Marvel Movies Ranked, group 3: the Fugly.
Wherein Dave pisses you off a little bit by crapping on your favorite. But seriously, though- these were just bad. Like Star Wars’ Episodes 1, 7, 8, & 9, they’re all carried more by the momentum of what’s going on around them. That’s right, I went there too.
Doctor Strange: Failing Upwards
When it first came out this would have made the Eh list, but then only barely. It was a perfectly serviceable introduction, but there were two problems. First, Strange is an asshole. And not in a Tony-Stark-sells-weapons way, but in a doctor-that-personally-hurts-people way. Then there’s the big bad. In the guy’s first trip out the door he overcomes a demon of creation that consumes entire universes. Dormammu probably leaves several Thanoses in the toilet every day, and yet Strange handles him like a boss. So when Thanos does roll up either this guy completely rolls over, or his intro set the bar WAY too high.
Iron Man 3: Oi?
That’s the problem with whitewashed Mandarin villainy- two hours later it’s like it never happened.
Thor 1: Fear of an Aryan Planet
Thor is the Whitest superhero movie since Clooney’s Batman. Just look at that poster, have you ever seen a more Master Race hero? There are sequences in this film where he looks like a straight-up albino, he’s that pure. He’s also clunky as hell. This is the classical era I mentioned before, Norse royalty through a Shakespearean lens. Which sounds very classy, but you gotta remember those people spent a lot of their short lives just sitting around wishing there was an internet to entertain them.
Captain Marvel: Crank Girl
Brie Larson as an actress has a whole lot more personality than Carol Danvers has as a superhero. The performances here were all clunky, and the soundtrack selections produced some of the most forced and misplaced sentimentality since English Patient. Then there’s the whole aliens-among-us garbage again. The multiverse is a much more interesting direction for Marvel to go in than the rubberface refugee war. By the halfway mark I’d more or less tuned out. Of course the title’s a joke, but Tank Girl really pulls off the vibe Marvel’s going for here much better than Marvel does. Something in the production of this film sucked all the life out of it.
Thanos 1: Infinity War
Civil War was Avengers 3. This was Thanos 1, and the film is a narrative brick. No development, no drama, just one punch after another while Earth’s mightiest soak up one bruise after another.
This one is why I’m not really interested in watching WandaVision. I get the concept of the show, she’s transitioning into the Scarlet Witch. but it’s the how. She watched her parents die, she felt her brother die, she watched her lover die at her own hand for a higher purpose, only to watch him die again for no good reason at all. Seems like she’s earned a break, I don’t need to watch her break.
Avengers 4: End (of the Previous) Game
My theory now is that the time machine was actually dropping them back into adjacent universes and not the true TVA MCU, which neatly explains all the time travel this movie screws up. I wondered if Nebula and Rhodey were the exception though, considering Thanos follows them back. But who’s to say that Thanos 2 wasn’t a Variant Thanos? Nobody! Because the time travel in this movie makes perfect sense except for when they decide to make no sense at all.
And Black Widow! OMG, what a way to go. What a BAD way. Somewhere there’s a dismembered Black Knight watching that scene and wondering what kind of sick tasteless joke was going on.
Guardians of the Galaxy 2: Tone Deaf
There’s all sorts of ways this one sucks. There’s the poorly-framed moments, like Rocket bragging and laughing about the stolen batteries right in front of the Sovereign, there’s the forced moments like the examinations of proper sarcasm. Watching the pirate crew get brutally impaled, torched, or perforated one after another over a span of several minutes was a master class in the silliness of the PG13 rating. But the worst by far is the music. In the same way that Vol 1 and (especially) Ragnarok were made golden by the music, this tunes here produce a turd. This is road movie music, Thelma & Louise on Xanax, or what Chevy Chase was actually listening to during Vacation. The lazy beats, the mellow moods, absolutely kill the pacing of every big visual beat- the opening sequence alone will leave you with a weird cognitive arrhythmia.
About The Author
davetwsprocket
Dave didn't get the memo until, like, just now. He is capable with arranging words, but only just getting started at getting those words to actually do anything. He is motivated by a disrespect for authority, and towards finally doing what's right. He's good with people, but that's a learned skill- his natural inclination is to be far, far away. He's a Leo.