Fuck Marvel

I'm finally deleting these stupid Marvel movies from my hard drive. I've never sat through an entire film besides Avengers & Guardians so I skimmed through these.

The 2008 Incredible Hulk, while a total bore with wooden characters and only one good action scene, is more respectable than what Marvel has put out. Its the lovely location scouting, production design and cinematography. The flat commercial directing is led by the lavish production of visuals. This is the review I give to 9/10 Hollywood films.

Captain America Winter Soldier. Essentially the same story as The Hulk, Thor and Iron Man films. Same pacing, same plot twists, same messages. All-American macho Ken doll is at odds with the military (but also works for them), has some betrayal, has some light romantic tension with his Lois Lane, stops the evil guys pulling strings so the government can function better. These films, if you take out the basics stolen from old Superman/Batman movies, must represent some middle class NeoLiberal/Conservative white utopian statist dream, where capitalism is protected, terrorists are spectacularly defeated and patriarchy is preserved. They appeal to a tribalism thats always been in America, but they pour gallons of gasoline on the fire. These superheroes, unlike DC's Justice League, are not concerned with ideas like "democracy" or "truth" or stamping out corruption. They are simply government workers who protect the status quo from radicalism. Winter Soldier replaces the usual Lois Lane role with a fiery Scarlett Johansson (and her many stand-in's) and gives Cap a black sidekick, but thats about as progressive as it gets. There's some airheaded attempt at political/spy intrigue and it makes no sense. The rewarding bits are the bookend action scenes where everyone uses superpowers and CGI. The rest of the film looks like a bland network TV drama and the action scenes are lifeless and built around money/time-saving tricks, even though they knew they would make a billion dollars with this lemon.

Iron Man 3 was released at the height of Marvel mania and was the first critical flop. Its not any worse than the other two films, but its like a bad remake of Batman Forever. Iron Man is sulking and heartached to show he's as deep as Batman. The cinematography reflects this and its actually show well. Too much of the film is the uninteresting, unromantic love story of Robert Downey Jr & Gwyneth Paltrow. Zero chemistry and it was all done better in the Spider-man films.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is pretty good. The script lacks the unity and zing of the first Avengers, which I can't deny was a timely bit of Hollywood escapism and mindless fun a'la Michael Bay. Joss Wheadon deserves all of the credit for any positivity associated with the MVU. He's a great writer and a great visual designer and he brings personality and fun to these characters that totally drizzle without him.

Captain America: Civil War. This is the MVU's biggest production I assume as it has a ton of C, B and A level superheroes. My beef with Marvel they rarely put any imagination into the visuals or production. They just show off what expensive sets and locations they have, throw some stunt men at each other and film some cliche dialogue to stitch it all together, performed by very limited actors with big names. Civil War is the same but its evolved a bit. The action is better, the cast is more diverse and it at least tries to make some smart observations about the fractured political atmosphere. But you smell the bullshit as its all lip service to sell tickets. There is no story behind the noise. No drama, no insight, nothing memorable. This film is the crowd favorite over Batman v Superman, but it lacks all of their style and substance.

The next Avengers film will be a huge success and we will probably get these films for the next few generations. Thats such a sad idea to process. They will recast these characters and relaunch them endlessly in Disney fashion until they've lost all history and imagination. Warners' Justice League films are bound to be abused by critics and audiences because of brand loyalty, but Batman & Superman will live on. Wonder Woman brings a great balance to the Marvel formula too. God, I want this trend to fucking finish. Only a handful of these characters are even good.

P.S. I want to say that I especially dislike the Guardians of the Galaxy film I watched. James Gunn is a nice guy and the film is no different than these other films, but I'm disappointed that he basically just made an MTV version of The Avengers. And that I've heard him repeatidly called a genius for throwing in some pop songs and letting his digital animator direct 2/3rds of the film. What a hack. And this guy came from Troma is the tragedy of it. He could redeem himself if he damage controls the eventual Hollywood version of The Toxic Avenger.

P.S.S. Deadpool is probably the best MVU film after the original Avengers, but its essentially just Die Hard 6. Wise-cracking everyman vigilante with a broken heart shooting terrorists on big artificial sets with explosions, funny sidekicks and pop culture jokes. Its even made by the same studio as Die Hard so it feels like they just exploited the Marvel trend and canned Bruce. Its a decent action-comedy tho and the director did a good job. I'd like to see him work on something actually useful.