Marvel Month - Mini Review - Captain America: The Winter Soldier

May I introduce the 2 best directors in the MCU right now: The Russo Brothers

And next up is their debut in the MCU. Captain America: Winter Soldier

Released in early 2014, Captain America: Winter Soldier was very successful, earning $700m on the $177m budget and an 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Does it still work? Here are my thoughts:

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: Iron Man 2

Well, Iron Man 1 was a success, so a sequel was inevitable. Iron Man 2 came out in 2010 to critical acclaim at the time, however looking back on it people’s tastes seem to have soured towards it. Still it made $623m on a $200m budget so it was successful enough for Marvel as they continued to build momentum towards the Avengers. Here’s how I see it

Guilty Pleasures #27: Samuel L Jackson Month - Avengers: Age of Ultron

It’s Samuel L Jackson Month

And yeah… I’m cheating a bit with this one, since Jackson barely appears but screw it, it’s my review blog and I say this counts! So, yeah, it’s the Avengers

Yeah… The Avengers was my first Marvel Movie. And I f*cking loved it. But that’s not to say it was entirely flawless, the first half or so can kinda drag and the way the Chitauri are defeated is kinda dumb but it’s 2 hours of entertainment. How long is this movie again?

2hrs 21 minutes

Goody! Yeah, despite making over a billion dollars, again, this movie has received a fair amount of critical backlash and some of it is kinda undeserved and I’m here to defend its corner, I’m not gonna tell you it’s a perfect movie, there’s no such thing and this isn’t even close. I also have a message for most of the critics of this movie but that’s for later, let’s dig into 2 hrs 21 minutes of Avengers: Age of Ultron

TV Retrospective: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes season 2 episodes 16-20

TV Retrospective: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes season 2 episodes 11-15

TV Retrospective: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes season 2 episodes 6-10

TV Retrospective: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes season 1 episodes 16-20 review

TV Retrospective: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Season 1 episodes 1-5

With Avengers: Age of Ultron having come out only a few months back, it’s time I think to look at the Avengers cartoon

NO NOT THAT PIECE OF SH*T (Season 2 review coming when season 2 is done)

No, for this retrospective we’ll be looking at the full and complete run of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

Because of the long season lengths and the fact that I have other shows I want to do retrospectives on I will do each series in 5 parts (so 10 overall) so let’s dive into the first 5 episodes of the series.

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:

TV Retrospective: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 1 episodes 1-3 review

It’s finally time to take a look at the first season of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 

Spider-man Month: TV-Retrospective: Ultimate Spider-man

And so we come to my final entry for Spider-man month

When Disney reacquired the animated rights for Spider-man from Sony, it lead to Spider-man appearing in The Avengers: Earth’s mightiest heroes. It also lead to the cancellation of The Spectacular Spider-man, to be replaced by a more in-house production.

“Based” on Marvel comics Ultimate Imprint (despite the fact that Peter Parker had long been replaced by Miles Morales in that imprint) Ultimate Spider-man was the result. It’s been the subject of infamy amongst fans. Some appraising it’s new direction and the focus of it integrating it into the Marvel Universe, others thinking it sucks. What do I think? I’ll get to that later.

Bear in mind, I have not gone over all the episodes of the series for the purposes of this review, I am doing this purely off memory (and limited research) so there may be a few inaccuracies and of course spoilers will follow