• Follow us on Twitter @buckeyeplanet and @bp_recruiting, like us on Facebook! Enjoy a post or article, recommend it to others! BP is only as strong as its community, and we only promote by word of mouth, so share away!
  • Consider registering! Fewer and higher quality ads, no emails you don't want, access to all the forums, download game torrents, private messages, polls, Sportsbook, etc. Even if you just want to lurk, there are a lot of good reasons to register!

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Sort by date Sort by votes
Bucklion said:
Phase I: Complete.
First up was Captain America: The First Avenger. I have to say I really, really liked this one. I think the story worked, the background worked, the acting worked…and the girl, good God almighty, I don’t know if it was the role or the hot red lipstick or what, but Goddamned, I was like in palpitations all movie. This movie, more than the other ones even, seemed to set things up more and better for future things than the other iterations did…maybe that’s because of the time difference. Red Skull was…just OK for me, maybe not quite evil enough (I think of Himmler in a red mask), and his army looked fantastic but didn’t really do much. TLJ is always a treat and Stanley Tucci had a bit of a surprise role for me. As a scientist Arnim Zola is one of the characters that fascinates me, and I’m sure I’ll see a lot more from him. I really don’t have a whole lot of bad to say about it, the Tesseract is somewhat confusing to me, but that’s because I don’t comic. I will hopefully figure out more about it in…the next movie. I am probably in the significant minority here, but I put this one ever so slightly ahead of Iron Man, just because I had more “fun” watching it in addition to being entertained and following along the story.

And of course, that led to the Avengers. Obviously having watched the first 5, I knew who the players were going to be and what they would likely bring to the table. I went in unsure of how the whole Thor other realm thing was going to jive with, say, an Iron Man, and whether they would be able to do anything adequate on the villain side to really make this a culmination. What I got was, and I am not easily impressed if you’ve read many of my other reviews, a Goddamned masterpiece. It wasn’t a masterpiece because of the story, though it was good, it wasn’t a masterpiece because of the battle at the end, though of course it was both epic and necessary. It was a masterpiece because of the subtle (and not so subtle) interactions between the characters. Anyone thinking they would gloss over tension, mistrust, contrasting styles, dark humor, and general testosterone in favor of a CGI-fest must have been very pleasantly surprised. It was actually a lot less IM-centric than I thought it would be too…they all seemed to get adequate screen time and contribute without dominating the proceedings (even Hulk). And of course using Loki as the bad boy…brilliant! (clink). His acting nuances were fabulous, and he is the perfect foil for this group because he uses misdirection instead of technology or brute strength. I’m still confused AF about the whole Tesseract thing, but I imagine I have 13 more movies to figure it out. This movie is EXACTLY how you do comic books, in contrast to Scott Gimple’s epic dumbfuckery while ruining the Savior storyline in TWD, which will go down as one of TV’s all-time wasted opportunities. The cultural and historical significance of Black Panther cannot be minimized, and I still think it was an epic movie with a fabulous villain, but…because of the interactions between the characters and the top notch acting all the way around, this one gets the nod at #1 thus far from me.
Click to expand...

So next up, as stated, was IM3. This was somewhat hampered from the beginning because by the time you get to a third movie, it has the chance to get redundant and stale anyway. I will give them credit for going outside the box on a few things to spice things up, but there were also too many tropes. I didn’t like the story...at all...maybe that arc works in a comic, but it just didn’t work here. It was way shallower than most of the other movies thus far, it would have taken 5 hours to unpack everything. The girl character was terrible. She was basically there to a) fuck, and b) link Stark to the Mandarin. That was it. Her “heroism” was useless because we knew nothing about her motivations, her conflict, her anything. That was too Walking Deadish for me. Also I’ve finally gotten back to a comfortable position with Madame Goup...she now annoys me every time she is on screen, which pretty much covers everything I’ve seen her in except Seven and IMI. The villain guy was ok, but again he was just a pretty male face there to entice the female audience. What kept it from being a disaster were Ben Kingsley and an improved Don Cheadle. Kingsley is a maestro and even though I thought the story sucked he rocked his role as usual. Cheadle knee his role and did much better this time. The kid was OK, I don’t see it as tropish as some did because the banter worked, but the idea has certainly been in a thousand movies before. I thought the ending was fine for what it was. I am glad this is the last IM movie to date because frankly I am ready to watch some other characters and I am sick of Gwenyth.

1. Marvel’s Avengers 5/5
2. Black Panther 5/5
3. Captain America: The First Avenger 4.5/5
4. Iron Man 4.5/5
5. Thor 3.5/5
6. Incredible Hulk 3/5
7. Iron Man III 2.5/5
8. Iron Man II 2.5/5
 
Upvote 0
I think the most surprising movie for me was GotG. No familiarity with a single character. Never heard of the comic. Once I heard there was a talking rodent/rabbit/trash panda, I seriously considered skipping it. Ended up being the 1st movie I bought on dvd in a long time and even ended up buying it on xbox live too. It's my daughters favorite of all the Marvel flicks along with 2nd installment. I suspect that "Tree" and "Sweet Rabbit" are the reasons.

I could watch an entire movie series based on the adventures of Thor and GotG. That would be worth the money.
 
Upvote 0
BUCKYLE said:
I think the most surprising movie for me was GotG. No familiarity with a single character. Never heard of the comic. Once I heard there was a talking rodent/rabbit/trash panda, I seriously considered skipping it. Ended up being the 1st movie I bought on dvd in a long time and even ended up buying it on xbox live too. It's my daughters favorite of all the Marvel flicks along with 2nd installment. I suspect that "Tree" and "Sweet Rabbit" are the reasons.

I could watch an entire movie series based on the adventures of Thor and GotG. That would be worth the money.
Click to expand...

Think pretty much everyone thought this was going to be Marvel's first box office bomb.

I remember not being all that amped for it, then all the reviews started pouring in, was like holy shit gotta go now
 
Upvote 0
Bucklion said:
So next up, as stated, was IM3. This was somewhat hampered from the beginning because by the time you get to a third movie, it has the chance to get redundant and stale anyway. I will give them credit for going outside the box on a few things to spice things up, but there were also too many tropes. I didn’t like the story...at all...maybe that arc works in a comic, but it just didn’t work here. It was way shallower than most of the other movies thus far, it would have taken 5 hours to unpack everything. The girl character was terrible. She was basically there to a) fuck, and b) link Stark to the Mandarin. That was it. Her “heroism” was useless because we knew nothing about her motivations, her conflict, her anything. That was too Walking Deadish for me. Also I’ve finally gotten back to a comfortable position with Madame Goup...she now annoys me every time she is on screen, which pretty much covers everything I’ve seen her in except Seven and IMI. The villain guy was ok, but again he was just a pretty male face there to entice the female audience. What kept it from being a disaster were Ben Kingsley and an improved Don Cheadle. Kingsley is a maestro and even though I thought the story sucked he rocked his role as usual. Cheadle knee his role and did much better this time. The kid was OK, I don’t see it as tropish as some did because the banter worked, but the idea has certainly been in a thousand movies before. I thought the ending was fine for what it was. I am glad this is the last IM movie to date because frankly I am ready to watch some other characters and I am sick of Gwenyth.
Click to expand...
Thor: Dark World was next. Yeah, I hated it. I mean, part of my problem with these is that they’ve somewhat painted themselves into a corner after the group was together. With an event this cataclysmic involving earth, what were the other Avengers doing? I still hate Natalie Portman in this. Anthony Hopkins is pretty much just picking up a check. The intern was annoying. And the big villain was a 5’5” pasty white guy with no facial expressions and Crystal Gayle hair? The fuck? Loki and Thor’s tete a tete kept this from going off the rails completely, but all in all this was terrible and I don’t quite know what else to say. Lowpoint of the MCU for me.

1. Marvel’s Avengers 5/5
2. Black Panther 5/5
3. Captain America: The First Avenger 4.5/5
4. Iron Man 4.5/5
5. Thor 3.5/5
6. Incredible Hulk 3/5
7. Iron Man III 2.5/5
8. Iron Man II 2.5/5
9. Thor: Dark World 2/5
 
Upvote 0
I warned you :lol:

The 2 bright spots of the movie was when Loki and Thor was escaping and Loki kept transforming into different characters finishes with Cap. The other was seeing Loki a mess after the death of the mom. Putting on the charade that he's fine, then shows his true emotions
 
Upvote 0
Bucknut24 said:
I warned you :lol:

The 2 bright spots of the movie was when Loki and Thor was escaping and Loki kept transforming into different characters finishes with Cap. The other was seeing Loki a mess after the death of the mom. Putting on the charade that he's fine, then shows his true emotions
Click to expand...


And Thor hanging Mjolnir on the coat rack in the apartment.

Coat rack is worthy.
 
Upvote 0
Bucklion said:
Thor: Dark World was next. Yeah, I hated it. I mean, part of my problem with these is that they’ve somewhat painted themselves into a corner after the group was together. With an event this cataclysmic involving earth, what were the other Avengers doing? I still hate Natalie Portman in this. Anthony Hopkins is pretty much just picking up a check. The intern was annoying. And the big villain was a 5’5” pasty white guy with no facial expressions and Crystal Gayle hair? The fuck? Loki and Thor’s tete a tete kept this from going off the rails completely, but all in all this was terrible and I don’t quite know what else to say. Lowpoint of the MCU for me.

1. Marvel’s Avengers 5/5
2. Black Panther 5/5
3. Captain America: The First Avenger 4.5/5
4. Iron Man 4.5/5
5. Thor 3.5/5
6. Incredible Hulk 3/5
7. Iron Man III 2.5/5
8. Iron Man II 2.5/5
9. Thor: Dark World 2/5
Click to expand...

Good news is if you made it this far and still watch the rest of the MCU, you'll be rewarded. None of the remaining films will probably rank worse than the current 4th or 5th on your list. It's a ridiculous string of good movies. Even the ones that are arguably lesser (say, Age of Ultron) are redeemed by still being good summer popcorn mashers with actors like James Spader as antagonists. And the best part is every film was free to explore new directions. They are very distinctly political thrillers (Winter Soldier), or heist films (Ant-Man), or comedies (GotG, Ragnorok), or psychedelic mind-fuck (Doctor Strange), or even meta-Hollywood-mind-fuck (Michael Keaton as Vulture which is not a reference to his role in Birdman which was not a reference to his regret for leaving the role of Bat-Man).

Every movie left on your list is exceptional in its own way. The quality of the films takes a serious leap with Winter Soldier, and Samuel L Jackson becomes a less useless scenery chewer.
 
Upvote 0
yup, it gun b gud now

NnoGhN1.gif
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top