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Tag: 3-Star Reviews

  • Review: Iron Man 3

    Review: Iron Man 3

    Iron Man 3 is probably the most infuriating of the Marvel Cinematic Movies to watch as a fan of the comics, a fan of the movies, and someone who is effectively a critic (albeit an amateur critic). It gives us the second* biggest enemy Tony Stark across his publication history in the Mandarin. It has a fascinating take on the effects of being a superhero and the trauma and PTSD that would absolutely be a part of it. Robert Downey Jr. is probably at his best in showing us the hot mess of a person Tony Stark has become in the movie, and it works incredibly well.

    At the same time, so much of the movie just ends up not working. While I personally like a lot about the Mandarin reveal, I totally understand why it sat wrong with a lot of people. There are also a lot of parts that undermine the pacing and direction of the story that it is a bit harder to watch than the other movies we’ve watch.

    You have to give them credit… it takes some real talent to miss on the source material this hard.

    Iron Man 3 also gave us some of the absolute worst licensed sets that LEGO has ever made. I know that LEGO doesn’t have full access to the movie and a lot of the production, but they get concept art, early clips, and feedback from the production. I’ve yet to see the concept art in Iron Man 3 where the Mandarin, wearing a muscle shirt, was chasing after Iron Man and War Machine in a riding lawnmower.

    All of that aside, though… the biggest problem I usually have with Iron Man 3 is that so much of the action is so far over the top as to be… dull. Nearly all of the end fight is Michael Bay-levels of ridiculousness, and that takes what had been an uneven but entertaining movie and turns it into a trainwreck (or maybe a ship crash). Both of the “big” action scenes in the movie suffer from this problem; the attack on Tony’s house and the battle in the shipyard kind of look cool but get so eye-rolling if you brain gets a chance to think about it that you will have trouble to be getting back in.

    These are comic book movies, so we’re going to get a whole lot of silly, physics-defying action… but come on…

    I mean, think about the start of the attack on Tony’s house. It begins with a missile exploding between Tony and Pepper and it knocks them backwards by a shockwave that is powerful enough to destroy part of the house but basically just knocks the two fleshy bags of mostly water to the ground. They should have been stains, at best, but they get back up and run away.

    Was it cool to see the Mark 42 armor fly around and save Pepper? Absolutely. But just about everything else in the scene was wrong. We see later that all of the armors can fly around autonomously… why weren’t they doing that to defend the house? How do those helicopters even fly with enough weapons to take on the Army get all the way inland like that without alerting what has to be every bit of security in California? The Mk 42 wasn’t ready for battle but apparently it wasn’t ready for anything as he simply stumbled around the entire house as it exploded.

    So many people flat-out ignore Tony when he is desperately trying to get help in this movie, but it’s Rhodey ignoring PTSD, which he should be able to recognize, that sits really badly with me.

    Almost all of the action is filled with stuff like that. The only action scene that isn’t like that, and really works, is the one where he doesn’t have the armor on and is going full Rambo/MacGuyver and invading the Mandarin compound. There we got to see what makes Tony Stark so good at what he does, and clearly is more than just the guy inside the armor. Side note… how did he pay for all of that stuff?

    The strange thing about the core of the movie, the stuff that Tony is dealing with after the Battle of New York, had all of the potential to be fascinating. Tony dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and he most certainly was based on what we saw, would be a great story to go with. He is, despite protests in The Avengers, a soldier, and dealing with a lot of heavy damage that would take a toll on anyone.

    I’ve probably watched this movie a dozen times, and this is the first time that I’ve ever noticed what he wrote on it.

    That he is playing out the same patterns we see in soldiers (as well as victims of harassment and abuse… PTSD is not limited to combat and not to physical actions) and denying it, desperately trying to find any other reason behind it, could be a great thread to pull on… if they ever would have bothered. We see him suffering and suffering, and then a statement from a kid with a useful garage he ran into helped him work through it, and that was it. We get so much of it at the start, from the Jingle Bells-inspired building for multiple days without sleep to subliminal messages left in fan art, there’s so much meat on the bone they just throw away.

    Sure, the end credits scene sort of played into that, but as a joke, and it should have been treated with a lot more seriousness than it ends up being handled with. In fact, the whole of the narration through the movie leads up to that. At the start of the movie in 1999, it all works, because you’re seeing old Tony causing problems for new Tony. But that is always conflicting with ways that new Tony dealing with his own problems, and the movie can’t seem to make up its mind on which thing to focus on. That being said, Happy’s Mullet and Tony being a huge jerk at least establishes something for the villain to be obsessive about with Iron Man in this.

    Don’t get me wrong, the bonus scene was funny, it was the movie that irked me.

    Of course, our villains of the movie, Killian (played incredibly by Guy Pierce) and the Mandarin (played so very well by Ben Kingsley), are in a vacuum; just fantastic. A whole lot of comic book fans focus in on the Mandarin reveal in this movie as the biggest problem, but I’ve always loved it. Despite all the problems I talk about in here, that part just works for me.

    The reason I think it works is that it managed to thread a very fine needle with the Mandarin, who is one of the most fascinating, and problematic, villains in Marvel history. Created in the 1960s, he was one big bucket of racist stereotypes of the period. He was a Karate master that basically fell into all of the “Fu Manchu” or “yellow peril” caricature that was part of comics for the decades around World War II and through the cold war, so it was going to be a fine line to walk. Iron Man 3 was one of the first MCU movies made specifically so it would play well overseas, in China specifically, so it was going to be a tough line for them to walk.

    A lot of the humor works really well, even if it’s presented in such absurd and fantastic ways

    There was certainly a lot of noise when it was announced that Ben Kingsley, a British man of Indian descent, was playing the character, it was initially seen as “more of the same” from Hollywood – who has a very bad record with things like this, specifically. That’s what made the reveal that it was all fake, and Killian was the force behind it… both playing directly on American fears to get it done while also falling into a trap of appropriation with his own persona, was quite simply a stroke of genius. Marvel managed to sidestep the problems behind the character with how it unfolded.

    Most importantly, if you are familiar with the master manipulator and work-from-the shadows character which the Mandarin finally became in the comics… it was simply a perfect move. It was exactly the kind of thing that the Mandarin would do in the comics, which is why I will always think it worked. It’s not often that a comic movie genuinely shocks me, but I still remember being blown away by Iron Man 3 and how they managed to hide that so well.

    Little turtle, cooking in his turtle shell… that line was genuinely menacing

    Killian, on the other hand, had so much potential that was wasted in the movie, despite a great job by the actor. He had a real menace to him, and I loved that they were bringing in another stalwart organization of the Marvel Universe in A.I.M. Unfortunately, both are effectively destroyed in this movie, beginning a fairly long streak of Marvel having to always kill the bad guys in their films.

    Killian was an interesting choice… he was in the comics and was involved in making Extremis along with Maya Hansen. That being said… he was also an extremely minor character who killed himself in the issue over guilt at selling the Extremis virus. I don’t mind that Iron Man 3 made him so much more, and tied him to A.I.M., I just wish they would have done something more lasting with it.

    My favorite part was that he drank Budweiser, and I cannot explain why

    The whole of his plan seemed to be kind of bonkers.  Using the Mandarin to cover up accidents in developing the glow juice was brilliant, and using that at the same time to effect a shift in power to control the presidency was a Mandarin-worthy move. But… what we he going to do with Extremis when he figured it out?

    The side effects weren’t just that people could explode, it also seemed to make people ultra-violent and kind of insane while they could melt metal and apparently breathe fire. It seems like the exploding part was only one of the issues at hand. Unlike previous Iron Man villains, I got the motivations they were setting up, but like the action, it only works if you don’t think about them for too long.

    Drink in that super mullet. DRINK… IT… IN…

    Part of the problem was the introduction of Maya Hansen into the mix, and just the confusion of it. Rebecca Hall did fine in the role, but it was the character herself that didn’t make sense. Was she trying to kidnap Pepper to get Tony’s involvement, or just trying to find sympathy for the work when the attack happened? Was she in on the whole “Master” thing, or did she believe it (in fact, did anyone in A.I.M.’s employ actually believe it or did they all know)?

    She was the one behind the whole of it, but basically all she did was move some characters around and get shot in the end so we knew that Killian was the really bad guy in everything. It was a character that they just wasted, and the only real impact she had on the story is that she is the one who made the glowy goo to begin with. To her point, though, right before Killian shot her… how did he expect to move on with the project without her? He had to know Tony was never going to help, and had been working on it for over a decade at that point.

    Hey look, it’s civilian helicopters that are carrying more ordinance than an AC-130 gunship. Joking aside, that was a pretty awesome way to take down one of them.

    It’s the middle of the movie, when Tony ends up in Tennessee, where it drags. Adding the kid, who inexplicably has a garage full of everything that he needs thanks to his paper route (I mean, who has papers and since when do kids still deliver them), I guess? The villains happened to be there with the female Extremis soldier who moved exceptionally strange when she went full glowy, to pick up a file the exact day that Tony Stark showed up there? It was all just… convenient.

    As an actor, the kid wasn’t bad, it just felt like most of the scenes around there were just wasting our time to fill in things. Yes, it’s nice that he helped Tony get through an attack, but none of it was especially memorable. The best thing about the whole section is the interaction between Tony and his biggest fan, which I have to assume is actually RDJ’s living nightmare put on film.

    This was the best set of the mix, but it was so small as to just be underwhelming.

    As bad as the pacing slow down is in the second act, it ends strong with that infiltration of the compound and bringing Tony and Rhodey back together. Their work was the best part of Iron Man 2, and the charisma between the actors is far better here than in their restaurant scene at the beginning. Sadly… that’s the last time the movie will really deliver on the promise, because it’s just going to get silly after they work to go after the President and find Killian.

    I mean… the initial foray into Air Force One wasn’t bad, though the security on what is the most secure plane in the world is kind of laughable to advance the plot here (seriously, even Iron Patriot would get ID’d to get on it). The initial kidnapping and stuff isn’t bad… but I have about how the Extremis guys work because we see a guy with glowy hot hands that somehow don’t melt right through the floor go toe-to-toe with armor we’ve seen withstand far worse. What is the level where they can regenerate and where they can’t, because that seems to be super unclear.

    This is by far the worst cameo that Stan Lee ever did.

    That’s the problem with the Extremis soldiers as baddies in the movie… it’s never really defined what they can do, they’re just insane soldiers that seem to have whatever skills they need in the moment. Sometimes it’s heat that can somehow melt titanium composites, other times it’s being able to jump twenty or thirty feet into the airs, others, being immune to bullets. Basically they were just generic action monsters introduced for the final fight.

    I should go listen to the commentary track to see who it was that went to an air show and decided that the thing Iron Man 3 was really missing was a ridiculous skydiving rescue number. I mean… nothing about that whole sequence makes sense, and it goes on for several minutes. How are they even conscious given the height they’d need to be at to have time to get together, how can they hear him give instructions, since when can his armor electrify someone, and how is it that being in a circle and having enough force applied to your arms to rip them off would save them?

    Blink and you’ll miss it, but this guy was actually fine, and shows up in the credits shaking Trevor’s hand after the fact. So I guess Roxxon was in on it?

    The actual production behind the shot it a lot more interesting… it was a real skydive stunt done by the Red Bull Skydiving team (they were digitally removed and replaced with the actors and stuntmen/stuntwomen who did the slowdown on wires at the end). They actually did several jumps a day for several straight days, from 14,000 feet, to get everything they needed. The most fun aspect was that they were wearing the clothes you see in the scene over their chutes and packs. The most painful aspect was that they had to do each jump without goggles, which would be like staring into a windstorm… for a week.

    I mean, on one hand, it was a fun scene, but it didn’t add anything. Iron Man killed the bad guy in the plane, and we got to see him be a hero saving everyone. We already knew he was a hero, so this was basically filler… maybe as a sly intermission opportunity, I guess. It was really just setting up a chance to get the Iron Man armor smashed so he and Rhodey had to go after Killian by themselves, which could have easily been done by saying it was out of power. After the tight and efficient editing of Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers, this movie is just… wasteful… with the time and scenes it had.

    It’s easier to count of what’s right in this set than to list off what’s wrong with it. #1 It includes Iron Man. #2 …

    Of course, for all the problems I had with the attack on his house, the fight at the end was ten times more (and worse). Most of the fight that is interesting, between Tony and Killian, relies on changing the rules of the world as we knew it. We’d seen the time it takes for Tony to put on the Iron Man armor in every instance where he’d worn it… but here, he was in and out of multiple armors in under a second.

    Like I mentioned above, we saw the Extremis soldiers just making up new powers, and nearly all of the fight is between various Iron Man armors that should have been turned into a Collectable Minifigure Line and nameless bad guy grunts. There are explosions, insane moves frome people with no armor and power, and some good comedy moments between Tony and Pepper that are undone by a temporary fridging of Pepper to motivate Tony.

    Much like IM2, the big problem with Pepper in this is how often she is hostile or just ignores Tony, including once when he is pouring out his heart to her and explaining the problem.

    I actually like that she’s the one who ultimately “took care” of Killian, but there’s also the fact that so many people in this universe can seemingly kill another person without batting an eye. I mean, the Extremis seems to cause a whole ton of aggression, but in the other cases, he was recruiting soldiers and people trained to fight as grunts… where did Pepper learn any of that stuff?

    Of course, the characterization of Pepper hasn’t gotten much better in this movie compared to Iron Man 2, and we get an equally inconsistent take on the character. I don’t think it’s Paltrow, who does a fine job in the part… more in how she’s presented. She’s still CEO of Stark Enterprise (I think), and she’s doing great, but also she sees the trauma and pain in Tony and mostly ignores or dismisses it. Much like Maya, once it’s time to just move people for the final fight, she’s moved aside and we barely see her until it’s time for the final fight.

    We deserved a bigger play set of the various Iron Man armors on display. And no, I don’t think that the new Endgame set is it, at least based on the pictures.

    This is the last time she’s going to have much past a minor supporting role in the MCU (she appears at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming and at the start of Infinity War, but that’s it), and I wish she would have had a better showing. While Gwenyth Paltrow may bug me all sorts of ways with her woo nonsense, the character of Pepper Potts was great and she did bring a lot to the role. There was a lot of promise on places it could go (Rescuse, for example), and it didn’t really happen.

    This movie was a real step back from the upward swing that we’d gotten with the past two. It’s not… terrible, per se, but it has more problems than the other Iron Man films. It’s just strange that they are different problems than we got in the last sequel. More than that, though, it really doesn’t do much to set up anything in the future. By the time that Age of Ultron comes around, Tony is back in New York and building. The only thing really looking forward here is in the end credits scene… that Bruce Banner is working with Tony Stark.

    Gutter does wake up in the end, so I guess all’s well that ends well.

    Other than that, none of the villains or characters have any influence in the future of the MCU. Much like the Incredible Hulk, you can cut this movie out of a marathon and not miss a lot… though it’s a better overall movie with a lot more going for it, so you’d be missing some fun stuff (just not that much fun action). For that reason, I’m going to call it a three out of five, basically average. It hurts in some ways, succeeds in others, and basically cancels out into the middle. Luckily, the next movie is a Thor movie, a film they had so much confidence in that they didn’t even set it up with a stinger scene. It can’t possibly be worse can it.

    I mean… can it?

    *The biggest enemy Tony Stark, in the comics or the movies, will always be Tony Stark.

    Bonus Review: Agent Carter

    I love the spycraft stuff that she does as part of the mission

    For all the inconsistently of Iron Man 3, it’s Bluray/DVD release did give us the best One Shot that Marvel ever made in Agent Carter. It’s also the first ones that is part of the bonus features on streaming services if you buy the movie (the other three you have to crack out the discs to see). It’s a revisit of the best female character they’d had in the universe thus far, and was a setup to her woefully underrated TV show (come on, Disney+, bring back Agent Carter for season 3).

    After stabbing us directly in the feels with a replay of the most emotional scene in the MCU, we get a fascinating blend of Carter dealing with the realities and sexist nature of 1940s/1950s America, which was a very real thing in the post-war era (one that didn’t go away, it just changed) as men were coming home from battle and women pushed out of roles they’d filled. Seeing what we knew was a complete badass character reduced to clerical work kind of hurt, and you were just waiting for her to prove herself.

    20 gallons of jackass in 5 gallon bags…

    Luckily, through her boss being horrible, she gets just that, and what follows is far better action than we got in the movie. It’s a mixture of her being awesome and smart at the same time, more or less effortlessly disarming a gang to get a deadly weapon back. We get to see her be smart, get an insane grouping shot, and show the kind of planning that would make for a great TV show that, seriously, we all want back Disney.

    Review Summary

    Since there are going to be a lot of these reviews, and it’s nice to see how all of the movies stack up against one another, we’re going to add a little summary section for the Marvel Cinematic movies. When we’re all done, I’ll have an article that goes over my rankings of all the movies (which won’t necessarily reflect the overall quality of the movie in stars, etc, more of how it ranks within the total collection).

    • Iron Man (2008) – 5 out of 5
    • The Incredible Hulk (2008) – 2 out of 5
    • Iron Man 2 (2010) – 3 out of 5
    • Thor (2011) – 3 out of 5
    • Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) – 4 out of 5
    • The Avengers (2012) – 5 out of 5
    • Iron Man 3 (2013) – 3 out of 5
    • Thor: The Dark World (2013)
    • Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
    • Guardian’s of the Galaxy (2014)
    • Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
    • Ant-Man (2015)
    • Captain America: Civil War (2016)
    • Doctor Strange (2016)
    • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
    • Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
    • Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
    • Black Panther (2018)
    • Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
    • Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
    • Captain Marvel (2019)
    • Avengers: Endgame (2019)
  • Review: Iron Man 2

    Review: Iron Man 2

    Confession time: I’ve never hated Iron Man 2 as much as most fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe do. I fully acknowledge its flaws, and there are many that I will talk about in here. But coming off the low of Hulk and the high of Iron Man, this one was always going to be a weird film.

    I can’t really remember what I was expecting going in to the movie, which I watched in the theaters (I’ve watched all of the MCU movies in the theaters, actually… something I can say of few other series not called Star Wars). While Iron Man was popular, the Marvel Cinematic Universe wasn’t the zeitgeist that it has become quite yet… that really came about with Avengers when it all suddenly made sense.

    I want this desk so bad

    This movie is daring, given that it opens on two characters we don’t know, one of them dies within 30 seconds of the start, and then it goes directly into a montage. This movie is just lousy with montages… Gutter from PCU must really love the things. Watching this in a more critical eye, it really hits on just about every bad action movie trope of the era. I mean, I really like Jon Favraeu, but I’m starting to realize his move from director to producer was probably for the best, given the movies that came after this.

    This suit can fly across the globe, why exactly does he need an airdrop?

    Iron Man 2 is where Pepper Potts started to stop being a character and started just being Gwyneth Paltrow in real life, I think. Compared to other characters, it feels like she kind of took a step back in this compared to the first movie at times. It comes off as so disjointed and I’m not sure if it’s in the writing or in Patrow’s acting for Pepper, or maybe scenes that put a lot of it into context were cut from the movie.

    The animosity around her relationship with Tony is weirdly placed in the movie. I mean, I get it from him… he’s always been like that and is notoriously bad at communication. Pepper was the counter-balance to that in the first movie, but here, she’s just as bad at it. She’s sniping at tony, dismissive of him at times, or downright angry for reasons that weren’t made clear.

    Why would a party have a whole uncut watermelon just available to throw?

    On the other hand, you get to see her take charge and kick butt as a CEO (despite being dismissed by seemingly everyone), and that part is great. The same strange conflict is there with her an Natalie/Natasha… she’s blaming her for something at the party when she had been standing there, and they are perfectly professional later (and the only person who seemed confused was Tony). Maybe there’s something there that would have made it make sense, but how it comes off here is like there were two different Pepper Potts characters in the story and they forgot to get the writing consistent between them.

    The strange way that characters are brought into the story and develop isn’t limited just ot Pepper. The initial reveal of Whiplash is bad. The slow motion walk, the explosions in the background while he’s walking away… it’s like all the worst action movie tropes. Slow motion slow motion action. The fight is actually kind of cool, but it mostly highlights that both of them are seemingly lousy at tactics. Whiplash has a weapon and plan that requires him being within ten feet of his enemies… and Tony is being dumb and staying within ten feet for the whole fight. Again… the Iron Man suit can fly. Go up, hover, and blast him.

    What is the deal with the bird thing?

    We continue to see this disjointed Whiplash throughout the movie. He loves his bird and his father, he’s a gifted scientist and engineer… but also tattooed like he had a metal band in the 90s that just couldn’t quite get their break and able to escape from prison like a trained soldier and assassin. He can hack into a computer through movie magic while also apparently programming a computer system and building an advanced suit without anyone noticing.

    That’s the problem with him as a villain… they establish that he hates Tony Stark, he was convicted of selling plutonium, and that he spent 15 years in prison. How did he have time to learn to be a dangerous hand to hand killer when most of his time was spent getting tattooed? And why did the hatred that they have for Howard Stark transfer so hard on to Tony. I get that irrational revenge can be a motivating factor in things, but there’s such a level of planning and calculation here that doesn’t fit him being a crazed fanatic.

    I mean, from a usefulness point of view this is accurate, but Congressional hearings are never this entertaining.

    The big problem with this movie is that it skips on the important thing of actually providing us background. It’s more concerned with setting up Black Widow and the relationship between Pepper and Tony than telling an overall story. The march to Avengers was on, and the interesting story is around Nick Fury, Coulson… basically everything except the main plot of the story. Justin Hammer was a much better idea as a villain here than Whiplash, and a shame that he was sort of squandered after this movie.

    This is a movie of contrasts in what works and what doesn’t. Tony watching the videos of his father works. Justin Hammer’s rivalry and jealousy of Tony Work. Tony’s interaction with SHIELD. The interaction with Tony and Rhodey work. Whiplash doesn’t, the huge animosity that Pepper has with Tony through the whole thing doesn’t.

    Have to admit that Visually this is pretty funny

    “Everything is achievable through technology” – Howard Stark. That sort of draws the line around Tony in such a way. In fact, the filling in of the background of Tony, what made him… him, is the strength of this movie. Unlike the whole Vanko going nuts trying to kill Stark, this has believable emotion and belief behind it… and we see the unresolved conflict within Tony over it. Better yet, it’s not something that he comes to grips with or shrugs off, it’s just part of his identity to mull over and live with.

    The dialog in this movie is some of the worst and some of the best that the MCU has to offer. I mean, it’s time for the whole “bar of soap” jail joke to just fade away, but I can also see Tony saying something like that at this point in his life. But so much of the interaction just comes across as noise and banter.

    Every time I watch this movie I end up going to Amazon to see if you can buy this sculpture

    Basically everything Tony says without an audience must be Robert Downey Jr. doing some stream of consciousness improv. Basically everything in Morocco, the stuff back and forth with Pepper in the office… things like that. There’s a lot of dialog in there, but it’s almost like the extra money they were paying RDJ must have been by the word.

    There are points when it works well, mostly in the parts where I called out it working. Every time Sam Rockwell is on the screen as Justin Hammer is just a highlight, and his interactions with Ivan are great. Like I mentioned above though, Pepper feels like a step back here in spots, but great in others.

    This was peak action movie. Slow motion, not looking at explosions, walking without a shirt on. All it needed was a quip or two thrown in. “Sorry to Lash out at You” maybe.

    Her smacking down Justin Hammer and taking control are fine. Her being stressed out is understandable, but I don’t get the hatred for Tony that only goes away when she realizes that he was dying (something he tried to say multiple times, but, you know). They improve that aspect of it a bit more come Avengers and Iron Man 3, but it is such an abrupt change in the course of this movie.

    Huh, Project Pegasus. A nice little comic reference that I’m sure will never be referenced again

    The big introduction in this movie is obviously Natalie, the new admin assistant… whom we all know now as Natashia Rominov / Black Widow (she never gets named as Black Widow until Avengers, though). If you didn’t read any of the casting stuff, you probably didn’t know how she was going to be set up in the movie until she’s actually revealed later on as an Agent of SHIELD. In fact, she tried to get before Tony at the expo – as a blonde when she passed him a note to call her.

    To think, this was originally supposed to be Emily Blunt, but she had to drop out to make Gulliver’s Travels…

    Overall, she was an interesting character at first that you are curious about, but once she’s revealed as an agent of shield (and, based on the costume, we comic nerds know she’s likely Black Widow), she becomes a fascinating character. The best fight scene of the movie belongs to her, punctuated by the humor of Happy thinking he’s helping so much while she just goes on to disable the entire guard force.

    Last movie, we got multiple building montages of armor. Here… we get somehow building a particle accelerator out of stuff he had lying around in order to synthesize his new element. The very idea of him manually aiming it, and the power of it, is just so ridiculous. He’s basically standing in the middle of what would be an astronomical release of radiation when he goes to make it. It had an atomic number in the 200s, while the most massive thing that our universe has ever produced is Plutonium, which is 94 for those who want to wander down high school science memory lane (also stupidly rare, most of what we ever had to make bombs was man-made).

    “Been dead for almost 20 years, still taking me to school” – one of my favorite MCU lines ever

    We’ve been able to make up to 118, which existed for milliseconds, but that doesn’t occur in nature. Those took millions or billions of dollars, armies of scientists, and years of effort, experiments, and work to make minuscule amounts. Not to mention that it was done with particle accelerators that span miles and consume as much power as a small city just to run the collider. I mean, it’s ridiculous and bonkers, but still kind of enjoyable.

    After watching this and the original Iron Man close to back to back… I’m not sure if Whiplash or Stane is the weakest villain of the MCU. With Vanko, his motivations are just stated to us, but never shown except in flashbacks or small news clippings (well, and his dad’s death at the start). I get the idea that Vanko hated Howard Stark, but the whole hatred of Tony feels just forced.

    If they wanted to sneak him back in to the MCU, I’d be down

    With Stane, his was crazy and his plan was stupid, but you can see the connection there between the characters directly. I mean, from one point, I get that it’s the obsession at seeing someone have success with the same thing… but it’s not like Howard was around to see his son get killed or that Tony even understood why the hatred was there. Even the whole Vanko setting it up… we don’t get to see how he was able to reproduce the miniaturization of the arc reactor tech that Tony was able to make work (and that Tony’s father and Vanko’s father were not).

    At this point, you can really see the villain problem that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is dealing with. This is the third movie with a lackluster overall villain… but a good to great secondary villain. Justin Hammer is sort of a side act to Vanko, but is a far better character to watch because you can understand exactly how he got there. General Ross filled that role in Hulk, they didn’t establish how he got there at all but you could at least see what motivated him to go after Banner.

    No offense to Howard, but this was a better choice for the character.

    It’s strange to look back at now, but there was a time where it was somewhat concerning with the direction of the MCU. Even now, most people are going to rank this movie towards the bottom of any lists. I like it, but I still wouldn’t put it all that high… the flaws are obvious when you watch it, there’s just a lot in there to still chew on and enjoy.

    This is the first movie that laid down breadcrumbs of what was to come with the MCU overall. Avengers are mentioned by name, though nothing more past it, and we get a much bigger glimpse into what SHIELD is doing. Again, comparing to Hulk, it’s stark (pun intended) how much universe building is happening in this movie compared to the last one, and you can see the plan forming up.

    I am always curious how far forward they plan out these movies… but at this point they knew everything up to Avengers.

    With the return of Coulson, we also get the little touch early on relating to his love of all things Captain America with the prototype shield. The end credits scene is a direct shout out to the next movie, Thor, ending with the trademark thunder. We get Black Widow, setting up the relationship between Tony and Pepper (and that evolves to more of a Partnership in Avengers), and the revelations that there are a lot bigger things out there to worry about.

    While the focus of Iron Man 2 remains very much on the personal level of conflict, the threats are starting to be a lot more real. The problem with Tony Stark failing isn’t that he’s dangerous, it’s that he’s become so important to the safety of the world that it is just going to escalate to the next point. His building of the Iron Man suit was opening Pandora’s Box, and Vanko proved that the technology can be duplicated. Despite what Tony said at the start, others will have worse coming up. More than that, there are a lot of worse things out there… and maybe the people that will save us aren’t up to the task.

    Stan’s cameo in this one is literally a blink and you’ll miss it affair

    Despite that setup, Iron Man is still the best hope that exists in the MCU… and Fury seems to know it, setting him up for the final fight with the big bad. The final showdown is bombastic, but also ridiculous. They make jokes about how bad Hammer’s tech are, but we’re shown hundreds of drones firing thousands of bullets and never hitting anyone. Not even random background people. They’re worse than Stormtroopers.

    Despite that whole fight, what is just fantastic to watch is the concert movement of Iron Man and War Machine together. We got a lot of it foreshadowed earlier on with their “cross the beams” moment… but it still just worked. Their friendship remains a highlight through the rest of the films where it is shown. That being said, I wish Rhodey and Falcon would get far more screen time in the Avengers movies than they do.

    Vanko’s success seems to hinge on picking enemies that don’t realize standing fifteen feet away and engaging him renders him powerless.

    Once all the Hammer Drones are gone, though, is where it just sort of falls apart. Truth is, the end just anticlimactic. Somehow, Whiplash was able to piece together a suit and be better at using it and fighting than Iron Man or War Machine… which makes no sense at all given everything we are shown. We saw nothing to say he was smarter than Tony (at best, he’s as smart), just that he had access to the same info and a bird.

    His grand plan seemed to be fight him then blow himself up in movie-audience friendly explosions that may somehow kill Pepper. How would Whiplash know to go after Pepper, given everything we’d seen of their relationship was very private. I don’t get at all what the reasoning was for blowing up the bots everywhere (or, for that matter, how them getting shot earlier didn’t set even one of them off). It’s basically explosion for explosion’s sake… and setting up the little rooftop scene between Tony, Pepper, and Rhodey (which is pretty good).

    We’ve lost a lot of good bit character actors from the MCU in recent years…

    It’s weird how the fight is overshadowed by the aftermath of it… slowing down the “Avengers” thing and having Stark make fun of himself a bit, the whole thing with Senator Shandling were both genuinely great scenes, and the aforementioned end credits scene that rolls right into Thor. It’s weird to think that at this point, Thor was basically unknown outside of fairly big comic fans.

    He was never an overly popular hero at any point along his life, to be honest, and the vast majority of people likely had no idea who he was. Also, the end credits are worth listening to just for the Stark Expo song. They remind me of the GE and GM shorts about the World of Tomorrow, featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax… I just love those slices of cheese.

    It really bugs me… why are there so many glasses sitting on this table?

    While this most certainly isn’t the best movie of the MCU, and it is a worse movie overall than the original Iron Man… it’s not the disposable thing that Hulk was. We get two, maybe three, references to the Incredible Hulk after the movie. Here, despite the failings on many levels, there’s just a ton of world building, setup, and introductions that define what the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going to become. That fact alone elevates this one up to a three out of five in my book. It’s not what I’d call great, but it is entertaining and has some great new characters established in it.

    Review Summary

    Since there are going to be a lot of these reviews, and it’s nice to see how all of the movies stack up against one another, we’re going to add a little summary section for the Marvel Cinematic movies. When we’re all done, I’ll have an article that goes over my rankings of all the movies (which won’t necessarily reflect the overall quality of the movie in stars, etc, more of how it ranks within the total collection).

    • Iron Man (2008) – 5 out of 5
    • The Incredible Hulk (2008) – 2 out of 5
    • Iron Man 2 (2010) – 3 out of 5
    • Thor (2011)
    • Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
    • The Avengers (2012)
    • Iron Man 3 (2013)
    • Thor: The Dark World (2013)
    • Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
    • Guardian’s of the Galaxy (2014)
    • Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
    • Ant-Man (2015)
    • Captain America: Civil War (2016)
    • Doctor Strange (2016)
    • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
    • Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
    • Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
    • Black Panther (2018)
    • Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
    • Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
    • Captain Marvel (2019)
    • Avengers: Endgame (2019)
  • Review: 76077 Iron Man Detroit Steel Strikes

    Review: 76077 Iron Man Detroit Steel Strikes

    I’m going to be honest… I had very little idea what was coming up for the 2017 Marvel lineup outside of Ms. Marvel. In recent years, I’ve avoided most of the spoiler-y information around sets. There’s something nice about wandering into the store, seeing something, and going “wow, that looks cool.” It’s fairly rare in our modern world of all leaks and spoilers all the time to get something like that. Of course, sometimes that policy ends with Ace laughing at me because I had no idea there was a LEGO Batman Dimensions fun pack featuring Excalibur Batman until yesterday. Literally.

    This set was one I only knew the name of before it was shown off at Toy Fair, and once I saw the pictures, I knew I was going to buy it just because I wanted an Agent Coulson minifigure. While there’s certainly been a lot of movie-to-comic influence in Marvel stuff (movie comics from MCU invariably end up in the comics eventually), Agent Coulson has been a lasting addition after he was introduced in 2008’s Iron Man. From there, he was in Phase 1 movies (notably ending in Avengers), television (Agents of SHIELD and the Spider-Man cartoon), and now into comics.

    Coulson is pretty much the reason that I’m reviewing 76077 Iron Man Detroit Steel Strikes and its unnecessarily long name; it comes with 377 parts and a nice $29.99 price tag. We get two brand new characters in Justin Hammer and Coulson, and a brand new version of Iron Man that includes his hair. I remarked how odd the mixture of sources was in the Ms. Marvel set, but I’m not sure it has anything on this weird mashup of cartoon, movie, and made-up stuff. Still, it’s got Lola, so maybe this “yet another mech” has something going for it.

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  • Review: 70900 The Joker Balloon Escape

    Review: 70900 The Joker Balloon Escape

    You know, every so often LEGO makes a part you just can’t help but love. Things like the original lightsaber, the batarang, and jester caps are among my favorites. I’m pretty sure that the joker smile face is going to end up on that list, even if it’s a pretty specialized head. There is something wonderful in how it seems to wrap the Joker up in LEGO just perfectly, and it’s hard not to look at the sinister smile and not smile in kind.

    I knew I wanted to review 70900 The Joker Balloon Escape before any of the other Batman sets. It was fantastically goofy and simple, the cheapest set to get purple-suit Joker in (this head also appears in Arkham, while the rest of the torso and the coattails show up in the Scuttler), and the set part built into different builds with 70901 Mr Freeze Ice Attack and 70910 Scarecrow Special Delivery to make the energy works. I’m sure it all ties together for some plot point in the movie (which is only a month away as I write this review), but even by itself, it works as a good little set.

    This 124 piece set, featuring two minifigures, is the cheapest non-CMF set at $14.99. I miss the era of inexpensive sets that you could just use for simple builds, so it’s always nice to see something small pop up. I’m not sure there’s much else you can build out of it at first glance, but I always need balloons for city and park setups, and I’m sure builders more talented than I am can come up with some nifty stuff here. Except with yet another Batman figure… not sure how many of them you can use at this point.

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  • Review: 76034 The Batboat Harbor Pursuit

    Review: 76034 The Batboat Harbor Pursuit

    One of the very few things that makes sense in Batman vs Superman is when they show Alfred fixing some of Batman’s gear. Oh, and spoiler, I guess, for something that’s basically used as a non-plot point and to get you to laugh later when the Batmobile gets damaged. Alfred has long been one of the best parts of Batman lore, and frequently the moral compass and influence of “humanity” to keep Batman from going full-on psycopath. BvS is a movie of many sins, and under-using Jeremy Irons is towards the top of the list. Seriously.

    I’ve been hard on DC in the past for sticking Batman in sets where he doesn’t belong, but I have no problem with actual Bat-themed sets. One of the most wonderfully absurd parts about the Batman mythos is the insane manufacturing and fabrication industry that must exist to make the highly specialized fleet of vehicles that he has to use. Say what you want about Batman, he’s obviously a guy that understands good marketing.

    I decided to review 76034 The Batboat Harbor Pursuit mostly because I wanted Deathstroke and the set helped me get some promo item by bumping up my purchase at a LEGO store. I’ve had it for awhile, took pictures, etc… everything else just kept getting in the way. It’s not that it’s a bad set, or even looks like a bad set; at $30 and 264 pieces, along with greatest of the Deadpool knockoffs*, it seems to be fairly solid. It’s just… how many Batmans is too many Batmans?

    *That was a joke, for those currently wanting to go rant in the comments

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  • Review: 76051 Super Hero Airport Battle

    Review: 76051 Super Hero Airport Battle

    I’ve provided my theory on what constitutes a spoiler and what doesn’t in our modern, internet-y world. Telling someone that Vader is Luke’s father is a spoiler; learning that Vader wears a mask because he has a very bad case of asthma is not. The only reason I mention that is because there was wailing and gnashing of teeth when this particular set came out, because of the appearance of a particularly awesome version of Ant-Man.

    I get that some people might have been genuinely surprised that Ant-Man became Giant Man suddenly… they likely haven’t read the comics; but it’s not like that’s going to be some big plot point in the movie. Giant-Man is not what ends up kicking off the Civil War (revealing that would be a spoiler, like releasing your first trailer for a movie with your big surprise and bad guy). And spoiler aside… you have to admit that his inclusion makes what, at first glance, is just “yet another Quinjet” set into a “ohmygod Giant-Man imuthavethisset!”

    I knew I was going to review 76051 Super Hero Airport Battle the moment the first pictures of the set showed up. There’s even a threatening note for Ace in the signup sheet that I was going to take it (of course, I leave threatening notes for Ace all over the place in general, so it may have gone unnoticed). Part of the reason is because I’ve reviewed all the other Super Heroes sets lately (I think I’m the only one on the staff still buying them… but who knows), and I’ve already complained about all the jets. At 807 parts and $79.99 USD, this seems to have a lot of value at it’s surface. Looking at the set, it seems a bit sparse, but there are six different heroes, along with Ant-Man in both giant and mini form. So it could be we potentially have a knockout set here.

    That or we have yet another Quinjet.

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  • Review: 76047 Black Panther Pursuit

    Review: 76047 Black Panther Pursuit

    Black Panther wasn’t really big in the general arc of my comic fandom. I was a kid of the 80s and 90s, and I don’t even remember him showing up in the stuff I read (which, like everything in that era, used a lot of Xs and was Xtremely Xcessively Xtreme). When I got back into comics seriously a few years ago, I had missed the best of his stories, like his marriage to Storm from the X-Men and the whole “at war with everyone all the time” that seemed to go with the character.

    Of course, in the past few years, the character has risen to prominence again, and been at the center of all the big events (Illuminati, Secret Wars, etc), so it was pretty great to hear he was showing up in the movies. I’m curious how they’re going to handle him, and Wakanda, in the upcoming movie. The character was one that always worked according to his own agenda and sense of honor, and it could look like a good guy or a bad guy from the outside. Sometimes, he’s both.

    I’m excited enough for the movie that I jumped at the chance to get all of these sets, and start the reviews with 76047 Black Panther Pursuit. It seems to have all the requisites of a Marvel Super Heroes set at this point… Captain America and/or Iron Man, a motorcycle, and a jet of some sort. At $29.99, this is the mid-point set (though much lower than the middle for LEGO’s range), and it weighs in at 287 parts and three minifigs. It seems like a pretty solid set at first glance, so here’s hoping that it holds up.

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  • Review: 75134 Galactic Empire Battle Pack

    Review: 75134 Galactic Empire Battle Pack

    LEGO has never been the best company at communicating, well… anything really, unless they wanted something from fan and news sites. So while it was surprising that when the 2016 sets showed up at the beginning of the year and half of the new sets were missing, it wasn’t really shocking that LEGO missed telling anyone about it. The weirdest part was that Europe got all of the releases at the same time, but the rest of the world was left waiting for the new sets that had originally been revealed together.

    No idea if it has something to do with the “shortage” that LEGO reported in Europe last year, but there have been some real strange trends in the LEGO supply chain lately after years of pretty predictable stuff. Several sets were gone in short windows, and some seem to linger around on shelves. Now that all of the early 2016 sets on on shelves, we have last year’s lingering battle packs along with four new packs. I’ve already covered 75132 First Order Battle Pack and 75131 Resistance Trooper Battle Pack, which are both fine ways to spend your LEGO dollars.

    While I love the chance to bolster the number of First Order troops I have (Resistance is a bit more sketchy, as they didn’t do anything) in the movie, I was far more excited to review 75134 Galactic Empire Battle Pack and it’s brother, 75133 Rebel Alliance Battle Pack, since there is no such thing as too many Rebel or Imperial troops. I’ll talk about the Rebel pack on Thursday, but there were some things that were an immediate draw in the Empire pack, like an Imperial Technician and a couple of jetpacks. At 109 parts and the standard Battle Pack cost of $12.99, this set seems to have a whole lot going for it. Except apparently anything to clean armor.

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  • Review: 75904 Mystery Mansion

    Review: 75904 Mystery Mansion

    One of the more sinister (but understandable, from a marketing perspective, I guess) things that LEGO does is spreading characters across multiple sets, so if you want to build an entire group, you need to buy every set in a series. In larger setups like Star Wars, I get that, or even in Super Hero sets… but for stuff like Scooby Doo and the Hobbit, where the group is the central focus of the story, it’s kind of annoying. I’m still not certain that all of the dwarves from the Hobbit were released, but there were like seventeen million different characters in that movie.

    At least with Scooby Doo, you really only need to buy two sets to complete the gang, the fantastic Mystery Machine set, and this set. Of course, you’d miss some decent bad guys and you have to buy the most expensive set. I was rather indifferent to this set, initially. It looked interesting, but I didn’t know if it was $89.99 interesting. I figured I could grab Velma and Daphne on the aftermarket and be done with it. That plan was sort of dashed when my daughter went crazy for Halloween stuff last year (she’s three, so holidays are a big thing), and I wanted some decorations. So reviewing 75904 Mystery Mansion was suddenly on the docket.

    It weighs in at a respectable 860 pieces and includes 6 (7 if you want to count Scooby) minifigs, which is frankly a lot better than some of the other sets in this price range. There are also a lot of things that stand out just glancing at it, like pumpkin heads, the clock, and plenty of windows and purple parts. So maybe $89.99 for a decoration and completing the Scooby Gang was going to end up as worth it.

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  • Review: 75104 Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle

    Review: 75104 Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle

    The first wave of LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens sets were kind of odd in the fact that the two most expensive in the series, Kylo Ren’s shuttle and 75105 Millennium Falcon were probably the two least desirable of the entire line. Kylo Ren’s shuttle smacked of another big-set clunker from Clone Wars, The Twilight, and the Falcon had it’s huge price and some of the issues that I covered in the review. It wasn’t until after I saw the movie that I wanted this set and also ended up reviewing 75104 Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle.

    Part of that is that I wanted Kylo Ren and General Hux, honestly. The other was that in the movie, it was actually a fairly cool ship. Much like the Imperial Landing craft, it ended up being far better than I was expecting based on the promotional art and initial toy releases. The biggest knock on the landing craft was that it suffered from a problem of scale (and provided an easy target for making boat jokes, and apparently confusing people who didn’t understand that comments about it being a boat were jokes). The shuttle didn’t suffer the scale problem as much, since it came in a hefty $119.99 and 1005 pieces.

    The biggest problem with the command shuttle is obvious just looking at the box: it’s the wrong color. Another problem came after watching the movie (and is very non-spoiler-y)… the wings should angle out when in flight as well as extend. The box makes a big point that they go up, but they’re obviously stuck in the fully upright position, and we know from the movie that you do not want to lay small annoyances at the feet of a disgruntled Hot Topic employee. The question is was there enough other stuff in the ship to overcome those two fairly big issues?

    Mild Spoiler warning, since we’re talking about a movie I hope everyone that’s a fan of our site has already seen.

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