Thursday, July 4, 2019

In which CK talks about Marvel


Heck with it, let’s make this.

The Comprehensive Rankings of the Marvel Cinematic Universe As We Know It*


*does not include non-movie entries.  If I’d seen all the shows I’d probably do each season of a TV show as its own entry, but since I could only discuss Agents of SHIELD season 1 from personal experience it’s cleaner to just do the movies.

I must stress at the outset that this is a list of personal rankings, not any attempt on my part to quantify the merits of the films.  While the sheer size of the list honestly minimizes the degree to which my personal biases influence things, how I react emotionally to certain aspects of a film does have a big impact and that’s just always going to be personal despite “provoking emotional response in an intentional way” also being a big part of “objective” quality in a film.  And as I poke at this I think I’m seeing enough of a trend to break them down into tiers.  Nothing earth shattering really, but a useful tool to organize my own thoughts and also put some distance between some entries and others.

And for the sake of clarity, as always, if I start talking about a thing I assume you have seen the thing.  While normally on a big list stretching a big span of time like this there’s an element of “if you haven’t seen this by now do you REALLY care?”, I decided specifically to hold off on putting this out until Phase 3 proper was done, meaning I’m gonna be talking about a movie released this week.  Spider-Man!


Actual Mediocrities- These movies are just not very good.  There’s merit to them, good scenes or good performances or things that advance the overarching plots for the characters involved, because if we’re honest no MCU entry is actively bad.  But they also just don’t quite come together and feel like they were made from obligation rather than anyone having a genuine creative spark behind them.

23. Iron Man 2- IM2 is the biggest example of being made from obligation.  Despite being all of the third entry in the franchise there’s a clear air of “welp we gotta make something to keep everyone invested and get in groundwork for all the later entries” to a lot of it.  The use of SHIELD and Nick Fury seems simultaneously like the skeleton the movie was meant to house but also completely unrelated to the main conflict of the movie.  One suspects they got word Johansson was interested in more action-oriented roles and quickly wrote in a Black Widow sequence so they could get her in a contract before anyone else.  Now despite that I like the subtle tweaks to Tony’s character for this film, as he has to grapple with responsibility not just for his own actions but for placing himself at the center of a rapidly changing world that’s suddenly realizing en masse that… well, they’re in a Marvel universe. It’s not a majority of the film, and indeed a film more directly about that would have been much stronger and not require that much retooling, but it’s there and it gives you something to hang your hat on instead of dismissing the entire thing as an exercise in pure franchise maintenance.

22. Thor: The Dark World- Speaking of franchise maintenance.
The causes seem a bit different here of course.  Thor as a franchise character has a problem: people like THOR, and his primary antagonist Loki is one of the most recurring and important in all Marvel.  However… nobody knows anything else about Thor or his major storylines.  When Dark World was made nobody actually knew what to do with Cosmic Marvel, and while Thor doesn’t fit cleanly into that mold either it’s closer to what he is than Captain America to say the least.  But they had introduced the idea of Thanos, and the plan was already clearly going to be building up to Infinity Gauntlet.  So… welp, why not just knock out one of the Infinity Stones and have Thor deal with the silly thing.  Sure, why not.
So yeah, this exists to advance the metaplot and for no other reason.  Not an adaptation of any major Thor plotline, nothing especially interesting for Thor to do, Loki is still here and he’s just that damn good, it’s why I’m putting this above IM2, but… yeah.

21. The Incredible Hulk- In some ways there’s less interesting things in this film compared to the other two, but it also has a much clearer sense of purpose.  In the grand scheme it just never quite comes together more than anything: Norton doesn’t quite work as Bruce Banner, the connection between him and Betsy doesn’t quite gel, and the two tiered villain setup with General Ross and Abomination doesn’t quite work.  Now, I think in part this is actually from a seemingly good decision they made: Ang Lee’s Hulk is not generally considered as part of the MCU, but The Incredible Hulk seems crafted to plausibly include it.  So they wanted to avoid touching too much on the origin or Banner’s pre-Hulk work, to avoid stepping on what that movie said about those things, but also didn’t want to beholden themselves to it considering how much they’d changed.  So the entire movie is just kinda a vague collection of random Hulk-like events rather than anything really impactful, so there’s not any huge story elements to push it above the cast dynamic not quite working out.
But for myself lacking that Franchise Maintenance sense does a lot to let it eek out above the other two.  Woo.

They’re… Fine.  Y’know, Fine- These films are less “not especially good” and more “have really clear good and bad points”.  Overall they’re in order of how good the good parts are, excepting one.

20. Doctor Strange- So people joke about how similar all the Marvel Origin Story movies are.  “The hero has a clear personal flaw and gains power, and must learn how to use their abilities while also facing down a dark mirror of themselves with similar, usually stolen, powers and a magnification of their own flaws”.  And that’s not unfair, albeit an oversimplification for the sake of analysis… except for Doctor Strange.  And it’s so much more OBVIOUS here because Stephen Strange is characterized so similarly to Tony Stark that it sticks out like a sore thumb, and I feel like they have a similar way of writing the character in the script such that the dialogue is meant to be embellished and infused with personality by the actor, but as much as Cumberbatch is fantasy fan casting for Dr. Strange he doesn’t bring quite as much to the role as RDJ brought to Tony Stark… because of course he doesn’t!  But it does make the script and overall story feel a lot more recycled than it otherwise should.
In spite of all that the design on the big action scenes is really that good, and god DAMN that final sequence is something else.  It tempts me to put it higher but… there really is just not enough beyond spectacle to elevate it higher to me.

19. Captain America: The Winter Soldier- Mostly interesting for the novelty of “spy thriller except super heroes”.  The dynamic between Widow and Cap is pretty good, although like a lot of Natasha’s character beats its influence isn’t felt so strongly as it could be in later films, but I guess it’s not totally forgotten either.  The early parts of the movie with Sam and how Steve interacts with him is also really good, but… eh.  The Hydra reveal is a good idea that doesn’t entirely come together because honestly having so much of SHIELD be actual, ideologically committed Nazis and Fury never picking up on this strains credulity.  I remember saying at the time it’d have been a lot more relevant and compelling if the Zola AI had played it as more that sure, the original Hydra was destroyed, but their might makes right philosophy and subtle influence on the world at large had clearly supplanted the world Cap fought to create.  Like, just have Pierce be Hydra, and everyone else just has bought into his preemptive strike because that’s how badly the world’s been corrupted by just a handful of committed members.
… this feels like a tangent but yeah, there’s solid core ideas but lacks spark as it exists.

18. Spider-Man: Homecoming- At the opposite end of that spectrum, Homecoming is one of the most basic Spider-Man stories we’ve ever had: it’s high school, there’s one villain who’s more or less a local crimes guy but with some extra tech, and it deals with daddy issues a bit.  But damn they work that cast and work it good.  As much as I think there’s ONE specific moment in the movie where they put in Tony Stark where it REALLY shoulda been Uncle Ben (seriously, when he’s trapped under that building, WHY is the voice over ANYTHING but “with great power must also come great responsibility”?  The heck!), god damn if they don’t do a great job selling his mentor/parent role throughout the film, and Vulture is one of the small handful of MCU villains that feels like a rounded and complete character.  So it’s a really good time in the theater but the longer I sat on it… yeah everything else about this film just faded away entirely. 

17. Iron Man 3- I really dunno how I’d feel about a version of Iron Man 3 where it was exactly the same except Killian isn’t a boring wanker.  The actual twist with the Mandarin/Slattery is just utterly brilliant: of COURSE the terrorist is actually a custom made super-terrorist designed by some rich white asshole in order to inspire maximum fear amongst his American marks.
But… I dunno, the rest is just… fine.  Nothing in this one jumps out as especially groan-worthy, but I guess the sense of let down after how brilliant Kingsley had been that the rest was just Generic Marvel Villain #5 is palpable.

16. Ant-Man and the Wasp- I think I had the most trouble placing this one.  A lot of it works for me!  Phase 3 villains in the main are a bit step up for the franchise, and they manage some real pathos for Ghost, doubly so since Lawrence Fishburn brings a lot as her mentor as well.  And they do bring back a lot of the energy from the first.  But the more I sit on it… yeah, it does feel like a rehash, and it does feel kinda pandering.  I honestly can’t articulate it any better than that, the number of callbacks to the first Ant-Man just feels incredibly high without quite matching any of them for imagination of impact.  The skeleton of the movie honestly feels stronger overall thanks to the increased attention to Scott and Hope’s dynamic and the stronger villain, but all the other bits being too similar just diminish the overall experience a bit.

15. Avengers: Infinity War- Infinity War is the exception in this tier, held back by its sins rather than elevated by its successes.  The best of Infinity War stands among some of the best scenes put to film in the entire MCU; exactly twice has this series pulled off a triumphant moment on par with Thor and Rocket entering the battle in Wakanda, the battle on Titan is flatly the best fight scene ever choreographed/animated in the franchise and does a better job of really highlighting how Thanos’ control of the Gauntlet is evolving and what it allows him to do, and the banter between Thor and the Guardians is a thing of beauty.
Unfortunately it does not get along with or play well with the broader franchise in a way that reflects badly on most of its more bold decisions.  Genociding the Asgardians after Thor’s previous movie was all about their moving on from their imperialist past as a people starts the entire movie on a sour note (yes, technically half the ship got away… which if you weren’t looking for it during that scene I assure you was not especially noticeable.  Oh and then half of THEM were snapped.)  It very much feels like the filmmakers going “oh were you a big Thor fan?  Well fuck you, we don’t know what to do with him and his supporting cast except kill them.”  The movie is pretty alright in the middle, all that good stuff happens in there.  And then we get to the big climax, the Snap, and immediately… oh, wait, you’ve dusted Black Panther and Spider-Man?  Did you even WANT to maintain dramatic tension that ANYONE killed in this movie was going to stay dead?  Was your only goal to make small children cry?  Mission accomplished if so, but probably you should have tweaked those scenes so the adult audience at least got out of the theater before going “oh, none of this matters, literally nothing matters.”
We’re going to come back to some of this, but ultimately Infinity War just does not hold together as a film by itself without Endgame already existing, and this is my best attempt to balance that uneven quality.

14. Spider-Man: Far From Home- Hi!  This just came out!  I may have put a warning in the start about that!  SPOILERS ARE MY BLOOD.
So it’s hard for me not to compare this to Homecoming, the tone is just that similar. And if I’m honest within the teen comedy (but with action beats) genre Homecoming is probably better?  And I think the Stark Dad moments work better with a real Tony Stark around rather than Peter chasing his shadow, because it makes it a lot more glaring that they never mention Uncle Ben (except just enough that you know there WAS an Uncle Ben).  Not that the “I’m just not ready for this” moments lose any punch because of that, but we know for a fact that Peter’s lost fathers before and it’s weird not to see that sense of compounding loss at all.
But there’s a whole other movie contained in one sequence, a completely different vision of Mysterio who’s not just trying to do crimes, but who could be Spider-Man’s one true archnemesis.  And the idea of “Mysterio plucks your deepest fears from everything he’s ever known about you and makes them real” is not completely new, it’s never really been done in any of the adaptations before, so seeing it up on screen was a huge “well hello what’s THIS movie” moment.
I’d known going in they were going to pull the trigger on a major Fandom Rejoiced moment, but not which one.  I guessed wrong.  It was great.

13. Avengers: Age of Ultron- Age of Ultron somewhat uniquely suffers from being too busy.  It’s the origin story for Ultron himself, Pietro and Wanda, and Vision.  It introduces a couple MORE supporting characters that require their own establishing scenes in Klaue, von Strucker, and Dr. Cho.  Oh and Hawkeye’s family.  And honestly all of those elements fit in the movie and some of them stand out as pretty good, but after a point the fact that the overall plot is a pretty cliché one glued together mostly by trying to throw as much as possible at you and hoping Spader’s charisma as Ultron smooths everything over does start to stick out. Honestly it gets away with it to a degree, certainly I was quite pleased with the film walking out of it, but finding the right headspace to appreciate it outside a theater environment is tricky and the seams stand out a lot more.
Also: Eckshelshiooooorr

Actual Good Movies- The sort of movies you’ll always sit down and watch if you happen to see them on.  Wholly entertaining, whilst never managing those extra sparks of thematic or personal emotional resonance to stand a particular chance of becoming anyone’s Favorite Movie.

12. Captain America: The First Avenger- Cap’s first movie feels like two movies to me.  The film leading up to his first stare down with Red Skull while rescuing Bucky is this amazingly complete experience that completely sells the sense of “this man is everything America could be” that is absolutely core to who Captain America is.  It’s an utterly perfect origin.  And the infiltration of the Hydra base highlights how a super hero functions in a broader conflict, mixing the stealth inherent in a one-man operation with the fighting power of a much larger group able to accomplish both espionage and rescue ops together.  It’s great.  The big “taking out Hydra” montage and the climax… are there.  Perfectly serviceable action fluff with a kiss of both war movie and Indiana Jones, but it does feel like a bit of a letdown just by comparison.

11. Thor- Thor is probably the best chance to talk about the overall trends in my rankings here.  Or rather, how the MCU ‘works’ and how that’s reflected in the way it’s progressed.  This entire tier ended up being origin movies, and they’re more or less ranked in order of how successful they are within the framework that makes Marvel’s movies work.  It’s often said that the secret to the MCU is caring about characters then making plots and villains that allow them to show off (hence, among other things, the proliferation of “one dimensional dark mirror of the hero” villains).  One consequence of this is the characters have a fairly complete arc in the first film, and nobody quite knows what to do with them in their next films aside from throwing everyone in a blender to bounce off each other rather than having meaningful character beats.
In some respects Thor himself, while buoyed tremendously by Chris Hemsworth’s charisma, is the weakest solo main character in this respect.  Except Thor is as much about Loki as him, and honestly is the only entry in the franchise to show a compelling villain origin.  Thanos gets to tell us about his backstory but enters his spotlight movie fully formed, and Ultron has a complete origin story in his titular film but doesn’t have an arc so much as an “AI is like… really hard” scene.  Loki gets to go through the complete story from good intentions to all the tiny justifications you make to yourself that grease the slide into villainy.  And honestly the only reason this isn’t higher is that a lot of the surrounding framework is not terribly solid, a series of vignettes with either Thor being self-owned or Loki doing eviler and eviler things and just… not much supporting it, so it doesn’t really come across as a coherent work unto itself while still being thoroughly enjoyable.

10. Ant-Man- It’s said that the MCU’s willingness to let super heroes be a vehicle for other genres of movies is a large part of its continued success, and Ant-Man is probably the most obvious example of this.  It is structurally little different from a film like Ocean’s 11, except that the big set pieces to show off each member’s skills are instead scenes that show off all the things the hero’s unique power set lets him do.  Couple that with the way size changing can bring an inherent humor to otherwise fairly typical Marvel-style action set pieces and it’s one of the more joyous films in the franchise.
It’s worth mentioning that Ant-Man focuses less on the individual characters and more on the relationships between them, which is somewhat unusual for Marvel.  Scott, Hank, and Hope aren’t nearly as fleshed out or well-rounded as Tony Stark or Steve Rogers, but the dynamic between them, Scott’s bond with Cassie, and their sense of coming together as a team and (in the sequel) as a family also sets it apart, although this is not something unique to this film overall, just within its larger franchise.

9. Iron Man- The Marvel Cinematic Universe would not exist without Robert Downey Jr. knocking Tony Stark out of the park within 20 minutes.  While he has a fairly complete arc in this movie, it also does a great job of setting up good places for him to go later… albeit his remaining solo movies don’t really figure out how to make it work.  And while I don’t want to award bonus points for being an originator, I do think Iron Man’s status as the first MCU film is part of its strength; it feels like a bridge between reality as we knew it in 2008 and a Marvel universe, and how with just a little extra nudge, a bigger world behind the curtain of normality, our world might start down the path to become a place with wizards and heroes and Norse gods.  The pattern of dark mirror villains starts here as well of course, but Stane’s execution works a lot better for me since the hero’s flaws are not just more pronounced but more explicitly part of the narrative.  Stane isn’t just who Tony might have been in a different life, it’s who he was at the start of the movie and who he’s trying to no longer be; a man who sticks to doing what’s safe and willfully ignores the external costs of his own fortune and reckless development.

8. Captain Marvel- Weirdly the overt things Captain Marvel does to set itself apart from other origin movies don’t quite land.  The montage of Carol getting up is… there, for example, so it has this vibe of trying to go for this iconic feminist imagery like Wonder Woman’s scene in No Man’s Land and not getting there.
The good bits on that front are all in the subtextual or allegorical stories which come through much stronger in Captain Marvel to me than most MCU movies.  Carol’s gifted with basically unimaginable power and her big task in the movie is… breaking free from the expansionist imperial force she previously served, driving off their extermination fleet, and helping a group of refugees find a new home.  Her backstory is revealed when she finds her home… with another woman, a child she had some hand in raising, and whom had her personal effects despite it being stated in dialog she had living blood relatives.
Carol Danvers, blonde white woman and lesbian antifa super soldier.
But that’s background stuff that helps it stick in the memory over the Marvel baseline.  Incorporating Nick Fury so thoroughly gives it a hook that a lot of the other origin-type movies lack.  The tension between the edict her Kree handlers give her to, essentially, act like a man and her own natural wit and warmth is achingly visible (I love in particular how Carol just lights up around kids without the film feeling the need to draw attention to it).  And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit the sheer 90s nostalgia bomb the movie delivers wasn’t a hell of a drug.

Really Very Good Movies- I will guarantee you every single one of these has a great many people who cite it as My Favorite Movie.  Each would have some larger impact on the cultural consciousness even in the before times when other companies besides Disney made movies

7. Thor Ragnarok- If it wasn’t clear I am fairly attached to Thor as a film and his supporting cast, so having so many of them summarily killed off here doesn’t sit well with me.  And being an American, the underlying message that lasting reform of an imperialist culture is impossible and the only thing you can do is blow the entire thing up and make a new homeland entirely is… well I hope not, but fuck if I can find a compelling counterargument.
Which is pretty much why it’s the bottom of the top tier because everything that actually happens here is amazing.  Campy supervillain Cate Blanchet is a thing of beauty, Hemsworth gets to show off his natural comedy chops in his most famous role for the first time, and his chemistry with both Thompson and Ruffalo is stunning.  Valkyrie unto herself is Very Yes.  And just… Jeff Goldblum.  And despite how I opened up this entry, the journey Thor goes on here and how he evolves his understanding of himself and his duty to Asgard makes perfect sense while still being a very distinct ending place from the original Thor.

6. Captain America: Civil War- In a way I have trouble justifying this quite so high, because while the dour ending note is bold, the last battle between Tony, Steve, and Bucky is one of the most visceral in the entire franchise, and of course The Airport, like most Avengers movies it is a bit busy and only occasionally do its big moments fully land.
But… I dunno, I actually at the time wrote a lot about the Sokovia Accords and the way the movie presents the conflict is interesting to me.  It manages to actually tie in Cap’s overall tension between what humanity can be and all the ways it can go wrong into the basic ground-level conflict between who he and Tony are.  And the way the Accords play out speak a lot to the underlying way Tony Stark as a hero goes wrong; the desire to micromanage the world in order to protect it is a natural one, but all it takes is one thing going wrong, one bad actor, to derail the whole thing and get innocent people killed.  I mean, the fact that Bucky Barnes is victim of complete brainwashing not in control of his own violent acts is public knowledge thanks to Winter Solider’s ending, but they insist on shoot to kill?  Yeah, this is why Cap’s still the hero.

5. Guardians of the Galaxy- GotG1 feels like the most self-evidently good entry on the list?  The sheer joy of the movie, the expert use of needle drops, the effortlessness with which they establish an entire team of heroes… yeah you can complain about Ronan but eeeehhhhhhh.  The big speech even turns the overall  theme into text: what do we see?  A bunch of losers, people who’ve lost things, coming together to give a shit and make the world better.

4. Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2- Dad’s Suck: the Movie.  Good, good.
Okay technically Infinity War is that even more so but damned if they don’t name it here and that makes a big difference.
But yeah.  Parental love can be flawed when they don’t know how to be honest with themselves or what they feel.  Or parents can just love you because they see only an extension of themselves.  Or maybe they don’t care and use the knowledge the children crave their love to pit them against one another and trap them in a cycle of self-destruction.
And I think part of the film is everyone realizing that when they acknowledge how badly their parents failed them, they can also start healing in another way: realizing that even if their parents were worthless shits who never cared, they are worth loving, and it’s okay to love themselves and be better.  And by extension, for other people to care about them (which, as this cast does, is made text between Rocket and Yondu.)
Oh and y’know it’s more or less just as good as the first one in terms of “oh my god space opera!!!”

3. Avengers: Endgame-
TIME
HEIST
The temptation exists to just leave it at that, but that’d be unfair.  One of the reasons I normally talk about cartoons or video games is I find those are better at big emotional punches and teaching tear bending that these sorts of movies.  Endgame is the biggest exception to this in the MCU, and it’s actually in some unexpected places.  The entire scene after Scott gets back from the quantum realm, building to his reunion with Cassie.  Steve’s long stare at Peggy through her office window.  Nebula for huge chunks of the movie is basically the main character and damn it’s cool to see the Russos do someone besides Cap justice.
But I don’t want to detract from the fact this movie is an invincible collection of memes and just fucking COOL scenes.  Ancient One “vs” Hulk.  Paying off that hammer wiggle in Age of Ultron.  2012 Loki.  America’s ass.  “Heil Hydra” is the first time I can think of Marvel Studios has directly called out Marvel Comics on their shit.
Honestly the only thing wrong with the movie isn’t even something that’s wrong with the movie, it’s a holdover flaw from Infinity War.  Killing off Natasha by mirroring the Gamora scene in that movie just does not sit nicely, despite being a better scene in every respect.  And even this I’m a lot more willing to be lenient on because 2014 Thanos is here to put lie to all the half-positive implications of Thanos and his actions in Infinity War.  He’s the personification of abusive fathers, the self-assured toxicity of Patriarchy knowing best, and in this movie, when he sees “oh maybe I was wrong and my plan could never work”?  He decides fuck it, just kill everyone.  Because men like that will turn out that way every single time, and that final bit of context to the character shows us they really did understand what they wrote and had a plan for it.

2. Black Panther- Killmonger is like if you took Magneto and stripped away the allegory.  And it’s a stunning character study because you see both the humanity, the pain, but also the damage, the ways growing up in an imperialist culture that hates you for who you are can breed becoming that same imperialist yourself while also enabling the delusion you have some higher, nobler goal.  And the emotional core of the movie being essentially “He never had to become this, and only did because YOU, my forebearers, abdicated your responsibility to the world to protect your own power and comfort” is some potent stuff.  I mean everything else about Wakanda is appropriately grand in a “they’ve NEVER made movies like this” kinda way, and fuck if I don’t just adore most of the supporting cast (M’Baku and Shuri in particular), but core conflict, and the seamless way it weaves text and subtext, action and emotion, tension and release, is something else.  It’s probably no exaggeration to call this the best crafted movie in the franchise just on these grounds really… buuuuut I’d be lying if I didn’t admit there’s one more that’s my actual favorite.

1. The Avengers- So… yeah.  The biggest thing the original Avengers has going for it is the inescapable sense that… this is real, it’s actually a real movie that exists.  We really took all these characters from these completely unrelated genres, actually introduced them to one another in a way that made sense, took on faith that you knew at least some of them were from other movies, and just made a giant adventure largely about the fact that they shouldn’t work at all but kinda do.  While the elements of this that bring it all together have become cliché to the point later films actually move away from it, the way Avengers establishes how different genre mechanics interact with one another (Cap is a soldier and has the plan, Tony is a tech guy and makes sure everyone can stay in the fight, Thor is an outside context ally with better insight into the outside context threat, Widow is an assassin and thus is the one who goes straight for the weak points), how the different elements of the heroes can gel in an action scene, and how to balance humor, character, and raw snark to let everyone get a moment without highlighting too badly how differently they all speak in their own environments is something that was an absolute magic trick.  The MCU would not exist without RDJ’s instant grasp of Iron Man, but it didn’t switch from a series to a franchise until that one moment, the 360 camera pan matched to the climax of Assemble.  And in spite of everything no other movie in the MCU has been quite so compulsively watchable as Avengers, so reliably got me sucked in from almost any point in the movie, and so reliably dictated that my mood match the one they wanted me to have.  A few movies are probably strictly better, but none of them really stick to the memory and retain their power like The Avengers.

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