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Top 12 Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies
Captain America: Civil War opens tonight and that marks the beginning of the Marvel cinematic universe’s third and final stage. I figured it was time we ranked each Marvel movie, so here we go.
12) Thor: Dark World
Marvel movies are notorious for not developing their villains—this will be an ongoing theme—but Thor: Dark World went a step further with under developed villains. You could omit the movie’s villain and not miss a thing. It takes a special Marvel movie to have a meaningless villain (the dark elves, not Loki, as they were the main villain). The rest of the movie didn’t fare much better. Natalie Portman fought through a script she hated. You couldn’t tell she loathed the film from her performance but her alleged ire was the only thing that was memorable.
11) Iron Man 2
The next two films could switch places, and often do on a regular basis for me, but Iron Man 2 earns the lower spot on the list, despite trying to develop its villain. It’s a mess. Tony’s alcoholism was touched, his illness took center stage after a while, and Ivan Vanko’s backstory dump through expositional dialogue was no dynamo. The movie put too many story threads into two hours and ended up flat. There was little chance the sequel could recapture the excitement of the original, but where’s the joy?
10) Iron Man 3
Iron Man 3 had more humorous moments than Iron Man 2, but it also had more issues. Seriously, these last two movies could switch places. I hate revisionist history, and Iron Man 3’s villain, set up as the mastermind behind everything Iron Man through flashbacks, played like revisionist history. Renaming a well-known Marvel group like AIM to The Ten Rings was a cheat, and Marvel had one larger than life role for an Asian actor (The Mandarin) and decided to make him a punchline. Hollywood has only cast an Asian or Asian-American in 50% of their TV shows and movies in the last several years (per The Screen Actors Guild), so a buffoonish Mandarin was a terrible look. Oh, and I don’t like having a figurehead villain with a real villain pulling the strings behind the scenes, even if the figurehead villain wasn’t the Mandarin. It’s been done. It’s not clever; it’s a lazy attempt to be clever.
9) The Incredible Hulk
It’s a testament to how little I think of the previous three movies that The Incredible Hulk doesn’t make for a compelling lead character; he’s too overpowered. He’s great as a side character, a force of nature, or another loose end the Avengers have to tie up. Ed Norton Jr. did an adequate job as Bruce Banner, and Abomination was developed as well as a one-note villain can be, so this movie made it this high on the list despite its hokeyness.
8) Captain America: The First Avenger
Ever wonder why Captain America movies always have subtitles? Those subtitles are what the movies are called overseas. That has nothing to do with the movie’s quality, I just thought it was interesting. Anyway, the first Cap movie was good. Chris Evans made a convincing Steve Rogers, the origin story went off without a hitch, and I liked Bucky and the addition of the Howling Commandos, but I’ve never seen a character portrayed by Hugo Weaving come across as flat as the Red Skull, one of Marvel’s best villains, and he was a huge, under developed yawn. There’s that term again: under developed.
7) Avengers: Age of Ultron
I could’ve swapped Age of Ultron and The First Avenger, but oh well. Avengers: Age of Ultron was yet another Marvel movie that didn’t develop its villain—big shock, I know—but I can’t blame it. The film stuffed as many characters as it could into one film and the bloated cast resulted in Ultron getting twenty to thirty minutes of screen time for a movie that bears his name. Age of Ultron also suffered from the law of diminished returns. We’ve seen these scenes—or similar ones—before and the movie needed more than Marvel’s tried and true CGI goodness. Hawkeye had some great moments, while the relationship between Black Widow and Hulk was a head scratcher.
6) Ant-Man
Despite being the final movie in the Marvel cinematic universe’s second wave, Ant-Man shrank down the plot’s scope—pun intended—and delivered a film akin to earlier Marvel films. It made characters the heart of the story. The film couldn’t quite capture the same magic of the earliest Marvel movies, but it came close. The humor was welcome. It presented a fun, super-hero twist to the heist movie genre. And Paul Rudd and Michael Pena were a joy. Sure, the main villain was under-developed—like most Marvel movies—and a greater Hydra threat loomed in the background, but the focus was on family and that made the characters relatable. I’m not sure how many more character-driven movies remain in the Marvel cinematic universe, but Ant-Man was one of them.
5) Thor
Loki has daddy issues. It’s a common trope and colors him as a character in broad strokes, but the God of Mischief has had more character development than most Marvel cinematic universe villains, and that’s a great thing. And it’s not the only thing Thor does well. I’m not a huge Thor comic book fan, but the movie does a great job setting up character relations and developing them through actions instead of expositional dialogue. Okay. There was a lot of exposition, mostly from Odin, but a lot of other movies only build their characters through dialogue, and Thor uses the snot-nosed son of Odin’s actions as the main characterization vehicle.
4) Avengers
This one is a spectacle. I marvel at how they balanced the character’ screen time in this one. Folks were thinking Avengers was an impossible movie to make because of the sheer number of characters needed on-screen, but Joss Whedon pulled off a miracle. I would’ve rated this movie a little higher, but viewers need context for this movie. You can’t watch Avengers without first watching at least two or three other movies—you’ll see this argument come up again real soon—and some of the scenes are a little hokey, but man, Avengers was a great popcorn flick. And I love the Hulk as comic relief.
3) Iron Man
I had to give the movie that kicked off the Marvel cinematic universe some respect. Iron Man also holds up really well, unlike its sequels. This is another movie where the character’s actions define who he is. Iron Man could’ve spent a lot of time having Tony ponder the meaning of life—and he does a little bit of this while he’s in captivity—but that’s not who the character is. Iron Man doesn’t tell as much as it shows who these characters are, and that’s wonderful. It also helps that Robert Downey Jr. was born to play the role and he’s a delight.
2) Captain America: Winter Soldier
When this one was out in theaters, I couldn’t get enough of it. Winter Soldier shook the Marvel cinematic universe to its core. It developed its characters really well and took secondary characters—like Black Widow—and elevated them. Winter Soldier was also the most faithful adaptation of a comic book to the silver screen. It’s amazing. But this is where the context issue comes into play. While you could say that every Marvel movie—except for Iron Man—is a dependent film, Winter Soldier suffers the most from lack of context. I showed Winter Soldier to someone who said that they love Marvel movies. It turned out that they hadn’t watched Iron Man 2, the first Cap film, or many of the other ones on this list, and they had no idea what was going on. Winter Soldier changed the Marvel universe but it’s also dependent on the rest of the Marvel universe to make any sense. Still, it’s fantastic.
1) Guardians of the Galaxy
I really should switch these top two, but I showed Guardians of the Galaxy to the same guy who hadn’t seen Winter Soldier, and it was a much different experience. Similar to Winter Soldier, the Guardians were well developed. But while Winter Soldier leaned heavily on plot twists, Guardians of the Galaxy had more memorable moments. Each character—with the exception of the patented Marvel movie underdeveloped villain—had their own moments to shine. Guardians is also the movie that made me yearn less for a Star Wars sequel—no offense, The Force Awakens. That’s not bad for a group Stan Lee forgot was a Marvel comic.
I know that was a long post, but there’s a lot of Marvel movies. These rankings are subject to change. In fact, I may change them soon. There are so many great Marvel movies. Let’s enjoy this comic book movie renaissance. Thanks for reading.
Manga Artists Matching Quiz 01
Anime Voice Actor Matching Quiz 01
CW Orders Flash-Arrow Spinoff DC’s Legends of Tomorrow
Kyle’s Take
It’s official, The CW produce and air The Flash-Arrow spinoff that’s been setting the rumor mill ablaze. You didn’t have too much in the way of facts prior to now because The CW was on the fence about the series – who are they kidding, we knew they were going forward with the series – but now that CW has confirmed the series and named it Legends of Tomorrow, they’ve leaked plenty of information about the upcoming series.
The tentative tagline for the show reads When heroes alone are not enough, the world needs legends. The tagline reveals that we won’t just have heroes in this new team; some villains will grace this team. The title, Legends of Tomorrow, hints at a time-travel, but we now know that our time-jumping hero will be Rip Hunter, played by Arthur Darvill. Hunter has seen the future and will try to prevent something big from happening but he’ll need the help of The Legends to stand a chance of defeating this unstoppable threat.
And here’s our team of Legends:
Arthur Darvill as Rip Hunter
Rip Hunter isn’t this time traveler’s real name because as Rip says, “As a time traveler, I can’t let anyone know what my own past is. What’s to stop my enemies from suffocating me in my crib? Or doing the same to my father?”
We may not know what Rip’s real name is but with the help of his Time-Sphere, he’s had a lot of time traveling exploits. We also know that Rip’s part of the Carter family and that Booster Gold is his father. Don’t get any ideas, dastardly villains, or our next Legend will shrink you down to size.
Brandon Routh as Atom
Starling City isn’t big enough for Atom and the Arrow, so Ray Palmer’s taking his talents to South—actually, I don’t know where this show will be set. If we assume that Starling is in Wisconsin (check out our DC Comics Cities Map for more details), Ray should be headed south and my best guess is that the Legends of Tomorrow could have some scenes in Pittsburgh, PA.
Rip Hunter has spent some of his formative years in the Steel City and so did the next member of The Legends.
Victor Garber and Robbie Amell as Firestorm
Two heads are better than one or so this nuclear man on fire would have you believe. Well, Firestorm’s two heads do come in handy and we get some great dialogue that’s more of a monologue. Would that make it a monialogue?
Anyway, Firestorm may be the most overpowered member on The Legends. Here’s a quick breakdown of the powers he’s had over the years:
Density Control: He can manipulate the density of solids, liquids, and gases—from elements as light as hydrogen to ones as heavy as uranium (you know, because he’s a nuclear man).
Eidetic Memory: Anyone tied to the Firestorm Matrix can access the memories of anyone else (human or otherwise) who has ever been fused to the Matrix, and they can do so with moment to moment clarity. Thanks, but I’m good with not having the memory of another man’s birth.
Energy Absorption: Whether it’s solar, nuclear, petroleum, or even life-force, Firestorm and sap energy from just about any source. How does he stay so thin?
Energy Projection: Nuclear blasts, plain and simple.
Enhanced Vision: Anything you can see, Superman, I can see, too—only I have Thermal Vision.
Flight: Yeah, we know he can fly.
Molecular Reconstruction: How else could he reform his body after he implodes in a ball of nuclear fire?
Phasing: Wow, you couldn’t let Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) from the Marvel Universe have one cool thing about her. You just had to be able to pass through solid objects, too.
Psychic Link: Eat your heart out, Grodd.
Regeneration: That’s another neat trick. He can already reconstruct his molecules, so why not?
Self-Sustenance: Firestorm can survive in space and doesn’t have to eat.
Superhuman Durability: He can survive bullets and stab wounds.
Superhuman Strength: But can he challenge Supes to an arm wrestling match?
Fortunately, The Flash weakened Firestorm or else The Legends would be playing cheerleader and we’d have no use for one of the next members on our list.
Wentworth Miller as Captain Cold and Dominic Purcell as Heat Wave
Why have one Rogue when you can get two? Miller and Purcell reprise their roles as Captain Cold and Heat Wave in The Legends. I’m not entirely sure why the team needs Heat Wave but the more the merrier. And there may be another addition to The Legends that might make some Arrow merrier.
Caity Lotz as Black Canary?
All we know is that Caity Lotz will be in The Legends. We don’t know if she’s only in flashbacks, portrays a different character, or if she returns as an alternate reality Sarah Lance/Black Canary or if she’s Sarah post-Lazarus Pit. We’ll have to see how The Legends plays her character but we do know the identity of the other female member of the team.
Ciara Renee as Hawkgirl
Hawkgirl was the new hero I most wanted to see in The Legends but this may not be the hard but clean nosed heroine from the mid-80’s to 2011. This Hawkgirl’s alter ego is Kendra Saunders and she might share the New 52’s Hawkgirl origin as a reformed treasure hunter/grave robber. Either way, I can’t wait to see Hawkgirl get some air time and she’s by no means the most mysterious member of The Legends.
Franz Drameh as Jay Jackson
First thing’s first: there is no Jay Jackson in the DC Universe.
He could be a new character or his name could be used as subterfuge for the true identity of the character Drameh’s portraying. This wouldn’t be the first time that DC has introduced a new character in a TV series (Harley Quinn, anyone?) but it also wouldn’t be the first time that DC changed a character’s alter ego name so that fans would keep guessing who the character was over the course of a summer.
Action Jackson – please don’t let that be his character name if he’s a new character – could be anything from Karate Kid, to a reimagining of Kid Flash, to even Cyborg from The Titans. That last one might be interesting. TNT has a Titans TV show planned for later this year or next year but they don’t have Cyborg in the line-up. The CW could be changing Cyborg’s alter ego name (from Victor Stone) to Jay Jackson so that TNT could use Stone as Cyborg in a future season of Titans. It wouldn’t be the first time for that either but I don’t know what the CW has planned. All I know is that I’m intrigued by The Legends’ large cast.
iZombie versus Pushing Daisies
iZombie is essentially Pushing Daisies—with a splash of zombie—for a younger demographic. I didn’t include this comparison in my review of iZombie’s pilot (if you want to read my review, here’s a link) because I didn’t want to marry the two shows to each other. I loved Pushing Daisies, so I’m leery to compare it to iZombie. But there are some lessons iZombie can learn from Pushing Daises.
We’ll get to these lessons in a bit, but first, let’s see how these two shows stack against each other.
By the numbers, iZombie resembles Pushing Daisies, but it doesn’t have the same whimsy. The zombie motif adds a dark streak. iZombie could overcome this by adding flare to the special effects and art direction. That’s not a knock on iZombie necessarily. The effects and art direction for Pushing Daisies was top-notch, Emmy worthy. But with its smaller budget, I’m not sure if iZombie can ever compete with Pushing Daisies in this regard, so they could make the subject matter even lighter and still, getting too light-hearted could be an issue.
Pushing Daisies balanced the goofy humor, mystery elements, and romance pretty well—the first season. It got a little too weird for its own good in season two and lost a lot of viewers. Likewise, iZombie’s pilot balanced its elements well. But will iZombie fall prey to the same weird just for weird’s sake? There are a couple of factors that might help.
iZombie grounds itself in police work more than Pushing Daisies ever did—that’s because Pushing Daisies was a fantasy—and you don’t have to explain a zombie as much as a magical pie maker, so that’s another obstacle averted. Then, you have a change in point of view. In Pushing Daisies, you gain distance from the dead because the pie maker brought people back to life: third person reanimated dead. In iZombie, Liv is a zombie and she experiences unliving first-hand: first person reanimated dead. I like the point of view shift. It helps to separate the two shows for me, gives a fresh perspective on the undead, and could keep the show afloat.
There’s plenty of room for both shows and for iZombie in the growing number of zombie media. We’ll have to watch tonight’s episode to find out whether or not iZombie’s elements fall out of balance and even later to see if it can match or beat Pushing Daisies’ number of twenty-two, total episodes. I’d love it if they brought back or rebooted Pushing Daisies.
Actor, Director and “Star Trek” Icon Leonard Nimoy Dies at Age 83
We don’t usually write tributes to those we lost on this page, but we don’t usually lose an acting icon either. Leonard Nimoy might’ve tried to separate himself from his most famous character in his 1975 autobiography I Am Not Spock, but that was illogical as the pointy-eared, emotionless, half-human Spock, and the progressive world without prejudice of Star Trek in which Spock inhabited, shaped Nimoy of as a person.
Nimoy—who passed away on February 27, 2015 at the age of 83 from the end-stage of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—later wrote a follow-up autobiography I Am Spock that showed him embracing his iconic character. To many Sci-Fi fans he was Spock, and he was the only Star Trek original cast member J. J. Abrams insisted on returning in his Star Trek reboot. But Nimoy was so much more than Spock.
The Boston born Nimoy started as a child actor and worked steadily on television before and after Star Trek, appearing on disparate shows such as Sea Hunt, Gunsmoke, and Mission: Impossible. In the ‘80s, he established himself as a film director, overseeing two back-to-back Star Trek installments (The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home) before directing the 1987 hit, Three Men and a Baby.
Once Nimoy got comfortable behind a camera, he shifted to photography, snapping pictures that hung in galleries and collecting some of his works in the book The Full Body Project, which he collected photos he shot of nude plus-sized and obese women. He later said that he wanted people to accept their bodies and show the bodies that people lived in, not the body types that fashion magazines sell.
That kind of sentiment speaks to how Nimoy’s involvement in a socially conscious series like Star Trek shaped his worldview. Through most of his work, Nimoy endeavored to shape the world into a brighter future.
DC Comics Universe Cities
Arrow frequently relocates Starling City.
The first season placed Starling near Seattle because the series is filmed in Vancouver and the two cities have similar terrain. The second season flashed geographic coordinates that depicted Starling City’s airport in northern Wisconsin, somewhere north of Green Bay. Then during a Flash/Arrow crossover in the third season, they said that The Flash ran from Central City to Starling City and that Barry traveled 600 miles to do so. Even if Starling City exists in northern Wisconsin, Barry would still have had to travel more than 600 miles, so there may be a third location for Starling City. But the comics place Green Arrow in Star City and that’s in northern California.
As far as the Golden Age Flash’s home of Keystone City is concerned, it’s located across the Missouri River (in Kansas) and serves as a twin city for Central City, MO. I didn’t include it on the map because that would’ve looked crowded.
Metropolis used to be located near New York City but it got moved to Illinois. Many believe that it’s located in Chicago, and that may be, but DC Comics made a public announcement that the physical Metropolis is the official home of Superman. Perhaps I should’ve put a second Superman logo in northern Illinois to muddy up things further.
At any rate, let’s see how these locations compare in terms of population.
I guess Smallville’s population is no more than a drop in the bucket when compared with Metropolis. Ba-dum-bump.
Note: Gotham City’s population refers to post-No-Man’s Land arc.
Worker Placement Board Game Timeline Quiz
Spider-Man Joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Marvel fans around the world rejoice. The Spider-Man embargo in Marvel movies has ended. You might just see him in an upcoming Avengers movie and more as Spider-Man joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
With this new deal the new Spider-Man will appear in a Marvel film from Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. Sony Pictures will then release the next installment of its $4 billion Spider-Man franchise on July 28, 2017 in a film that will be co-produced by Kevin Feige and his team at Marvel, and May Pascal who launched Sony’s Spider-Man franchise 13 years ago. Sony and Marvel will collaborate on a new creative direction for the web slinger. Sony will continue to finance, distribute and own the Spider-Man films. They’ll also have final say with creative control of the character. We’ll have to see what this news will hold, but things are headed in the right direction.
This announcement follows a decade of speculation of will they or won’t they add Spider-Man to the MCU. Today, it’s official. Spidey’s back, but what does that mean for movie goers?
1) Sorry, Andrew Garfield is out as Spidey.
2) Future Spidey–the ones beyond the Sinister Six, perhaps–should get pushed six-ten months into the future. We told you that last week’s graphic was subject to change.
But, hey. We can finally see Spidey on the big screen with Cap, Iron Man, Hulk, and Thor, so we can wade through a short transition period. Welcome back, Spidey.
Here’s a video depicting the legalize that has kept Spidey from Marvel for over a decade.
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