Started watching the Marvel films (properly), my thoughts so far

[Julius Seeker]

I’m not a fan of most of these, but super hero films generally aren’t my thing. I’d seen Avengers Age of Ultron, Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther (part of it), and Thor (part of it). I can’t say I enjoyed any of these films, none of them did anything I hadn’t seen before about 37 dozen times before. I don’t think any of these films are anywhere near as good as the Nolan and Burton Batman films, Blade (all three), Deadpool (both), X-Men First Class, Logan, and I’m apparently one of the 14 people who liked X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Spider-Man 1 (Tibet Maguire) and 3 (again, another film very few seemed to enjoy), Watchmen (film) is fantastic, and the TV series The Boys is brilliant.

Iron Man and Captain America: The first Avenger are where I started. Captain America I enjoyed (which actually surprised me a great deal, I was expecting to dislike this one), Iron Man I did not.

I understand I’m in the minority on this.

I give lists of reasons, but in the end the reality is I just enjoyed one and not the other so much.

Iron Man, my issues:
• I don’t buy unmotivated Bruce Wayne as a character.
• Probably hearing so much about Robert Downey Junior’s great come back, but finding him kind of boring compared to his coked out years (Natural Born Killers, Less than Zero, Chaplin… yeah, I’m probably one of the 5 people left remaining on Earth who was, until recently, only familiar with pre-1995 Robert Downey Jr.)
• The film was choppy, and the pacing was rushed until the third act—before that point, the whole flow of the film was kind of random—I felt like I needed Ritalin just from watching it.
• I don’t mind cartoony (I love Deadpool), but this one didn’t land for me. I think Deadpool had the charm of never taking itself seriously. Iron Man featured unserious characters, but the film was constantly taking itself seriously, never self-jabbing.
• WAY too contrived. The plotting was very forced. And any time he or the plot needed something it was already there. I can take a bit of contrivance, but I much prefer organic, character driven plotting to the characters just doing things because the plot asks for it… like, there was a scene in Iron Man where his second in command is randomly dealing under the table, terrorists who seem to be randomly attacking people, and Iron Man makes his result and gets there just in time to save them. seemed to have a point except “the plot needs it”
• Because he could just create anything he needs, the stakes never felt important… maybe if I was really high and ignored the fact that Tony Stark can make everything from anything, there would be tension of some sort.
• On the positive: a dirty martini is a great drink. In fact, I didn’t even know I liked olives before I started drinking these in University.

Captain America: Why I liked it
• Better directed. Better written. Action was much better.
• It was a more serious film than Iron Man, but knew exactly when to not take itself seriously. (As opposed to Iron Man, which I mentioned above isn’t serious, but seems to always take itself seriously as a film: it’s like a cheesy metal band).
• Felt like a simultaneous parody and improvement over the 1990s film, The Rocketeer.
• The Nazi parody (Hydra) is funny.
• Hugo Weaving plays a great villain.
• It reminded me of a deliberate Spider-Man 1. Which I kind of like better than the whole accidental mutation.
• Tony Stark’s father/grandfather? He’s clearly based on the historical figure Vannevar Bush, the founder of Raytheon and father of the US military industrial complex - the guy that brought radar to the west, combined it with sonar and depth charge launchers, and figured out a way to take out all those Nazi U-boats sinking the allied convoys. So, I really dig the historical parallels.

I didn’t like how Iron Man kind of ignored those historical parallels for the most part (mentioned the Atomic bomb, but that’s all I picked up on). Not sure what the source material says, I’m a film/video game/novel guy, not a comic guy.

[Julius Seeker]

I just saw Dark Phoenix, and I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. Great acting, great action sequences (they were all paced very well), great cinematography, and the soundtrack weaves into the film very well. The tension was great in this film as well. I’m not a big fan of Sophie Turner, but I think she did fantastic in this film—I felt the aggression she felt in many of her scenes (kind of like when Darth Vader started messing people up in Rogue One), I loved it. I also enjoyed the story even if it does break from the setup at the end of Apocalypse (fuck that ending, anyway).
I had some issues with the third act, which felt a bit formulaic for my tastes: they get on a train and have this battle just to have a battle, and it goes on a lot longer than it needed to. It felt more like something to fill up the explosion quota than something that needed to be in the film. But the rest of the film I liked a lot, even Logan I wasn’t as fond of the third act as I was of the rest of the film; I liked First Class’s ending the best.

I think I’d probably rank the X-men films something like this, according to my tastes, definitely not the mainstream opinion - I think my top 4 are uncontroversial, but the rest down are far from the general consensus:

1. Logan
2. First Class (although a very close second)
3. Deadpool 2
4. Deadpool
5. Dark Phoenix
6. Origins: Wolverine
7. The Wolverine
8. X-men 3
9 (tie). Days of Future Past
9 (tie). Apocalypse
9 (tie). X-men 2
9 (tie). X-Men 1

Notes:
Logan is excellent, exactly the sort of superhero film I enjoy. The action was visceral, and the acting was fantastic, cinematography was phenomenal, and atmosphere was the best I’ve seen in a super hero film (maybe Watchmen came close).
First Class has some of my favourite scenes of any super hero film ever. The opening killing Nazi scene and the final battle with Magneto.
Deadpool 1 and 2 had great action scenes, and felt very smartly written (despite the very low brow humour).
Dark Phoenix maybe because of decency bias, I liked the film a lot!
Wolverine was highly unpopular. But I think many judges it far too harshly because of Deadpool and the atrocious script, but I found the film much more than made up for it with its fantastic and excellently paced action scenes. It had a strong 80s-like charm to it. Also, Sabertooth was the bomb in this film.
The Wolverine would have been higher but I didn’t like the ending. Although, much of the rest of the film is quite well done, I just wish it had a less formulaic story. I have to watch this one again.
X-Men 3, I admit, is probably the dumbest and fuckiest film in the franchise, but I found it more entertaining than the bottom 4, and have an easier time watching it.
The bottom 4 suffer from the same/similar problems, IMO. All of them have terrible pacing and come off a bit too cartoony. Also, I found Days of Future Past was a really disappointing follow-up to First Class. First Class and Apocalypse both suffered from long and drawn-out action sequences—not saying people shouldn’t like those, they simply aren’t my preference. I found X-Men 1 and 2 to be kind of bland, and some of the action looks cheesy (although, not bad for the time period, but also not great). I really liked the Nightstalker storyline in X2, and I really liked Rogue/Wolverine in X1, but neither brought it above The Wolverine for me, or notably ahead of Days or Apocalypse. That said, I still enjoy the X-men films I like the least more than many other Marvel films.

I haven’t seen The New Mutants, will get to it eventually.

I really hope to see more X-Men, and I hope they keep the Fox crew (and cast) rather than just starting it all over again with the Disney production staff… unless they bring in the Rogue One people.

[Julius Seeker]

Iron Man 2. I liked it. Seems this one was not well liked by many. I will admit, it’s not exactly an original type film, it’s basically the same plot as most other action/blockbuster sophomore sequels. But the acting and action sequences were really good. Scarlett Johansson was a fantastic addition. While I like Terrence Howard, Don Cheadle is one of my favourite actors of all time. I also much preferred the pacing of this film, and it was considerably less contrived than the first.

I am not trying to be a contrarian, these are just my tastes. Sometimes they align with the consensus (Logan and Deadpool) other times they’re a bit off (First Class is considered good by consensus, I think it’s great), and other times they’re completely different (people hate Origins and Dark Phoenix, I quite like both). But I’m going to like what I like.

Looking at some of the criticisms for Dark Phoenix, some called it too boring, others said the actors didn’t want to be there, and others were worried about plot inconsistencies with other X-Men films. First, I don’t care about unified plots across multiple films, Bond don’t do it, Simpsons doesn’t do it, South Park, Seinfeld, etc… doesn’t do it—focus on the film and not what other films did. I mean, it’s a little different if the film series is something like The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings trilogies which are supposed to be one story; but, each X-man film is kind of its own story. Boring? Matter of opinion, I don’t share that opinion, I was really into the character of Jean and her journey through the film. Actors didn’t want to be there? Not sure what this even means, are they reading minds? Xavier was apathetic, but he was also drunk most of the film—Iron Man/Tony Stark was pretty much the same through the first film. I don’t buy the criticisms, they sound more like excuses to serve a bias than actual criticism. Either way, I liked Dark Phoenix.

I’m about 20 minutes into Thor, and again, my head feels like it’s imploding from boredom. But I’m going to chug through it. This one really is not my type of film… and I’m a big fan of Norse and medieval stuff. One of the main reasons I’m disappointed with Thor is the writer is J Michael Straczynski. JMS is one of my favourite television writers of all time, I’m not sure his exact involvement, he wrote the Thor comics that I believe were the basis for the film - but I was really expecting to like this.

One last thing, I actually liked the stories of Xmen Days of Future Past and Apocalypse, and many of the other elements. But, it was mostly the drawn out action and pacing I wasn’t a big fan of. It felt like if they would have recut these films, they could be great. X-Men Apocalypse was always going to be a big challenge given how over-the-top cartoony the villain is. Growing up, Apocalypse was probably my favourite villain in the franchise.