TAGGED AS: Marvel, Superheroes
Welcome to Marvel Movie Madness! If you’re just joining us, you’re too late! You get nothing! You lose! Good day, sir! We already watched all 34 theatrical Marvel movies and many have moved on to Tarkovsky and Bresson marathons to cleanse the palette.
You may, however, quietly check out the full schedule to read (or re-read) any of the entries.
Otherwise, this here is a final recap, just a little retrospective looking over our favorites of the series, our least favorites, and our biggest surprises. Thanks for reading and participating everyone!
Matt
Favorite Movie: X-Men. It’s hard to pick an absolute favorite, because I really like Iron Man too, but X-Men is one of those movies that I can catch on TV at any point in the film, and I’ll set the remote down and watch the rest of it.
Worst Movie: Man-Thing, but only because I didn’t rewatch Howard the Duck. When I was fifteen, I thought Howard the Duck was an excellent movie, probably because I thought George Lucas could do no wrong. I was a devotee of the Star Wars films, and I loved Raiders, and I think I convinced myself that Howard the Duck was another home run from Lucas. I saw it three times in the theater, and dragged friends to see it. If I were to rewatch it now, the forty-year-old me would want to to slap fifteen-year-old me in the face. I couldn’t face the possible contempt I’d have for my younger self, so I didn’t watch Howard again. But damn, Man-Thing was one of the worst movies I’ve seen in years.
Biggest Surprise: Captain America. I was worried about this one; director Joe Johnston has a bumpy track record, Chris Evans seemed like odd casting, and I wasn’t sure that an all-American hero like Cap would translate well to the modern expectations of audiences. Somehow this production sidestepped each one of those pitfalls, and audiences got a great introduction to the first Avenger.
Tim
Favorite Movie: Iron Man. For me, this is one of the best blockbusters of recent years. Robert Downey Jr. is perfect as Tony Stark – he’s charming, roguish, intelligent, and conscious – and the dazzling special effects never overwhelm the characters or the drama. It’s exhilarating stuff, and, surprisingly, it’s one of the few big Hollywood movies to address our post-9/11 foreign policy in a way that doesn’t seem overly didactic.
Worst Movie: Howard the Duck. It’s mind-bogglingly awful, and just wrong on so many levels. It’s too raunchy for kids, too dumb for adults, and its air of forced zaniness is seriously off-putting. Plus, it never makes clear what made Howard a countercultural icon in the first place.
Biggest Surprise: Daredevil. I didn’t see it when it first came out, and my expectations were minuscule because of its terrible reputation. And I found myself really enjoying it – it achieves its modest aims with style and finesse. It’s by no means a masterpiece, but as a second-tier movie about a second-string Marvel hero, it’s sharp and satisfying.
Ryan
Favorite Movie: This is a toughie because, quite honestly, I don’t really love any of the Marvel movies; even the ones I liked best were only “pretty decent.” With that in mind, there are a couple I’d consider my favorites, and of those, I’ll choose Iron Man. RDJ is perfectly cast, and despite a rather snoozy final battle, I enjoyed almost everything else about the movie. Good, pure fun, and a great summer popcorn flick.
Worst Movie: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. With most of the bad movies, I was still able to find at least one or two things to praise. I could not say the same for FF:RotSS, save for maybe Chris Evans. Terribly written, terribly acted, miscast villain, inconsistent CGI, and dull action. This movie should never have been made.
Biggest Surprise: Captain America (1990). I expected to hate this movie, and it is indeed poorly crafted. But, as with a lot of Albert Pyun films from that era, it’s got a lot of unintentional hilarity, and that led to a much more enjoyable experience than I expected. I’m not saying it’s a good movie — it isn’t — but I was far more entertained by it than I had any right to be.
Luke
Favorite Movie: I suppose Men in Black is entertaining on a slow day. And it’s mostly unlike any of the major Marvel titles, which explains enough. What can I say? I’d rather watch a sci-fi comedy with a sense of humor than some leaden, self-important superhero movie. But that’s me. Oh, and the first X-Men is still okay.
Worst Movie: Honestly, where to begin? Elektra was garbage, but that’s stating the obvious. There are so many I could pick here.
Biggest Surprise: Yep, pretty much everything was as I expected. I mean, relative to conventional wisdom Howard the Duck is stupid and enjoyable, but I already knew that going in. Mostly what’s good is what was expected, and what sucked, sucked.
Alex
Favorite Movie: Spider-Man 2. A bubblegum triumph. Sam Raimi runs freshman Peter Parker through a gauntlet of emotions — love, hate, jealousy, despair, hope — and amplifies them the way only comic books can. With Raimi really cutting loose in a way we haven’t seen since the ’80s and throwing in a great juicy villain, you’re gonna get a classic.
Worst Movie: X-Men: The Last Stand. Crude and depressing. A clear demonstration of zero respect for the source or the fans who had invested in the series. Nothing against gun for hire directors since they’re the ones who grease the Hollywood wheels, but Brett Ratner was incapable of finding proper tone, decent action, or a capable script under the duress of filming.
Biggest Surprise: Red Sonja. If only all “trashy fun” B-movies were this trashy and this fun.
Jeff
Favorite Movie: I’ve got to go with Iron Man. Much as he might bristle at the notion, I think Tony Stark is the role Robert Downey, Jr. was born to play — and here he has a sharp, funny script, not to mention a director who did a terrific job of walking the line between fanboy faithfulness and solid cinema.
Worst Movie: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The Marvel catalogue includes plenty of duds, but this is the only one that actually made me angry. You could cut out the first hour of the movie without missing a thing. Awful, just awful.
Biggest Surprise: I think I have to call it a tie between Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger — given the characters’ limitations and the storyline restrictions imposed by the way they had to lead into The Avengers, both movies are far better than they had any right to be. Nice, solid bookends for a pretty bumpy series, wouldn’t you say?
