Jon's live action movie was a bit 'meh', but I'm really loving his story telling and puppeteering.
When I first saw AntC I despised what he made of MC. I was like 'no fucking way dude, MC isn't like that at all, and what the fuck is an Elite doing having brains and morals?' Then I was turned back onto AntC and totally fell in love with it. I love how the characters have evolved over the years and how he shoots his episodes. He purposely uses the shaky cam technique to add a bit of motion to an otherwise static shot. He also leaves some subtle tidbits in his shots to add to the story if you take the time to look for them.
Someone brought up that where Arbiter and Claire met back up is where they first met. I can't say that for certain (can't e arsed to go back and look it up) but it is the type of thing Jon would do.
Never even watched it. I remember Hard Justice with a bitter fondness. First few episodes were fantastic, then he made it serious and I wanted to cut bitches.
I can fire at a target and hit it at least half the time I graph an electron path? while using only numbers prime I calculate the fall rate of a bullet shot a thousand yards I perforate the thick heads of a hundred military guards I can make a simulation of an atom bomb and build one too? or flank a dozen men and ambush ten out of the blue From SMGs to RPGs I carry quite an arsenal and skip around a war zone like a subatomic particle.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of the coolest CONCEPTS in silver screen and comic book history. Connecting tons of unique stories and characters into one continuity and storyline.
But the execution has been awful. Let's review the individual movies.
Iron Man - Great Movie, shows off some impressive visuals, witty humor, great characterization of Tony Stark. Yet the bad guy makes no sense, and the plot devolves into a big dumb action scene at the end, where the main villain's motivation is completely ruined (not that it made much sense in the first place). Overall, it's a great film with a lousy villain. Being one of the best comic book movies of all time, it's a 9/10
The Incredible Hulk - Starts out strong, great introduction to the Bruce Banner character, and the idea of him being on the run and outwitting the government is very true to the character. But somewhere around the half way mark it becomes a big dumb romance plot. Instead of focusing on Banner having to deal with his demon, they focus on the love story of these two star crossed characters, and it just fucking ruins the film. And after this point Norton only Hulking out at one other time in the movie, for the final fight. The villain solider dude was awesome, but he got very little show time before he was turned into a big dumb hulk thing. But in this movie, his motivation to become a big dumb hulk thing makes sense, and the final battle, while being a big dumb fight scene, actually makes sense and is really well done. But overall, the movie suffered from some poor acting by almost everyone who wasn't Norton, bad pacing, and stupid characters that no one cared about. 5/10
Iron Man 2 - Sequel to Iron Man. I really loved the movie because Mickie Rorke was a great villain, and character, even though they didn't utilize him very effectively. The plot is kind of paper thin, and the set pieces aren't that inventive, but it's a good movie and while it's less spectacular than Iron Man, it's still a solid movie 7/10
Thor - Good set up, good world building, interesting villains and problems in the first part. Then they go to earth and nothing is good. The plot is paper thing, the acting is awful, and everything just gets brushed under the rug as quickly as possible. No one really likes to admit this, but this movie is just as bad, and imo, even worse than The Incredible Hulk. It has few redeeming qualities, and when those redeeming qualties are just "cool fight coordination and set piece design", that doesn't really count for much. Though, it is kind of funny - 4/10
Captain America - Once again, it's set up really well. The origin half of the story is really interesting, fun and dramatic. Unfortunately once Cap takes on the responsibility of being a super soldier, he's just sort of... stupid. The villains use stupid futuristic weapons, theres never any real threat to anything ever. The only big problem is at the end when the airships are about to lay waste to the Earth Kingdom, but even then Cap just climbs on board and fucks up the Red Skull. It's a fun movie, but it's not very deep, and it lacks the spectacle of the Iron Man movies. - 6/10
The Avengers - The Avengers is, by and large, the best movie in this franchise. It did almost everything it needed to do. It has wit, humor, spectacle, awesome action set pieces, and real viable threats that put you on the edge of your seat. However, the villain motivations make no sense, and Loki, the lord of lies and deception.... doesn't do fucking shit. His character sucks, and he's outwitted by every fucking body. The plan to take over the earth doesn't really make any sense, I know they need the Power Cube, but they never really explain WHY, just that evil aliens want it, but once they have it.... why are they still attacking earth? That's never explained. It's just bad guys for the sake of bad guys. And the giant bomb deus ex machina in a wormhole making all the bad guys it DOESN'T touch die, makes no sense. 9.5.10
Iron Man 3 - This is the second best movie in the franchise. It has all the great elements of the Avengers, with all the same pitfalls. But this time the motivations of the enemies makes sense, even if their final undoing was stupid. - 9.5/10
Overall, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a HUGE let down for me. The first half of every movie is always exceptionally good, but after they tell the backstory of the characters, it seems like the writers have a hard time getting those super heros to do something interesting. With Thor, they tried to take away his powers, and they did it horribly. Iron Man 3 did the "our hero without his suit" thing really well, though. So it can be done, it just wasn't done well in that movie. The movies also suffer from some awful writing in terms of the villains. Their motivations, and the things they actually do, never make much sense and they are often bad just for the sake of being bad, which rarely makes for a compelling villain. Which is sad, becase there are loads of spins on the villains from the comic books that could have been adapted to the screen to make them more two dimensional and thought out, but that's only been the case for Two movies, both of which have been Iron Man movies.
All I'm saying, Phase two better be better with their supplemental movies than Phase One was.
I agree with Iron Man, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Cap. Frankly, I rather enjoyed Thor beginning to end, and I disagree that Hulk had bad acting from anyone other than Liv Tyler. Though that movie really shouldn't count, seeing as no actors from it were involved in Avengers at all. But it does, so whatever.
Iron Man 3 was a good kick off to Phase Two, and The Dark World looks good so far. We will see.
I agree with everything you said besides what you said about the Hulk and Iron Man 3. I personally thought it was at least a 6 or 7. Edward Norton tied that whole film together for me, and I had a lot of fun watching Eli Roth jump around like Spider-Man fighting the green rage machine.
As for Iron Man 3, I has a few issues with it, and would definitely put it behind Iron Man 1. The whole GYYYRL POWR at the end fucking ruined the ending for me. I mean we set up this giant fight all film between these guys, then this chick who had done absolutely fuck all up to this point saves the day, just to lose her powers minutes later. Also, of course, there were a few extra leaps of faith in terms of logic the audience had to go along with. Like how the 8327432 suits of armor couldn't break out of the basement, or why Iron Man's superhero pals didn't help a nigga out when his house was being obliterated on national TV.
I also disagree with it being a letdown. This is because I'm not looking at the series with much hindsight, I'm taking these films as they come, the first initial theater popcorn viewing, me and my buddies eating shitty food watching Captain America brawl a fucked up Nazi.You know what I mean?
I'm not taking them in hindsight either, not really.
I've only seen The Iron Man movies, the Incredible Hulk (because Ed Norton is a GOD) and the Avengers more than once. Every other opinion of the other movies has been based off my initial thoughts and initial viewings, I just never got around to talking about them in here.
And I agree with what you said about Iron Man 3, but that part was just as dumb as the ending to the first film, imo.
I guess my opinions are mostly based on what these characters COULD Have been.
Captain America could have been a gritty world war 2 piece with Cap fighting Nazis and uncovering a secret plot underneath it, but it was laced with that stupid space technology shit from the get go and it just took me out of the whole thing. Plus they killed off Dr. King Schulz like ten minutes into the movie and he was just so damn good.
I have no idea what you mean by GYYYRL POWER. Just because they had that twist where Pepper saves the day because he had been experimenting on her does not make it some shoehorned way to show that girls are just as strong, which seems to be what you're implying. Not every surprise badass has to be a guy.
