Saturday, November 9, 2013

Two Tickets For… Ranks… The Marvel Cinematic Universe Films (Not Called The Avengers)


Andrew: Hello readers! What did we say in our last post, eh? Definitely our busy season, but with Thor: The Dark World -  the latest entry of Phase 2 in the Marvel Cinematic Universe - hitting theatres this weekend, we wanted to take the time (even if ever so quick) to give you our obligatory personal rankings of the MCU films.

Now, for the purpose of this exercise, when we say the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" films we mean that in the way Marvel Studios does, i.e. no X-Men films, no Spider-Man films, etc. This leaves us with Phases 1 and 2 of the MCU films, and we're going to trim it down by one right off the top by taking The Avengers out of the equation. Why? Because it would be at the top of both our lists, duh. That leaves us with six films to rank, so without further ado please enjoy the very first entry of our new feature, Two Tickets For... Ranks...


Sarah: Personally I'm glad we're sticking to the Phase 1 and Phase 2 films in the MCU because I'm not a fan of the Spider-Man movies or the Fantastic Four movies, so I can guarantee you they wouldn't be on my list anyway. But like you said Andrew, here's how I personally rank the Marvel Cinematic Universe films if we're leaving The Avengers out of it, from least favorite to most favorite.


SARAH'S RANKINGS

6.) Iron Man 3
I still don't quite understand why I didn't like this one. Until we watch it again, I'm going to stick with I think I was just in Iron Man overload and was little tired of the kitsch.

5.) The Incredible Hulk
While this one is low on my list there are things that I like about it, such as I really liked Edward Norton as Bruce Banner. I thought that the story was a little weak but this was a necessary movie to feed into the future Avengers movie at the end of Phase 1. 

4.) Iron Man 2
I think I may be one of the only people who really liked this movie, but I don't care. I'm a big Sam Rockwell fan and I thought he was a great choice to play one of the villains. 

3.) Iron Man
The originals are always the best! An origin story at its best is what Iron Man was. We were introduced to a great film superhero led by the amazing casting of Robert Downey, Jr.

2.) Thor
Chris Hemsworth…enough said on that. But again, I thought this was another great origin story plus it was a very educational one for me because going into it I had no idea what the character of Thor was all about. 

1.) Captain America: The First Avenger 
It's the tale of the very first Avenger - the noble and good-hearted Steve Rogers/Captain America - plus we get a sneak peak at where S.H.I.E.L.D. and EVERYTHING began! And on top of that it's got a really sweet and sad love story.

Andrew: I love doing stuff like this because I knew you really liked Captain America but I had NO idea that you would put it at the very top of your list! Interesting! Here's how I rank 'em.

ANDREW'S RANKINGS

6.) Iron Man 2
A bit of a letdown after the awesomeness the first Iron Man knocked it out of the park, but in my eyes this one suffered from too many villains and neither of them was particularly interesting to me. Tony Stark's daddy problems and poisonous arc reactor weren't helping things, and then it's topped off my what I felt was a shoe-horned S.H.I.E.L.D. presence.

5.) The Incredible Hulk
The only MCU film I didn't see on the big-screen, mainly because I've never been a big Hulk fan. I liked the casting of Edward Norton, Tim Roth, and William Hurt but it just didn't come together for me. I only put it above IM2 because it's not a BAD movie per se, just not a very good one. (The climactic fight is pretty sweet, for example.)

4.) Captain America: The First Avenger
While I don't love it as much as you Sarah, I do believe Marvel nailed this one. Hiring Joe Johnston to direct was a stroke of genius, almost every character in the film was perfectly cast (a recurring theme for Marvel), and everything up to Cap breaking the soldiers out of prison is riveting to me. The final third is just okay to me, although the last scene is heartbreaking in a good way.

3.) Iron Man
The first MCU film and arguably the best just because it gets everything so RIGHT. Well…almost everything. The only weakness in the film is the villain - Obediah Stane - and in turn the climactic battle, and in turn the final battle is kind of meh. This is RDJ at his best though and it's aged well.

2.) Iron Man 3
In my opinion director Shane Black and his fellow writers took everything that was great about the first two IM films and improved upon it (especially the dialogue). It's not a perfect film (none of the MCU films are) but I had an absolute blast with this one. Count me in the camp that loved the Mandarin twist, too.

1.) Thor
I may be in the minority here but hear me out. Every role in this film is perfectly cast, especially Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Anthony Hopkins as Odin and Tom Hiddleson as Loki, and they all knock it out of the park. I even think Natalie Portman does well here. It's fun, it's emotional (the scene where Odin banishes Thor to Earth is heartbreaking to me), it's a gorgeous film to watch, I love the music…add it all up and Thor is the MCU film I like to re-watch above all the others.  

S: So there you have it, readers! We have a couple of them in the same spot, but some pretty big differences, too!

A: And after having seen Thor: The Dark World last night we'll have to revisit this list once we've done our review and see where it stacks up in our opinions!

Ok readers, now we want to hear how YOU rank the Marvel Cinematic Universe films down in the comments! You can even include The Avengers if you so choose (or especially if you don't have it at the top). 

11 comments:

  1. Nice lists, I've thought about doing something like this myself, but I think I'll wait until Guardians of the Galaxy or possibly even Avengers 2 so I have more to go on and have the chance to revisit a few of them again, especially Iron Man 3 which I think needs another chance. If I were to go with my gut right now, I think I'd go:
    1. Avengers
    2. Iron Man
    3. Thor: The Dark World
    4. Captain America
    4. Incredible Hulk
    4. Iron Man 2
    4. Iron Man 3

    Well, couldn't quite do it, after I wrote the bottom ones down I started to have a change of heart and figured I could be rearranging them for hours so just decided to make it a four way tie.

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