I'm sort-of withholding judgement on Infinity War until part 2 arrives - it feels like a difficult film to judge in isolation, when it's so much more tied into the films that came before it (and the one that comes after) than even any of the other MCU films.
I'm very looking forward to Captain Marvel, though. It's probably higher on my anticipation list than Avengers 4.
I really dug it. Really liked the post credits scene because it instantly gives a huge amount of strength to the character that it's in reference to. She's Nick Fury's panic button. Alien invasion? Whatever. Hydra take over SHIELD? Eh. Robot threatens all life on earth? Pfft.
Captain Marvel is Nick Fury's 'oh shit' button.
I remember sitting there thinking that there was a startling amount of content in it that wasn't appropriate for kids to watch, though. Suicide monsters smashing against a wall, coupled with the ending. Like, try explaining to a eight year old that they'll probably all be fine.
Little Miss Bloodaxe is six now and she really wants to see it. She'll love a lot of it and some of it will really get her down, but I think the biggest problem is that there's just so much of it. She'll be totally worn out by the end of it and she'll need a few days just to process it all.
There are a couple of deaths in there though that are just too much for a little kid though, so she's going to have to wait.
So now I've all caught up, I tried to do a personal ranking of all the MCU movies (with the exception of Ant Man and the Wasp, which I haven't seen yet):
1 Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2 Thor: Ragnarok
3 Avengers Assemble
4 Captain America: Civil War
5 Iron Man
6 Avengers: Infinity War
7 Guardians of the Galaxy
8 Captain America: The First Avenger
9 Ant Man
10 Black Panther
11 Avengers: Age of Ultron
12 Spider-Man: Homecoming
13 Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2
14 Thor
15 Doctor Strange
16 Iron Man 2
17 Iron Man 3
18 The Incredible Hulk
19 Thor 2: The Dark World
I think the top four and the bottom four I'm completely settled on - everything in between is probably subject to change, especially the two GotG movies (I actually enjoyed the second one more than the first on first viewing, but I'm pretty sure the first one is quite a bit better and would stand up to repeat viewing much more).
Anyone violently disagree?
I switched off Winter Soldier and Black Panther halfway through, and really enjoyed Thor. But I'm probably just a bit weird.
Your 2, 3, 4 would be my 1, 2, 3, so we agree there.
I just don't understand people who rate Iron Man 3 that low. I'd also have Black Panther a lot higher.
Iron Man 3 has one standout sequence (the freefall rescue) and a really stupid final-act battle (OH NOES TEH PRESIDETN has zero dramatic impact). The idea of the character stuff is good, but they just don't quite pull it off, for my money - doubly so in retrospect, where none of the big sea changes for Stark actually stick. Kingsley's Mandarin is great, but the reveal is too early.
Iron Man 2 is a fractured, conflicted film, but I think I prefer it, because at least it has a soul. 3 doesn't.
I'd drop Age of Ultron and Guardians 2 down below Doctor Strange, maybe shift Panther up above Ant-Man, but other than that, my ranking would be pretty much the same, I think.
Iron Man 2 … has a soul.
Sam Rockwell having a blast does not a soul make. IM2 is an exercise in wheel-spinning, a half-baked cash-grab rushed out to keep Tony Stark in people's memories while the Avengers engine continued to spin up.
I'd disagree with that, IM2 is the first movie where the whole thing starts to feel like a franchise, with the introduction of War Machine and Black Widow. IM3 is pretty forgettable in that sense, it has no overall bearing on anything really and along with The Incredible Hulk is perhaps the most skippable movie in the whole sequence.
It's also got a terrible CGI overload for an ending and WAY too much Gwyneth Paltrow.
Sod it, I'm reversing their order now I've thought about it some more.
I really like both Iron Man 2 and 3, they are entertaining, stuff happens and the world is fleshed out. I don't think the latter films would have mattered as much without the two of these listing the foundations. The climaxes of both are a bit by-the-numbers but that's because films have been doing comic book action sequences for 30 years now, it's going to seem old hat. The main achievement of the MCU is that it's manages to bring the rest of the comic book experience to the screen.
Drop Captain America and Civil War down. The first has zero threat, a crushingly slow 1st act and the best bits are all skilled in a 60 second montage in the middle. Civil War is nothing but set-up for the latter movies and on its own it's just dumb. It's climax is a six on six staged fight where none wants to hurt each other. If it wasn't for Spiderman's jokes it would be about as interesting as an episode of Ben 10.
Age of Ultron goes down
Homecoming goes up.
Civil War gets a lot of credit from me for making a six-on-six superhero fight where nobody wants to hurt each other still feel like it has stakes, and as much as it (and Winter Soldier) suffer from a lack of Bucky setup in First Avenger, I like how the ideological lines get drawn counter to how you'd have expected Cap and Stark to feel even a couple of movies ago, but without it seeming like a break in character.
The first act of First Avenger is maybe my favourite bit of the entire franchise. Skinny Steve Rogers standing up in the alley way and jumping on the grenade is 95% of what makes me continue to give a shit about Captain America as a character, and without that foundation, he wouldn't be half as interesting and his character arc wouldn't make any sense.
The good bits at the start of First Avenger are good, but they total about ten minutes out of an hour. The start and finale should have both been a third shorter and then they could have actually shown the team fighting some Nazis and built up Buckie a bit better.
I'm just gonna leave this here.
LEARN WHAT MAKES HER A HERO
(punches old lady in the face)
YES.
FUCKING.
PLEASE.
That animated Spider-Man movie is looking weirder and weirder and I am here for it.
It looks incredibly lush.
Finally got around to Ant Man and the Wasp tonight. It was pretty great, undoubtedly helped by not having to deal with my baggage about the Edgar Wright version that never was.
Some very inventive set-pieces, only most of which were spoiled in the trailers, and it seemed much more confident in its humour.
Not sure I'm all that hyped for a third outing - guess we'll see how Infinity War 2 shakes out - though it's weird how many plot threads seemingly just got dropped at the end.
Spoiler - click to showAre Hank, Hope (and Janet?) still on the run from the Feds? There wasn't really a wider threat to the world (or even the city) that our heroes averted, that would buy them sufficient goodwill to avoid law enforcement attention in the aftermath. Scott's still on three years of probation too, so hanging out with Hank & Co. is probably a bad idea since it undoubtedly counts as a parole violation - especially if they are still fugitives.
I vaguely remember the whole thing feeling kind of… unthreatening. And aside from one macguffin, Scott was largely incidental to the entire plot. I dunno, I enjoyed it okay, and maybe it was because I saw it so close behind Infinity War, but it just didn't seem to have any stakes or sense of urgency.
:[
Stan.
;_;7
Despite him being 95, this feels so sudden and comes as a complete shock, probably because he seemed relatively healthy for his age? Huge loss.
Yeah that's poo. RIP Stan.
At least he got to see, and have a LOT of fun with, his comics being mega-movie-famous for the last decade.
Saw Into The Spider-Verse this morning and it’s really, really excellent.
There is almost certainly a zero percent chance anybody here hasn't seen these already, but just for completeness sake, there are new trailers for Avengers Endgame
and Captain Marvel
I'm kind of impressed with how effective that Endgame trailer is considering A. how little it shows, and B. how certain the ultimate outcome of the film is. (There's no way they don't undo most, if not all, of Thanos' shenanigans from Infinity War.)
Captain Marvel is a bit more of a mixed bag. I realise that it's a superhero movie set in the 90s, but it kind of looks like a superhero movie made in the 90s, or early 2000s, somehow. I'm very excited for it, but it looks weirdly tame, somehow - there's a vibe in some of the Earth-based shots that reminds me of the early X-Men's embarrassment at being comic book movies. Maybe it's just the 90s aesthetic and young Sam Jackson.
Some of the Captain Marvel VFX shots are pretty ropey; hopefully it's all non-final.
Wonder when/if they'll tip their hand on the cat..?
Saw Into The Spider-Verse this morning and it’s really, really excellent.
We went tonight and, yeah, it's stunning. I don't remember the last movie that I couldn't find anything to even nitpick about. It might be actually perfect.
Easily the best Spider-Man movie I've seen and it's ranking alongside Coco as one of the best animated movies.
Just out of Spider-Verse. It's really good. Properly bonkers. No idea how it actually manages to work, but it does. Looks spectacular, too.
After a second viewing of Into the Spider-Verse, I can confirm that it actually is that incredible, holy shit, how actually did they pull this blessed goddamn miracle off.
(I did manage to scrape up two incredibly minor "criticisms" though: the chromatic aberration at the start of the film is way too strong, and Peni Parker doesn't entirely justify her presence in the movie by her actions or joke volume. Spider-Ham and Spider-Man Noir get some great gags, but I don't think I could quote anything Peni says.)
At the start of the year, I'm not sure many people would have expected a cartoon Spider-Man movie to be a bigger deal than Black Panther, but it just might be.
In terms of criticism, I don't really like Kingpin's design.
That's it. That's all I got.
It's probably the most I've ever enjoyed a superhero movie.
Spoiler - click to showI'd have liked to have seen more spider-people – from the trailers I was expecting hundreds of tiny sight gags as crazier and crazier dimensions showed up – but that would have just taken time away from the characters that did show up.
So yeah, no negatives really.
I've also had Sunflower on repeat for two days. What a great song.
the chromatic aberration at the start of the film is way too strong
Yes that was about my only issue too - apparently they've had people in screenings thinking/complaining they've been watching the 3D version by mistake. I get what they were trying to do but it was a bit much.
(Also, having watched this with a 9-year-old who has no interest in superheroes and honestly isn't much of a movie watcher: there was slightly too much talky-talky with Miles at the start, and the ending battle could have done with a couple of minutes trimmed off it - he was getting fidgety in both bits. But "slow start, too much CGI at the end" is a criticism you could apply to virtually any superhero movie, it practically comes with the genre.)
Ant-Man and the Wasp: it's very slight, isn't it? In some ways I like that the MCU can still produce straightforward superhero romps without needing to tie everything into the ongoing Avengers melodrama, but I'm not sure this particular bunch of characters really had enough in them for a second outing. The best jokes (such as Luis's streams of consciousness) are basically replicated from the first movie. And I'm not at all convinced by Michelle Pfeiffer's turn as Quantum Gandalf at the end there.
In many ways this is much like GOTG2 - fun but eminently skippable.
I'm in a similar boat. I think it's probably better than I first thought (like GotGv2, I only saw it once at the cinema, but I've since read some pieces that have a much higher opinion of it), but it all felt sort of airless and low-stakes to me, not least because Scott is completely extraneous to about 90% of the story.
Spoiler - click to showHe spends most of his time in the movie worried they're going to catch him breaking house arrest, but it's, like… just go home, man. They don't really need you. This isn't a threat.
Again, there are some good scale gags, a couple of decent chases, and Luis' Story Time is fun, but Ghost is pretty poorly-used, Janet is a complete non-presence, the low-rent mobster guy is entirely unthreatening, and I just ended up not really caring too much about anything that happened.
I watched Black Panther. I mean. Meh? Rhinos I guess.
Racist.
Here's another great Captain Marvel trailer.
March cannot get here quick enough.
Also this amazing poster (linking due to size) which, if there's a UK cinema quad version, I might just have to buy.
It looks alllriiiiiiight. But I was hoping for lots more 90s nostalgia.
I wasn't paying attention in the 80s, so I'm bored of all the 80s nostalgia in films. The film-makers are old enough now, gimme my 90s goodness.
Also this amazing poster (linking due to size) which, if there's a UK cinema quad version, I might just have to buy.
where might one buy something such as this
where might one buy something such as this
I've bought a few (Baby Driver and Arrival) off eBay; they run £10-30, usually – depending on the movie and age. Framing them, on the other hand… 
We saw Aquaman last week. It's not bad! Not great, but entertaining enough. I found it a bit of an exhausting experience, though.
Part of that, no doubt, is a result of James Wan's decision to film every action scene like it's a car chase. Everything is in motion all the time, characters running past a stationary camera that whips around to follow them, except for when the camera is also moving through the scene, zooming across a city square or battlefield or living room with urgent purpose.
On the handful of occasions when things slow down for exposition, it's like the film itself gets bored of Jason Momoa's laid-back, winking charm, and blows up a wall so someone can dramatically walk through the smoke in a dutch angle and start another fight.
It's kind of a shame, since the performances are pitch-perfect for this material. (The only real flaw on the character front is the forced romantic subplot between Aquaman and Mera; their chemistry is solid for the friendly banter, but I cannot buy anything more.)
It descends, as all these things do, into a CGI battle royale at the end, for most of the runtime there's little actual peril for the characters, and for all the talk of Aquaman being a bridge between the surface world and Atlantis, there's no point where he's put in a position to choose one over the other, so it's a little flat on the thematic front. But this is comfortably in the second place of DCEU movies.
My over riding impression of it was that it was desperately wanting to be Thor Ragnarok but couldn't quite reach those heights.
Gave the first episode and a half of Titans a go today. It's alright, very clearly trying to go for the Daredevil / Arrow vibe. People do die in it. In fact through he's not offed anyone yet, Robin is a violent son of a bitch. It's trying very hard to be adult ("Fuck Batman!", Naughty Dick).
It's got a pretty standard, protect the young new superhero story line, but it's the best DC thing on the screen I have seen in a while.
I watched Titans as it came out over the last couple of months, and now want to binge the lot all over again.
I think it’s the best thing DC have put on a small screen.
I liked Titans for the first 0.1% of it and then it was downhill from there
Got a copy of Spider-Verse that fell off the back of a server (the April 23rd release date on my Blu preorder feels years away), so that had to be rewatched.
I'm not sure if that's the third or fourth time I've seen it, but I'm not sure I've seen any movie this many times and still haven't got anything to point to as even having room for improvement.
Maybe I'm just not capable of watching it critically; about ten minutes in I'm completely on board, hooked on the characters and the visuals and honestly the whole package.
So, yeah - still brilliant.
Caption Marvel, then. It's really fun! Not really revolutionary in the story department, but the pacing was really swift considering how much they had to pack in.
Spoiler - click to showPartly this is due to the smart use of flashbacks, which - from the trailers - I assumed would be fleshed out much more in the final product. But they're really just kept as glimpses, enough to inform the character but getting out of the way of the plot.
Spoiler - click to showIt also takes longer to get to Earth than I'd expected; there's time to get used to Veers' powers and the Kree/Skrull backstory before we get too deep into the SHIELD stuff.
Brie Larson is fantastic in this. I can't wait to see her again in Endgame next month. Her playful chemistry with Sam Jackson is the backbone of the movie, though I was also surprised how solid the relationship was between Carol and Maria Rambeau, especially considering how little screen time they had to establish it; Lashanna Lynch does a lot of heavy lifting in her first full scene that really carries their relationship through the rest of the film.
Short version: It's great. Go see it.
Agree with everything Aniki said. It stands on its own as a fantastic superhero film but I was also very impressed with how it inserts itself into and builds up the MCU.