The Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Two Retrospective

This is the second part of my retrospective look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If you're reading this blog first, then you might be asking yourself what I thought about Phase One. Well, I'm not going to tell you. I wrote a whole blog on that last week. I'm not going to waste my typing energy rehashing it just to save you the trouble of looking at a WHOLE OTHER BLOG. No. You can read that yourself. I guess we'll all just have to wait for you, won't we? Fine. You go and follow the link there while I sell-out with some product placement that nobody asked me to do and when you're finally ready to join the conversation we'll get started. Jeez, do the homework people!

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Drink Dr. Pepper. Do it. Right now. Don't drink Coke. Coke is the soft drink equivalent of chicken. Everything gets compared to Coke. Dr. Pepper is way cooler. It's got all those flavors that you'd never find in chicken. Dr. Pepper is like grilled salmon with lemon and just a kick of spices. Who'd want chicken after that? I mean, yeah, Coke has Mr. Pibb, which is fine if that's all the restaurant has, but ever since they added in that cherry flavor it's just not he same. So drink Dr. Pepper, or if you need to tighten the budget you can have Dr. Chek from Winn-Dixie. They practically taste the same. Or you can always try one of the other knockoff brands like Dr. Faygo or Dr. Pig. They're passable enough. Oh, but stay away from Dr. Publix. That's nasty. It's like when you mix fountain drinks at the Circle K but you add in a little Root Beer because you think it tastes pretty good on its own, but then somehow the flavors work against each other and it gives you this bitter nauseating medicine aftertaste. That's Dr. Publix. But Dr. Thunder from Wal-Mart? Oh man, I'd give up Dr. Pepper forever if I could live off that stuff. Dr. Thunder is a legal antidepressant. There is nothing greater than a 2-liter of that stuff. So, yeah. Um. Drink Dr. Pepper I guess. As long as there's no Dr. Thunder around.


Okay, are you done? Good! We've got a blog to get through.

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Of course everyone was still on about the Avengers, but the question now was whether or not anyone was interested in solo movies anymore. And if there weren't an Avengers sequel in the works we all may very well have moved on. But who are we kidding? We're invested now. The audience is pretty much obligated to go to the Marvel films and at least rave about them for the first two weekends.

Fortunately, Iron Man 3 turned out to be a worthy successor to the EVENT the preceding summer. Guy Pearce plays a solid villain, maybe not Loki caliber but certainly a step up from wherever Mickey Rourke wandered off to. I'm really not bothered by what they did with the Mandarin. It worked for the movie. I suppose I felt the absence of Thor and the rest of the team, but I rather like seeing Don Cheadle get some real screen time as War Machine (yeah, Terrence Howard got gypped, but I've honestly moved past it).

If I have anything negative to say, and I really don't, it's that I felt exhausted by the end of the movie. I suppose it's better than feeling unsatisfied. After The Avengers I couldn't wait for the next installment. With Iron Man 3 I was fine waiting.

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

I don't get it. Why go through the trouble of casting Christopher Eccleston in a role that could have been played by a stuntman? When you hear him talk about the role, you can tell he signed on to really act. But truthfully, I don't even remember what the hell happened to his character at the end of the movie.

Compared to the first Thor this movie has individual sequences that push the boat out further, and I give it credit there. But the overall product doesn't hold together as well. Perhaps it was a mistake to have to tie the movie back onto earth. As nice as it was to see Jane and Darcy again, I kind of feel like the human characters are being forced into the plot, to the point of holding it back. Loki is back and scene stealing as ever, but no. He doesn't need a solo film. I know we'll see him again in Thor: Ragnarok in 2017, and as much as I love his character that probably should be his swansong.

I guess the bottom line with the Thor franchise is that Asgard is having to take a backseat to the stuff on earth and it's really limiting what we can do with this realm. What is daily life like in Asgard if there's not a frost giant infiltration to handle? Is this like Star Trek's federation, where everyone of every profession and class association is content with their lots in life? It's hard to care about a dark elf invasion when we don't feel any attachment to the place. And Rene Russo's Frigga was a truly wasted opportunity, but apparently moms just get in the way of the hero's journey. *sigh*

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

What the hell happened here? When did Steve Rogers become so awesome? I mean, this movie did everything right; from casting Robert Redford as the main villain to giving Cap a global affecting decision, which he of course makes without a second thought in keeping with his character.

I loved seeing Black Widow in this movie. You only needed one extra Avenger to flesh out the cast as part of the overriding whole, and Natasha was the correct choice. I particularly loved seeing The Nanny Diaries's costars in a completely non-romantic setting. Widow gets about as much action as Cap does to the point you could practically have included her name in the title.

Now I'll admit I never got attached to Bucky in the first film because, like so much of The First Avenger, his character left no real impression on me. But here as the Winter Soldier his character effectively conveys what he means to Steve and what's personally at stake. And at the end of the movie when Captain America refuses to leave Bucky behind it comes across as Steve Rogers has never thought of himself as anything more than any other soldier, no matter what uniform he's wearing. It's a strong moment.

Nick Fury and Maria Hill are spot on, Fury is probably utilized better in this movie than in any other that Sam Jackson will get contracted for. And Anthony Mackie inserts himself flawlessly into the pre-existing cast as Falcon. Iron Man 3 and Thor: Just Call it Thor 2 both have their places in the franchise, but Winter Soldier is the first movie since The Avengers that you absolutely HAVE to see.

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Okay. So. If you've talked to anyone ever, you've probably heard how great this movie is, and you might even think that the naysayers simply don't exist; not by being beaten into submission by the cult of Matrix worshipers, but by being snuffed out from the weight of fan kinderlings who have fallen in love with Chris Pratt (and yeah, he was great in The Lego Movie). I mean, if there's one thing nerds are known for, it's knowing when to give up on expressing their opinions about things.

I really felt like I wasted my time with this movie. I don't get what people are seeing in it. I'm not saying it was a bad movie. I'm just saying it wasn't good either. Case in point: the fundamental question for anything designed as entertainment is, why do I care about this particular story? I haven't had to ask that for any of the past Marvel films because they've all seemed to justify themselves. But going into Guardians pre-hype I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be attaching to. It's a band of misfits in space. And? Aside from Marvel's stamp, what makes that any different than every hundred other band of misfits in space story that's been done to cliched death?

I actually expressed my reaction to the trailer on Facebook to see why people were so excited, and the only concrete response I got was, "It's a raccoon with a gun! Come on!" So f**king what? That's nothing special. And here's where my problem lies. The raccoon with a gun never became a character with more depth than his basic trope definition. Groot was the well-meaning tree. Green Avatar girl was green and did some action. And Chris Pratt listened to a mix tape made up of songs that I personally find barely tolerable. Those characters were the same at the end of the movie that they were at the beginning.

A buddy of mine insisted that the character development was there, it was just subtle. Maybe he's right, but in an unsubtle movie like this, subtlety is congruent to irrelevant. I think the filmmakers were too busy being 'hip' that they either forgot to make it engaging, or decided for themselves that I was going into the theater already engaged. That's a rookie mistake.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

I didn't know who Ultron was because I didn't remember him from the Lego Marvel game, so I wasn't going into this one excited about said character. And I don't know what happened exactly but as the movie wore on, Ultron stopped being interesting. Now, from what I understand, Joss Whedon had to trim out like an hour of footage, so maybe that's the problem. But whereas Phase One was clearly leading up to the payoff of The Avengers, Phase Two seems to be setting its sights on Civil War.

The Vision is another character that I never really warmed up to. A lot of critics were saying they wanted to see more of him, but I didn't see enough of anything to have any kind of intrigue about him. He honestly just feels like third act deus ex machina. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver fare much better with Elizabeth Olsen in particular being the breakout performer. But Baron Strucker and Ulysses Klaue are paraded through so fast I really wish they'd settled on only using one of the characters. And then there's bit parts from Fury and Falcon and Selvig and so on; it's more of a scavenger hunt than actual necessity.

And then there's the crap between Black Widow and Bruce Banner. A lot of people I know liked the romance. I thought it weakened her character and made his less fun. I find Black Widow's no-nonsense approach refreshing, and it's not that a romantic angle weakens every female character but for her it feels out of place. And Banner's thing has always been trying to get a handle on the Hulk before even considering any kind of relationship. Just because Natasha is convenient doesn't mean he'd have an attraction. Was that really all Joss Whedon could think of to do with those two characters?

Ant-Man (2015)

So this is how we finish off Phase Two then? Okay...but I really need to get this off my chest. Ant-Man is silly. I'm not talking about the movie, just the concept. If Marvel had led with Ant-Man instead of Iron Man and expected any dignity the franchise would have been dead on impact.

Well, here we go. It's a decent origin story reminiscent of Iron Man, although certainly not on its level. Paul Rudd is likable, Michael Douglas is in top form, Evangeline Lily is as credible a leading lady as Hayley Atwell. So the cast is pretty solid. The one weak point is Corey Stoll, whose work I'm not familiar with but it's probably the way his character is written more than the actor. Maybe I just didn't believe that he believed in the Yellowjacket technology. He just seemed too easygoing to ever feel like a real threat. The difference between a villain who is confident versus just smug is the underlying passion they have for what they're doing. Stoll's Darren Cross just seemed too comfortable.

So I liked the movie, even if the third act felt confused over its identity, but it was kind of a weak way to end Phase Two. I don't know why Marvel called Ant-Man the finale when they could have just as easily have claimed it was the pre-show to Phase Three without even moving its release date. Even if the Avengers sequel missed the bullseye, it still has more of the raw power behind it to say, "That's Phase Two folks! See you at the next eleven movies!"

So if you're keeping score, Marvel spent a total of 1 billion 46 million making Phase Two while earning (as of this weekend) 5 billion 84.2 million at the box office. Which is to say that Phase Three is the only sure bet in Hollywood these days. So it's not a question of will we shell out the money for Infinity War, but how will we feel about the whole saga once it's done? Civil War will most definitely be a thrill ride, but consider the possibility of the series peaking there. That leaves us with nine films to notice the aftertaste leading in to whatever Marvel is convinced we're still going to want to sit through for the next decade.

Ambitious if nothing else.