MCU Part 1

I am breaking my own rule and blogging when I said I wouldn’t. However I am doing it where I shouldn’t and keeping my mornings open for editing, so that’s not cheating myself right? Anyways with some blockbusters coming out and Punisher fresh out I think I need to break down the MCU. All 18 films and maybe the TV shows too. But before I do that I have to take a minute and talk about Stan the Man. The guy who started it all. The last decade of his life must have been amazing, to top of an already great life. The guy took a “childrens” medium and got to watch it blow up into pretty much the biggest movie franchise ever. Accomplishing a 1/10th of that would pretty much fulfill my life! Now lets be honest, Stan was the face. Over his career he did create a hella lotta cool shit and was lucky enough to work with many great modern storytellers who helped build marvel. He wasn't the only one, however he was the one we all knew. But I did have to just take a minute to recognize the man who created the classics and the basis for the whole MCU! You a legend YO!

Just a few quick notes. The Worldwide gross and budget are from IMDB. My rank is simply how I put them in order of my likes. I mean some are more important to the franchise BUT maybe I don't like them as much.

So might as well start at the start. Iron Man. I will be honest, I had 0 interest when it came out. I was a Marvel fan but more a mutant fan. Sure some Avengers were cool, when it was a cross over or something but not iron man. Really who needs a robot batman? BUT I have to say Marvel Studios needs to thank Robert Downey or RDJ needs to thank Marvel. Maybe both need done after this master piece.  RDJ nailed this comeback roll. Even if Tony Stark is to die the MCU won’t be able to replace him. Genius, billionaire, playboy RDJ plays it perfect, really is there anyone who nails a roll as well? This is a great origin story and a great way to ease people into the super hero genre. It isn’t TOO far fetched. Yes of course it is a bit but it isn’t like a universe ending villain. It remains real world relevant with terrorism. I wonder if Terrence Howard cries a single tear every time Marvel studios releases another blockbuster. Had Marvel not produced so many hits in the last few years I would say this might be the masterpiece for the MCU, sadly it has been dethroned BUT still one of top few & and a great way to start a franchise. It is crazy, if you look at the growth of Tony Stark from this movie until End Game.Would this Tony have hopped on a ship leaving earth? I doubt it. I can't put my finger on one great thing in this movie as the whole thing was so well done. Now I will never know if they even had a small plan for the MCU at this point but this was IMO the best opening the could have ever had.

Budget - $140,000,000 (US estimated) Worldwide Gross - $585,174,222 My Rank - 5

The only MCU movie I won’t review. The Incredible Hulk. First I hate having 3 actors play the same guy. THEN I really don’t even see how it fits into MCU continuity.  THEN the movie was pretty awful. Now don’t get me wrong Mark Ruffalo is a great Bruce Banner. I really HOPE they make a prequel staring him. Or a Hulk stand alone movie…. But done properly!! To get the awful flavor of the original attempts out of our mouths. So I guess maybe that is my teeny tiny review of the stinker.

Budget - $150,000,00            Worldwide Gross - $263,427,551   My Rank - 20

I like Iron Man movies in reverse order. 1 being the best 3 being not good. Now 2 is average. I did not like Justin Hammer. I can't say if that is good or bad. Is it the actor played it so well I dislike him or is he just lame? I can't decide. Whiplash however was awesome. Tony slowly dying and turning into a douche, kinda lame. The tie into the past with his father pretty cool. Howard Stark is a very awesome MCU character who rarely plays a big on screen role but seems to have formed the whole of the MCU. Expanding the MCU with Black Widow and War Machine also very cool. My wish is that Whiplash had been kept alive. He could have been a rival, that could have been used again. I assume it is cause Tony wanted him to take it, but Rhodey flying off in a suit is a huge plot hole that bugged me, if the suits are coded to Tony. The first time I saw it the Thor preview at the end, I was pumped!!!

Budget - $200,000,000       Gross - $623,933,331           My Rank - 15   (Quite the fall from IM1)

Thor is a series that gets better over the run of the MCU, cause if your honest while the first one had a decent introduction story yet the set budget was less I think than most High School Drama clubs season budget! Now the cool about it, Hawkeye gets introduced. Even cooler LOKI! The god of mischief is awesome and Tom Hiddleston is the man. Also of course Sir Anthony Hopkins is going to play Odin. And we get our first glimpse of Asgard. This seemed like a movie finding its place. Was Thor going to have humor?  Or would it be very serious. It seemed to struggle between those 2 things. Had this been the first movie in the MCU and not Iron man, I am not sure where we would be BUT as an origin for the god of thunder I liked it.

Budget - $150,000,000       Gross - $449,326,618         My Rank - 9

I cannot say enough good about this movie / series and that is awesomely startling for me. I thought I was gonna hate the way too goody goody Cpt. America. Nope it is my fav series. Let’s start with 1 though. First Stanley Tucci is amazing, he nails the role and makes you believe he is working to make super soldiers to make the world better. Tiny Chris Evans, grows into big Chris Evans, which is a neat bit of CGI. And Mr. Evans nails Cap. Like could they have cast a better Cap? Like RDJ and Iron Man I really hope when Cap is gone they do not recast. It is a good story, they capture that every man quality that makes Cap easy to identify with. He is the man, good men want to be. We also get a friendship story between him and Bucky that is going to play out for a few movies. Plus you get a tragic love story. Let me put the name Howard Stark in here yet again. More of the MCU comes about because of his work. On top of that we finally start to see the bigger universe with the first infinity stone and a tie into the Asgardian world with the tree of life. Red Skull is a great villain to have for the comic fans. No he isn't super known like a Magneto or Joker but his is a comic icon for Cap fans. Also it is pretty neat to see him vanish and find out many, many movies later where he went. Had Iron Man not started the MCU this is the only other one I would have said could have went first. (Fun supposed facts. Chris Evans turned the role down 3 times before RDJ convinced him to take it. Also Agent Carter wasn't supposed to touch Cap when he emerges big. That was legit impressed with Evans)

Budget - $ 140,000,000            Gross - $370,569,774          My Rank - 4

“AVENGERS! AVENGE!” I had a friend swear that line would be in the movie. Thank god it wasn’t! The most ambitious crossover ever. Or at least up until that point. We had a few random interesting stories, with no real thread tying them together. Other than HOWARD STARK, yes again with Stark. He ties Cpt to Iron Man and him finding the tesseract which loosely ties Asgard to Cpt were the only real connections. Oh and Nick Fury trying to build the Avengers. Then my boy Loki ties them all together by invading our world. Why is this huge? Well straight forward it puts all the MCU together for the first time DUH! Plus 2 infinity stones come into play. Plus the real villain of the first  18 movies is slowly coming around. PLUS PLUS PLUS a decent hulk finally appears and the destruction of NY is going to keep popping up over the course of the stories. All huge, all the ground work laid in this will shape the MCU. SO ya this is massive. That’s just the implications from the movie. And we get to see Cap, Iron Man and Thor together for the first time. Dontcha get chills when Loki gets all nervous as thunder starts?? The scuffle between Iron man and Thor in the woods, great! Could have had more action but what we did get was awesome. The battle of NY, super cool. You know when someone instructs the Hulk to SMASH. Shit is going to go DOWN! This was the opening to setting up crossovers and a more complete MCU. Agent Coulson gets his swan song, his dying was tragic. It is almost too bad they brought him back. The MCU doesn’t need to be as dark as DC but it is almost like don’t worry if someone dies, they will be back. On the other hand I guess this did set up agents of shield, which I have never watched. That was a great summer, even people who were not super hero fans loved this movie. It was a record breaker a whole new level of huge. But let me stop with the love fest. First it made a ton of new fan boys. People who didn’t give a crap about comics all of a sudden were into it. And my nerdy hobby became mainstream L Next, how did Loki get here? I know there is time constraints on movies but really, he fell from the Bifrost reappears bragging about new worlds, using an infinity stone and we dunno how? Also WHY would Thanos gift him a stone? Kinda goes against gathering them all. Also where was Cpt Marvel? Fury needed super heroes but didn’t call her? You can’t say he wasn’t worried and kept her as a back up. I mean aliens are invading. The world is in danger I don’t think he was all “nah she can wait” Hoping her movie this spring explains that. Other than that this was amazing. However this did start a "dark" period for marvel. Not that the writing got dark, just the movies for the most part went down hill. If the last 2 years or so have been mega hits. Most of the next few movies were some of the worst Marvel has put out.

Budget - $200,000,000            Gross - $ 1,519,557,910      My Rank - 3

So the more they make the worse they get for me at least with Iron Man. I can’t even tell you why. I rewatch them over and over and still don’t really like 3. Ben Kingsley is great as Trevor the fake Mandarin. That is an awesome twist when you find out it isn’t him. Killian is actually much lamer as the Mandarin. Maybe that’s the problem. Villains need to be good to be entertaining. I mean his grinning errand boy is perfect. You wanna see him get his ass kicked. Oh and Tonys house getting blowed up, wtf?! Your telling me Iron Man couldn’t take on 3 choppers?? He can call an army to come get his back miles away but didn’t call them when they were literally right there? The little kid is cool, the hardware store attack kit he makes also a nice touch. How easy War Machine gets caught, also pretty weak. And again I thought these suits were tagged for a certain operator? Like glaring holes. Then killing Killain, again wtf?? Seriously he gets blown up in a suit and walks it off, but a small bomb blows him to shit. I don't get it.... The suits all showing up and saving Tony though that is pretty sweet. Easily the best part in the movie.

Budget - $ 200,000,000     Gross - $1,215,439,994 (Dunno why)       My Rank - 16

Let’s stop pretending the Dark World was a good movie. Wait was anyone pretending this was a good movie. If so why?? The reality stone showing up is cool, let’s give it that. The dark elves are boring and even in Thor (Rangnarok which I like) I can’t wrap my head around the Norris Gods and space ships. Freya dying is great, not really but it at least gives the plot some life. Odin goes all dumb and risks annihilation, like that make sense…. He literally was scolding Thor about that before. The running joke of you betray him and I kill you! Said to Loki is good. But the whole betrayal only lasting 30 seconds is lame. Could have made that longer than one scene. Pretty much every earth scene here almost seems pointless and I hate to say it but I am pretty glad Erik and Jane seems now to be gone from the MCU. Even the bonus scene doesn’t make a hella lotta sense. The Collector says all bad like, ass one down…. Like he is collecting them but that never pans out at all.

Budget - $ 170,000,000            Gross - $ 644,783,140 (After 2 billion movies)   My Rank - 17

Cap 2 the winter solider, keeps up the Cap being awesome saga. Like I cannot get over how much I actually enjoy this series. I like antiheroes and here is the guy who always does what is right being one of my favs. They work in a hydra storyline which is awesome for Cap fans who want to some what still with the comics. Unlike some of the comic movies that have gods, monsters, men in flying suits Cap is about morality. Should we stop threats before they start? Power and the abuse of it. It is cool that they throw in SHIELD which is a big part of tying the whole MCU together. Falcon debuts and we learn a bit more about Nick Fury. This guy could have his own stand alone movie or two. (Maybe Cpt Marvel will spill some on him) Also we learn a dark truth about Howard Starks end. BUt that will play out later. (Again a background character with huge involvement in the MCU) And of course Bucky is back. Winter solider, one of my favs. Him and Falcon should get a buddy movie. Overall no, it has no real movement towards the infinity war but it is a huge stepping stone in the MCU and as Iron Man slowly fades off as the heart series of the MCU Cap starts to take the reins.

Budget - $ 170,000,000    Gross - $14,766,572          My Rank - 6

I will never understand the hype for guardians of the galaxy. Now don’t get me wrong, it was a pretty good movie but when it came out everyone acted like it was as good as Avengers. It wasn’t! It was a new hybrid cross. A kinda comedy mixed into the superhero genre. Most MCU movies have some humor but guardians tried (and mostly succeeded) to go over the top with it. A dance off? Really? This is getting way to cheesy. It was a blockbuster and I think drew in more fans. The good thing for the rest of us. Another infinity stone. Plus finally showing space is hugely growing the MCU. And of course it can start showing Thanos a bit more.  Space for the MCU can be its own entity and with Cpt Marvel coming the Skrulls are rumored to be the next big bad villain. Replacing Thanos…. Could space be the next phase for the MCU? Micheal Rooker was a hidden gem as Yondu. You need a gruff actor he is perfect and who doesn’t like Rocket and Groot. Personally I think this movie wasted Ronin. Starlord proved Pratt can be a leading man. Don’t get me wrong it is a decent movie but I just feel it is almost its own brand of superhero movie. There is comedies, romance, then came rom-coms now you have hero-coms?

Budget - $ 170,000,000           Gross - $ 774,176,600          My Rank - 12