Comic Book Movies

[Dr. Insomniac]

Sony's had an awful record regarding both Spider-Man and other attempts at franchises, so I can't say I'm hopeful about the situation. Unless some North Koreans hack into Sony's computers again.

[gunswordfist]

aahahaha

[Dr. Insomniac]

Chris Evans is confused.

This just makes me want to see all of the actors react to the dumber exploits of their respective characters.

[Spark Of Spirit]

We're all confused.

They could just make this a new character. But no, they have to entirely change Steve Rogers personality instead.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Alongside the "Watchmen is a prequel!" revelation, this has certainly been a fun week to talk about comics.

[Avaitor]

So this is making the rounds.

I still don't understand why so many people hate the Black Widow plot in AOU (I hear that it was forced, but no one ever explains why they think so. Also, I don't think that those who complain realize that the director is usually the fourth or fifth most important person in a MCU project, so I really don't get why everyone focused their venom on Whedon as opposed to Feige or Perlmutter for the movie), and most of my favorite Natasha moments are still in the first Avengers, and even in parts of AOU as opposed to what little we get of her in TWS and CW. That said, I would also prefer a female director for a Natasha movie, and I'm not sure if his vision is totally right for it, either. I can also do without the knock against Supergirl.

I also find it funny that the article is acting like the Captain Marvel movie was just announced. It's been known for a while that we're getting Carol in Phase 3.

[Avaitor]

Also, here is Vox's MCU ranking. I do think that The First Avenger is a little low, and I'd still rank The Dark World over the first Thor and Iron Man 3, but I think the biggest faults that I have with the list is that Guardians isn't in the top 5. I'd easily swap it out with Ultron, and would put it a bit higher.

The top 3 is pretty hard to top, though. And I do agree that Winter Soldier is superior to Civil War.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, after much thought and deliberation, I have now redone my rankings for both the X-Men and MCU film series' to reflect my current thoughts:

First up is X-Men:

9. X-Men Origins: Wolverine- Interestingly enough, I did remember kind of enjoying this film when I first saw it in theaters (I had much lower standards back then, though), but upon re-watching it a few years ago I understood why so many people hated it, and aside from the obvious problems, it has absolutely no redeeming qualities to even keep other parts entertaining. There is nothing of value in any single scene within the film aside from Hugh Jackman's typically great performance as Wolverine to really latch onto, and even then he isn't given much to work with, here.

8. The Wolverine- Ranking it this low may be an unpopular opinion, but this movie just does nothing for me. It's not that it has a plethora of atrocious issues like Origins, but neither does it have anything noteworthy to keep it interesting. It's actually somehow even more boring that Origins, if truth be told, but I rank it above if only because it doesn't get anywhere near as ridiculously stupid as that film did.

7. X-Men 3: The Last Stand- While I did used to enjoy this movie, and while even now I don't absolutely hate it like most other people do (and yes, I have read the Dark Phoenix Saga), I also completely agree with all of the criticisms that it gets. It has a few good scenes in the mix to keep it above the other two movies, but it ultimately falls flat on every other level.

6. X-Men: Apocalypse- So, upon letting it stew on my mind for some time, I do admit that this movie is a bit of a mess. Well, more than a bit: it has too many characters and the plot is all over the place. I agree with these criticisms. Even so, I still stand by my opinion that it's an enjoyable mess. It's not so much that I simply forget about the film's problems, but rather I don't forget to also acknowledge its strengths, and I still feel that there were a lot of good aspects about the movie to counteract the bad ones. Most of the performances are really strong, and I enjoyed the new portrayals of characters like Scott and Jean. The Quicksilver and Weapon X scenes are also some of my favorite set-pieces from any X-Men film, period. The movie is heavily flawed, but still fun for what it is.

5. X-Men- The original is....a solid movie. To be honest, while I do really like the movie, it's kind of hard for me to find much to say about it other than that it helped pave the way for what modern superhero movies should be like, and while it's by no means perfect, I would argue that its influence can still be seen to this day, even with the MCU films.

4. X-Men: First Class- This one is definitely the most "fun" X-Men movie in terms of tone and style. Matthew Vaughn's direction is clearly the reason for this, and for that reason it has always stood out to me from other movies in the series, and in a good way. While it lacks the depth and nuance of the two best X-Men films, it makes up for it in pure entertainment value.

3. Deadpool- Yes, I'm counting Deadpool since it's set in the same universe, and since the character himself had his origins in an X-Men comic. And, what can I say, this is easily the funniest superhero film to date, and the best comedy of the past few years by far. It's also one of the best action movies in a while, for that matter. It's both a great mockery and celebration of the entire superhero movie genre. I love the film, and it's still my favorite comic book movie of the year (yes, even more than Civil War, and I really liked Civil War). Not ranking it as #1 is nothing against the movie on my part. I just happen to hold a really special place for my top two X-Men movies.

2. X-Men: Days of Future Past- So, I previously ranked this one as my favorite. Upon re-watching all of the main X-Men movies, I still enjoyed this movie as much as I did before. The writing is sublime and on-point, the acting is top-notch across the board, and the story is very gripping with a real sense of weight to everything. I also just love a good time-travel film, and this is one of my favorites in the genre in addition to being one of my favorite superhero movies. The only reason that I don't rank it as my favorite anymore is because I also re-watched another X-Men film which turned out to be my favorite after all.

1. X2: X-Men United- And finally we come to the best of the best. Yes, it is an early 2000's superhero film, but it transcended most other movies in that genre back then, and it still does to this day. Back when I had ranked DOFP as my favorite X-Men movie, I admittedly hadn't seen this movie in over half of a decade. When I re-watched it last year, and thought about it quite a lot, I came to realize just how damn well this movie holds up after all of these years. It got the perfect way to do a team-based superhero film down nearly a decade before The Avengers did, and while it may be an unpopular opinion, I think that it still does it even better than The Avengers (and I say that as someone who really enjoys The Avengers and liked Age of Ultron much more than most other people did). To me, this is the perfect blend of having nuanced and interesting characters and drama combined with great summer blockbuster-style action and fun.

As for the MCU films, I won't write about each of them right now, but here are my rankings:

13. Iron Man 2
12. The Incredible Hulk
11. Thor: The Dark World
10. Iron Man 3
9. Ant-Man
8. Thor
7. The Avengers
6. Avengers: Age of Ultron
5. Iron Man
4. Captain America: Civil War
3. Guardians of the Galaxy
2. Captain America: The First Avenger
1. Captain America: The Winter Solider

I've already talked at length about why I love TFA and why I believe that it's a much, MUCH stronger film than most people give it credit for. It really stands out to me among all of the movies in the MCU, and I consider it to be the perfect superhero period piece. Fuck everyone else's opinion as far as I care, that movie is great. Of course, Winter Solider is the perfect follow-up and still my favorite superhero movie to this day. As for Civil War, I really, REALLY enjoyed it. It's probably the best "Avengers" movie even though it really isn't technically an Avengers movie. However, it's also not really a Captain America movie despite the title. Steve Rogers has a big part in the movie, but he's not really its main focus. The conflict between him and Tony Stark is, and my point is that if Marvel had instead titled this movie Iron Man: Civil War, nobody would have batted an eye and it would make just as much sense. This movie's central focus is about the conflict between those two characters and The Winter Solider is in the middle of it. It is not simply just a continuation of Captain America's story from the first two movies, and for that reason I don't consider it a Captain America movie. That said, it still does a remarkably excellent job of telling the story that it's trying to tell, and it still boggles my mind how this movie not only juggles so many characters without making a complete disaster out of the pacing and plot, but that it also executes it excellently at that. While I don't like it quite as much as TFA or TWS, I still find it to be one of the best entries into the MCU to date.

[Avaitor]

8- The Last Stand
7- Origins
6- First Class
5- The Wolverine
4- X-Men
3- Deadpool
2- Days of Future Past
1- X2

As of now. I do still need to see Apocalypse, but I probably will this week. I will say that Deadpool has risen up for me after my first viewing. I actually thought that it sticks too close to the generic origin beats of your average super hero movie, only making fun of them when needed, but I mean, that's pretty fair for a beginning. What matters is that the comedy is as close to pitch-perfect as possible, and that everyone involved with the movie understood the character and made it work, which is why it holds up to repeat viewings. But I'm really excited to see how the sequel turns out.

And I still like The Wolverine. It's a better adaptation of Claremont and Miller's miniseries than I was expecting, and it has some really cool action scenes, especially in the unrated cut. I'm pretty interested in seeing how the last solo Wolvie will be, now that it's going to be rated R.

[Spark Of Spirit]

8- X3
7- Origins
6- First Class
5- The Wolverine
4- Deadpool
3- X-Men
2- X2
1- Days of Future Past

It's really the only non-Marvel Studios superhero series that has managed consistency. That said, I'd still like to see the '90s team together in a film. Every other era has gotten its chance. Now that Apocalypse is out of the way, we can hopefully move on to other X-Men villains and never see him ever again.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Minor spoilers for Apocalypse:

Spoiler

If you want to see an X-Men movie with some of the 90's cast, then you'd probably love the tease from the final scene of Apocalypse, regardless of the rest of the film's inconsistent quality.

[close]

While I did enjoy Apocalypse, it is Bryan Singer's weakest X-Men film to date. That said, I heard somewhere that, interestingly enough, among all of the "non-fans" of Apocalypse, Bryan Singer is one of them. I can't verify if this is true or not, but I heard that he didn't like the character and didn't really want to do this movie, but the studio pushed for it and he decided to do it and get it out of the way so that he could then do the X-Men film that he really wanted to make after it. I hope that Apocalypse's poor critical reception doesn't hurt the franchise enough to prevent FOX from continuing it. Despite its missteps, I'm still glad that I saw it, and I do feel that Bryan Singer could make a much better film out of source material that he would be more passionate about adapting.

As far as X-Men being the only non-Marvel series to maintain some general level of quality aside from one or two bad movies in the mix, what about Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy? I'd argue that it's pretty consistent, unless you are also counting all other DC Batman films as part of the same "series" as well.

[Spark Of Spirit]

X-Men is Fox's flagship superhero series now. Fantastic Four is scorched earth, and they have nothing else. Worst comes to worst, they'll simply reboot with a brand new universe and tone. X-Men ain't going anywhere.

But that's good to hear if he doesn't like the villain. Because he's an awful villain, easily the worst in the X-Men franchise.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've never been a fan of the all-knowing, all-powerful, invincible villain who is simply over-powered in a bad attempt by the writers to make them intimidating, and who's motivations come down to "I'm doing evil things for....reasons." For that matter, I've never liked any iteration of Darkseid that I've ever seen in any medium. I will admit that Thanos was kind of cool in Infinity Gauntlet, but I don't know anything else about him besides that, and I could easily see him falling into the same camp in less exciting stories.

Meruem from Hunter X Hunter, who may be a joke in the power scale compared to those other characters of this type, but who is insanely overpowered compared to other characters in his own fictional universe, is maybe the only example that I can think of in which a seemingly unbeatable villain is actually an interesting character. And what makes Meruem interesting is his humanity. Pretty much any other character of this type that I have seen lacks any sort of personality or interesting features.

[Daikun]

As far as X-Men being the only non-Marvel series to maintain some general level of quality aside from one or two bad movies in the mix, what about Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy? I'd argue that it's pretty consistent, unless you are also counting all other DC Batman films as part of the same "series" as well.

I wouldn't call them consistent. Batman Begins was good, but forgettable (I honestly keep forgetting large chunks of that movie). The Dark Knight is the true outstanding movie of the trilogy. The Dark Knight Rises flat-out sucked.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

That's fine if that's your opinion, but I disagree with it for the most part. Furthermore, most people like all three movies. Both critically and financially, the series has done consistently well. That's what I mean when I say that it's a consistent series.