They are all CGI and wirework fistfights. Many of the actors are good but the dialog and situations tend to be comic book. Yeah, I know they are based on comic books but in a film there is room for more. F’rinstance, I was rewatching Ultron and didn’t realize I’d seen it before until the team visited Hawkeye’s home. None of the rest was memorable, just fights and characters scraping a rut when they got punched by somebody immensely strong.
Thor is funny because Hemsworth is a very funny man. Cap is tedious. Downey plays Ironman/Stark as someone you want to punch in the face, though that could be because I generally want to punch Downey in the face. Scarlett Johansen looks great in leather but isn’t particularly pretty, and I’m concentrating on her appearance because in the movies she doesn’t really do much.
I’m not looking for art. I’m looking for something more like Deadpool, where the superhero shit was balanced by humor and a story and Morena Baccarin.
Yeah, I have trouble keeping up. I know I’ve missed six or seven along the lines, so I don’t know all of the dozens of characters. I will see this one, but I’m confident it is much like the others as you describe. Just that for this one they throw all of the characters (except the Wasp?) into a blender and hit “whirr”.
Ultron is one of my least favorite movies from the series and I also found it barely memorable. But I was amused by Ant-Man, though Ragnarok was a fun departure and Spider-Man: Homecoming (I’m considering it MCU for this) was good as well. All of them mixed in a good deal of humor with a decent story and the usual CGI actionfests. I also liked others (Civil War, etc) for other reasons but the ones I listed seem closer to what you were looking for.
I guess I’m saying that it seems a little unfair to judge the series based on Ultron which really wasn’t a great flick in my opinion.
Sure did. Overlong, too much Angry Green Guy and not enough Banner, but it was okay because Hemsworth (it’s getting to be that I’ll need to start specifying WHICH Hemsworth–“the hot one” won’t work) is funny.
Ah, lots of angry green guy is what I liked. Hulk is hilarious. Also, Jeff Goldblum! But to each their own. I fully agree with you about the majority of MCU though. They are painting by numbers and have been for years. I liked Black Panther quite a bit, but it is doing a different thing altogether. I didn’t finish Spider-Man and I just got back from Infinity War a couple hours ago and, Thor was once again great, the rest was kinda meh.
Ragnarok and Black Panther tricked me into thinking they had broken out of their rut. I was wrong.
Spider-Man: Homecoming is definitely in the MCU, hence the appearance of Tony Stark in that film and Tom Holland as Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War.
As for the o.p., you are certainly right to have your own opinion, but selecting Avengers: Age of Ultron as the canonical example of how the whole MCU is boring and derivative is like complaining about the Star Wars franchise based upon The Phantom Menace. Even the director, Joss Whedon, who directed the first Avengers movie and architected the Phase 2 (and the original Phase 3, although it has changed signficantly since), seemed less than enthused about the resulting film. The primary problem with the film, aside from trying a little to hard at the fan service aspect, was that it was also required to set up a bunch of successive films which gives it an uneven flow, and the character shifts that don’t really make much sense. (“We’re mad scientists; we’re monsters, buddy. You have to own it.” Uh, no, that is not a good reason to make a second killbot.) The film does have humorous scenes, such as the afterparty attempts to lift Thor’s hammer or Col. Rhodes telling a “War Machine story” to a disinterested Thor and Stark (“‘Boom! You lookin’ for this?’ ‘Boom, you lookin’ for…’ Why do I even talk to you guys?”) but much of the humor seemed forced.
I’ll say that one of the things Marvel Studios has done very well with the MCU, besides excellent casting, is to allow the films to each have a distinct character and cross genres, e.g. Iron Man as a mentor/protege conflct, Captain America: The First Avenger as a classic Golden Age war story, Thor as a Shakesperean family tragedy, Ant-Man as a heist film, Captain America: The Winter Soldier as a political conspiracy thriller, Guardians of the Galaxy as a classic space opera, Thor: Ragnarok as a gonzo science fantasy, Black Panther as a Godfather-esque story of betrayal in a reclusive Afrotech nation, et cetera, so each film doesn’t look or feel the same despite the action being largely CGI cartoons. The common complaint is that most of the villains, aside from Loki and Killmonger, are pretty much interchangeable is true, but in a sense is deliberate, because of the true conflict in the films is largely either a team coming together despite internal conflicts or characters overcoming their own weaknesses and fears. They fact that they end most of their conflicts by getting in fisticuffs with a seemingly indestructible villain is kind of a consequence of the fact that this is pretty much the way superheroes win in comics, but they’ve manage to subvert those tropes in a number of ways, from undermining Pierce’s plan in Winter Soldier by releasing all of the SHIELD archives or Dr. Strange putting Dormammu into an endless time loop to Thor deliberately bringing on Ragnarok, (“Hulk, for once in your life, don’t smash!”), so the complaint that the films all end in punch fests isn’t really true.
Nor is the observation that the dialogue is too much like a comic. Some of the dialogue and settings are drawn from comics to be sure, but the opening scene of Winter Soldierwith Rogers and Wilson bonding over their shared difficulty in reintegrating into society after their experiences in war and loss of comrades is a great scene and some excellent writing regardless of what film it is in. It provides fast exposition and setup for the film without ever feeling like the characters are explaining a plot point to one another just for the sake of the audience. It’s really an outstanding bit of writing which avoids clumsily bringing Wilson in on some other pretext that feels like everybody in the MCU universe works for SHIELD.
Deadpool is a fine film (and a redemption for how the character was treated in the awful X-Men: Origins movie) but it largely makes its credit by explicitly lampooning the standard tropes of the superhero genre and taking specific jabs at the X-Men continuity problems and Fox’s reluctance to back an R-rated superhero film. It was enjoyable, but if every superhero film were like it, it wouldn’t have anything to satirize, and it is certainly possible to make very good superhero films without a lot of humor, e.g. Logan.
Again, the o.p. or anyone else is perfectly right to have their own opinions about what is good or not, but the complaints of the o.p. are not really objectively true. There are other reasons to not care for the films, such as that they require a lot of attention, or that they tend to get overstuffed with unnecessary characters and story hooks for future films (did we really need Spider-Man for one scene in Civil War for any reason other than fan service?), or just that in plotting out this extended universe over the span of more than a decade requires viewers to keep tabs on developments that affect subsequent films in order to know where the characters come from and what their motivations are, but Marvel has never made any secret of their objective to interlink the films instead of creating a series of standalone stories.
”Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”
Johannson has been underused, but not because of her lack of talent (or appearance). She’s great in Winter Soldier (although how she goes from ‘bleeding out’ to sneaking in and fighting her way out of the Triskelion is never made clear), and the character is deserving of her own film which delves into her backstory and motivation. But then, I also want a period Agent Carter/Nick Fury/Hank Pym film set in the ‘Sixties with Daniel Kaluuya as a young Fury.
I KNOW! I mean, I’m a bigger fan of Normal Hot than the next guy but the movies where she acts aren’t the ones I normally see, being GOOD and shit.
Watching Black Panther. This copy has better sound but still has the visual quality of one filmed on a phone (FTR, following seeing Thor 3 I told my daughter to buy it with my money). I’m liking it so far.
And you’ll start (start?) seeing some decidedly middle-aged superheroes. As it is, in ten years Downey will qualify for the Senior Discount at Old People’s Buffet. He can already join AARP. (Where’s my fucking tote bag?)
I don’t want to be That Guy, but '60s Fury was white. :eek:
(FTR, following seeing Thor 3 I told my daughter to buy it with my money). I’m liking it so far.