THIS ARTICLE IS WRITTEN UNDER THE ASSUMPTION THAT YOU HAVE SEEN EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE MOVIES (IE
Captain America: The Winter Soldier,
The Amazing Spiderman 2,
X-Men: Days Of Future Past, and
Guardians Of The Galaxy)
AND MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!!
Before we go through my opinions of this year's batch of Marvel adaptations, I will start off by saying that I do read the comics, I am a fan of both Marvel and DC, and when it comes to Marvel film's I am not biased toward any one studio. Don't expect this to be an article deliberately praising Marvel Studios and panning Sony and Fox. These are my honest opinions toward each and every one of these films, and they are ranked from the film that I disliked the most to the #1 slot, which is the film I liked the most. Please note that by saying this, I am not hostile toward people who prefer Marvel Studios, nor am I saying that every person who prefers Marvel Studios is biased because that is clearly
NOT the case. Shall we begin?
4. THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2:
RISE OF ELECTRO
I will go ahead and say that I did not hate this movie. I did not love it either. The movie has a lot of problems and, from watching the movie, I think Marc Webb had a vision. Where did it go wrong? I think many factor's come into play, and while I am not biased, I do blame Sony for a lot of what brought this movie down (fingers are crossed that they learned from their mistakes since the film wasn't as successful as they hope). First off, I think the marketing really hurt this movie. Much like 2012's
The Amazing Spiderman, the trailers revealed WAAAAAY too much. In retrospect, it's clear Marc Webb wanted to keep a lot of the film and Gwen Stacy's death a secret. Having the title
Rise Of Electro, Electro being the "main villain," Norman Osborn dying early in the movie, Harry Osborn's transformation into the Green Goblin toward the very end of he movie, ETC. Yet, due to Sony's marketing, we knew Harry was going to be the Green Goblin, Norman Osborn was going to die early in the movie, that Alexei Sytsevich would indeed become The Rhino in this movie, and even that Gwen Stacy would die in this movie. We knew all of that before the movie even came out. Whoever does the marketing for both of
The Amazing Spiderman movies needs to be fired before
The Sinister Six. I am not joking.
As I previously mentioned, I do believe Marc Webb had a vision and Sony tampered with it. Sony seemed more focused on establishing a franchise then actually allowing Webb to make his movie. I am not saying the movie would've been perfect if Marc Webb would've had complete control, but I am saying it would've been a much better movie. Sony forced Webb to replace his original ending with a
Sinister Six trailer featuring the Rhino and The Gentleman, as well as forced him to delete a lot crucial scenes, hurting the character development of character's such as Electro.
Speaking of Electro, when Jamie Foxx was initially cast, I was actually very excited. Had they have gone with a comic accurate route (namely the Ultimate), Foxx would've been a fantastic Electro. Instead, they went in a different direction. There's nothing wrong with that (2004's
Spiderman 2 proved that), but there is a problem with the casting. Instead of trying to find an actor who could play a creepy, psychotic, yet sympathetic villain, they chose to go for an actor that would make them money. This version of Electro could've been one of the great comic book movie villains but this was not a role that Jamie Foxx could play. Even if you are a fantastic actor like Foxx is, every actor has their strengths and weaknesses and this role did not play to his strengths (with the exception of certain scenes).
Let's get into what was good about Electro. Without considering acting, the film did a fantastic job at portraying mental illness. Max Dillon showed clear signs of real life mental illness, and had the scene with Max Dillon's mother NOT been cut, we would have seen how he has been neglected all his life. Having the voices in Dillon's head being part of the musical score (which is once again fantastic thanks to Hans Zimmer) was a stroke of genius and the times square scene would've been fantastic had it been executed better and the actor had fit the role of Max Dillon. Electro was visually stunning and the scenes where Electro was a bad-ass are the scenes Foxx actually nails.
Sony removed way too many crucial scenes from the film. Not only did this hurt the character development of Electro, but also the development of Harry and Peter's relationship, how Harry was jealous of Peter because his father spent more of his attention on Peter than Harry, what the Exo-suit actually is, the dynamic between Harry and Felicia Hardy, ETC. This led to many, many plot holes. What's even more infuriating is that there are scenes that were cut that weren't even on the Blu-Ray (Mary Jane, "We have plans for you...Peter Parker," Alternative Gwen Stacy death, after credits scene ETC). Also, Activision released a non-canon video game tie-in that suspiciously gave explanations to the plot holes in the movie, leading me to believe a lot of the plot holes would not be there had Sony not cut certain scenes (some of which are unreleased) been removed. Here are a couple of examples. Plot hole: why is Harry dying way earlier in his life than Norman died if they both have the same Goblin disease? Game Explanation: Norman spent most of his life extending it through scientific means, which is part of why he neglected Harry. Seriously, why wasn't this clearly important explanation in the movie? Plot hole: why does Oscorp have control over a mental asylum and why is the asylum a laboratory for experimenting on patients? This makes no sense. Game Explanation: It's a privately funded asylum and Oscorp is the asylum's top donor, so they pretty much run the place. Even the government unofficially encourages the experiments because the mental patients there are considered incurable. Why wasn't that explanation in the movie?
Speaking of the asylum, it was actually Ravencroft Asylum, a name long time Spiderman fans will recognize. One problem I always had with Ravencroft in the comics is that it always felt like a rip-off of Arkham Asylum to me. While I initially considered Ravencroft to be one of the film's many plot holes, I actually can see where Webb was going with it given the explanation given by the game that was left out of the movie. Not only does it act as villain storage like Arkham in Batman comics, the experiments also act to create new villains and make old villains hate Spiderman even more. While I tried my best to hate the movie version of Ashley Kafka because he was the exact opposite of his comics counterpart, right down to the gender, I think the German mad scientist angle works for this franchise and it wouldn't make much sense for a heroic psychologist to be the head of this version of Ravencroft. One thing I liked about the movie is how well it combined the cartoony elements of classic Spiderman with a realistic world (my problem with Rhino wasn't how stupid and cartoony he was because he's supposed to be that way. My problem was how over-the-top and cheesy he was. Does he really have to scream everything he says? And that Russian accent definitely sounded fake.) I will say this though: if Marvel radically changes Kafka in the comics to fit the movie version, I will be pretty frustrated. As of now, she's seemingly deceased in the 616 universe but now that
The Amazing Spiderman comic series has returned, it's only a matter of time before Kafka and Alistair Smythe are retconned.
While he was OK as Peter Parker, Andrew Garfield is the perfect Spiderman. From the snarky attitude to the personality traits, the only complaint I really have is that he joked a little too much, too the point where it sometimes seemed he took nothing seriously. Emma Stone is another perfect casting. She actually added something to the character that wasn't there in the comics and her chemistry with Garfield is gold. Easily the greatest romance in any comic book film and I don't say that lightly. Yet another perfect casting was Dane Dehaan who had the exact druggy look to play Osborn and the acting talent to match it. He was wonderfully creepy as the Green Goblin and his laugh and musical theme were both perfect. My only problems were how under developed he was as the Goblin, he tried too hard on the voice, and his design was inconsistent. I'll need to see more of Chris Cooper's Norman Osborn to form an opinion, though it's perfectly obvious he faked his death and manipulated Harry into becoming the Goblin. Same goes for BJ Novak as the Spider Slayer and Michael Masse as The Gentleman.
And on a final note, they better do Dock Ock justice in
The Sinister Six and give him enough screen time. He is the closest thing Spiderman has to an arch-nemesis, other than Norman Osborn and, especially after Alfred Molina's brilliant performance, he and the Green Goblin should easily have the most screen time. As for the other members, Rhino and Vulture are obvious to point out. But what are the other two? One of them is either Chameleon or Mysterio but that last one could be a number of villains including The Hunter, Scorpion, Black Cat, ETC. Give me your thoughts below.
Score: 6.5/10
While you can see Marc Webb's vision under the surface of what we got, over-tampering by Sony and their obsession to create a billion dollar franchise bring what would be a brilliant film down to a mediocre one.
3. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
This was a really fun, fan-serving movie, though it's not quite as good as everyone says it is. People are saying it's the best Marvel Studios movie to date and it's the best comic book movie of all time, ETC. That is far from the case. In truth, this is a very flawed but don't let that hurt your experience.
When the trailers were first released for this movie, a was very worried that Star-Lord was just going to be a rip-off of Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark. After watching the movie, I am glad to say that's not the case. While he is a comedic, self-centred jack-@$$ like Stark, he proved to be a very different type of character and a very fun one to watch. When I first saw the trailers, I didn't like his re-design but after watching the movie in 3D, his design is really cool. It looks far better in the movie than in the trailers but alternate design concept art was recently released that revealed far superior, more comic accurate Star-Lord designs that I wish they had went with instead. Having said that, if every single new super hero that Marvel Studios brings to the big screen is a Stark-level jack-@$$, there's going to be a problem. Marvel seems to be over-using that formula. Just because something works really well once doesn't mean you have to repeat everytime you make a movie. On a less positive level, I highly disliked the movie version of Gamora. They took an awesome character and turned her into under-powered eye candy. My personal favourite member of the team is Drax The Destroyer. Drax is a total bad-@$$ and you can actually feel for him and why he wants to kill Ronan The Accuser and Thanos. While I loved the dynamic between Rocket Racoon and Groot, I disliked Groot in this movie. He was too silly and over-the-top for me. I know it's a silly movie, but Groot just seemed like too much. Rocket, however, was perfect in this movie. A real scene stealer, Rocket could've gone very wrong but they nailed him. You will be able to relate to a talking Racoon.
Now for the villains. I don't have an opinion on The Pursuer because he was under-used and barley in the movie. Lee Pace did a fine job playing Ronan The Accuser but the problems come from how he was written. While Ronan is cool and does really awesome things, he is a very under-developed character. The only explanation the movie gives for what he does is that he is a religious fanatic and he came off without personality. Pace really didn't have anything to do other than to be a bad-@$$. The scene where he defies Thanos in the movie is supposed to make the audience gasp in shock but the character is so under developed we kind of just go "OK." Speaking of Thanos, he looked perfect and Josh Brolin did a good job voicing him. No complaints as of now on Thanos. Nebula was cool. The actress was believable and the design was perfect. Does anyone else feel uneasy about how they just killed off The Other? We didn't even learn who he was and they just killed him in the second movie he was in.
The action scenes and special effects look really cool and are visually stunning. The biggest thing that bugged me through out the movie was the number of cliches that came up and the characters that were done wrong. That was really off putting. However the brilliant effects, hilarious comedy, character dynamics and fan service make this movie well worth watching.
Score: 7/10
2. X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
This series gets a lot of unwarranted hate, even though only two movies in the franchise were negatively received and the rest were very positively received. And now Bryan Singer has finally returned to prove that, even after 10 years, this is his franchise. Not only did he blow my highest expectations, but he created the best
X-Men movie to date. That's right, it's even better than
X-Men: First Class, but only by a tiny bit.
One of my biggest worries was that this film would be
The Wolverine Lite and would have an overflow of Wolverine. While Wolverine was a major character in this movie, there is thankfully plenty of the other characters to go around. As much as I loved
First Class, I hated how Mystique was portrayed in that movie. One thing Singer does really well in this was show us how that Mystique is slowly becoming the Mystique we now from the trilogy. Jennifer Lawrence does not disappoint this time around. Probably the best scene in the movie spotlights the scene stealer known as Quicksilver. Handled perfectly in this movie, Joss Whedon and Aaron Taylor Johnson have lot to live up to with this character in
Avengers: Age Of Ultron and I don't know if they can do it. Magneto and Xavier are just as well done as you remember them in
First Class, and in the movie's future timeline, we are introduced to a new cast of mutants I am interested in learning more about. We also get some returning mutants including Iceman finally being Iceman!
This film finally marks the debut of the classic X-Men baddie Bolivar Trask (despite a character of the same surname appearing
The Last Stand) and I thought he was very bland in this movie. Much like Lee Pace as Ronan, there was nothing wrong with Peter Dinklage's performance as Trask, just how he was written. We also get our first full appearance of the Sentinels. That was very exciting except I was disappointed because we saw the primitive 1970s Sentinels and the future Sentinels but we never saw the modern day Sentinels (even though we caught a glimpse in
The Last Stand) and I think there is still a lot of potential for that on the big screen.
My favourite X-Men villain is The Juggernaut and he was originally going to appear in the movie but was removed. Am I disappointed? Considering we got an awesome incarnation of Quicksilver instead, I'm not but I do hope to see him done right soon. My biggest complaint with the movie was that there were certain scenes that could've fixed continuity errors with nothing more than a single line of dialogue but didn't. Now that the franchise is back at a fresh start, there is absolutely no reason for continuity errors. Pay attention Fox: no more continuity errors! One thing I noticed: now that the time line is re-set, the Dark Phoenix personality is still inside Jean Grey. It never took over because
The Last Stand never happened. Can we get a Bryan Singer
The Dark Phoenix Saga movie? Please?
Score: 8/10
1. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER
While I was expecting this movie to be good, I was not expecting to be one of the two greatest Marvel Studios movies to date, on par with the original
Iron Man, yet it was! Delivering more than just the usual comic book movie action (and, man, does it deliver that well!) this movie delivers a political thriller that touches on real world concerns many of us have. Don't worry, the usual comic book movie fan service is there, too as the film delivers on easter eggs, action, and it fully establishes one of Captain America's greatest enemies, Arnim Zola, into the MCU.
Chris Evans is fantastic as Captain America, delivering credibility to the boy scout hero. The only real complaint with Scarlett Johansson is how Marvel expects us to believe she's Russian when she's clearly American. She doesn't even attempt the accent. Other than that, her performance is wonderful. I had no problems with Anthony Mackie as The Falcon, but I hope we see him done his red outfit eventually. As usual Samuel Jackson portrays an Ultimate-based Nick Fury and this is his best performance yet. We finally get to see him do Fury things like going off the grid and fighting hostile agents. Sebastian Stan is perfect as The Winter Soldier, bringing us emotional scenes as he begins to remember and forget who his best friend is. And, yes, he also brings Cap the fight of his life! And I'm sure we all got a kick out of Robert Redford saying "Hail Hydra."
Only a little better than
Days Of Future Past, this movie takes the cake as best Marvel adaptation of 2014, and shares a spot with 2008's
Iron man as best Marvel Studios movie.
Score: 8/10
Looking back, I've got to say this was a (mostly) great year for Marvel films and one we've needed since the controversial Marvel films of 2013. I am really looking forward to 2016, where most of these films get sequels and we finally get the true launch of the DC Movie Universe via the long awaited
Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice.