The “Project” Introduction

I have decided for various reasons to start a rewatch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I have also decided to chronicle my watch-through of them by writing a blog post for every “Phase” of it.

I might give up before the end of it (because it’s a lot of mostly mediocre movies), but even if I stop, I still think writing and releasing all my thoughts publicly might be interesting.

As of the beginning of this, my opinion about it as a whole is: it’s not awful, but it’s not good. It is, however, impressive that they were able to make something that has been able to mostly hold itself together (in term of continuity) for nearly 20 years.

I will skip some movies I already watched a lot but will still write some of my thoughts about them (to not lose continuity and bring back my memory of them, I will just watch those movies massively sped up but I’ll actually watch their post-credits scenes since they’re all made for continuity purposes).

For reference, here is what I’ve seen before starting this project: Here

This blog post is the beginning of that “project” and is about Phase 1 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Phase 1

Iron Man (2008):

The Incredible Hulk (2008):

Iron Man 2 (2010):

Thor (2011):

Captain America - The First Avenger (2011):

The Avengers (2012):

Iron Man (2008)

A movie I’ve already seen before, 5+ times, the first time was a year or two after release and the last time was less than 5 years ago.

I skipped it for this watch-through.

This is a really solid movie and one of the best origin stories for a superhero character in a movie. The bad guy is “forced” but makes sense. All in all, one of the MCU’s best movies and a pretty good movie in general!

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

A movie I’ve already seen before, 2 or 3 times, the first time was a year or two after release and the last time was more than 10 years ago.

I skipped it for this watch-through.

A pretty bad movie that wasn’t supposed to be in the MCU and was “forced in” because they didn’t want to do another Hulk origin story so close to the release of that one. It’s barely an MCU movie, so much so that the main actor for Hulk (Edward Norton) was replaced for the MCU’s Hulk. It can honestly freely be skipped.

Iron Man 2 (2010)

A movie I’ve already seen before, 5+ times, the first time was a year or two after release and the last time was less than 5 years ago.

I skipped it for this watch-through.

This is a pretty weird movie, it’s not awful and has really interesting plot elements (and the introduction of important characters like Black Widow and War Machine), but the story itself kinda feels like a repeat of the first movie (bad guy is a CEO who wants more power in the world) mixed with the idea that will be done far better in the third Iron Man of “the enemy wasn’t the one that the world thought”. It’s still a pretty good watch (and is far from being the worst of the MCU mainly because the character development is solid).

Thor (2011)

A movie I’ve already seen before, only once, weeks or months after release.

A bad movie filled with nothing.

It’s a movie I saw back in 2011, that I had a vague memory of “It’s pretty bland”.

The story is almost passable, the fish-out-of-water comedy works… sometimes… and the action scenes work… sometimes. The problem is the directing is just bad.

Kenneth Branagh’s directing feels like a joke, it’s so bad I’m surprised Marvel even let it happen. There are so many Dutch angle shots, something that I never usually notice, that 10 minutes in I started to notice and it became so distracting, the person I was watching with, and I started to point them all out. We did some research at the end and saw that some people made a compilation of not-even-all-of-them, and that people are saying that there are more than 200 of them (and that they just lost count after this much). Also, for whatever reason, some shots have smoothing filters on, so much so that I thought the copy of the movie I had was bad… but then the next shot would be fine (or even the shot of the other character in the scene was fine).

Natalie Portman (Jane Foster, the scientist / love interest) is acting in one of the worst ways I’ve ever seen anyone act in a “high tier” movie… literally all of her lines are badly acted, she’s slightly wrong for all of them, some of them we even said “So that was the best take uh”. It’s so bad that when at one point she did 1 line right, we were surprised. The person I was with said, and I kinda agreed, “She’s acting wrong because she’s playing a smart character… and she’s a pretty dumb and not-smart person, so she doesn’t know how to do it” (I’m paraphrasing).

Chris Hemsworth’s (Thor) acting isn’t great, but it’s passable.

Tom Hiddleston (Loki) is, surprisingly to me, the only one with acting that doesn’t feel like a Marvel movie… like… it’s so good it feels almost out of place.

All in all, it was far worse than I remember. The script was passable, but the result was piss-poor. We kept thinking, that same script directed by James Gunn could have made a good movie.

Captain America - The First Avenger (2011)

A movie I’ve already seen before, 2 or 3 times, the first time was a year or two after release and the last time was more than 5 years ago.

The best MCU origin story in terms of pure “cinematic quality”, the first half is effectively a full-on war movie (and a good one at that!). The second half falls a bit in terms of quality, but still remains pretty solid. It’s one of the only Marvel movie that doesn’t feel like one (at least for the first hour).

I don’t really have much to say honestly. It’s a pretty good movie all around outside of the (obligatory) boring CGI fight scenes at the end (though they are thankfully short and diverse).

It should be what every MCU should aspire to be: “fine” with a high point (the high point in this one being the whole first half).

It’s one of the better MCU movie, and honestly, probably the best in Phase one.

Post-Scriptum: The post-credit scene made me kinda chuckle… it’s a full-on movie trailer for Avengers… with a release date and everything… which is… so weird and amateurish, especially since it was released like that on Blu-ray.

The Avengers (2012)

A movie I’ve already seen before, only once, at release, in theater.

An interesting movie that succeeds in bringing a dozen “main characters” to a single movie while still having important scenes for all of them.

Tom Hiddleston (Loki) as the bad guy (again) is interesting but, weirdly enough, far less than in Thor (2011), his acting is also a lot more “basic”.

It’s a movie that, even though I’ve only seen it once, remember fondly. A lot of the “scenes” feel like set pieces that back then I’d never seen before (and haven’t seen since for some of them).

Some of the plot points fall apart if you think about it too much (like all of the MCU movies) - like, for example, the science guy that was mind-controlled remembers what he did, but when asked, “Where’s Loki now?” doesn’t know… and doesn’t think to bring them where he was doing his science - or the “box” for Hulk to make him fall to his death that… I guess wouldn’t work since Hulk survived the fall outside of the box.

Some of the sets are pretty rough (especially near the ending in New York) where you can see that everything is too flat and can almost see where the green screens starts.

One interesting thing about it is that the fight scenes feel REALLY short in comparison to the recent blockbuster, it’s genuinely weird, but it feels so nice!

In the end, the movie is pretty good, it’s a bit bland and basic, but it’s well made and some of the “setpieces” are actually really good and make the movie worth watching just for them.

Post-Scriptum: The end fight is REALLY similar (identical at times) to Transformers 3 which came shortly before (which is why in my memory they melded together), but I guess that’s how it goes with big block busters.

Rating and Recommendation

Iron Man (2008): 8/10 - Recommended

The Incredible Hulk (2008): 4/10 - Not Recommended

Iron Man 2 (2010): 6/10 - Recommended

Thor (2011): 3/10 - Not Recommended

Captain America - The First Avenger (2011): 8/10 - Recommended

The Avengers (2012): 7/10 - Recommended