Dave reviews the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Just what nobody needed: Dave reviews the Marvel Cinematic Universe!! 

IRON MAN - reasonably fun, enough of the 60s vibe to keep it rolling, they even used the cartoon theme song.

INCREDIBLE HULK - Hey, there's the Sam Sam The Record Man sign! Bring back The Leader, I say. Very Herb Trimpe film, which was "my" Hulk growing up

IRON MAN 2 - this is the one with Tony Stark's Dad from Mad Men hiding a secret inside his minature railroad set, and Mickey Roarke with a bad Russian accent, right? 

THOR - I waited until Rifftrax riffed this one before watching it. It's a boring movie right until the part where The Destroyer shows up, and then it gets good, and then immediately it ends.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: obviously this is the best of the early run of the movies because it has the Red Skull in it, who shows up and immediately starts vaporizing his own guys just for the hell of it. Also it has some kind of version of the Howling Commandos. I have pretty much every issue of Sgt. Fury & The Howling Commandos. 

THE AVENGERS: remember when every movie had the bad guy getting captured and put in a glass cage so he could smirk and tell the heroes that this was all part of his plan? Yes.

IRON MAN 3: this movie has people on fire and some kind of climax involving shipping containers at the Port Of Los Angeles, which is the climax of at least three other movies. What's the matter, screenwriters, does your corner office have a great view of the Port Of Los Angeles?

THOR THE DARK WORLD: Fun fact: nobody wants to see a movie where the bad guys are "dark elves" except for super gothy teens who haven't figured out what they really want to be are hippies

CAPTAIN AMERICA THE WINTER SOLDIER: Solid picture, good fights, ground-level super guy stuff with a minimum of magic beams shooting out of hands or flying. I wish there was a cut of this movie where Robert Redford reveals he's the Red Skull all along and somebody asks if he's going to take off his mask and he says "what mask?" This one really feels like the mid 1970s Kirby run of Captain America & The Falcon, which are my favorite Captain American comics.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: fun spacey movie with that very specific Marvel outer space stuff that is very post Star Wars but still influenced by all the drugs Marvel's creative staff was doing in the early and mid 1970s; spaceships are big airplanes that do whatever you need them to do and go whereever you need them to go, blaster guns shoot whatever they need to shoot, and everybody's some degree of super strong, able to speak all space languages, and space suits are totally optional. Also stars John C. Reilly! 

AVENGERS AGE OF ULTRON: why does a robot have lips? Ultron is a great villian in the comics, Spader makes a great bad guy, both are totally wasted in this film that exists solely to move continuity forward and get everybody to the next movie. Time is wasted with a detour to Asia, to secure Asian funding, I guess. A big thing is raised high in the air and then falls down, that's what happens in the climax of a lot of these movies.

ANT-MAN: fun heist movie starring funny people doing fun things, doesn't take itself seriously, a nice change. More Gregg Turkington please!

CAPTAIN AMERICA CIVIL WAR: Super heroes have to fight each other for contrived reasons. Not quite as silly as the Batman vs Superman movie, but still pretty contrived. Ant-Man is in all the best parts, which should tell you something.

DOCTOR STRANGE: Nice Ditko pastiche papered over with iffy American accent for Cumberbatch. Am still not sure about Swinton's Ancient One; do you keep a racist stereotype character as a racist stereotype, do you change it to a painfully white character, thereby whitewashing your racist stereotype, I dunno. It's a difficult proposition.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 2: This was the first one of these movies that I actively disliked, mostly because it was a retread of the first picture, with lots and lots of screen time of Saldana and Gillian in crazy face makeup hollering at each other, lots of More Of The Hits From The 70s, more smirky cosmic stuff, bad digital de-aging, more hand-wavey super stoned outer space "what if, like, there were these Ego The Living Planet flowers on every planet in the universe, man? And what if they all went off at once? Because things happen simultaneously across the universe, right? Dude!" Relax and listen to Mellow Hits Of The 70s again, dude

SPIDER MAN HOMECOMING: I saw three decent Spider Man movies, avoided two lame Spider Man movies, waited on this Spider Man movie, and I liked it, they let teenagers be teenagey, kept it local for the most part, and got the most out of Keaton. Still about a half hour too long.

THOR RAGNAROK: Great course correction for Thor, somebody finally realized they should start looking at the Thor comics people actually enjoyed, instead of the Vince Colletta-inked stuff people pretend to like but that nobody actually likes.

BLACK PANTHER: fine action picture, great cast, halfway through you start thinking Killmonger actually has a point, confusing Asian detour and pandering Give Martin Freeman Something To Do segments make this movie, again, about 25 minutes too long.

AVENGERS INFINITY WAR: let's get this straight: I think Thanos is a bargain basement Darkseid ripoff, he's boring, his whole "kill half of everything" plan is stupid, and this movie isn't going to age well. In fact I don't think a lot of these films are. How dare you put the Red Skull back in these movies and he's just playing the goddamn Crypt Keeper? What a waste!

ANT MAN AND THE WASP: again, solid, grounded, action-oriented, heisty switcheroo sciency picture with, instead of Gregg Turkington, his "On Cinema" partner Tim Heidecker as "Whale Man". Keep putting these guys in these movies and I will keep paying to see them in theaters.

CAPTAIN MARVEL: A-list cast works their way through deep-cut Marvel space-empire mythology and generally makes a good showing; fun 90s setting made people nostalgic for Blockbuster Video until they remembered what a shitshow Blockbuster Video really was, burn in hell Blockbuster Video. 

AVENGERS ENDGAME: again, Thanos is boring, he's that boring guy you went to college with who would show up in your dorm room after two beers and three bong hits who really wanted to talk about his philosophy class and then later he got angry with you because he thought you were hitting on his girlfriend, and then even later he dissolved into weepy tears. Also, seriously, again, here's the Red Skull NOT being evil and betraying everybody, and here's way more Jeremy Renner than anybody wanted or needed, combined with, again, Inexplicable Asian Detour. Let's really take our time with this one, okay? Also let's tone the color way down until by the end of the picture it's all one gray-brown smudge. Remember primary colors? 

SPIDER MAN FAR FROM HOME: Actually liked it better than the first movie? Maybe? Moved a little faster. It did the Mysterio very well, better than I'd been expecting. Likeable cast gets to be teenagers, too, thankfully. 

I am probably done seeing these movies anywhere except Netflix, and as it turns out they likely won't be on Netflix, I'm... probably done seeing these movies? Maybe?