Last Movie You Watched?

[Askold]

a) The reason Stark doesn't make jokes in the final battle is to show how desperate things are. He is already hurt, he is killing himself by trying to use the old generator to power the suit and he is facing an opponent that outclasses him for the first time since he made the Iron man suit. (The fighter planes were dangerous but mainly because he didn't want to harm them.)

b) Coulson was supposed to be a minor character but everyone liked him so the role kept growing. (He is even a major character in a spiderman cartoon now.)

[Sixth Monarchist]

Oh, I get the purpose of the scene; it's just that pulling off such a one-eighty in tone is nigh-impossible. It's just one slight weak spot in an otherwise classic film.
______________________________

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

The only film thus far in the run of ten to fail to gross double its production budget worldwide, or to match said budget domestically, The Incredible Hulk is also the weakest artistically, failing to truly commit to the various themes available. Its opening third hints or implies a possible action-adventure, techno-thriller, monster movie, romance, absurdist satire, medical drama or even a warped sort of kung-fu movie, but it never fully commits to any of these, or even to a few of them, instead retreating to the superhero-as-genre setup exemplified by X-Men (2000); in a year of films including Iron Man and The Dark Knight, this gives it a somewhat dated feel. Edward Norton also plays Bruce Banner as something closer to Bruce Wayne (“Batman’s a scientist!”) rather than, as Mark Ruffalo does, a man in on the cruel joke of his own existence. None of this makes it a terrible film, but it does make it a forgettable one.

FUN FACT: the Abomination survives this film; in fact, no main antagonist in a Marvel Studios film would be unambiguously killed until Iron Man 3 (2013).

MARVEL NO-FACT: when Bruce Banner needs to get angry, he thinks of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution.

[Sixth Monarchist]

Iron Man 2 (2010)

Iron Man 2 is not as good as Iron Man, which in Internet terms naturally means it's the worst piece of suckitude in the universe ever. In truth, despite Jon Favreau's wish for a "more conventional" film, Iron Man 2 is almost like a superhero version of A Scanner Darkly (by coincidence, another RDJ film); no scene appears to be essential, but it's hard to know what you'd cut, and minus the Philip K Dickery this makes it OK to good, instead of great. In truth, like The Incredible Hulk, the film could've use more thematic focus - science often crops up, but it's never quite a full-blown theme; nor is the connection between "Hammer" and Thor, and Justin Hammer, practically a Bond villain in the comics, is somewhat wasted as comic relief, even if it results in good scenes. In the end, what improves the film is Captain America: The Winter Soldier; in retrospect, it's not just the US government's interventions that become troubling, but even SHIELD's actions in this film, however well-intentioned.

FUN FACT: Maria Stark has been referenced in three films, but has never appeared.

MARVEL NO-FACT: many believe Mickey Rourke's character to be Whiplash, with elements of the Crimson Dynamo, but a close examination of the script reveals him to be a poorly-written version of Stilt-Man.

[R. U. Sirius]

"The Rocketeer", the 1991 adaptation of the comic of the same name. If you watch it and notice similarities between the flying scenes and those in "Iron Man" when Tony is first getting the hang of the suit, it's because ILM did the special effects for both movies. The special effects hold up surprisingly well for it being twenty-four years old; it's still easy to tell that they used bluescreen for a lot of the flying effects, but the "separation" between the Rocketeer and the background isn't nearly as bad as in many other bluescreen-heavy movies of the time.

[Askold]

Rocketeer is a great movie. Good story and good actors although I think only Timothy Dalton was a major star in the bunch.

Forward unto dawn is on Netflix and it was kinda disappointing. I can't quite finger what was wrong with it but apart from giving more background to the UNSC before the Human vs Covenant war it didn't really add much to the Halo verse. And for someone who has not played the games the sudden plot twist would not make sense.

Although I have to admit that seeing the dark side of the humanity was a welcome change. The first few Halo games showed the Humans as good guys but the truth is that before humanity was united by a common enemy there was a bloody war of independence and the major powers were quite brutal in their method of trying to keep humanity under control.

[Zygarde]

Saw Furious Seven today, pretty good film granted it's mostly car porn but that's what I paid for.

[Sixth Monarchist]

Thor (2011)

Thor keeps it simple, from its plot - a sort of inverted Hero’s Journey where the protagonist must regain his powers and never refuses the call - to its fish-out-of-water humour (“Another!”) to the way it embraces the simple mysteries (is Thor a god or a crazy man? Whose side is SHIELD on?) and eschews the complex ones (should Kat Dennings’ character, who is pretty much Kat Dennings, be trusted with a taser?).  The film is not without flaws - the Hawkeye cameo is nice but inessential, and SHIELD is a little intrusive, albeit not as much as many criticisms suggest. Whilst the film has some subtleties - the Jotunn have something of a point about Asgard - by aiming low enough and vaulting said aims easily, it never really contains the potential to be a true classic. But it succeeds on its own terms anyhow.

FUN FACT: Odin‘s offhand remark about how both his sons have king-potential, but only one of them can be king, is pretty much what kicks off Thor, The Avengers, Thor: The Dark World, and no doubt Thor: Ragnarok, as well as, indirectly from the Battle of New York, Project Insight from Captain America: The Winter Soldier. What a dick.

MARVEL NO-FACT: thanks to their advanced technology and abilities, Asgardians are able to easily believe it’s not butter.

[Sixth Monarchist]

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

The First Avenger is the most idealistic of the Marvel films so far, but what could be an aggravating watch when viewed with even a trace of cynicism succeeds due to two key factors - one, it tempers the idealism with acknowledgements of 1940s reality (no-one in the film is exactly racist or misogynist, but such things existing does crop up) and the nuances to Steve Rogers (whilst a smart tactical thinker, he is a dumbass at all things socially, even post-serum) - and two, the film embraces all things unavoidably goofy (the turbo-button in Colonel Philips’ car, the array of gadgets from the Red Skull, including a helicopter-jet and a special Tesseract-grabber, “his target…is everywhere”, etc). The First Avenger is not the best Marvel Studios film - it might not even be in the top five - but this is merely owing to an abundance of candidates for the title, including its own sequel.

FUN FACT: thus far, the post-credits scene is the last one not to have been filmed as a standalone scene, on this occasion being a trailer of sorts for The Avengers.

MARVEL NO-FACT: Erskine’s serum also functions as a vaccine for Morgellon’s Disease.

[Sixth Monarchist]

The Avengers (2012)

Whilst The Avengers may have a three-act structure of almost insulting simplicity, only a cynic would argue its $623m US gross arose as a consequence of that. Where the film succeeds is in a frictionless execution of said story, with pretty much every single moment deriving from character motivation. Those not getting an arc over the 2.25 hour running time at least get a strong level of characterisation - even an unnamed fighter pilot who unwisely targets the Hulk. The focus on character is even there in subtexts, such as Thor’s strangely muted fighting style in the third act, or the way every interaction between Iron Man and Black Widow is marked with passive-aggression. And like Iron Man 2, the film’s Manichean outlook takes on a truckload of ambiguity after later events.

FUN FACT: Stark talks about Banner’s work with “anti-electron collisions”; anti-electrons, i.e. positrons, arise sometimes as a consequence of gamma quanta, but are also thought to exist in cosmic rays, from which the Fantastic Four acquired their powers.

MARVEL NO-FACT: The Avengers Initiative initially didn’t approve Tony Stark, but it did approve The Whizzer, who was occupied in a vitally important mission in the Hamptons during the course of this film.

[Sixth Monarchist]

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Gleefully subverting many action-film tropes even as it holds to the general structure of such things, Iron Man 3’s Xmas setting is an odd choice, even considering the delayed release date. Equally as odd, but much smarter, is the decision - maybe unprecedented for the genre - to have a first-person unreliable narrator. First-person perspective isn’t new in superhero films - Raimi’s Spider-Man films being an obvious example - but there’s no reason not to trust Peter Parker, and every reason to doubt self-aggrandising Tony Stark, who may be a committed boyfriend and genius inventor, but is happy to introduce absurd one-off events (man breathing fire) for the sake of comedy, mocking, gently or otherwise, Happy, Pepper, his enemies, and even JARVIS, who could certainly provide proof against. It’s entirely possible that the actual story of Iron Man 3 is actually a dull, routine superhero story - but with Stark telling the story, who would know? Or even care?

FUN FACT: this was the last Marvel film to carry Paramount branding, although Paramount itself hadn’t had any involvement in the series for at least two years. With Sony’s involvement in Spider-Man, no Phase of the MCU will be purely Disney-branded until at least the 2020s.

MARVEL NO-FACT: whilst film-universe Stark has designed 42 suits of armour, not one of them has that stupid fucking nose from the 1970s.

[Sixth Monarchist]

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Yes, The Dark World is the weakest of the four post-Avengers films. Those claiming it to be the worst in the whole series, however, are surely forgetting about The Incredible Hulk, or even the first Thor, whose oddly cramped scope is blown up into properly epic proportions in The Dark World. It’s true that the film is rushed, with its running time - well under two hours - easily able to be twenty minutes more. Malekith is also somewhat undersold; all we really know about him is a motive (to return the world to a time of darkness) which doesn’t really distinguish him from the editor of the Daily Mail. It’s also a little weird how, despite the lack of time, we get two explanations about the Dark Elves and two instances of Selvig running round Stonehenge, when one of each would suffice. By and large, though, the film holds up, giving much more to its characters and setting than its predecessor.

FUN FACT: The Dark World only got a 43% worldwide Avengers bump, compared to 95% for Iron Man 3 and 93% for Winter Soldier. The horror.

MARVEL NO-FACT: Officially, there are Ten Realms, but Asgard refuses to recognise Guggenheim, the realm of art gallery curators.

[Meshakhad]

Interstellar. So beautiful. And so depressing at first.

[Sixth Monarchist]

Interstellar seemed to arrive right at the point when the media decided the Nolan backlash had come, which is unfair; it's probably Inception's equal, although the two are diametric opposites of one another and that makes comparison tricky.

________________________________________

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

For all its conventionality, Thor: The Dark World takes one subtle risk - it is the first film in the series to make no direct reference to the Stark family or Stark Industries. Tony Stark, however, is a spectre hanging over The Winter Soldier more than the eponymous character himself, providing the engine power for Project Insight, the Falcon’s wings, and Maria Hill’s future employment. Indeed, the film takes two radical steps forward, one being increasing interconnectedness - to Iron Man 2, The Avengers, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Doctor Strange - and the other being tone. The Winter Soldier might be the first superhero film describable as “post-Nolan”, influenced by but not dependent on the Dark Knight Trilogy’s approach, able to contain the fantastical within the realistic. Alongside Iron Man 3, a classic film.

FUN FACT: None of the three films involving Captain America have taken more than $1m on July 4th.

MARVEL NO-FACT: Captain America: Whoopee Cushion Justice is tentatively scheduled for January 5th, 2029.

[Askold]

Redline.

First of all, the movie is weird but good. They manage to make a complex (but weird) world that is just full of life. In fact, the world is so full that most of what appear to be plot hooks are left unexplored.

I don't think this is a bad thing. Conservation of detail and Chekhov's gun are overvalued anyway and I think it is refreshing to see a movie that throws all kinds of interesting things at the viewer, even if we do not have a chance to explore them. Why is a magical princess the ruler of that planet? What happened to those guys who clearly had a history? Why don't we see the mission that those other guys are on? What happened to those monsters? And so on.

Those stories aren't explored because they are not the point. The race is all that matters and all the characters are caught up with it.

Also the art is amazing.

The action is quite stylish as well and although there were some things that I thought were too silly (The "Spinning car trick?" is the only one that isn't a huge spoiler. Guy crosses a  lake by popping nitro into his car which makes it spin so fast it skips over the lake. ...Really? Is that the best you could think of?)

[Sixth Monarchist]

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Pretty much a container for Cosmic Marvel outside of Asgard and whatever FF rights Fox claims, Guardians is the most overt comedy of the Marvel films, and at the sharp end for characterisation too, which is just as well; for the better part of an hour, even the basic conflict doesn’t fall into place. The series has leant on protagonists rather than antagonists so far, and Ronan isn’t much different in this regard, although Nebula’s survival offers some promise of her development into a Loki-esque depth, or at least a HYDRA-like recurrence. Guardians offers to open up the Marvel universe as a whole, but more to the point, it also offers the potential for islands of narrative around the larger continent of continuity. Perhaps slightly overrated, it’s nonetheless a strong film and a surprisingly important one, too.

FUN FACT: Drax the Destroyer first appeared in Iron Man #55; even in the most obscure corners, Marvel can’t quite get away from Stark.

MARVEL NO-FACT: When pressed for comment, the Living Tribunal stated that he “couldn’t give a flying shitfuck” about the events that transpired in Guardians.