Various Thoughts

Having recently seen Captain Marvel and wanting to do a little preparation for the upcoming release of Endgame I decided to finally watch a few Marvel movies I’d been passively avoiding following the disappointment of Thor 2 and The Avengers:

• Guardians of the Galaxy – It’s good. It’s really good with a great mix of comedy & action along with some fantastic character banter.
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 – Same as the above.
• Avengers: Infinity War – The first Avengers movie suffered from being too busy, a problem this one managed to solve through a sort of compartmentalization. It separates the cast into several groups each doing their own thing and then manages to seamlessly merge those separate plotlines into a cohesive whole. It’s quite impressive and Thanos looks much better in motion than he does in still images.

After the success of those three, and not really wanting to do anything that would require effort, it seemed catching up with a few more was in order:

• Avengers: Age of Ultron – This starts out pretty meh, and honestly never manages to rise above decent. The only important takeaway is Vision‘s creation.
• Thor: Ragnarok – This feels less like a movie and more like a TV episode. It’s not bad, and certainly entertaining for the most part, but it very much comes across like an episodic installment. If you’re not planning on watching Infinity War immediately after I’d strongly suggest just reading the plot summary and moving on.
• Iron Man 2 – I’ve seen a lot of hate/disappointment directed at this movie, and honestly suspect I actually watched it once before and completely forgot everything that happened, but this time around it was a lot of fun.
• Iron Man 3 – Hated the kid-related subplot and it gave me a very Bruce Wayne kind of feeling overall.

Despite the mixed results, I was on something of a roll now and decided to move on to the last batch:

• Captain America: The First Avenger – Very, very different from the other Marvel works. It starts out more period drama than flashy action spectacle, transforming into a relatively low-tech warfare thriller reminiscent of Command & Conquer.
• Captain America: Winter Soldier – Ah, now here’s the action spectacle I was looking for. Still leans more toward special agent than superhero, and that’s not a bad thing.
• Captain America: Civil War – Starts off and concludes very Avengers, briefly slipping back into spy games mode in the middle. Won’t make a great deal of sense unless you’ve already seen both the prequel and Age of Ultron.
• Black Panther – This also happens to be quite a bit different from the other Marvel movies; less in genre though and more in theme and cultural focus. The disconnect/dissonance between the modern day high-tech setting and heavy traditional/tribal imagery is extraordinarily severe.

So was all that necessary to watch Infinity War/Endgame? No, not at all. If you just want to see those two I would suggest going with the below viewing order:

1. Age of Ultron (or read its plot summary)
2. Civil War (just read the plot summary if you haven’t seen Winter Soldier)
3. Captain Marvel (skip the post-credits scene)
4. Guardians 1 & 2
5. Thor: Ragnarok (or read its plot summary)
6. Infinity War
7. Endgame

And maybe try to fit Doctor Strange and Black Panther in there somewhere pre-Ragnarok to cover a few extra references.