Iron Man 3

So this came out today...

Needless to say, I'm excited.

The Avengers (2012)

Now that I've seen The Avengers for a second time, I feel more prepared to offer a review that sounds a bit more coherent than 'OMG!' and 'THAT WAS THE AWESOME!'


Quick word... There will be spoilers, of this I am sure.  Be warned.


To the cast!


Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark AKA Iron Man
Chris Hemsworth as Thor, God of Thunder
Chris Evans as Captain Steve Rogers AKA Captain America
Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff AKA Black Widow
Mark Ruffalo as Dr. Bruce Banner AKA The Hulk
Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson AKA Agent Coulson
Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton AKA Hawkeye
Cobie Smulders as Agent Maria Hill
Tom Hiddleston as Loki, God of Mischief
Stellan Skarsgard as Dr. Erik Selvig
Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD


The movie opens with the evacuation of the Joint Dark Energies Laboratory.  Remember that glowing cube from Captain America?  Let's call it the Tesserect and oh ya, its apparently a doorway. As Hawkeye so eloquently points out, doors swing both ways.  Enter Loki.


See, Loki is a little pissed that his brother Thor cast him out of Asgard.  Loki is given the power of a Tesserect like staff and the promise of an army of creatures known as the Chitauri.  Loki gets to conquer and rule Earth, while the Chitauri gain the power of the Tesserect.  Nothing major, right?


Director Fury will have none of this.  He decides to activate the Avengers Initiative, which will bring together our heroes of the previous films.  The Council (Fury's bosses) are not pleased with this.


But, this, of course, does not go as planned.  The way in which our hero's come together is through conflict with each other.  And the conflict is good.  Thor v. Iron Man, Cap v. Thor.  Lots of smashing fun.


We all gather on the Helicarrier (spoiler: its awesome).  Loki works his devious ways and splits the team again, causing more hero on hero action.


Spoiler: Thor v. Hulk = awesome.


Its at this point the main event starts to kick off.  The Chitauri are invading.  Stark Tower is providing the source of the power for the gateway.  Time to destroy a good chunk of New York.


This last action piece of the film is superb.  One of the best parts is where ego maniac Iron Man effectively gives control of the battle to Cap.  Cap expertly doles out roles, telling Hulk to smash.  And smash he does.


Eventually, when all looks like it is lost, The Council decides to nuke Manhatten.  Fury has none of this and blows up the plane carrying said nuke.  Gotcha!  There are two planes taking off.


Iron Man grabs the missile from the second plane and takes it through the portal, blowing up the main Chitauri ship.  Portal closes, battle over, Avengers go their separate ways.  Roll credits. 


But wait!  What is this scene in the middle of the credits?  Could it be a spoilerific preview of who will be a future bad guy?  It is.  Enter: Thanos.


I know little of Thanos, but I'm sure he will be a good villain to face off against.


Summary:  I really, REALLY enjoyed this film.  I look forward to the next series of the Marvel movie universe.

New Avengers trailer!!!!!!!!!

Yup, I am supremely  stoked for this.  A lot.

The Avengers (2012) Trailer

Oh my good gravy.  The Avengers trailer was released today.  In case you missed it, (which I'm sure you haven't), I've included it below.  Go watch it.  Once or twice, its up to you.

What do I think?  Short form: holy hell that movie is going to be amazing.  I was a touch worried about how Joss would handle it, but stylistically it looks like Iron Man, which is a plus.  In talking with a co-worker, we figure there will be some Kree/Skrull action possibly directed by Loki?  Who cares!  I love the interplay between Stark and Cap, and then Stark and Banner.

All I know, is that I can't wait for May.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Abraham Erskine: Why someone weak?  Because a weak man knows the value of strength, the value of power...


SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!


Oh, you wanted something more?


Well, why didn't you ask?


Captain America tells the story of Steve Rogers, a kid from Brooklyn who is... less than physically fit according to the standards of the US Army Draft Board.


He gets injected with some serious human growth hormone, and becomes Captain America.  Turns out however that he is not alone.  The leader of Hydra, Red Skull, became said crimson bone assembly when an injection of same human growth hormone went... wrong.




So now that we have our crazy, power mad villain, lets get with the ass whoopin!  Sorry Cap, first you have to go raise money by singing and dancing.  And slugging ole' Adolf. (see first cover ever of Cap comics).  Actually, I rather enjoyed this sequence as it worked in some of the earlier Cap costumes.  Cap gets mad, and wants to do something.  After spitting out a piece of scenery that got stuck in his teeth, Tommy Lee Jones tells him to stay out of the way.  Does Cap?  Hell no!  He goes and rescues Bucky Barnes and the rest of the Howling Commandos.


More ass whoopins ensue, and Cap gets trapped in ice.  Movie begins and ends with the discovery of Cap in the ice.  Sam 'BMF' Jackson shows up as Nick Fury (or Nick Fury showed up as Sammy J... not sure about that) and says to Cap: 'You're not in Kansas anymore' (1)


Overall, I really enjoyed this movie.  It felt a lot like Thor in that its a back story movie, so we don't have to waste time on said back stories in The Avengers.  I rate this right at the same level as Thor.  For some reason, nothing has topped Iron Man/Iron Man  2 in my super hero movie list yet.  A fun romp that stuck fairly close to the source material, its a good standalone movie, and a hell of a lead up to The Avengers in 2012.


Appropriately awesome post credits sequence gave me nerd tingles for 2012.


(1) This is NOT what Nick Fury said, but it sounded cool in my head

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Logan: Control?  You know, sometimes when you cage the beast, the beast gets angry.


And here we are.  One of the more divisive movies I know, people either love it or hate it.  The end of X2 set us up rather nicely for a telling of the Dark Phoenix story.  And we did get a telling of that story.  Just not the one that is from the comics as I understand.


See, I've never really been into the X-Men comics. So I had very little invested in the movies.  With one exception.  Portions of this movie was taken from the Joss Whedon penned Astonishing X-Men.  And they treated that material well.


Dark Phoenix however...


I dunno.  It felt forced.  Killing off Cyclops was... pointless?  Plot device?  Apparently Professor X did some mind control on Jean to protect her from herself.  She's crazy powerful.  And then the Phoenix cam through and wanted to tear things up.  So naturally she kills Prof. X and joins with Magneto.


BTW, there is also a mutant cure.  Which Rouge takes.  And then sits back on the bench, cause, ya know she had nothing else to do in this movie.  Magneto wants to (again) destroy all humans!  The X-Men (again) want to stop him.


And here we are on Alcatraz Island.  Probably one of my favorite battle scenes.  On one side we have a shit ton of the Brotherhood of Mutants.  On the other, puny humans and some X-Men.  Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Iceman (who totally goes full ice!), Beast, Kitty Pride.  And that's it.  Intense battle ensues.


In the end, Magneto is 'cured', Professor X is 'alive' and Jean Grey is dead.  I like the movie.  Like I said, its got some good action pieces, including a part in the danger room against a Sentinel.


I look forward to X-Men: First Class.  This was a nice end to the trilogy.  I know its not without issues, but what movie is truly perfect?

X2: X-Men United (2003)

Wolverine: You picked the wrong house, bub.


And right there in the quote I chose for this film, I represent again how well X-Men set up for this movie.  Intentional or not, to me this hearkens back to the line in X-Men where Professor X pities the poor fools who choose to attack his school.


In this case, the attacker is one Stryker, the person responsible for Wolverine's adamantium skeleton.  Stryker would like to destroy all the mutants in the world because Prof. X couldn't help Stryker's powerfully mutant son.  So in one of the most ill advised moves in cinema history, Stryker attacks Xavier's school, so he can kidnap some of the kids and test his mutant killing version of Cerebro.  Bad idea.  Yes, he does take some, but I maintain Stryker's team got the shorter end of the stick.


Speaking of mutants, we also get to see Nightcrawler.  Very cool, very well done.  And he didn't even need to tell us he's invincible.  (Bond joke there.  Look up Alan Cumming, and Goldeneye)


But wait!  In one of my favorite escape scenes, Mystique has injected a guard with iron who somehow gets past the metal detector and walks into Magneto's  plastic cell.  So, Magneto extracts the lead from the poor guard and escapes with a certain panache.  All hell begins to break loose.  Of course, Magneto wants to kill all the humans.  Magneto and Stryker meet, hugs and kisses ensue.


Um, no.  We all meet up at Alkali Lake, the location of Stryker's super secret love shack.  And just as all the mutants are about to be destroyed, Magneto shows up and starts the process on destroying all the humans!


Well, that's not really that important.  No one side gets obliterated.  What we do get is Jean Grey dieing, and setting up for what should be a pretty bad ass telling of the Dark Phoenix saga.


What we got was X-Men: The Last Stand.  Which isn't completely fair, as I think X-Men: The Last stand is pretty decent, but I won't be going into that here.

X-Men (2000)

Cyclops: Well, what would you prefer? Yellow spandex?


Going into this movie, oh, 11 or so years ago, I knew very little about X-Men other than names of the characters and their powers.  So, I went into this movie with no expectations other than to be entertained.  And I was not disappointed.  This is a great super hero movie.  One of my favorites.


Plot here is simple.  Magneto wants to take over the world, and Professor X is going to stop him.  In the process of this occurring, we are introduced to some of the bigger X-Men and villains.  Cyclops.  Wolverine.  Rouge.  Mystique.  Storm. Toad.


One of the things I forgot about this movie was how well it set up for X2.  One of the cleanest endings to any movie with a predictable sequel.  Not much to review here, just a simple super hero action movie.


I give it 8/13 X-Men

Captain America: The First Avenger FTW!!!

Thor Poster

Behold, The Mighty Thor, in all his awesomeness.  Dear May, come soon please.  Thanks.