Avengers: Infinity War

What can I say about the MCU that I haven’t already said? By now you know that I’m just not into superhero movies. Sure, you occasionally get a gem like The Dark Knight or Logan or Wonder Woman, but for the most part, they are drab, unimaginative, paint-by-numbers affairs. A valid complaint other people have leveled against the MCU is that the ultimate goal is to get to the Avengers films, and all the films in between are just road bumps in that path. Sometimes, with how mediocre the “in-between films” are, it really does seem to be true. And so, Avengers: Infinity War arrives, as part one of a two-part extravaganza incorporating almost every character seen in the MCU so far. They have been teasing Thanos as the ultimate villain in the universe for some time, and now he finally gets to the front and center of the screen.

Captain America: Civil War AKA WTF Did I Just Watch?

Full disclosure, here is a list of Marvel Cinematic Universe properties I haven’t seen: Captain America 2, Thor 2, Iron Man 3, Avengers 2, Ant-Man, Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Amazing Spider-Man, and Amazing Spider-Man 2. So, I probably wasn’t prepared for Captain America 3: The Combining of All Properties Civil War. Seeing this movie presented an interesting experiment: watch a bunch of characters I’m not very familiar with cavort on-screen, and try to see if I can figure out what the hell is going on.

Civil War is about Selfless Captain America fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. Err, wait no, scratch that. Civil War is about Sanctimonious Captain America defending his psycho assassin best friend despite the fact he’s a murderous lunatic who deserves to rot in a prison cell.

Avengers Assemble for a Giant Circle Jerk

The forces of Photoshop are here to save the day!

Ever since the 2008 film Iron Man was a success, comic book studio Marvel has been trying to get people excited for a movie starring several of its most famous superheroes. Four years, and four movies, later Marvel has finally done it. Marvel has been cramming all their other movies with unnecessary Avengers bullshit, just for the sole reason of getting people interested in the upcoming Avengers movie. Did Thor need a huge Avengers sub-plot where agents of SHIELD took his hammer and he had to get it back? No. Did Iron Man 2 need a huge Avengers sub-plot with Samuel L. Jackson trying to recruit Tony Stark into SHIELD? No. In fact, that particular bullshit ruined the entire movie. And I won’t even get started on what a hokey piece of shit Captain America was. Every time Marvel shoe-horned in an Avengers sub-plot into one of their movies, all it did was serve as an annoying distraction from the rest of the film. It’s almost as if Marvel was telling the audience, “Don’t worry about all this origin story nonsense, we just want to get this out of the way so you can watch The Avengers later.”

I was certainly not excited for The Avengers. In my attempts to become a world-class blogger, I typically watch a film 6-12 months after theatrical release, just long enough for my review to be irrelevant. I figured I would try something new this time. And since I am such a big fan of Summer Shit Spectaculars, not to mention excruciatingly long lines, and headache-inducing 3D, I really had no choice but to see this movie opening weekend. And how did it turn out? Well, it wasn’t as horrible as I thought it was going to be. I didn’t feel like Marvel was taking a huge fart in my face. But that doesn’t mean the movie was particularly good either.

Justified Season 1, Captain America

Justified Season 1

If you see Raylan doing this to you, you’re probably dead.

This show is great. The main character is Raylan Givens, portrayed by Timothy Olyphant, and based on the same character who appeared in two Elmore Leonards novels and one short story. He is a U.S. Marshal, but fancies himself more of a modern-day cowboy. If given the chance, he’ll quick-draw on an enemy and shoot him down. Raylan also gives steely-eyed stare-downs, and plenty of badass lines to give Clint Eastwood a run for his money. The show has Raylan moving back to his home state of Kentucky after a debacle in Miami. There, he gets entagled with a group of Neo-Nazi drug dealers. It sounds bad, I know, but it is executed flawlessly. There is intricate layering to the story, and the character’s have dynamic interpersonal relationships and are fully realized. The acting is terrific. While the pacing of the series can be rather slow at times, only punctuated by short bursts of action, if you have the attention span to get through it, you will be rewarded with excellent characters and story.

Verdict: Good

Captain America

Moichandizing! Where the real money from the movie is made!

I refuse to write out this movie’s full title, since it is nothing more than a cog in the machine for Marvel’s stupid fucking Avengers movie/shitfest. Traditionally, superhero movies are terrible. Only in recent years have they become even remotely watchable. Captain America decides that the notion of a watchable superhero movie has become a cliche, and goes back to the days of really shitty superhero crap. This is one of the cheesiest, hokyiest, worst superhero movies I have ever seen. There isn’t anything good about this movie. For example, Nazis have ray guns, people are always mugging for the camera, Hugo Weaving chews so much scenery you eventually don’t have any props left, and of course Marvel’s favorite shtick: LOL LOOK THERE IS TONY STARKS DAD AND LOOK THERE IS SAMUEL L JACKSON THIS MOVIE TIES IN WITH ALL THE OTHER MARVEL MOVIES LOL! This movie is incompetently directed, horribly paced, terribly acted, and is all in all a cheesefest of monumental proportions. And not the good kind of cheese. Not tasty cheese. Moldy, rotten, nasty cheese that the rats won’t even touch. Fuck this movie.

Verdict: Shitty

Screw You, Marvel

This is exactly what Marvel is doing to their properties.

All of Marvel’s upcoming movies are going to be trash.

A decade ago, movie adaptations of comic books were a joke. With the exception of the 1989 Batman and 1978 Superman films, they were laughable at best, and huge steaming piles of shit at worst. The problem was that nobody took it seriously, not even the creators. They made them campy and hokey, and self-referentially stupid. They were the lowest common denominator of movies. They became a self-fulfilling prophecy of crappy movie-making. After all, if the filmmakers themselves treated the properties like shit, then the movies would inevitably turn out to be shit. The industry chugged along, and churned out turd after turd with the occasional, anomalous decent movie like Blade in 1998.

Fast forward to 2002, and the release of Spider-Man. Suddenly, we had a GOOD live action version of a comic book movie. How did it turn out good, you ask? Well, let me answer that for you. The simple reason was that the director, Sam Raimi, had been a longtime fan of the comic book series. He wanted to stay as true to the character as possible while adapting him for the more difficult live action film environment. Naturally, certain things needed to be changed, but they were done with as much care as possible. The characters and situations were taken seriously, and given the right amount of gravity with occasional moments of levity thrown in to keep things fun. The script was solid, the actors were well cast and talented, and everything flowed together seamlessly. It just worked. Worldwide, that movie grossed over $800 million. People were screaming about how awesome the movie was, and all of a sudden it wasn’t nerdy to like comics any more.