I must be the only one who's not super into this recent spate of Marvel films. I haven't seen
Civil War—probably won't until it's out on Redbox, or (more likely) until it's randomly on HBO in a year—nor most of the second
Avengers (saw the final thirty minutes on HBO a few weeks ago); but I've seen most of the others, and they seem to be growing progressively more similar, more formulaic, more burdened with a surplus of characters (which is an extension of often busying themselves more with fan-service than character- and plot-arcs).
My favorites have been, in order:
- the initial Iron Man, which—even though I'm not really a fan of Robert Downey, Jr, felt really fresh, self-contained, and had some teeth to it;
- Guardians of the Galaxy, which was likewise fresh, very fun, and I think benefited greatly from being worlds away, albeit in the same universe;
[then, after a decent drop in quality, in my opinion]
- Winter Soldier, which I coincidentally just saw last night (because it happened to be playing on one of the movie channels, of course), but which—while a bit thin on plot (I mean, of course Redford is double-crossing SLJ, and of course SLJ is secretly still alive)—had a nice spareness and focus, in terms of its set of characters, that allowed those character arcs to at least feel mostly-baked (plus: the "Ezekiel 25:17" on Fury's gravestone was a great little nod);
[after another drop in quality]
- the initial Thor, which was silly but fun, self-contained, and definitely (unlike its sequel) felt distinct from a lot of the other Marvel Universe films heretofore;
[then, after a pretty huge drop in quality]
- Ant Man, pretty much purely on the strength of Paul Rudd; I found the film itself, while self-contained, pretty poorly-hewn.
Now, Marvel is probably entirely justified to not give a flip what I think—
Iron Man 2 (which I found pretty disappointing) and
Guardians of the Galaxy are the only two I've seen in the theatres—but I will say that I personally
want to like these films—in no small part because I'm really keen on the idea of building and developing an interconnected mythos out of series of heroic tales. However, I feel that the building of the mythos, the developing of the universe, has come at the expense of crafting good stand-alone stories and, for the most part, hurt the individual films. Indeed, the individual films have become increasingly reliant on each other—not just for context, but for all their relevance and substance. In other words—as one article, from about a year ago, noted—most of the Marvel Universe products have now become more about the
next film than about the story they're meant to tell. To me, that's ultimately not very interesting.
