RageLite review - Thor: Ragnarok

After Catwoman, I need a bit of a palate cleanser, so let’s return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Thor: Ragnarok.

Of the Avengers characters who’ve had multiple solo movies, Thor’s have undoubtedly been the weakest. Whilst Loki remained one of Marvel’s strongest villains, the films themselves often felt bland and boring. This was particularly the case with the Dark World, which ended up being quite a divisive movie.

It’s all change for Ragnarok though. Natalie Portman, who allegedly hated filming the Dark World, is gone, and once again, we have a new director, this time Taika Waititi. The overall style and tone from the first two movies is to get a massive overhaul, but I’ll leave that for the review portion. Waititi’s past experience is in comedy, with his directing credits including “What we do in the Shadows” and “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” neither of which I’ve seen but they’re both critical and commercial successes.

And the trend would continue here, Thor Ragnarok would go onto make $890m on its $180m budget and scoring a 92% Rotten Tomatoes rating with an average 7.52/10 and an 89% audience rating with a 4.2/5 average. All these figures exceed the previous Thor movies, but is it worth the reception, here’s my take

Marvel Month - Mini Review - The Avengers/Avengers Assemble

Next up in Marvel Month, it’s Time for Avengers assemble

I’ve already done a review of that, and a lot of my complaints still stand is it goes into *sigh* its 4^th season, that said I have seen improvements. But this time we’re looking at the other Avengers Assemble

Known as The Avengers in the US, the title was changed to not be mistaken for the British The Avengers, the Nostalgia Critic did his review on that and I have no unique perspective to cover it as I’ve never seen it, it’s a little before my time.

But Avengers Assemble was a massive gamble for Marvel, with a hefty $220m budget, a large cast and the pressure of being that movie everything was all building up to, this movie blew everyone away, meeting their expectations and of course, for Disney, who had recently acquired Marvel, made over $1bn at the box office, $1.5bn to be more precise. This is also the first Marvel movie I ever watched, at the cinema with my soon-to-be uni housemates.

But 2012 was a way away, does it still hold up, let’s take a closer look.

Marvel Month - Mini review: The Incredible Hulk

So, the Hulk. A classic Jekyll and Hyde story. You’d think there’s potential for great movies with that concept but with Aang Lee’s introspective but ultimately incredibly boring adaptation was a colossal failure and the less said about the Incredible Bulk the better. But neither of those are part of the Marvel cinematic universe, this is, despite the Hulk being played by Edward Norton in this movie and Mark Ruffalo in the others.

This movie was very much overshadowed by Iron Man, making only $260m on its $150m budget but that was enough and met Marvel’s expectations. Critics marked this with a 67% Rotten Tomatoes rating, only one film in the entire MCU has a lower rating than that, but we’ll get to that in due course, for now, here’s what I think.

Editorial: My thoughts on Civil War II

You've heard me talk about this one in a few reviews but given that my Next review, Jessica Jones, has significant links to this event, or at least a particular aspect of it, it's time to give my thoughts in full.

Guilty Pleasures #15 - Ultimate Avengers 2

When it comes to direct to DVD flicks, DC is leaps ahead of Marvel. Whilst DC has had its slip-ups (JL: War and Son of Batman being notable examples), Marvel haven’t really had much success. But these are a few I’d recommend as only a casual Marvel comics reader

Doctor Strange: a nice introduction to the sorcerer supreme with great moments for the character as he overcomes adversity to become the sorcerer supreme. There’s debate about the addition to his back story and I think it adds depth and emotional weight to the character. People very rarely are jackasses just for the sake of it.

The Hulk vs Series: Both Hulk vs Wolverine and Hulk vs Thor are very fun romps within the Wolverine/Hulk universe, with Deadpool appearing as part of the weapon X squad in the Wolverine one (voiced by Nolan North)

And that’s about it. There are a couple of decent ones I’ll cover in future Guilty Pleasure reviews, but those are the two that stand out to me. (Thor: Tales of Asgard and Young Avengers are in the line-up for some-when)

We also have the following which I’ll cover briefly

The Invincible Iron Man – Largely forgettable

Iron Man: Rise of the technovore – confusing

Iron Man and Hulk: Heroes united – Childish

Iron Man and Captain America: Heroes United – Childish

Planet Hulk – Decent-ish

But today, I’m doing Ultimate Avengers 2. In 2000 Marvel began the launch of the ‘Ultimate Universe’ imprint. It was a way of establishing characters without being hampered by decades of continuity, hopefully attracting new readers in the process.

It started with Ultimate Spider-man, still the most popular of the series (although it got a new titular character after the supposed Death of Spider-man) then Ultimate Fantastic 4 and X-men. But the Ultimate version of the Avengers came out initially in mini-series called Ultimates (1, 2 and 3) it was the original Ultimates book that drew the inspiration for Ultimate Avengers. (Given the synopsis from Wikipedia, it follows most of the story (minus the wife abuse storyline for Hank) folding in the Hulk plot within the Chitauri invasion plot) it was a decent success that a sequel was made, Ultimate Avengers 2

Unlike the original, Ultimate Avengers 2 is a unique story, it does not follow the plot-line of Ultimates 2, at all (largely because it hadn’t been fully written yet) and we have tagline: Rise of the Black Panther. Black Panther is a criminally underrated character in Marvel. I’d go into his origin, but this is more or less the subject of the movie.

For this review, bare two things in mind: 1) I haven’t rewatched Ultimate Avengers for this, so don’t expect me to latch onto continuity errors between films. And 2) the only Ultimates book I’ve ever read is the Avengers vs New Ultimates: Death of Spider-man tie-in book

With that out of the way, let’s dig in:

Guilty Pleasures #6 Iron Man 3

The Iron Man franchise was the beginning of great things for Marvel as their partnership with Paramount allowed the creation of a Marvel Cinematic Universe, which eventually cumulated into the Avengers.

But Iron Man sequels themselves never quite had the popularity of the first. Iron Man 2 was criticised for particularly its lack of Iron Man himself and its ending, where Tony created an impossible to synthesise element in a matter of minutes. Still it enjoys a 73% rotten tomatoes rating and made a decent $600 million at the box office, so a 3^rd instalment was inevitable.

Also note-worthy is that this is the last movie distributed by Paramount Studios. Following Marvel Comics Acquisition by Disney, Disney themselves handled the distribution of the films that followed this.

There are loud critics for Iron Man, despite its incredible box office performance, managing $1.2 billion at the box office, and its favourable 78% rotten tomatoes. I don’t consider this movie that brilliant, it’s flawed and I’ll be spending the remainder of the review explaining it. But for all its problems, I find, like most Marvel movies, it’s fun and enjoyable. So let’s dig into Iron Man 3 and discover all that it can be.