Board 8 > ITT I re-watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) (spoilers, obviously)

(+) Yeah! (+)

colliding posted...

It's only overrated because many people still consider this to be the best MCU movie and that is WILD to me.

if this is true, it's definitely overrated as hell but... is it? i thought most people still considered infinity war and endgame to be better movies. maybe no way home too.

to me, endgame is the overrated avengers movie. to me, it's clearly vastly inferior to infinity war. i'd probably put it below avengers 1, too. (still a good movie, though!)

I even like age of ultron

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

if this is true, it's definitely overrated as hell but... is it? i thought most people still considered infinity war and endgame to be better movies. maybe no way home too.

we have people in this very thread who say "marvel hasn't outdone the avengers," and it's "their favorite of the four" and "nearly perfect!"

granted one of them is LMS

i mean, that's just a few people.

it could very well be that you're right but i personally haven't seen all that many people who think avengers 1 is the best MCU movie of all time.

Avengers is kind of a weird movie for me since it's supposed to be this epic story where several heroes come together to cooperate against a major threat but the fact that the face of that threat is Loki who is basically a joke character made it hard for me to really get excited. Like, is this a comedy I'm watching? It's true there's a giant army at the end that is actually a threat but it's just a vague giant army without a real face or identity.

I know that's pretty common for Marvel but I guess I just wanted them to drop that and get a bit serious for something big like the first Avengers movies. Basically what Infinity War did, actually.

It was still an enjoyable movie and all but it's not in the top for me.

Then00bAvenger posted...

Avengers is kind of a weird movie for me since it's supposed to be this epic story where several heroes come together to cooperate against a major threat but the fact that the face of that threat is Loki who is basically a joke character made it hard for me to really get excited. Like, is this a comedy I'm watching? It's true there's a giant army at the end that is actually a threat but it's just a vague giant army without a real face or identity.

I know that's pretty common for Marvel but I guess I just wanted them to drop that and get a bit serious for something big like the first Avengers movies. Basically what Infinity War did, actually.

It was still an enjoyable movie and all but it's not in the top for me.

Sorry, Loki is not a joke character and you're crazy if you think so.

Loki was deathly serious in Thor and a massively conniving force who was willing to let everyone he loved die and destroy an entire world of people to get what he wanted and nearly succeeded. He didn't hold back and was vicious.

Avengers continued that. The only difference in Avengers is that they allowed the Avengers to get one up on Loki rather often. That doesn't make him any less formidable, and while he's the butt of a joke a couple times, he's in no way a joke character. The thing is: Loki still succeeds in what he set out to do. He still summoned an army to Earth and decimated New York. He just unluckily had a group of heroes appear who could do things just as impossible as him that brought him down.

I don't know if joke character was the right choice of words but he was portrayed as the opposite of formidable. They go out of their way to show him give speeches about ruling over people, being a god etc. that comes across as a weak person trying to compensate with arrogance. He gets clowned on multiple times, and they even make a joke about how his plan is incompetent.

It feels more like he bumbled into success than connived his way to success(mostly due to having an extremely powerful tool at his disposal). I do agree that it wasn't nearly this exaggerated in the first Thor movie but every movie after that? Nah, they stripped him of any threatening presence

Loki was certainly a joke character by Thor Ragnarok tho

I don't agree Loki was portrayed as a joke in Avengers at all. He was constantly shown as one step ahead. Even when they capture him it's "why do I get the feeling he's the only one who wants to be here."

I mean yes he gets beaten up a good few times but he's not really about being a fighter he's about scheming and his scheming is on point in the movie.

Ragnarok he is sure.

Half the idea in the first Avengers is they're a ragtag bunch of misfits ready to turn on each other whenever it suits them and Loki takes advantage of it (this also makes me think of how TV Tropes once had an entire section for the MCU on the page for "Retroactive Idiot Ball" before I nixed it, where one example was basically "Loki could have impersonated any of the Avengers" even though I doubt he knew them well enough by this point). Loki is more of a schemer than a straight-up fighter, which is why I feel like the criticisms of him being seemingly "incompetent" in his show are a little off-base if still understandable.

Also Captain Marvel explains why the team is called the "Avengers".

Even in terms of scheming, there's the interrogation by Natasha where she basically humiliates him there too. Like, they go out of their way to show him at low points not just physically but mentally as well. I don't really have any memories of that movie thinking "Wow, Loki got them good" it's all "Wow, Loki got punked." It was to the point that when he killed Coulson I was actually surprised like "Really? Loki actually managed that?" I think I came away thinking that the staff was more important to the result than Loki himself

To me it's not so much that they 'turned' him into what he becomes in Ragnarok/Loki/whatnot. It's more like they just looked back at what they did to him already and ran with it.

I actually prefer that direction, it's just as a main villain I don't really feel like he's up to the task(and this is even lampshaded in Loki)

Loki underestimates Humans, its the flaw that leads to his defeat. That's why BW can trick him, its playing on his arrogance.

But he still easily steals the tessaract, easily escapes the helicarrier, and succeeds in his plan to summon an alien army. And he almost succeeds in his plan to destroy the Avengers from the inside but they manage to figure out his staff just before its too late. And he does get Hulk unleashed in the Helicarrier.

And while Loki's specialty isn't battle he is only beaten by Thor and Hulk. No one else could beat him in a fight. Hawkeye gets one good shot on him with the exploding arrow trick but it doesn't really do much/any damage.

I think the idea is Black Widow is just that good.

Lotta discussion for just the first Avengers movie. Didn't think there was that much to talk about.

i like when hulk smash

I mean, it was a pretty big movie when it came out!

I love the first Avengers movie. It's really well put-together. Infinity War is also fantastic but there are a few small occasions where it strains under its own weight - the first movie has none of that.

XIII_Rocks posted...

Infinity War is also fantastic but there are a few small occasions where it strains under its own weight

What did you have in mind?

first Avengers movie is a very 2012 film but that doesn't stop it from being very enjoyable. I'm sure there's a lot of people who fondly remember geeking out about such a large-scale crossover being done well for the first time (other than OG Universal Monsters of course) but even when you remove the nostalgia goggles it's a really well-constructed movie

redrocket posted...

What did you have in mind?

Well for me, and I agree with XIII's sentiment but he may have a different idea than I do, I just think it jumps around a little too quickly in general.

And that's largely because they have this humongous cast and they want everyone doing something. Like Captain America's crew is basically completely irrelevant to the bigger picture but they get time. Wanda and Vision are mostly irrelevant till the end. Black Panther exists only for Wakanda to be the site of the last battle. I would say you could basically make the movie a Guardians Movie with Thor Iron Man and Strange as a side characters and not lose much at all in terms of the narrative.

Avengers 1 is allowed time to breathe and everyone feels like they matter. This is because the cast is like 1/4 the size.

redrocket posted...

What did you have in mind?

Big one that comes to mind is Thanos capturing Gamora. Gamora and Star Lord have a very specific conversation about Thanos capturing her like...5 minutes before. It's so obviously telegraphed. In a movie where you had less characters, and less stuff going on, you could drop that in with a bit more subtlety at the start of the movie, and then Quill's moment of truth could come later. In Infinity War there's no option for that because it's having to serve 88 different characters.

I think the movie mostly juggles its cast very well, it's one of the best mcu movies, there are just some rare occasions where you can see the seams a little bit.

Watching Iron Man 3.

it still sucks

Before I write up Iron Man 3, I almost forgot I wanted to actually rank these after each phase. So here goes.

The Avengers
Iron Man
Thor
Captain America: The First Avenger
The Incredible Hulk
Iron Man 2

Iron Man 3
Release Date: May 3, 2013
Stand-Out Character: Iron Man/Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.)
Best Scene: The House Party vs. Killian Krew

So I didn't like this movie when I first saw it. Outright disliked it, frankly. I went into this with an open mind. I still think it's an awful movie, but I appreciate some other parts of it more.

Iron Man 3 is about Tony Stark fighting back against the Ten Rings and the evil Mandarin being aided by AIM's Aldrich Killian. After being abandoned from all of his fancy gadgets and gizmos, he comes back and only sometimes is without his fancy gadgets and gizmos as he fights back and exposes that Adrich Killian was really behind everything and almost kills the president to rule America and the biggest terrorist group, but Tony Stark, James Rhodes, and somehow Pepper Potts save the day.

I'm just going to start with what I do like about this movie, because a lot of this will be negative. Tony Stark is the stand out, as is completely unsurprising, but not because Tony Stark is so much more entertaining in this movie, but because everyone else is varying degrees of bland to terrible, even our returning characters. Robert Downey Jr., given the subpar material here, is still enough to really drag this movie into something entertaining between action scenes.

I actually almost gave the honor of the stand-out to Eric Savin, played by James Badge Dale (who I was pleased to be reminded was the lead in The Empty Man). As a villain, he is still pretty bland, but he really ends up chewing the scenery in every scene he was in somehow. You probably don't remember him at all, and that's fine. But I at least enjoyed his presence in this film quite a bit.

But hey! The action is awesome in this film. That's easily the highlight. It's nice seeing them come up with creative stuff to do with Tony Stark's armor and his various gimmick stuff. I don't care for when he's just some secret agent with his makeshift gadgets, but when he's doing cool stuff with his Iron Man armor, or making due with his armor not at full capacity, it's great. In particular, I loved how out of pocket a lot of scenes were like Tony giving Pepper the armor in the attack on his home and when he saves all of the people falling out of Air Force One. I loved that stuff. But as far as action, we get the attack on Tony's home, Savin as Iron Patriot on Air Force One, and the highlight which is The House Party of many Iron Man armors against all of the Extremis folks.

I also really enjoy how cool Extremis looks. As a fan of that arc in the comics, Extremis was done really well here I thought. It was menacing and provided for some unique scenes.

We're done with the good stuff. Here's the bad stuff.

Adrich Killian sucks. He's not interesting, has terrible one liners, and he's just a random freak. His motivations are absolutely horrible. His plan is just stupid and impossibly absurd when you think about it, and he ends up being arguably the lamest villain in the entire MCU. There is nothing redeeming about this character who is just Business Man, but Has A Fake Terrorist Group. Oh and I guess he's big mad because Tony stood him up at a conference like 15 years ago.

Which hey, may as well bring up The Mandarin. God, those scenes with The Mandarin were awesome. They were outrageously cool. He's positively chilling to behold, and I thought it was absolutely the perfect way to give us The Mandarin without the racism. But instead he's a bumbling joke and laughingstock and for what? To give the spotlight to bland as hell Killian? A legitimately good character and good concept that could hit home pretty well and build off the mythos of the first film and we have Ben Kingsley being a coked up idiot who isn't even funny after the reveal. This sucked.

And then there's Maya Hansen, played by Rebecca Hall, who gives a frankly mediocre performance in a role that I swear she's not even in the film for more than seven minutes run time. What is the point here? She's not even interesting, impressive, and her arc is completely wasted for Adrich Killian.

But we like all the returning characters, right? Well Happy is gone in the first, what, fifteen minutes? Rhodey is barely in the film too and while he has a couple good bits, he feels kind of wasted here. And Pepper just... exists to be a weird toy for Killian and also kind of an afterthought that feels like they apologize for at the end? But nobody feels as fun because we barely get any meaningful scenes with Tony and any of them, Pepper included.

And then that kid, Harley. Utterly pointless. Not interesting. Not fun. Just exists here to exposition drop and give a weird back and forth with Tony, but it's just not interesting or fun and it goes next to nowhere?

The characters are maddeningly poorly utilized and it drives me nuts. It takes everything we had from the first two movies and just throws it all away for this bizarre film that barely feels like the Iron Man we're used to. Oh, and next to none of the humor lands. It's crazy how poorly the humor in this movie holds up. It's all just these weird jokes.

I've ranted about the Mandarin stuff, so I won't go into that further. But let's talk about it being Christmas. Why is it Christmas? Nothing comes of this. Nothing is relevant to this. It's just arbitrarily Christmas, and it's just a waste. It's a little thing, but... just why? They barely use the Christmas motif at all.

Remember when Tony had PTSD in this film? For like, three selective scenes where they make it seem like a huge freaking big deal? And then it goes NOWHERE? Sorry, you mean to tell me that Tony isn't having panic attacks and feels SAFE in the armor where all the horrible stuff happened? Why isn't the idea that he's afraid to be in the armor in that case? Why isn't he having PTSD when he's trying to fight in the suit again? Why is it only when people are like "Hey Tony, how about New York?" Indefensibly bad writing.

Speaking of, Tony Stark saying "Here's my address, terrorist. Do your worst." With his girlfriend there. And having no intention of leaving. Pepper wants to, but the fact she isn't completely flipping livid over this is crazy. And guess what? It bites Tony and his house is blown up. It's just a contrived excuse to advance this plot along.

They reveal too much about Extremis to us and Killian's plan ahead of time, and we know most things and aren't learning it with Tony, which makes it far less interesting and compelling until they hit us in the face with the Mandarin twist.

And this whole plot with Tony being obsessed with making his armors and then getting rid of them entirely is also, you know, very bad. And it doesn't even make sense when he's back to making new armors in Avengers 2 time. It's not interesting and it's forgotten about for like 95% of the movie from beginning to end.

And by the end of the movie, Tony seems to not be nearly as torn up as he should about Pepper falling to her death, and he's still cracking jokes to Killian about it. Killian explodes, which kills most other Extremis folks but I guess Killian has super duper extra Extremis for some reason? And we have Pepper Potts suddenly becoming an incredible fighter inexplicably and killing Killian? This sucks and it's not satisfying. It feels like an apology more than anything for the crappy way her character was treated before this.

It's just a completely messy film that is strung together with some impressive action scenes. I didn't enjoy my time trying to watch this a second time because it's just... not fun to sit through. Iron Man 2, for all of its thoughts, at least tried to give us some interesting characters and developments. Iron Man 3 gives us none of that. It gives us shallow interactions that rely entirely on Robert Downey Jr.'s ability to make anything good and a plot that attempts to be subversive but only delivers something far less interesting than we thought we would get. It's a film of half-baked ideas everywhere but the cool Iron Man stuff they can do. I can at least re-watch Iron Man 2, but I don't think I can watch this movie again. It's tragic.

Girlfriend Thoughts: Most of the humor didn't land for her and she was repeatedly looking over at me after some jokes, particularly in the Harley and Tony parts of the movie, as if to see if I found it funny. She thought Adrich Killian was just weird and didn't really care when he was on screen. This is likely because she hated the Mandarin twist. She had completely forgotten everything about it that's talked about in Shang-Chi and I didn't remind her, because she seemed to really be excited to see Ben Kingsley as the villain. When I reminded her after the twist, it all came rushing back to her. She liked the action too, and wanted to see the Iron Man saving everyone on Air Force One scene again. She just seemed really disinterested for the most part.

The film is set at Christmas because the director likes setting films he writes then. See the first Lethal Weapon.

But here's the million-dollar question: is it still better than The Predator?

Mandarin twist still irks me to this day as the absolute worst thing they have ever done in MCU. His greatest villain got an update that makes sense, feels right, seems to be feared.....and then they make him a joke. WHAT.

Still better than IM2 for me though.

what bothers me about the mandarin twist is that that aspect of the plot goes absolutely nowhere. maybe i would have been fine with it if it had an awesome, well thought out payoff. instead, we get "killian is the REAL mandarin! ...well, not really. we later find out that another guy is the REAL real mandarin!" what the hell? it seems like they just wanted to troll fans of the mandarin from the comics and then had no idea how to proceed after they did that.

I resent the notion that Trevor Slattery isnt funny after the reveal.

Hes even better in the Hail to the King one shot

trevor slattery is pathetically unfunny after the reveal.

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Speaking of, Tony Stark saying "Here's my address, terrorist. Do your worst." With his girlfriend there. And having no intention of leaving. Pepper wants to, but the fact she isn't completely flipping livid over this is crazy. And guess what? It bites Tony and his house is blown up. It's just a contrived excuse to advance this plot along

The worst part to me is that he somehow has no defenses installed on his house. How is there not a suit or a blaster that can be ordered to blast that helicopter out of the sky?

Jakyl25 posted...

I resent the notion that Trevor Slattery isnt funny after the reveal.

Hes even better in the Hail to the King one shot

I beg you to re-watch this movie and tell me he's funny after the reveal. The humor absolutely does not hold up in this film.

Maniac64 posted...

The worst part to me is that he somehow has no defenses installed on his house. How is there not a suit or a blaster that can be ordered to blast that helicopter out of the sky?

This is another thing. We're supposed to believe that Tony Stark is such a genius and even if he flies off the handle like this, he has nothing to protect Pepper of all people and there's no defense system or anything to stop MISSILES? That's literally all they were. Instead of building armor obsessively or whatever, it's far more reasonable for Tony to build a defense system. The whole thing is so contrived.

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

I beg you to re-watch this movie and tell me he's funny after the reveal. The humor absolutely does not hold up in this film.

This is another thing. We're supposed to believe that Tony Stark is such a genius and even if he flies off the handle like this, he has nothing to protect Pepper of all people and there's no defense system or anything to stop MISSILES? That's literally all they were. Instead of building armor obsessively or whatever, it's far more reasonable for Tony to build a defense system. The whole thing is so contrived.

You have to understand 2 things. One, it is a very well known thing in the MCU that Tony Stark is reactive to the things that happen to him and he learns from his mistakes and takes preventative measures after the fact. Two, he is arrogant as fuck which is why he doesn't stop to think about these kinds of preventative measures until he sees that they can happen to him.

Oh no, I understand these two things fine.

But I think it's ridiculous to just assume Tony Stark cares so little about Pepper that he won't even have a way to protect her when he KNOWS he's the top of every bad guy's list. And not only that, Tony outright doesn't CARE when Pepper is trying to leave because he called a fucking terrorist to his home without being able to easily get an armor that works and is just telling her to chill. I don't care how arrogant he is.

Tony is arrogant as fuck because he always has things set in place to be arrogant. He has nothing ready, not even an easily accessible armor that functions properly. This movie simultaneously wants you to believe Tony is extremely smart while also having him do the dumbest possible things that make no sense.

I haven't watched it in a while but I remember IM3 being him at the peak of his arrogance and it was after that film where he actually started to turn it around and become less arrogant and more safe in regards to himself and those around him.

It absolutely was not the peak of his arrogance. He was having nervous breakdowns before this and doubting himself and builds a bunch of armors to cope with that. He's not even showboating in the film at all prior to that. This is him at his least arrogant, actually!

Was this the one where he was having nervous breakdowns? For whatever reason I thought they came after Ultron.

It's very easy to forget about the nervous breakdowns because they happen like 4 times, and the plot goes nowhere, and it means nothing, and for some reason he just has them when he's hanging out or people say "New York". And not, you know, when he is piloting the armor in which he used regarding his PTSD or fighting or explosions are happening. It's such a meaningless plot that could have been better if it actually affected him or it was something he had to overcome to be Iron Man, but it's an absolute waste of time and completely forgotten about halfway through the movie.

I think myself I still go IM3>IM2, but it's really close. Both are not great films, especially MCU ones.

It's hard to sit through Iron Man 3 because there's no good interactions for Tony and all the characters are just boring or suck. And it tries so hard to be funny but it's just not. Iron Man 2 at least has Tony palling around with his supporting cast and that's fun, and it has Justin Hammer who is a highlight. It's still boring, but at least it isn't actively hard to sit through.

Cool action scenes are the only thing that this movie has over Iron Man 2, but the waiting for them is so rough in Iron Man 3.

Thinking about it Tony did have a defense he could have used.

He could have used the house party command and that one pathetic helicopter would have a fleet of suits surrounding it. So he is just to stupid to use his defenses and somehow doesn't have his smart house programed for this.

His defense for Pepper was that he could send the suit to her

its pretty pathetic but its something

Also the framing device reveal of him being in a therapy session with Banner is SO half assed

You dont even notice there even is a framing device until it happens

One thing I've always hated about Iron Man 3 is how it dramatically misrepresents the city of Chattanooga,Tennessee. It's actually extremely nice, and even at the time of this movie's being made it was one of the first cities to implement fiber internet.

Yeah it was just insultingly wrong.

This is the same franchise that depicts farming activity in St. Petersburg.

I have begun re-watching Daredevil. I'll do a write up when I make it to the end of the season.

I watched Hail to the King. It was funnier than any of Trevor Slattery's humor in Iron Man 3, but the best part about it is still Justin Hammer. There's rumors Justin Hammer is returning so dear god please give it to us because he's great.

If Justin hammer doesnt make the cut for Thunderbolts there should be a riot

In a janky Iron-Man suit lol