I realised while watching Iron Man what my problem with the Marvel Cinematic Universe is now. It was confirmed when I watched Thor and Avengers Assemble - at this stage - I'm watching the films in a totally random way (I'm still to decide to re-watch Iron Man 2 and Incredible Hulk) - the original Phase One films were by and large absolutely fucking brilliant. They oozed with great lines, fantastic special effects, nice compact stories and a theme that ran through them all like an analogy that suits this description. It's what's missing from 2022 MCU films; that sense of wonder; that feeling you're walking into something bigger and better than any other film franchise has tried to do; the sense of myth building happening in front of your eyes.
With the exception of Mark Ruffalo's version of the Hulk, we'd met Tony Stark, Thor, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov and Steve Rogers before, either as cameos, guest-stars or in their own films and seeing them combine in a New York-levelling blockbuster like Marvel's The Avengers (or whatever it's called in whatever country it's shown) felt like the first time you read a comics-spanning crossover, or saw an Avengers comic with a galactic threat. No wonder Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame were record-breaking box office hits; the MCU had created a fabulous new world/universe and it was time to tear it apart...
You could argue that the current Multiverse story unfolding in the MCU is bigger, bolder and more daring, but it isn't just that, there's whatever new sub-plot Shang-Chi belongs to, which also might include some of the scenarios from the Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Hawkeye series, the new cosmic storyline involving the Eternals, other family members of Thanos's and the Celestials and other things waiting in the wings to further muddy the waters (Blade, Black Knight, etc). You could argue that after the Infinity Saga the only way forward for the MCU is to have a multi-plot even-bigger blockbusters styled series of movies that while linked to each other and the MCU are also new even-bigger threads of their own. Like I said, muddy the waters, because how the second Black Panther film, the Ms Marvel and Moon Knight series, the next Ant-Man and the Wasp film and The Marvels fit into the grand scheme of things will obviously become clearer, but all the while it just feels like an attempt to get as many people buying tickets to watch all their films as possible - and, yes, I know that's how the business of film franchises work, but it didn't seem to be a problem when the MCU was in its embryonic stages. I think that was because people wanted to see what happens next - like the first or second season of a great TV programme; the problems arise when you have to top the previous season with something even more outrageous and MASSIVE.
I've forecasted a couple of times now that I believe the Fantastic Four film - probably due to drop autumn/winter 2023 - will be the conclusion of the Multiverse story and may also reset/reboot the entire MCU franchise by recasting characters such as Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow and as many of the other 'Avengers' characters who have aged up to 15 years by the time we get to the FF film and will be hard pressed to continue as these super heroics without serious money on special effects or having them all get geriatric together (plus if Johannsson, Evans and RDjr aren't going to reprise their roles in a new reunified single universe, then you're going to need new actors to inherit the roles).
But this is all speculation and what I'm here to do, this time, is wax lyrically about why Phase One was the best of all the stages of the MCU so far...
Iron Man is an exceptional way to start a film franchise. Just about everything about it is perfect and largely believable - yes men in iron suits firing disrupters might sound far-fetched but even in the 1960s when Tony Stark was first wounded - in Viet Nam - and needed the armour to stop shrapnel from entering his heart and killing him, this was a concept that over the years stopped being science fiction and is now not far from being science fact. Marvel's choice of doing Iron Man first is at the very heart of why they've been so successful and frankly the only thing that has dimmed the MCU has been the fact that there haven't been more Iron Man films, specifically better ones than 2 & 3.
Robert Downey Jr was born to play Tony Stark and for 10 years he ruled the MCU as the stand out character, the soul of it and the backbone of it. Captain America, also brilliantly portrayed in the films, is a close second, but he didn't have Tony Stark's joie de vivre or one-liners or looks or suave and brilliant sophistication. Tony was the billionaire we want all our real billionaires to be like and he cemented his place in everything with the closing scene of the first film where, after a couple of poor attempts at suggesting the Iron Man was a bodyguard, he just comes out and admits that it's him and BANG! The MCU was not only born, it was there, in your face, in a way the comics could never equal.
I bloody love this film. It's by far and away my favourite MCU film. It had just enough of everything without being OTT and felt so understated it allowed everything else to ramp up the peril and action without it ever feeling like they were simply ramping up the action because that is what was expected.
Thor has slowly crept up the list of great MCU films. I think there was a sense of because it's a Kenneth Branagh film it was going to be a bit too serious, hi-brow almost. It's not, but it does add some marvellous sense of cosmic and fantastic to the franchise. It's a big and bold film with lots of Shakespearean touches and a true sense that Asgard is a bonkers place with such grandeur and wonder that it's almost impossible for us mere mortals to comprehend it. Branagh does a bang on job and our introduction to Thor is, like Iron Man, a real nod to the original comics. It is however a proper foray into fantasy territory and at times feels a little rushed, almost like Branagh wanted to focus on the characters rather than the action. I was initially disappointed that The Destroyer was made too easy to get rid of - in the comics it was a character that was almost impossible to defeat, which was why it usually served Odin and wasn't used against our hero, unless Odin wasn't about and that was how it played in the film.
It also properly introduces us to SHIELD, although it was obviously a key component in the Iron Man film, this gave them more of an identity, albeit slightly more sinister than they would become. It's a really big film with some excellent stars camping it up and obviously having a great time. The real stand-out is Tom Hiddleston's Loki, who has truly metamorphosed from the nasty villain he became for the Avengers film into a truly heroic character. This film ranks very high in my list of favourite MCU films - top 5 at least and the crazy thing is I doubted whether they could pull Thor off and make him and his supporting cast into mainstays of the MCU, yet the three Thor films to date, in terms of quality and story, have all been excellent.
Marvel's The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble) almost feels like it arrived too early and yet as a spectacle it's a real powerhouse of a film and while Joss Whedon's stock might have fallen he was really able to flesh out some of the characters and yet feels like a proper rollercoaster of ride.
There are things about this film that feel a little off. We last saw Loki plunging into the abyss of space and time in the final moments of Thor and we're reintroduced to him as a sunken eyed, revenge-addled nasty with a disdain toward humans that felt misplaced in many ways, probably due to the fact that while he is a villain, his relationship with his brother has always been handled with love and tenderness, despite the God of Mischief always looking for an angle to exploit. The thing is, this film was designed to essentially introduce us to the threat of Thanos, without him really being in it apart from a brief mention and the first post-credit scene. This was the film that opened the world to threats from far away and there's an uneasy feeling about what SHIELD has been doing in the months after Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger.
It's also great to see the Hulk and the beginnings of the relationship that would never really happen between Banner/Hulk and the Black Widow. Ruffalo ended up being more than an adequate replacement for Edward Norton, who played the character in the appropriated Incredible Hulk. I also felt that the focus on Hawkeye, the Widow and Nick Fury was balanced extremely well; after all the other Avengers had their own films and while the Hulk was undoubtedly a slightly different one from the 2008 film, that was far enough in the past for Marvel to take the key parts from that and replace Norton with someone who was likely to be in for duration.
This film was the end of Phase One, because everything after this was either closely or subliminally linked to the thing that is often referred to as The Infinity Saga but it had everything you needed from a blockbuster stand alone film and while we're unlikely to see another Avengers film of this ilk again, it's a formula that worked extremely well and shouldn't be forgotten about, especially given how muddled the MCU seems to have become.
Captain America: The First Avenger - which I watched about four months ago - is a cracking film that completely destroyed my hate for the character. I've spent most of my life in comics struggling in vain to find a run of the Captain America comic that I've enjoyed, mainly because I've never really got the idea of Captain America (yet, perversely I've never had a problem with Captain Britain).
I approached this film a decade ago thinking I'd dislike it and was proven wrong and now I've seen it three times I can safely say it's one of the three best Marvel films ever. It's a great war film that feels like a costumed version of an Indiana Jones film. It has sexy characters, a great script, a relevant origin story and, like all the others, seemed to stick with the origin story to a tee. There's little wrong with it, even the pantomime Nazis and Red Skull are a perfect fit. It sets so much up that I feel was needlessly ignored in later MCU films and has the Howling Commandos, who were rather let down by there not being a Sgt Fury to lead them - now that would have been something, especially if Nick Fury had been nearly 100 years old when he became director of SHIELD.
It's almost a perfect superhero film, let down by the tiniest of quibbles.
While I have The Incredible Hulk to watch again - it was only about a year ago since we last watched it - along with Iron Man 2, I firmly believe that Phase One of the MCU is the best of everything that was to follow.
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