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The Incredible Hulk

Let’s get the big, huge, hulking elephant out of the room: this is not Mark Ruffalo. This is, in fact, Edward Norton, who really wanted to go in a direction similar to Nolan’s Batman. He wanted to do dark, and gritty, and it seemed like the director mostly agreed. Edward Norton embodied some of the chaos I love about Bruce Banner, and played it with a very chaotic sad tone.

Seemed like it, anyway. After this film, he was released from the role of Bruce Banner, and Mark Ruffalo was brought in instead for Avengers Assemble.

So. With that out the way, let’s talk about this.

The Incredible Hulk is weirdly gritty. The story is relatively well paced, though there is a touch too much bouncing around the favelas of Brazil.

Despite the fact that this is apparently supposed to be played fairly straight and gritty, they establish fairly early on that there is some dorkiness to it. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m hungry,” espouses Banner, to the confusion of the colleagues around him, that are confused and ready to shake down the white man.

There’s also a point where it goes from a clear, sunny day with only the odd cloud in the sky to pouring down with rain as a cinematic decision. The oddest cinematic decision- until the moonlit night whilst it rains and thunders. Apparently this director wasn’t too sure how weather worked.

It also failed on the “did the dog die?” metric. Two dogs got hit with tranquilisers intended for the hulk. I very honestly thought the first one was just straight up shot and therefore dead. Bad decision to show that, imo.

However, that scene was also followed by some good cinematic music. Nothing memorable in tune, but it used traditional percussion from Brazil as part of it, and that bit I remember. It stuck out enough to me that I wrote down a note about it!

In general, it’s reasonably paced, with time for the action to breathe, though it sometimes jumps from place to place a little fast.

But, that doesn’t really excuse several things. One, cinematography was. Uh. Hmm. Two, the story, whilst a reasonable origin story, was just... very flat compared to the other two movies that sandwich this one- Iron Man 2 and Thor. Three, the decision to play this gritty isn’t right for the origin story of a superhero. This isn’t even the saddest origin story!! The Winter Soldier has the Hulk beaten by a mile for that.

Overall Rating: 3/10

#the incredible hulk #edward norton #bruce banner #marvel cinematic universe #mcu #movie review #3/10

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Iron Man 2

Listen, for all I’d heard this was a terrible sequel to a good movie, I actually kind of enjoyed this.

But the reasons I enjoyed it are more to do with individual characters or the reasons as to why it’s not a great movie in the first place. I’ll be honest, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow really had me drooling because I am a useless gay. Pepper was stunning and wonderful as always. It was an easy watch… but that does not a good movie make.

First off, let me deal with something that really jarred me: the replacement of Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle. That threw me off for a good while until I either googled it or the name ‘Rhodey’ was mentioned and it put me back on track. I understand this was an issue of pay (really disney????) and availability for the rest of the MCU. Anyway, getting over that hump, let’s get into the meat of the review.

So, this film, if you haven’t watched it, is about Tony Stark staring his mortality in the face while 3 ‘villains’ gang up on him. Senator Stern, Justin Hammer and Ivan Vanko. I really would have rather two or even one fully fleshed out character in that spot, given them more emotional depth.

Speaking of emotional depth, really, for a movie that was about Tony counting down the days till he died, it lacked any. Zip, nada, zilch. I didn’t even feel the intense ‘I must hug him’ feelings of the first film. I should have been cringing off the sofa with his wild and erratic antics, but it all just lacked energy and any real emotion behind it. Nothing soared emotionally, and the whole thing with Pepper at the end should have been beautiful, slightly cheesy, sweet, made my heart sing. Instead, nothing.

It was just… flat. Very flat emotionally. Lots of explosions, lots of people doing things, no time to reflect on the action that had just happened. So, I guess you could call it pacing issues! Nothing as extreme as CA:tfa, where nothing was given breathing room, but it sure happened here. Things like Fury showing up and feeling extraneous to the story, Coulson appearing and disappearing for not much reason- aside from tying in Thor on a timeline, I guess. If they had either made more of or this connection had faded into the background, it could have worked!

It did give us some great moments though, like Tony sulking inside a giant doughnut, and the car with the boards sticking straight up out of it.

This is, out of the films I have seen so far, pretty skippable, even if I did think it was a nice couple of hours of entertainment.

Overall rating: 4/10

#Iron Man 2 #Tony Stark #marvel cinematic universe #MCU #Movie review #4/10

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Iron Man

I think this was technically the first movie in the MCU, kicking everything off. I can get behind it! It's fun! It's funky! It's a little dated even compared to Iron Man 2, which was only 3(?) years later.

Firstly, my main pet peeve about this movie: product placement. Product placement EVERYWHERE.

Second pet peeve: the music is either classic rock bangers or boring incidental and there's rarely anything inbetween. (Granted, the same could be said for captain marvel, so...)

Anyway, let's talk about how I'm attracted to Tony Stark when he's being a blacksmith.

His arms, guys.

Hhh. Also Tony needs a platonic cuddle sometimes poor man.

At points it got a little bit too cringy for me, but I dealt with it. It was mostly when they were playing up Tony's playboy or erratic behaviour that I twitched and felt bad. Also I am not a fan of torture scenes so that hit a no for me as well.

However, generally it was funny and dealt with hard issues like terrorism and showed the effects of displacement on people really well. It showed character growth, it did creepy obadiah pretty well and I just.... Enjoyed it. I won't say it matched up to Captain Marvel, but it's definitely a strong showing.

The pacing was fairly good, action and story were balanced well. It showed progress right from the word go, without being excessively action packed. Charming film in general, in my opinion!

Overall rating: 7/10

#Iron man #marvel cinematic universe #Mcu #Tony stark #Movie review #7/10

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Captain Marvel

Listen. I'm gay. I'm very gay.

As such my review is totally coloured by how attracted I was every few seconds. She glows??? She punches things????

Nostalgia! Blockbusters! 90s music! A cat!

So it started a bit slow, a bit matrixy, but once she got to earth we got the good stuff. Young nick fury! Early coulson! A cat!

I loved it, like genuinely loved it as a film. It was cheesy, it was wonderful. I loved every twist, they let us feel the impact of her being betrayed.

There's shocking moments! There's that moment with goose that's utterly perfect! There's fury's eye!

Trust me, this is a fun one to watch. Maybe not perfect, but very fun.

Overall rating: 9/10

#Captain marvel #Mcu #marvel cinematic universe #carol danvers #Movie review #Film review #9/10

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Captain America: The First Avenger

This is the first in the timeline and well... I'm very underwhelmed. There was little emotion involved. There was too much action, all squished together, and very little breathing room for the story.

There were moments that should have been given more respect, especially the 'death' of a major character. There was no space for mourning, nothing to make it emotive.

I'm a big lover of music in my films and even man with a star spangled plan didn't stand out. Nothing catchy, nothing that really bolstered or enhanced scenes.

As an aside: I'm a UK resident and knew they'd used the streets of Manchester for a chase scene through brooklyn and honestly, I could see it. Loved that, was hyped about that.

The character that overall stood out most was Peggy Carter who can ABSOLUTELY step on me any day. Love her, wish I could access Agent Carter spinoffs.

Anyway, overall I think this is actually a weak offering, and I'm not sure that if it was anything other than the first in the timeline that I'd recommend people watch it. If you know enough of his back story, you could probably skip it

Overall rating: 2/10