Anthony's MCU Binge: Phase Two!
Did you forget I was doing this? I occasionally did, too! Click the following hyperlinks to read my take on Phase One, and remind yourself what the Gregg Turkington-inspired rating scale means.
Iron Man 3 (2013)
Still shaking from his brief kamikaze trip to space in The Avengers, Tony Stark’s return to everyday billionaire business is rudely interrupted by an anti-American super-terrorist (Ben Kingsley), a slick scientist hoping to seduce his girlfriend (Guy Pearce) and spontaneously combusting randos. Shane Black, writer of Lethal Weapon and director of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, finds novel ways to keep Robert Downey Jr. out of his armor, the better to engage sweetly with a precocious young potato-gun enthusiast in Tennessee before infiltrating a mansion in Miami with his gun-toting black partner in sassy banter (did I mention Black wrote Lethal Weapon?). While the set pieces are a blessed improvement on the previous movie’s (the free-fall sequence!), Iron Man 3 has aged the worst of all the MCU movies I hadn’t seen since the theaters. Whether it’s the cultural moment or my personal disdain for the Blockbuster-Video-As-Hollywood-Golden-Era mentality, Shane Black’s knowing male chauvinism now feels as obnoxious and smarmy as the older breed. A shot of Happy Hogan closing sliding doors, leaving Tony to seduce Rebecca Hall’s eager scientist, may be the most repulsive image Marvel has ever supplied us. Can’t we make a movie without half-naked bimbos being scared off by guns, rather than a self-aware one? FIVE BAGS.
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
“Long before the birth of light, there was darkness. And from that darkness, came the Dark Elves.” Imagine having hundreds of millions of dollars at your disposal, and opening a movie with Anthony Hopkins saying that. Yet in terms of memorability, no line that follows tops it, and the most striking image in Thor 2: Elfish Boogaloo is a shell-shocked Stellan Skarsgaard clapping two sneakers together. Christopher Eccleston plays the mad king of the evil Keeblers, awoken when Natalie Portman bumps into a cosmic contrivance. Eccleston, a brave, thoughtful, underrated actor, reportedly helped invent an entire language for his character, as well as an affecting backstory to dignify the hours spent in make-up. The director says he’d like to share the related, excised scenes in a director’s cut, but Marvel fans have enough good movies to enjoy that they don’t foam at the mouth demanding redemptive re-edits. THREE BAGS.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Captain America makes a new friend in Anthony Mackie’s Falcon and discovers he’s not the only ghost of WWII still haunting the deep state. A lot of people consider this the finest Marvel movie, possibly because the presence of Robert Redford and numerous double-crosses allowed some cineastes to pretend they were watching blockbuster junk from fifty years ago on TCM. The first time I saw the movie, during a matinee weeks after its release, I had both a distracted buzz on and a then-wife beside me rolling her eyes and miming ejaculation when Chris Evans gasped “Bucky!” I might be the only person who appreciates “good” Hollywood movies more when sober and not around friends, and I definitely enjoyed Winter Soldier more just chilling on my couch in isolation. But I still didn’t find it particularly affecting, let alone transcendent. Just a decent, world-building sequel. But I don't go to superhero movies wishing I was watching The Pelican Brief, like most film critics seem to. FIVE BAGS.
Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014)
A Luke Skywalker who thinks he’s a Han Solo is thrown into a make-shift family with two humanoid aliens driven by vengeance, a psychotic talking raccoon and a soulful tree-being who only says “I Am Groot.” Director James Gunn has no problem making a delightful romp with that ensemble, which is unsurprising when you remember he’d miraculously managed to do the same with scripts for a live action Scooby Doo movie and a Dawn Of The Dead remake. As with The Dark World, a quality European actor or three playing baddies have little to do but growl under mounds of make-up, but the overqualified American supporting cast gets to ham it up under wigs (I'd watch a two-hour block of Benicio Del Toro's The Collector doing Antiques Roadshow) and the leads have lots of fun doing a post-NBC Thursdays Star Wars. This was the movie where it first looked like Marvel could make an enjoyable film out of anything, always putting the right ambitious director with the right ensemble and the right concept, audience familiarity be damned. POPCORN CLASSIC.
Avengers: The Age Of Ultron (2015)
This movie gets a lot of grief, and I’m not totally sure why. Heroes banter, bonk and blast baddies with style, the breather in the second act is legit unexpected, characters have clear emotional arcs (even Hawkeye & Black Widow!), and the big bad is a robot with the voice of James Spader at his most self-amused and contemptuous. A monologue-happy Mecha-Steff! Admittedly, Thor’s sub-plot is little more than a chance for a piss break, but so was the whole of The Dark World. And in this movie you get to see Thor in a hoodie! There’s also foreshadowing that director Joss Whedon wasn't God’s gift to women in entertainment, but better some dubious lines than intercutting yourself into Black Widow’s spotlight fight scene…Jon Favreau. The clash between the visual and emotional content of the Hulk vs Hulkbuster scene is both hilarious and affecting, with Robert Downey Jr conveying a desperate mix of love and exasperation any parent should recognize, and Paul Bettany’s Spock Jesus shtick immediately rewards the buys required to accept Vision’s origin story. Honestly, this might be my favorite Part 2 of the whole mega-franchise. All due respect to lovers of Three Super-Days Of The Super-Condor. POPCORN CLASSIC.
Ant-Man (2015)
Paul Rudd plays an ex-con so charming, handsome and moral that a wizened Michael Douglas has no choice but to give him a suit that makes him microscopic and gives him hypnotic control over ants. This was Edgar Wright’s passion project well before the MCU came underway, and I’m forever grateful that he realized the fun of the character isn’t just someone being extremely tiny, but someone dramatically zipping from tiny to big to tiny again, giving the audience an unprecedented and unpredictable shifting in scale during what would otherwise be a familiar heist or fight sequence. Wright split when he realized Marvel did script revisions without asking, but his replacement, Peyton “Bring It On” Reed, with screenwriting assistance from Anchorman vets Rudd and Adam McKay (before the latter turned into the Gen X Oliver Stone) keep the final product hilarious if less…whatever Wright wanted instead. Frankly, considering the static, interminable climax of The World’s End, we might have lucked out. The result is likely the wryest, most absurd superhero movie that never veers into thin parody, and the fullest display of Paul Rudd’s charisma since Clueless. While Michael Pena wins the VIP award as the epitome of eccentric, unfazeable amiability, the entire supporting cast deserves respect for never looking embarrassed or crossing their eyes at the camera. Again, the hero has hypnotic control over ants. Even names one "ANT-hony." POPCORN CLASSIC.