Hard as it is to believe, preview night viewers will be watching Avengers: Infinity War in just 22 days. What began with Iron Man in 2008 and has continued through Black Panther earlier this year, is an interconnected 18-film tapestry that has introduced the Marvel Universe to the entire world and created a host of indelible moments. Some of the best have been the fights (these are comic book films after all) and WatchMojo has put together a list of their 10 best.
The best fights have either been the ones that were deeply personal (Tony, Cap, and Bucky in Civil War or Cap and Bucky in Winter Solider) or were just flat-out battles your inner nerdgeekdork wanted to see (Thor and Hulk in Thor: Ragnarok). The villains in MCU films are rarely the point, but this list was published before Black Panther was released, and I wonder if the Panther/Killmonger fight would have made the list if they had to do it over. WM also considered the MCU’s TV entries and, as no surprise, there’s an iconic fight from each season of Daredevil that justly makes the list. It’s rare in the MCU that the heroes fighting each other isn’t more interesting than a villain showdown. I doubt that’s going to be the case when the entire MCU comes for Thanos and his Black Order, but we’ve only got to wait 3 weeks to find out. So were there any glaring throwdown omissions for you on WM’s list?
*I’m stunned. Here’s the obit from the New York Times.
Garry Shandling, a comedian who deftly walked a tightrope between comedic fiction and show-business reality on two cable sitcoms, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 66.
There’s an old saying amongst people who compulsively read comic books that heroes are only as good as their villains. The Marvel Cinematic Universe just churned out MCU #12 with Ant-Man (click here for review), and now we’re on a sad break until Netflix’s JessicaJones in the fall. If there’s a systemic flaw in the franchise it is that, while the heroes have been cast and developed near-perfectly, the villains have not gotten the same treatment.
Sadly, this is-in part-because a lot of Marvel’s best villains are locked into the X-Men and Fantastic Four lots that are owned by other studios. The Red Skull was completely mishandled in Cap 1, and I don’t believe for a second he’s dead so hopefully they’ll give him his due the second time around. In fact, if Tom Hiddleston hadn’t nearly stolen Phase 1 from Iron Man, we’d be talking about this as a real problem. Hiddleston’s Loki is so good that the temptation is to overuse him because he’s SO GOOD. Norse gods don’t age though, and Hiddleston will, so the smart move is to spend more time developing antagonists with depth equal to the heroes. That will probably have to start with Dr. Strange, because in Captain America: Civil War, the heroes are going to be pounding on each other.
1. Wilson Fisk (Daredevil)
I think, and we’ll see if the fall’s Jessica Jones proves me right, that the best villains are going to come out of the Netflix shows. They have what the movie villains lack: time. The Kingpin doesn’t appear until the end of the fourth episode of the series, but his presence is there from the pilot. D’Onofrio didn’t just make him a thug or a refined crime boss or a bully. He made him a scared little boy trying to mold his world like a child building a train set. Nuanced, brilliant and explosively dangerous, the Kingpin is the new standard for what a Marvel villain can be.
2. Loki (Thor, Thor: The Dark World, The Avengers)
I know, I know, you think he should be number one. He certainly was until April. He’s been in the most films of every villain (he was cut from Age of Ultron or he’d have been in four) and we’re certainly going to see him again. Loki is a character, like all the Asgardians, that could have come off corny and dumb, but Hiddleston just ate scenery like a mulcher every time he was onscreen. The best part about him, though, is he’s NOT pure evil, he does love his brother, he just also wants to rule the world. He has depth that only D’Onofrio topped and he had more time to develop it.
3. The Winter Soldier (Captain America: The Winter Soldier)
Oh he’s not much of a talker, but for sheer menace and ability, The Winter Soldier hit Cap and company like a freight train. I did not like Sebastian Stan in the first Cap film, but I will give him all the props in the world for making TWS a foe that made the Red Skull look like a pussycat (which is actually a problem, but not Stan’s fault).
4. Ultron (Avengers: Age of Ultron)
Between Ultron and The Blacklist, I live in a world where I like James Spader. However did that happen? Spader did a great job with Ultron. He’s a child, learning at an exponential rate and if he sounds like Stark….you have to remember he kind of is. That is the scary thing and that, I think, will lead us to Civil War.
5. Whiplash (Iron Man 2)
I know Iron Man 2 has its detractors, but rewatch it and look how much it sets up for Phase 2. If you had told me that Whiplash was going to somehow be made cool, I’d have passed you some very tasty pills, but Mickey Rourke managed to put actual menace in him and the scene where he compares his family to the Starks while Tony visits him in prison is one of my favorite in the MCU.
The reviews for Avengers: Age of Ultron are hovering around the 70% mark now, and I’m hearing a lot of panic last-minute. Let’s remember that Rotten Tomatoes gave Thor: The Dark World a 66% and I think that’s one of the strongest films Marvel has produced. The film, though, that I’m hearing it most compared to is Iron Man 2 (in a negative way). Here’s the thing: I liked Iron Man 2. It made Whiplash cool and introduced Black Widow. It was also tasked with doing what I think (and this is speculation) Age of Ultron will be tasked with doing. It had to set up A LOT. Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were the first two MCU films and their success made it necessary for Iron Man 2 to set up a ton of characters, plotlines and themes that would be explored not just in that movie, but in phases to come. If you watch the film now, you can see how much of a pivotal film it was. You could compare it to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix or Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which JK Rowling used heavily to set up plot points that would resonate throughout the rest of her epic and, when reread, those books are much more powerful in retrospect.
That being said, my favorite scene in Iron Man 2 is the pure Marvel porn that is Tony and Rhodey versus Whiplash and his drones. You have the trademark banter, You have an amazing fight that shows everything those two sets of armor can do at that point. I giggled like a little kid through the whole thing.
I have passes tomorrow to see Age of Ultron and we’ll see what we see. I compared it to Harry Potter, because this is a franchise unlike any other. It’s a cinematic comic book with each movie an issue in a giant overarching story. Some chapters may stand out more than others, but in any huge story there are going to have to be chapters where you lay a lot of groundwork. Let’s not forget, also, that after Ant-Man, we have Captain America: Civil War, which will feature most of the characters in Age of Ultron AND MORE, so we’re closing out Phase 2 and also beginning what will be a very dark Phase 3 before the climactic battle that will be Avengers: Infinity War.
After a month of frenzied voting, the Killing Time Community’s pick for Best Marvel Movie is the film that began it all: 2008’s Iron Man. It was not an easy win for the grandpappy of Marvel films. Battling it to the wire was Marvel’s latest film: Guardians of the Galaxy. Right behind those two was this year’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Finishing between the top 3 and a gaggle of votes for every other film was 2012’s The Avengers. Even though the original still sits atop the throne, the fact that the last two Marvel movies finished right behind it, should prove that six plus years into the Marvel movie-verse, things are just getting better and better.
