic - like there's dozens of other things happening off the edges of the screen - and despite multiple characters, forces and locations involved in each melee it's never confusing to keep track of. I also love just how much the film switches locations, and how swiftly, without feeling the need to hold anyone's hand. Malekith, of course, is basically a nonentity, but the film seems to know that, and doubles down on the Thor/Loki drama, choosing to use its real villain as simply a chisel to drive wedges between the characters, and it mostly works.

TBC because rambling too much for 1 post.

[CraigTheCylon]

Continued!

5 - The Avengers (Assemble). I always struggle with ranking this one. On the one hand, it was the big gamble that paid off, one that carries itself with such innate confidence that it never feels like a gamble, and the high points ("Hulk? Smash.") are the stuff of legend. The kind of thing where you feel like you'll be explaining to your grandkids how it felt to see that the first time, one day. On the other hand, the first 45 minutes are boring as hell, a bunch of by-the-numbers busywork that's necessary to get the right pieces in the right places but really feels like it could've been done better, or at least more economically. Mind you, once the film starts going it never stops, and all your issues with that prolonged opening just sort of melt away...plus it's THE AVENGERS, y'know? Even now, 4 years later, that rotating shot of the whole team standing together sends shivers down the spine. Movie magic.

4 - Iron Man 3. The Marmite movie. Even among MCU die-hards, this is the love-it-or-hate-it point that will still be argued over for years to come. If you couldn't guess, I am very much of the 'love' persuasion. Yeah, Tony spends a lot of time out of the suit, but honestly? That's a good thing. Iron Man is invincible, but Tony Stark is all too mortal - something all good Iron Man comics understand. Iron Man 3 breaks all his toys - literally stripping him of his plot armour - and forces him to exercise that mighty brain in new and interesting ways, with some genuinely awesome results. It also successfully torpedoes that smugness I mentioned was bothering me in Iron Man 2, by giving Tony some Chitauri PTSD that Downey Jr. absolutely nails. And the Mandarin...he might be the best MCU villain to date. Really, he's kinda perfect. When they chose to have Tony be captured in Afghanistan back in the first film, they drew a clear parallel between Iron Man and modern terrorism, so of course Iron Man's greatest foe is the apotheosis of the modern terrorist...which is basically a gaudy smokescreen. That's what terrorists tend to be, a mixture of unusual iconography and provocative wordplay, punctuated by chaotic violence. The world was afraid of Bin Laden for years despite him being a barely-mobile old guy plugged into a dialysis machine who was eventually shot dead unceremoniously in someone else's house. Iron Man 3 redrafts that, reinforcing with a welcome shot of comedy (via Ben Kingsley's hilarious Trevor Slattery) and a dark, nasty satire of the military industrial complex. Add to that some expanded and far more interesting roles for Pepper and Rhodey (this is where Cheadle absolutely puts his stamp on the role), the terrific plane rescue and a brilliant last battle and I don't know what else I could ask for. Maybe a groovy '70s-sounding end credits theme? Oh wait, it's got that too.

3 - Avengers: Age of Ultron. I get why people think Age of Ultron was a disappointing follow-up to the first Avengers. There's nothing in this film to match "I'm always angry" and the like. It never reaches those kind of high notes. What it does do is hit a more respectable average level of, let's just say 'awesomeness' to be childish about it, across the course of the whole film. There's no near-hour-long benchwarming period before the fireworks start - we pretty much get thrown right into the fray as soon as the studio logo disappears, and there's a more generous smattering of action throughout. Plus, when things cool down the resulting chatter is more rewarding, as Whedon (aided by having a good few more other movies to check for notes) has a superior grip on everyone's issues and personas, and cuts to their core more sharply. Even the oft-maligned subplot where Thor buggers off to have a magic bath fits in logically with his confidence-shaking hallucination and his sudden, urgent need to prove he can be just as good at building and protecting as he is at breaking stuff. And of course there's Ultron himself, not a very convincing villain (lack of physical power aside, when it becomes apparent that this sentient alien AI born from an infinity stone is somehow being outsmarted by Tony Stark's equivalent of the MS Office paperclip all hope of accepting him as an 'Avengers-worthy' bad guy dries up) but an endlessly fascinating character - a human-hating machine who can't leave humanity behind, whose odd fully-animated face with artificial lips and eyelids, none of which he needs, are a constant reminder that he is every bit as fickle and flawed as the fleshy ones he looks down upon. Overall, Age of Ultron is bloated, and uneven, but it's far more thoughtful than it looks, and it seems to be the one I'm always rewatching so it's clearly doing something right.

2 - Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Not even sure what's left to say about this one. It's openly the most thematically deep of all the MCU films, a great contextualization of the latter-day war on terror and the politics behind it that pulls no punches about how crappy said things are. It's also another big, important step on the personal, ongoing journey of Cap in the modern day, and fully-realized Black Widow after Avengers nearly-but-not-quite got there, and made everybody fall in love with the Falcon, and had some of the best hand-to-hand combat scenes in any recent film that isn't The Raid, AND had Samuel L. Jackson's best turn as Nick Fury to date, AND finally gave us robot brain Arnim Zola who talks with his face broadcast onto an old CRT monitor, and...look, it's just really good. You know this. Its only noteworthy issues are the very unremarkable, sometimes iffy score, and a very underused Sharon Carter, and neither of those are gamebreakers.

But even so...

1 - Guardians of the Galaxy. It's the best. It just is. And a lot of that is personal bias - I was a Star Wars kid long before I was a Marvel fan, I love a good space opera, especially one not too uptight about itself - but honestly? I cannot imagine how Guardians of the Galaxy could be better than it is. There's no single scene I'd cut, no character I'd evict, no setpiece I'd demand be taken back to storyboard. It hits all the right notes, makes you laugh, makes you cheer, makes you cry, it's legitimately gorgeous to behold, opens up the MCU in a thousand interesting ways, makes the best possible use of every part of its incredible eclectic cast...it's the best. Were it legal to marry a movie, I would marry this movie.


Not really sure where Civil War would fit even after seeing it twice. Could knock Winter Soldier off the #2 spot, honestly. It's very very good.

[MindofShadow]

Civil was great. Really great.

I need to see it to confirm, but it could very well be my favorite comic book movie ever and in my top 3 favorite movies ever.

Can't 100% claim that until it survives a handful of rewatches. But good lord... the action scenes were great, the ending was brutal... it just hit on everything.

Plus, T'challa is my favorite character, ever, so... yeah. And he was a BOSS.

Lots to discuss with CW, but imma save ituntil I get to work tomorrow so I don't have to rush. So much is changed now honestly. This isn't like the other Avenger movies where they put the pieces back together in the end... the pieces are all over the place.

The Russos are god in my book.

[JKtheMac]

Civil was great. Really great.

I need to see it to confirm, but it could very well be my favorite comic book movie ever and in my top 3 favorite movies ever.

Can't 100% claim that until it survives a handful of rewatches. But good lord... the action scenes were great, the ending was brutal... it just hit on everything.

Plus, T'challa is my favorite character, ever, so... yeah. And he was a BOSS.

Lots to discuss with CW, but imma save ituntil I get to work tomorrow so I don't have to rush. So much is changed now honestly. This isn't like the other Avenger movies where they put the pieces back together in the end... the pieces are all over the place.

The Russos are god in my book.

I'm glad you liked it, I was worried you were over building your expectations considering how much you apparently wanted to like it. Whatever happened I knew you would like the BP portrayal, I mean what's not to like.

[MindofShadow]

I'm glad you liked it, I was worried you were over building your expectations considering how much you apparently wanted to like it. Whatever happened I knew you would like the BP portrayal, I mean what's not to like.

Yeah... expectations can affect a movie big time. My hype level was on over drive and it was better than i hoped. Same thing happened with avengers.

Ive been disappointed bc of my too high expectations in the past

[ImprobableQuestion]

Darn it Craig, you're making me rethink Iron Man 3.

[Rogue Star]

Darn it Craig, you're making me rethink Iron Man 3.

Don't feel bad. I don't hate Iron Man 3 either...


anymore...

sometimes.

[Rogue Star]

These words are so epic they deserve a place in this thread:

"The other secret, and why it’s still a secret, I don’t know, but they just took what Deadpool is in the comics," Feige continued. "He breaks the fourth wall. He talks into the camera. He doesn’t give a shit about any of the other heroes. He doesn’t take anything seriously. All of that is what made Deadpool so popular in the comics. Tim and his writers and Ryan Reynolds were able to get that and even magnify that up on the big screen. We’ve always said if there’s any 'secret' it’s respect the source material, understand the source material and then, any adaptation you make from the source material should be done only to enhance whatever the original pure spirit of the source material was. 'Deadpool' hit on all cylinders with that."

Now I'm convinced that the MCU would not have been possible without Kevin Feige in charge.