This time no Romanov or Fury, “Iron Man 3” is a ‘stand-alone’ Marvel. Stark has anxiety attacks but still has to fight a bad guy.
The story is not too interesting, but there are great parts of Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce. The latter looks quite the same as he does in “Memento“.
The film does not really have surprises. The story taps into the terrorist scare and of course the opponents have something that even Iron Man cannot simply brush aside. Towards the weak end, the story is wrapped up in the last five minutes.
Iron Man / Tony Stark is not exactly my favourite Marvel character, so I skipped the “Iron Man” movies so far. Actually. In “Iron Man 2” he is not so bad. Perhaps because he is a bit of the tragic character.
In “Iron Man 2” we have both Gwyneth Paltrow (as Pepper of course) and Scarlett Johansson (as Natalie Rushman / Natasha Romanoff, apparently not yet “Black Widow“) which is a plus. And Mickey Rourke is an amusing bad guy. We also see the dawn of the Avengers, as Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) yet has to recruit Iron Man for his team.
For the rest, Iron Man is hunted by Ivan Vanko, plus the competition tries to outsmart him. Together these opponents wreck havoc which Iron Man sets right, without the help of the other Avengers, as that team appears to be non-existent yet.
So perhaps “Iron Man 2” fits in the larger Marvel story and was it a good idea to watch it after all. I suppose I might now also watch “Iron Man 3” (2013).
Even compared to the previous Thor films, this one is quite ‘screwball’. Not too bad humour though.
Thor teams up with the Gardians of the Galaxy to fight a new arch enemy (a great Christian Bale btw) and in doing so he finds out that the hammer that his sister destroyed has been reassembled by his ex Jane (Natalie Portman) who is now “mighty Thor”. Thor made himself a new axe for a replacement and tries to prevent ever again falling in love.
In order to fight Gorr, a group of three visit Zeus (an amusing Russell Crowe), but he refused to help out, so another party is created to help prevent Gorr killing all the Gods and all that with the usual action, comedy and drama.
Thor’s sister Hela (Cate Blanchett) is the one to wreak havoc this time. Thor and Loki fall off the Bifrost trying to prevent Hela from entering Asgard and they end up on the same planet. This planet is ruled by “Grandmaster” (an amusing Jeff Goldblum) where he has a bit of Videodrome-type fights. There Thor meets an old pal.
The first task is to get off the thrash-planet and then of course to defeat Hela which succeeds in an unexpected way that gives an amusing twist to the actual Ragnarök theme.
There is another known Marvel character in the film: Dr. Strange.
Early in the “fourth fase” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a new director gets a whole new storyline.
A Chinese legend of a man is told who became immortal when he obtained ‘the ten rings’. Not just immortal, Xu is unconquerable. After a few centuries of battle he tries to settle down, have kids, grow old. Of course things do not turn out that way.
We mostly follow Xu’s son Shaun (Shang-Chi) who lives his life parking cars, whose past catches up with him. He needs to return to his land of birth and find his sister to fight his father. A not too interesting story unfolds.
I wonder how this new storyline will be woven into the rest. There is a Wakanda-like land beyond a waterfall, new dark and light creatures, etc.
The film is not boring, but I wonder why something completely new was found necessary.
This three hour ‘episode’ seems to come right after “Infinity War”. Thanos has wiped out a large part of the inhabitants of the universe, including earth. The Avengers are depressed, the movie is rather gloomy. Then the idea emerges to use Ant-Man’s “subatomic” state for time-travelling, go back in time, gather all infinity stones and prevent Thanos from obtaining them.
First we have the usual Avengers. Iron Man, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye, Hulk and Thor. Ant-Man joins the team and different parties go to different places and times to get the stones. During that proces the Guardians of the Galaxy join the club, Captain Marvel, Spider Man, Dr. Strange and when the war with Thanos becomes serious even the Wakandians.
A lot of drama, a massive battle halfway. “Endgame” has less of the feel good atmosphere of earlier Avenger films. There are a few jokes and funny dialogues. Beer belly Thor is amusing.
The story is not too interesting. An alright twist is that some characters from different times end up in the same time, such as Nebula giving the story a new twist.
Apparently I saw the first “Ant-Man” well before I started watching the Marvel franchise. At the time (2015) I was not impressed, still expecting a film with comic book elements. Yet the Ant-Man ‘concept’ is very familiar. Did I see the old film again or did Ant-Man appear in another Marvel production?
The scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) created a suit that can shrink a person. Initially using it together with his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer), something went wrong and Pym put the project in the closet. Later the random Scott Lang becomes the new Ant-Man.
The thing that went wrong was that Pym’s wife went “sub atomic” and got lost, but Scott proves that coming back is possible, so in this second movie, the quest is to retrieve Janet van Dyke.
The only reference to the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” is that Ant-Man is under house arrest for having wreaked havoc together with the Avengers. During that period Hank Pym and his daughter (Hope van Dyke) have recreated the project and even expanded it. Now they can not only shrink a person in a suit, but they can shrink anything, whether a car or a complete building. This makes some amusing finds and brings an extra element to the ‘shrink-hit-grow’ type action scenes.
I find Ant-Man not the best Marvel character, he is a bit too goofy for me, but the shrinking-while-fighting concept does bring more of the amusing Marvel action.
The new troupe of heroes from ‘vol. 1‘ have become a team. The talking tree Groot has been replaced by a baby tree, but for the rest, the group remained the same. Even the villains partly did.
The movie is more to the comedy side of the Marvel franchise with silly jokes and screwball humour. The adventure this time involves the father of Peter Quill who may not have such great plans for the universe.
So there is some humour, some drama, some action, a not-too-interesting story. A bit of a filler in the Marvel franchise perhaps. Not even an addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe it seems.
Not boring, but nothing that needs to be high up on your watch list.
So not all Marvel characters make it to the league of Marvel Cinematic Universe. Daredevil is one such.
As a boy Matthew Murdock lost both his father and his sight. His blindness gives him new abilities and he trains himself from a shy boy into a fighting machine. He buys himself a fancy suit and sets out both to fight crime and to avenge his father.
“Daredevil” is a typical comic book action with a villain, drama and romance. Nothing out of the ordinary.
The character is used more often. A series has been made about him. He is one of four smaller Marvel characters in the series “The Defenders” and “Daredevil: The First Defender” seems to be a second movie, while “Daredevil: Born Again” has been announced.
The titles say less and less about whom the Marvel films are about. In “Infinity War” the Avengers are no longer complete (Hawkeye died somewhere) and also here we have Spider Man, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Dr. Strange, Thor, there is even a part set in Wakanda, the bad guy is Thanos again. You get it, the Marvel movies are beginning to be like someone asking the entire cast who feels like playing in another movie and all characters of the actors who say ‘yes’ are written in. Think of a name, an there is another addition to the franchise.
“Infinity War” is another extraterrestrial spectacle. Thanos is after all the infinity stones and he is well on his way. Should he be able to get them all in his specially crafted glove, he would have infinite power and hence: destroy the universe. He is the bad guy after all, is he not?
Thor had some of the stones, but Thanos gets it in the opening scenes of the film. Also Dr. Strange appears to get his powers from one of the stones, so he is sought after as well. Vision, who grew out of the AI of Tony Stark (Iron Man) has one in his head as well. Different troupes who either or not met before get together. The Avengers meet the Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Man meets Dr. Strange, etc. There are amusing references to earlier films such as Captain America asking about Thor’s new haircut (shorter) and Thor about his new beard or the Black Panther who shouts that Captain America needs a new shield.
Story wise there are not a whole lot of surprises. Thanos has the upper hand all the way to the end, but I will not give a big spoiler when I tell you he does not make it.
