Marvel Movie-thon Part 2 of 4: Avengers Assemble!

I’m back with another set of reviews leading up to Avengers: Infinity War. This time, if you’ve been catching up, I’ll discuss the first crossover film and the three main Avengers after the big battle with Thanos’s army. So with that, let’s begin.

The Avengers

Perhaps one the most anticipated superhero films ever, The Avengers brought the whole cast together. Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Captain America were united at last and it proved to be an epic battle as Thanos emerged for the first time. This story revolves around the Tesseract and Loki’s plan to bring his master’s army into the fray. It also involves the Avengers “assembling” for the first time, but not without hostility. The group doesn’t particularly trust each other and while friendships were made, the team realized that they felt it’s better to take it out on themselves rather than save the world.

This movie is fantastic, even watching it a second time. It’s everything you could ever want in a superhero movie of this kind. Action, drama, superpowers in action and it wasn’t so over the top that you’d roll your eyes at how unbelievable it was. I felt this was a perfect end to the first main arc of the Avengers. This would catapult the franchise to new heights and become one of the longest running serials, especially superhero movies, of all time.

Iron Man 3

This is the first of three films to take place after The Avengers and details the moments of the main trio of superheroes after that battle. Tony Stark seems to be hit the hardest as he is borderline traumatized after plunging a bomb into space and nearly dying because of it. This film shows him doing pretty much all he can without any sleep while an organization run by The Mandarin seeks to cause harm to the United States. However, Tony eggs him on and calls him to his house, to which The Mandarin promptly destroys it and puts Tony out of commission for the time being.

The Mandarin is also a big threat as he can create regenerative powers, at the cost of making them living bombs, escalating him to being one of the most powerful villains Iron Man has faced yet.

This film is the best one out of the trilogy. It put Tony, a man whose superhero life isn’t going too smoothly and pushes it to new levels. It’s not like most superheroes where despite their life-changing forever, they still get by. No, his life is hell now and at this point, he finally realizes it. Tony is such an interesting character seeing someone who has it all go through such colossal suffering because he’s a successful genuine with too much time on his hand. Plus Robert Downey Jr.’s acting makes him such a lovable dork that it’s no wonder people like this series.

The twist with who the Mandarin really is is pretty amusing. Aside from the whole “portraying an Arab terrorist” thing, he’s really some drunk who barely has one ear open and is amusing to believe that the real Mandarin would go through such lengths to hire him as a man to strike fear into the United States and also the world at large. It’s amusing to discover and made the twist that more hilarious.

Overall, I thought this was the best of the three Iron Man films and a good way to end the trilogy.

Thor: The Dark World

This also follows up after the events of The Avengers and focuses on the return of Jane Foster after Erik is mind controlled by Loki. The story revolves around a race of beings known as the Space Elves Dark Elves discovering a power known as the aether. The Aether can bring about destruction to the nine realms, but Jane Foster accidentally discovers it when the real world and the realm of the gods intertwine, and the power is infused with her. Now, despite being brought to Asgard, putting the realm at risk, Jane has become a target for the dark elves and Thor must protect her.

As far as the movie itself, while it was a good movie in its own right, it wasn’t as strong as the others. The concept and lore are fantastic and has that science fantasy vibe to it, I felt it wasn’t as perfect as the others. Perhaps the fantasy elements were a bit much since for whatever reason, seeing elves in a superhero film was a little out of place. Yeah, it’s Asgard, yeah, it’s Norse mythology, yeah it’s not like the other billions of superheroes out there, but it’s still a superhero movie. Plus, the dark world didn’t seem as interesting as the others. Asgard looks amazing while the Dark World seems…empty.

Plus there were makeout scenes. Lots and lots of makeout scenes. It got a little too eye-rolly, to be honest.

Maybe I’m being a little hard on this one, but I did like the film overall.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

To end on a high note, this film was the turning point in the MCU canon: the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. This was the third MCU film I saw in theaters and boy was it a big one. So many twists and turns. The film revolves around Captain America, aka Steve Rogers, living a normal life in the future of present day (Well, present as in the year this released) 2014. Steve is on a mission on a ship carrying hostages but Black Widow is plotting something unbeknownst to Steve. When he brought it up, Nick Fury still keeps him out of the loop.

That all changes when S.H.I.E.L.D. hunts down Nick and nearly kills him. Then, all hell breaks loose when S.H.I.E.L.D. tries to take down Captain America. Now, the captain is a wanted fugitive. But when things seemed to be going their way, a mysterious villain appears. This “Winter Soldier” is out to kill Steve, but the mysterious man is familiar to Steve as if he met before during the attack against Red Skull. A man named Bucky Barnes.

This was a great film, even to watch a second time. I’ve always enjoyed the Captain America films and while it doesn’t have the uniqueness that the first film had, it pushes the story along and shows that this is an ongoing project spanning multiple movies. It also starts getting action movie-ish, which, being superheroes, kind of works for the universe.

Captain America going from hero to wanted criminal from an organization secretly under HYDRA control was a massive punishment for a group intended on keeping the Avengers afloat and is the biggest story development so far.

I will say also that I almost thought Nick Fury was going to get killed off for real, which would have been huge. To this day, I’m amazed they didn’t go through with it. It would have elevated this film to the top in terms of story, since having S.H.I.E.L.D. dismantled along with Nick’s fate would have been a humongous plot development. I can see why they would have kept Nick around, but this still would have been huge.

This is also the first film I’ve noticed that made me realize just how serious some of these films are. They gear these films to younger audiences because you know, they are superheroes, but the films, especially the one that came after it, are really violent and dark in some occasions. Thor especially seems a little too mature for kids and might be some of Disney’s boldest films yet, especially for a company that’s huge on censorship.

So that’s all of the MCU films this month. Next week is my thoughts on Black Panther and why it might be a contender for one of the best superhero films ever. So look out for that.

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That’s all for today. Take care, and remember, the inn is always open.