The MCU began on May 2, 2008 with Iron Man, which was joined a month later on June 13 by The Incredible Hulk, on May 7, 2010 Iron Man 2 was released, with was followed in 2011 by Thor(May 6) and Captain America: The First Avenger(July 22). On May 4, 2012 The Avengers ended Phase One. Iron Man 3 opened on May 3, 2013, and was followed that same year by Thor: The Dark World(November 8). In 2014, the MCU world as we knew it was shattered by the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier(April 4), and Guardians of the Galaxy(August 1) surprised everyone. In 2015, Avengers: Age of Ultron(May 2) changed the roster of the group, and Ant-Man will close out Phase Two on July 17.
If I was being really ambitious, this ranking would also include the One-Shots, Agent Carter, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Daredevil(with the rest of the Netflix shows to come).But you've got to start somewhere, right? Movies only for now. So, here we go...
11(8) - Thor: The Dark World - Plot Summary - Following the events of The Avengers, Loki is put on trial for his crimes and imprisoned. Jane Foster and Darcy the intern are working in London now, studying the Convergence, a once-every-5,000-years occurrence where the Nine Realms come together. Jane is infected with the Aether, one of the Infinity Stones, and so Thor has to travel to Earth to pick her up and see if she can be uninfected on Asgard. There she meets his parents, and Odin recognizes that the Aether's reappearance(his father hid it, hopefully forever, thousands of years ago) means the Convergence is about to happen, which could destroy the universe as we know it. Oh, and it will also kill Jane. Malekith and Algrim the Dark Elves are trying to get the Aether, so they attack Asgard trying to capture Jane. (They fail.) However, during the battle Thor's mother Frigga dies, and Loki is broken out of prison. He and Thor team up to save Jane and get revenge for Mom's death, respectively, by going after Malekith on Svartalheim, "The Dark World". Malekith gets the Aether out of Jane, and then treachery happens, Algrim ends up dead, and Loki slowly expires. Jane and Thor return to London, where they work with Darcy and Dr. Erik Selvig to stop Malekith from releasing the Aether at the center of the Convergence: Greenwich, England, Earth. That would pretty much destroy the universe somehow. Thor and Malekith have a huge planet-hopping battle, with the scientists doing science things, it's all really hard to follow. The universe is saved for now, though. Thor goes back to Asgard to decline the throne, and he returns to Earth. Just after he leaves again, we find out that Loki was impersonating Odin. In the immediately-following episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Coulson's crew leads janitorial duty on the Greenwich cleanup, which leads to some amusing comments.
My Thoughts - Tom Hiddleston is about the only watchable part of this movie...everyone else looks like they're bored out of their minds. The plot is extremely hard to care about, even if we can suspend our disbelief for a while. Really, the one-liners are about the best part. I've only seen this movie twice, and that was over a year ago, so take this low opinion with a bit of salt. Also, Thor seeming to care more about Jane's not dying than the world ending makes a tiny bit of sense when you remember that she's played by Natalie Portman.
Quotable Quotes - (Heimdall is talking about the Convergence, how though dangerous, it can be beautiful as well.) "I see nothing." - Thor. "Perhaps that is not the beauty you seek."
(Jane slaps Loki.) "That was for New York!" (Loki to Thor.) "I like her."
"Brother, whatever you are doing, I suggest you do it faster." "Well done! You just decapitated your grandfather." "You lied to me. I'm impressed." - all Loki to Thor.
"I saw you with the Avengers in New York." - Jane to Thor. "I was defending the Earth!" "That's your excuse?" "Yes!" (She pauses, frowning.) "It's...not terrible."
"I've got everything under control!" - Sif to Thor. "Is that why everything is on fire?"
"Is this how you expect me to while away eternity? Reading?" - Loki to Frigga. (I approve of this plan...)
Grade - 67, D.
10(2) - The Incredible Hulk - Plot Summary - A paranoid Dr. Bruce Banner lives alone as a figutive in an apartment in a subsection of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and he works in a soda factory while trying to find a cure for his condition. It's been 156 days without incident when he cuts his finger on some glass, where a drop falls into a soda bottle. An elderly man in Milwaukee drinks this contaminated bottle and gets gamma sickness as a result. The Army hears about this, and so Gen. Ross sends a SWAT team led by Emil Blonsky to track Banner down. Blonsky wants to become like what Banner is, so he's injected with a bad variant of the stuff Banner took(which was a bad replication of Dr. Erskine's Super-Soldier formula that was used on Steve Rogers). Banner hitchhikes from Brazil to Virginia, where he spies on his ex-girlfriend Betty and then gets attacked by her dad(Ross) and Blonsky. Banner and Betty go on the run again, this time for New York City, where they meet the guy he'd been working with in trying to find a cure. It works, but they're captured, and then Blonsky forces Dr. Sterns to work the cure on him, too. This turns Blonsky into an Abomination which smashes most of Harlem; Banner leaps out of a helicopter to Hulk out, and they pummel each other. The Hulk nearly kills the Abomination, but stops short at the last second, and Blonsky is stuck in a prison cell in Alaska. A month later Banner is in British Columbia, where he's learned to control the transformation. Tony Stark tells Ross that "we're putting a team together". Ross looks unimpressed. "Who's 'we'?"
My Thoughts - This is a a strange movie. Edward Norton makes a better Banner than Mark Ruffalo, but since the casting switch....it's a little jarring. I love that it skips over the origin story, though. That was brilliant. The CGI already looks dated.... Stan Lee has a great cameo. And like Ruffalo or somebody said in an interview, a Hulk movie is kind of an oxymoron; because Banner tries to avoid conflict as much as possible, while stories, in order to be interesting, require conflict. So I suppose they did a good job of balancing that, but it's still a strange movie.
Quotable Quotes - "Don't make me...hungry. You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry." - Banner(in Portuguese.)
"The subway is probably quickest." - Betty. "Me, in a metal tube, deep underground with hundreds of people, in the most aggressive city in the world?" - Banner.
Grade - 71, C.
9(3) - Iron Man 2 - Plot Summary - Well, we find out the "we" behind the "team" in this movie, which came out right after The Incredible Hulk. That would be S.H.I.E.L.D., aka "Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division". After revealing that he is Iron Man, Tony Stark has the world even more by the tail, if that's possible. Meanwhile in Russia, Ivan Vanko is building his own miniature arc reactor, intending to use it to get revenge for the Stark family's actions against his dad, who had worked closely with Howard. The palladium inside Tony's arc reactor is poisoning him; and there is no known substitute. Also, the U.S. government is trying to take control of the Iron Man suit. Tony appoints Pepper as CEO of Stark Industries and then his behavior becomes increasingly erratic; even driving a Formula One car he owned in the Monaco Grand Prix. There, Vanko(calling himself Whiplash) attacks Tony, in order to prove that Iron Man can be beaten. Justin Hammer, one of Stark's main rivals, breaks Vanko out of prison in return for a line of suits better than Stark's. Tony's best friend, Lt. James Rhodes, tries to stop a drunk Tony from further embarrassing himself while at his birthday party, they eventually fight while wearing the suits, ending in a draw. Rhodey delivers the suit he was wearing to the Air Force. Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D., reappears and reveals that Tony's new assistant Natalie was actually Natasha Romanoff, an undercover S.H.I.E.L.D. agent called the "Black Widow". Agent Coulson and JARVIS help Tony discover a replacement for the palladium. The military weaponizes Rhodey's suit with Hammer Industries-provided arsenal. These Vanko-designed drones(instead of suits, as required) are put on display during the Stark Expo, as is the new "upgraded" War Machine armor, where they are programmed to go haywire. Hammer is arrested by Pepper and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, Romanoff reprograms the War Machine armor, and Tony and Rhodey eventually defeat the drones. Vanko commits suicide by hitting the self-destruct button on his suit. While watching the news footage of the Culver University Hulk battle, Fury and Romanoff determine that Iron Man is a qualified candidate for the Avengers Initiative, but Tony Stark isn't. So for the time being, Stark is recruited as a consultant. In New Mexico, Coulson finds a hammer inside a crater.
My Thoughts - If this was a ranking of MCU movies in terms of importance to the storyline; IM2 would rank in the top three with Winter Soldier and Avengers. There are so many threads that you understand afterwards by watching later movies; you just skip over them while watching because they're hidden away so well. Plotwise it's a little cluttered, but it gets better as time goes on. Still, it's the worst of the Iron Man trilogy, because you can't really wrap up things up in the second act. And also, this is still Phase One, so a ton of important things happen afterwards. It's hard to watch at times, because of Tony's self-destruction, but it's very well made. The only reason it's this low is because so many other things that followed are so much more well told.
Quotable Quotes - Basically every time Tony and Pepper are talking to each other.
"It appears that the very thing keeping you alive is also killing you." - JARVIS.
"If you try to escape, or play any sort of games with me, I will tase you and watch Supernanny while you drool into the carpet." - Coulson.
(Interrupting Tony and Pepper.) "I think it's weird... You look like two seals fighting over a grape." - Rhodey.
Grade - 81, B.
8(11) - Avengers: Age of Ultron - Plot Summary - The Avengers are attacking a HYDRA fortress in Eastern Europe, where they capture Loki's scepter, but run into Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, the HYDRA-experimented-upon pair we saw in the Winter Soldier mid-credits scene. They're better known as Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch; he has super-speed, she's telekinetic. Stark and Banner create an artificial intelligence program called Ultron, which becomes sentient and dispatches JARVIS before attacking the Avengers at their home base. Ultron captures Loki's scepter, builds an army of drones and recruits the twins to help him destroy the Avengers in order to wipe out all humanity. The first step to that plan is getting vibranium; the Avengers come to stop them, the Scarlet Witch causes nightmares in everybody, Ultron escapes with the vibranium, and the Hulk smashes most of Johannesburg. Scared, and with the world calling for their heads because of the destroyed-city thing, the team runs away to Hawkeye's hidden farm and family. Fury shows up and tells them to save the world again; they're the Avengers! So it's off to South Korea to stop Ultron from uploading himself into a synthetic body, with a citywide chase following as the twins switch sides and Natasha is captured. JARVIS is uploaded into the body instead, becoming the Vision. From there, the team, with the new people in tow, travel back to Europe to rescue Romanoff and prevent Ultron from turning most of a large city into a meteorite. The citizens are all evacuated during the battle; Quicksilver dies, and then the Witch and Vision defeat the last two remaining Ultron bots. The Hulk flies off by himself...somewhere, and Hawkeye and Tony leave the team. Thor goes back to Asgard, and Cap and Widow train a new team of War Machine, Scarlet Witch, Vision and Falcon.
My Thoughts - This movie is both far too gigantic and claustrophobically limited in scope and storyline. It's very good, but not as good as expectations were set for it. And besides, we still have half the known MCU movies to follow. There's a lot of great banter throughout, and awesome fighting moves. (Ultimate Carpentry Frisbee! Cap throwing motorcycles at people!) I haven't made my mind up yet about the Hulk/Widow deal. And this movie's position will probably be moved around a lot as these rankings get updated as time goes on.
Quotable Quotes - "Shit." - Stark. "Language!" - Steve. (Later, same scene.) "Hold it - no one's gonna deal with the fact that Cap just said 'language'?!" "It just slipped out..."
"The gates of hell are filled with his victims!" - Thor about the Hulk. "Not the screams of the dead, of course; no, no...wounded screams. Mainly whimpering and a great deal of complaining....and tales of...strained deltoids...and...gout..."
(Summarizing the twins' files.) "He's fast, she's weird." - Maria Hill.
"Everyone creates the thing they most dread. Men of peace create engines of war; invaders create avengers, people create...smaller people? Uh...children!" - Ultron.
"As maybe the world's leading authority on waiting too long: Don't. You two are great together." - Steve to Banner.
(After slicing off a guy's arm.) "Oh. I'm sorry. I think that'll be fine." - Ultron.
"How do we cope with something like that?" - Tony. "Together." - Steve. "We'll lose." "Well, then we'll do that together, too."
"You get hurt, hurt 'em back. You get killed, walk it off." - Cap. (One of my top MCU quotes.)
"This city is flying. We're being attacked by an army of robots. And I have a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense!" - Hawkeye.
"Is that the best you can do?" - Thor. (New wave of robots swarm into view.) "Ya had to ask..." - Steve. . "Humans are odd. They think that order and chaos are somehow opposites, and they try to control what won't be. But there is grace in their failings. I think you've missed that." - Vision to Ultron. "They are doomed!" "Yes...but a thing isn't beautiful because it lasts. It is a privilege to be among them." "You are unbelievably naive." (Vision smiles in agreement, nodding with an apologetic shrug.) "Well, I was born yesterday."
Grade - 84, B.
7(1) - Iron Man - Plot Summary - Tony Stark is smart. Like, we're talking prodigy-genius-level smart here. And rich. Like, Bill Gates/Steve Jobs/Taylor Swift rich. Basically, he's a rock star. And he lives like it. While showing off his company's new Jericho missile, he is ambushed and kidnapped, waking up later in a cave, with a car battery hooked up to his chest, held hostage by a terrorist group called the Ten Rings. A fellow scientist/captive named Yinsen removed a bunch of shrapnel from his chest and implanted a miniaturized arc reactor into his heart to keep Tony alive. Tony escapes the terrorists after Yinsen sacrifices himself, returning to the U.S. after his three-month interment. Once back, he announces that Stark Industries will no longer make weapons: Tony's business manager Obadiah Stane thinks that this will blow up the company and ruin Howard Stark's legacy. Tony builds an improved version of the suit, which his assistant Pepper Potts finds out about; Tony also upgrades the arc reactor to make it more powerful. At a huge charity event hosted by Stark Industries, reporter Christine Everhart informs Tony that Stane is trying to take control of the company and that the Ten Rings had been a large-scale customer for Stark-made weapons. He then flies to Afghanistan to wipe out another terrorist cell, along the way running into the U.S. Air Force and Lt. James Rhodes, where he's nearly attacked by fighter jets. Stane reverse-engineers a suit of his own. Pepper hacks into the Stark Industries computers, finding out that Stane hired the Ten Rings to assassinate Tony, but at the last minute they held him for ransom instead. Stane then retaliates for this failure by murdering most of the terrorists. He also steals the new arc reactor from Tony's chest, which is replaced by the earlier model. In the Iron Monger suit, Stane fights Tony in the Iron Man suit above the skies of Los Angeles, and trickery leads to a power surge intentionally created by Pepper that causes an explosion which kills Stane. Agent Phil Coulson finally gets to talk with Tony the next day; it was a running joke throughout the movie how Tony would blow him off. To the dismay of Coulson, Pepper and Rodey, at a press conference Tony just flat-out says, "I am Iron Man." S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury then invites himself into Stark's house for a chat.
My Thoughts - There's a lot you could say about Tony Stark. The bottom line? He's a fantastic character. They did a great job.
Quotable Quotes - "You got a family?" - Tony. "Yes, and I will see them when I leave here. And you?" - Yinsen. "No." "So...you are a man who has everything....and nothing."
"Don't waste it. Don't waste your life, Stark." - Yinsen.
"I'm allowed to have plans on my birthday!" - Pepper. "It's your birthday?" - Tony. "Yes." "I knew that. (Pause) Already?" "Yeah, isn't that strange? It's the same day as last year."
"After all these years, Tony still has you picking up the dry cleaning." - Christine. "I do anything and everything that Mr. Stark requires. Including occasionally taking out the trash." - Pepper.
(JARVIS and the workshop robots are getting the suit off Tony.) "What's going on here?!" - Pepper. "Let's be honest. This is not the worst thing you've aught me doing." "Are those bullet holes?!"
"I shouldn't be alive, unless it was for a reason. I'm not crazy, Pepper, I just finally know what I have to do." - Tony.
"The render is complete." - JARVIS. "A little ostentatious, don't you think?" - Tony. "What was I thinking? You're usually so discreet." "Tell you what. Throw a little hot rod red in there." "Yes, that should help you keep a low profile..."
"JARVIS - Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk." - Tony.
"Mr. Stark?" "Yeah?" "Agent Coulson." "Oh, yeah, yeah. The guy from the..." "Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division." "Whew. You really need a new name for that." "Yeah, I hear that a lot."
"You had a great idea, Tony, but my suit is more advanced in every way!" - Stane. "Oh, yeah? How'd you solve the icing problem?" (Stane looks blank and starts to fall) "Icing problem?!" "Might wanna look into it."
"If I were Iron Man, I'd have this girlfriend who knew my true identity. She'd be a wreck. She'd always be worrying I was going to die, yet so proud of the man I've become. She'd be wildly conflicted, which would only make her more crazy about me..." - Tony to Pepper.
"You think you're the only superhero in the world? Mr. Stark, you've become part of a bigger universe. You just don't know it yet." - Fury.
Grade - 90, A.
6(4) - Thor - Plot Summary - On the realm of Asgard, Odin is preparing to step down from the throne and appoint his son Thor to the position of king, when the ceremony is interrupted by the arrival of three Jotunns(Frost Giants) from the realm of Jotunheim, attempting to steal back an ancient weapon. (The Frost Giants and Asgardians have been at war off and on for centuries.) Seeking revenge, Thor, his friends Volstagg, Sif, Fandrall and Hogun, and his brother Loki go to Jotunheim in order to attack it. They're nearly killed until Odin intervenes; but the skate-blade-thin truce has been shattered. Realizing his folly in thinking Thor was ready for the throne, Odin banishes him to Earth(Midgard) in order to learn to grow up. He lands in northwest New Mexico, where he's run over by Dr. Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis the intern and Dr. Erik Selvig, who are studying wormholes. Darcy also tases him for good measure. They take him to the hospital in Puente Antiguo, fifty miles east, where they've set up their base camp. Within a couple days, they hit him again, also by mistake. Locals have discovered Thor's hammer Mjolnir by now, and try unsuccessfully to lift it. A bunch of people from S.H.I.E.L.D., led by Phil Coulson, commandeers the area around the hammer and extremely efficiently and thoroughly confiscates all of Jane's data and equipment. Thor breaks into the facility and finds, to his horror and anguish, that he can't lift it, either. He's arrested by S.H.I.E.L.D. and bailed out by Selvig, in between Loki stopped by to tell him (falsely) that Odin was dead and that Thor was banished forever. On Asgard, Loki learns that he was adopted, takes the throne after Odin basically goes into a coma, and convinces Laufey(Frost Giant king and Loki's biological father) to murder Odin. Sf and the Warriors Three convince Heimdall the gatekeeper to let them rescue Thor, and poor Puente Antiguo is leveled by a gigantic robot from another planet. Thor offers to sacrifice himself in order to save the lives of everyone else in town, and this proves him worthy of carrying the hammer. The mammoth destructo-bot is defeated, and Thor and his friends return to Asgard, vowing to return as allies to S.H.I.E.L.D. if needed, as long as Coulson gives Jane her stuff back. Loki saves Odin by killing Laufey, then tries to destroy the entire planet of Jotunheim. In order to stop this, Thor destroys the bridge linking the worlds, knowingly stranding himself on Asgard - and giving up hope of a life with Jane - to save the entire race of his people's enemies. Odin wakes up and is aghast at Loki's scheme to prove himself worthy, Loki drops into a wormhole and disappears, Thor and Odin reconcile, the son recognizing that he still has much to learn, and Jane leads a team to crack the mystery of the Bifrost bridge. Selvig helps with that, and also with experiments to turn the Tesseract, described years before as "the jewel of Odin's treasure room", into an energy source for S.H.I.E.L.D. technology.
My Thoughts - This is one of the most complex stories in terms of character arc and growth, both for Thor and Loki. Kind of like Shakespeare; which most of the actors and crew had experience with. Plus there's all the wonderful slanted camera angles and a really nice, warm, tone to the New Mexico scenes. The plot is very simple, but that's part of the appeal. This is one of my favorites, but it's a little slow-paced.
Quotable Quotes - "I AM NOT DYING FOR SIX COLLEGE CREDITS!!!" - Darcy the intern. (This is one of my all-time favorite MCU quotes.)
"I have no plans to die today." - Thor. "None do." - Heimdall.
"I swear I'm not doing this on purpose!" - Jane, after running over Thor for the second time within a week.
"This mortal form has grown weak. I need sustenance!" - Thor.
"You think me strange." Thor to Jane. "Yeah." "Good strange, or bad strange?" "I'm not sure yet..."
"Better call it, Coulson...'cause I'm starting to root for this guy." - Hawkeye, after Thor pummels several SHIELD agents while looking to Mjolnir.
"For the first time in my life, I have no idea what to do." - Thor. "It's not a bad thing, finding out you don't have all the answers. You start asking the right questions." - Selvig.
"I'm sorry - I don't have many guests." Jane apologizes, trying to frantically clean her trailer. "Actually, I never have guests..."
"Is that one of Stark's?" - S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. "I don't know," Coulson moans. "Guy never tells me anything."
"Uh, base, we've got, uh...Xena, Jackie Chan, and Robin Hood." - S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.
"So, this is how you normally look?" - Jane to Thor. "More or less." "It's a good look!"
"How is he?" - Frigga. "He mourns his brother. And he misses her..." - Sif.
Grade - 93, A.
5(6) - The Avengers - Plot Summary - Loki of Asgard is burdened with glorious purpose: to conquer Midgard(Earth) with an army of Chitauri, a nomadic war-loving race. In exchange, he will give the Tesseract to Thanos. Loki's entrance to Earth, using a wormhole and the Tesseract, occurs in a S.H.I.E.L.D./NASA shared facility, and during a skirmish he hypnotizes Clint "Hawkeye" Barton and Dr. Selvig, Fury and Maria Hill giving chase. The Tesseract is stolen, which means there's a Level Seven threat: It's time to push the Avengers Initiative into action. Coulson goes to talk to Tony Stark, Fury finds Steve Rogers trying to cope with modern life, and Natasha Romanoff is sent to track down Dr. Bruce Banner. They're all brought to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier; which is exactly what it sounds like: a combination aircraft carrier and flying base of operations. Barton steals an element necessary to stabilizing the Tesseract's power, and Loki causes a distraction that brings Iron Man, Captain America and the Black Widow to Germany. After another brief skirmish, Loki allows himself to be captured, and Thor lands to take his brother back to Asgard. After a misunderstanding leads to a three-way fight between the heroes, they agree to stay with the plan of taking Loki to the Helicarrier for safekeeping. Banner and Stark try to locate the Tesseract by the gamma signature; bonding in the work. Loki's plan was to distract them all long enough for a Hawkeye-led strike force to hijack the ship. This is accomplished due to Fury's secretive nature in using the Tesseract to create weapons, much like HYDRA did during WWII, in order to guard against hostile extraterrestrial beings like Thor. (Puente Antiguo's decimation didn't sit well.) Banner Hulks out, there's a lot of damage done. Thor is ejected from the ship, Coulson is fatally stabbed, and Loki escapes. Coulson''s death(plus a little manipulation by Fury) provides the final push into the group accepting this challenge of teaming up; to which they head to New York to halt the Chitauri invasion above Stark Tower. They all get there eventually, and Barton's been unhypnotized by a Romanoff punch, so he's helping, too. A gargantuan battle takes up about forty-five minutes of screentime, the world is saved, basically. There's a ton of great one-liners throughout, mostly from Tony. In the aftermath, the world is buzzing about the Avengers(including a hacker named Skye...), Loki is taken back to Asgard by Thor for a trial, Selvig stays a short time in an asylum to get the hypnosis out of his head, Steve moves to D.C. and secret projects are undertaken at S.H.I.E.L.D. The world is saved - for now.
My Thoughts - From here on out, it got incredibly tough to arrange the rankings. And there's no way this should have worked. These people definitely shouldn't be in the same room, probably...yet that's exactly what they are forced to do or most of the movie. To learn how to work together for the common good. To use S.H.I.E.L.D. terms, they were each trained to be the whole solution, like Ward. But Skye's belief that a hundred people, each with one percent of the solution... It 's really cool to see them come together to solve a problem, even if things don't mesh perfectly. That's kind of Joss Whedon's thing; creating groups and exploring how relationships work with catchy dialogue. This movie definitely grows on you the more you watch it; there's always something new to spot in the corner, it 's almost Pixar-like that way. (And he did work at Pixar, so that explains it.) Everybody did a great job.
Quotable Quotes - "Leave a message." - Tony. "This is urgent." - Coulson. "Then leave it urgently." (Coulson walks through the elevator to Tony and Pepper.) "Security breach." - Tony. "Mr. Stark, Miss Potts," "Phil! How are you? - Pepper. "'Phil'? His first name is 'Agent'..." - Tony.
"This is out of line, Director. You're dealing with forces you can't control." - World Security Councilmember. "You ever been in a war, Councilman? In a firefight? Did you feel an overabundance of control?" - Fury.
(A pretty waitress named Beth flirts with Steve at a sidewalk cafe.) "Ask for her number, ya moron!" - Old Man at another table. (The old man is Stan Lee.)
"Is this about the Avengers? (Which I know nothing about.)" - Pepper to Coulson. "The Avengers Initiative was scrapped, I thought. And I didn't even qualify." - Tony to Coulson. "I didn't know that, either." "Yeah, apparently I'm 'volatile', 'self-obsessed' and I 'don't play well with others'?" "That I did know..."
"Until such time as the world ends, we shall act as though it intends to spin on." - Fury.
"When did you become an expert on thermonuclear astrophysics?" - Hill. "Last night. The packet. Selvig's notes, the extraction theory papers...? Am I the only one who did the reading?"
"An intelligence agency that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome..." - Tony.
(Flying into a storm, Loki's nervous.) "What's the matter? Scared of a little lightning?" Steve asks Loki. "I'm not overly fond of what follows..."
"I'd sit this one out, Cap. These guys are legends. They're basically gods." - Natasha. "There's only one God, ma'am; and I'm pretty sure He doesn't dress like that." - Steve.
"Stark, we need a plan of attack!" - Steve. "I have a plan: Attack!"
"The humans slaughter each other in droves, while you idly threat. I mean to rule them! And why should I not?" - Loki. "You think yourself above them?" Thor asks. "Well, yes," Loki says, surprised the question. "Then you miss the truth of ruling, brother. The throne would suit you ill," Thor replies, tears in his eyes.
(Thor leaps at a Loki mirage, missing yet again, to Loki's amusement.) "Are you ever not going to fall for that?"
"Loki may be beyond reason, but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother." - Thor. "He killed eighty-three people in two days." - Hill. "...and he's adopted." - Thor.
"What I'd like to know is how Loki used it[the Tesseract] to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys." - Fury. "Monkeys? I do not understand." - Thor. "I do!" Steve shouts, then looks embarrassed. "I mean...I understood that reference."
"There was an idea, Stark knows this, called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people to see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea. In heroes." - Fury.
(On being confronted with repairing a high-tech part of the Helicarrier.) "It appears to run on some form of electricity!" - Cap. "...Wellll....you're not wrong...." - Tony.
"Please tell me you were going to appeal to my humanity." - Loki. "Uh, no. Actually I was planning on threatening you." - Tony.
(Banner pulls into New York as the battle rages.) "Well. This all seems...horrible." "I've seen worse." - Widow. " "Sorry." "No, we could...use a little worse."
"JARVIS, have you ever heard the tale of Jonah?" - Stark. "I wouldn't consider him a role model, sir." - JARVIS. (Tony then smashes into a Chitauri whale-creature.)
"This is just like Budapest all over again." - Natasha. "You and I remember Budapest very differently." - Clint.
Grade - 95, A.
4(5) - Captain America: The First Avenger - Plot Summary - WWII is raging. The Nazis invade a town in Norway, where Johann Schmidt, leader of HYDRA, the Nazi deep-science division, swipes the Tesseract. In New York City, Steve Rogers has failed the draft physical five times. Steve and his friend Bucky attend Howard Stark's Expo of the Future the night before Bucky's deployment, and Dr. Abraham Erskine overhears Steve's wish to enlist as well, deciding to recruit him as part of an experiment run by the Strategic Scientific Reverse, and overseen by Col. Chester Phillips and British special agent Peggy Carter. Throughout this basic training, Steve's heroism, determination and outside-the-box thinking results in his being chosen for Erskine's Super-Soldier Serum, and with vita-rays he grows over a foot and gains about ninety pounds of muscle. A hidden HYDRA assassin blows up the lab on seeing the program's success, he also shoots Erskine for good measure. The assassin then runs away; Steve chases him, but the assassin takes a cyanide pill to avoid capture. With the enhanced-army idea dashed, the government uses Rogers as a propaganda tool selling war bonds as the character "Captain America", which takes him across the ocean to Europe performing for active servicemen. It doesn't go well. On hearing that Bucky's unit was captured by Germans to serve as forced labor in a HYDRA factory, Rogers decides to bust them out, against Phillips' orders but with the help of Stark and Peggy. Schmidt, having taken a prototype Erskine serum with very bad side effects, reveals himself to be the Red Skull and escapes, while the factory self-destructs and the prisoners are freed. As the war continues, Rogers recruits a team soon known as the Howling Commandos to help take out other known HYDRA bases. Howard creates a shield made of vibranium, which becomes what the war hero is known for. They capture Schmidt's right-hand man, Dr. Armin Zola, but on the mission they lose Bucky, as he plummeted off a cliff. Phillips interrogates Zola into giving the location of the last HYDRA base, which Schmidt has thrown off the Nazi oversight and is intending to bomb most of the globe's major cities. Steve sneaks onto Schmidt's plane and confronts him; there's a large fight and the Tesseract vaporizes the Red Skull before falling into the Atlantic. Unable to land the plane safely without killing a lot of innocent people, Steve crashes it in the Arctic. Soon after, the war ends following Hitler's suicide, and Stark recovers the Tesseract. Peggy continues working for the SSR, and sometime later they form S.H.I.E.L.D. with Phillips. Howard, of course, is Tony's father, and dies in a car wreck. During the crash, somehow Steve's body was frozen into the ice, so he's recovered seventy years later, it's a shock and heartbreak to find himself in the modern world.
My Thoughts - This is unusual. It's a war movie. It's also a 1940's romance. And it takes one of the more snicker-worthy patriotic concepts of history(to our modern cynical eyes) and makes a wonderful movie. It's simply good vs. evil, and audiences are okay with that. It's an old-fashioned notion.
Quotable Quotes - "...and the Fuhrer digs for trinkets in the desert." - Schmidt shakes his head in disbelief.
"There's three and a half million women in New York, and you'll be the only eligible bachelor left. What're you complaining about?" - Bucky. "Yeah, well, I'd settle for just one." - Steve.
"General Patton has said that wars are fought with weapons but they are won by men. We are going to win this war because we have the best....men..." - Col. Phillips on seeing Steve. (From here much faster, nervous.) "and because they are going to get better. Much better."
"This is why you were chosen. Because a strong man who has known power his whole life may lse respect for that power; but a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion." - Dr. Erskine. "Thanks...I think." - Steve. Whatever happens tomorrow, you must promise me one thing: That you will stay who you are. Not a perfect soldier; but a good man."
"You really have no idea how to talk to a woman, do you?" - Peggy asks. Steve shakes his head. "Not really. I think this is the longest conversation I've had with one. Women aren't exactly linin' up to dance with a guy they might step on." "You must have danced." "Well...askin' a woman to dance just always seemed so terrifying. And then with everything the past few years...just didn't seem to matter that much. Figured I'd wait." "For what?" "...The right partner."
(After an injection.) "That wasn't so bad." - Steve. "That was penicillin." Dr. Erskine.
"Ya know...for the longest time, I dreamed about comin' overseas and bein' on the front lines, serving my country. I finally get everything I wanted....and I'm wearing tights." - Steve.
"If you have something to say, now'd be the perfect time to keep it to yourself." - Col. Philliips to Peggy.
"So...were you two...fondue-ing?" Steve asks. Howard laughs. "Fondue is just cheese and bread, my friend."
"What d'you think?" - Steve asks, testing vibranium shields. (Peggy empties pistol into it; bullets crumple on impact.) "Yes, I think it works." - she says sweetly and stalks out of the room.
"The moment you think you know what's going in a a woman's head is the moment your goose is well and truly cooked." - Howard.
(Howard and Steve are in shock at Peggy's behavior.) "...I has some ideas about the uniform?" - Steve. "...Whatever you want, pal..." - Howard.
"Wait!" - Peggy. (She kisses Steve, hard. He looks at Col. Phillips, who's kind of enjoying it but wouldn't say so in a million years.) "I'm not kissin' you!" - Phillips. (Steve jumps into HYDRA plane.)
"...You gonna be okay?" - Fury. "Yeah...yeah. It's just...I had a date." - Steve.
Grade - 96, A.
3(9) - Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Plot Summary - The Battle of New York, two years ago, changed everything. Steve Rogers is living in Washington, D.C. now, working for S.H.I.E.L.D., and still trying to get used to the way things work in the 21st century. Natasha Romanoff constantly teasing him about going on a date with somebody isn't helping. Cap and the Black Widow are sent to rescue hostages(including Jasper Sitwell) aboard a hijacked ship with the S.H.I.E.L.D.-counter-terrorism group S.T.R.I.K.E.; halfway through the mission Steve finds out Fury ordered Romanoff to pull data from the ship's computers. He complains at the Triskelion; Fury shows him Project Insight: three Helicarriers linked to spy satellites, programmed to proactively take out threats before they happen. Rogers' suspicion, plus the fact that the hard drive's data cannot be read, prompts Fury to ask Alexander Pierce, of the World Security Council, for a delay on Insight. Fury is ambushed by fake police and a man with a metal arm. He hides out in Steve's apartment, warning him that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been compromised, giving him the flash drive, and he is shot by the metal-armed man, known as the Winter Soldier. Steve's neighbor Kate the nurse rushes in, revealing herself to be Agent 13 of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Fury is rushed to the hospital, but he dies during surgery. Pierce brings Rogers to the Triskelion the next day, trying to find out why Fury was at Steve's apartment. Steve refuses to answer, and so Pierce labels him a fugitive and sics S.T.R.I.K.E. on him. He and Natasha rely on basic rules of behavior in public to evade their pursuers in a mall, they steal a pickup and go to New Jersey, where their destination turns out to be the military installation where Steve's basic training for Project Rebirth took place. They discover a secret bunker with 1960's-era computers with Dr. Armin Zola's preserved consciousness installed(yes, it's a weird scene), where they find out that HYDRA has been lying dormant within S.H.I.E.L.D. this entire time since the founding; manipulating events and establishing global chaos, including the death of Howard Stark. The ultimate goal for HYDRA is that people will seek security so much, they'll be willing to give up their freedom. A S.H.I.E.L.D. missile nearly blows Steve and Natasha up, they figure out that Pierce is the HYDRA leader. With things moving too fast to get help from any other Avengers, and Coulson (presumed) dead, Cap and Widow seek help from Steve's running buddy Sam Wilson, who hides them for the night while they all figure out a plan. Then after swiping Cap's old suit from the Smithsonian and Sam's wings from the Air Force, they forcefully interrogate Sitwell, concluding that he's a mole. Sitwell says that Zola designed the algorithm that Insight uses, weeding out those who could become a threat to HYDRA's work. The Winter Soldier ambushes the group and maybe kills Sitwell, there's a huge machine gun melee across several freeways. Cap recognizes that the Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes, and they're rescued by Hill, taken to a safehouse where they find that Fury faked his own death. (They're none too happy with the Director.) Anyway, that's when the plot to sabotage the three Helicarriers by replacing their control chips is activated, Steve reveals the HYDRA plot to everyone at the Triskelion, Natasha plays the role of a WSC member and also leaks the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. database, Fury shoots Pierce, and Cap and Falcon take down the first two Helicarriers. The Winter Soldier is waiting on the third; and Steve refuses to fight, believing that Bucky was still there, deep down someplace. Steve gets knocked out, only to be saved by the Winter Soldier, who disappears. S.H.I.E.L.D. is branded a terrorist organization, Fury goes to Europe to take down more HYDRA cells, Steve and Sam go searching for Bucky, and things get pretty tense afterwards. (Watch Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to fully understand.)
My Thoughts - This is a great movie. Full of action and humor, and it makes you think.
Quotable Quotes - "Can't run everywhere." - Steve, getting into Natasha's Corvette. "No, you can't." - Sam agrees.
(Preparing to rescue hostages.) "You know, I bet if your asked Kristen out, from statistics, she'd probably say yes." - Natasha. "That's why I don't ask." - Steve. "Too shy, or too scared?" "Too busy!" (Steve jumps out of airplane.)
"What about the nurse that lives across the hall from you? She seems kind of nice." - Natasha. "First secure the engine room, then find me a date." - Steve. "I'm multitasking!"
"I work forty floors away and it takes a hijacking for you to come visit?" - Pierce. "Well, a nuclear war would do it, too." - Fury.
"Granddad loved people. But he didn't trust 'em very much." - Fury.
"I only act like I know everything, Rogers." - Natasha.
"Where did Captain America learn to steal a car?" - Natasha. "Nazi Germany. And we're not stealing, we're borrowing. Get your feet off the dash."
"Get me Agent Hill!" - Fury. "Communications array damaged." - Computer. "Well, what's not damaged?!" "Air Conditioning is fully operational."
"For as long as I can remember, I just wanted to do what was right. I guess I'm not quite sure what that is anymore. And I thought I could throw myself back in and follow orders, serve. It's just not the same." - Steve. ... "The world has changed, and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes the best we can do is to start over." - Peggy.
'First rule of going on the run is: Don't run. Walk." - Natasha.
(After purposely shocking herself with her stingers.) "Ow, that does sting..." - Widow.
(After being told that she's on the wrong side of this issue.) "That depends on where you're standing." - Agent 13/Sharon.
"I do what he does. Just slower." Sam, about Cap.
"How do we tell the good guys from the bad guys?!" - Sam. "If they're shooting at you, they're bad!" - Cap.
Grade - 97, A.
2(10) - Guardians of the Galaxy - Plot Summary - Not many space movies open in Missouri. Not many comedies open with someone dying from cancer. GotG is pretty much the exception to every known rule of the MCU and filmmaking in general. So it does start that way, where a boy named Peter Quill is running, trying to avoid the fact that his mom just died, when he's picked up by a spaceship. The crew is a band of pirates called the Ravagers, led by Yondu, and they raise Quill in their ways. 26 years later, on a mission for Yondu, Quill steals an orb, evades a henchman for the Kree Ronan, and he attempts to sell the orb, Yondu finds out and issues a bounty of Quill, and Ronan hires Gamora the assassin to track down the orb. On the planet Xandar, Gamora and Quill fight over the orb, which brings in the bounty-hunter team of Rocket and Groot, a raccoon and tree-monster, respectively. The chase for the orb lands all four in the high-security prison called the Kyln, where they meet Drax the Destroyer and improvise a jail breakout. The five forge an uneasy alliance, held together by the enormity of the payout should Gamora sell the orb to a prospective buyer. It has the power to destroy planets, as it holds one of the Infinity Stones. Plus Gamora had betrayed Ronan so that he wouldn't blow up a string of planets. The group goes to the space station outpost Knowhere, where Drax, bent on avenging the murder of his family, alerts Ronan to their location. The fight doesn't go well, Drax is defeated, and everyone else flees by ship, chased by a bunch of people, including yet another of Ronan's allies, Gamora's sister Nebula. Quill and Gamora are saved by the Ravagers, only to have Rocket, Groot and Drax nearly blow them up due to a miscommunication problem. The team decides that they can't let Ronan destroy the galaxy, so they have to stop him. The Ravagers, Xandar's military police force the Nova Corps and the Guardians launch an attack on Ronan's ship, which is intentionally rammed into the planet's surface; the battle continues on the ground, and Groot dies. Working together, the remaining team members use the Infinity Stone to obliterate Ronan. Quill gives the orb to the Nova Corps, and as repayment for saving their homeworld, they've fixed up his totalled ship and all the Guardians' criminal records were wiped clean. They set off for new adventures with a sapling-Groot in tow. "What's next? Something good? Something bad? Little of both?" Quill asks. "We'll follow your lead, Star-Lord." Gamora replies. "Little of both." he grins.
My Thoughts - Chris Pratt in the lead role? YES. A talking genetically-engineered raccoon, talking tree, green-skinned assassin woman and insane Shakespearean-speaking wrestler? Um, okay...why not? And then you see the movie, and....wow. It's full of snark, pop-culture references, disco music and surprisingly relatable characters. It's like if Star Wars collided with Firefly and The Princess Bride. It's sometimes profane, often hysterical and absolutely should not have worked. But it does.
Quotable Quotes - Pretty much the entire movie...
"I come from Earth, a planet of outlaws. my name is Peter Quill. There's one other name you might know me by...Star-Lord." - Quill says dramatically. "Who?" Korath looks mystified. "Star-Lord, man! The legendary outlaw?"
"His people are completely literal. Metaphors go over his head." - Rocket. "Nothing goes over my head! My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it." - Drax.
"Do not call me a thesaurus!" - Drax.
"I am going to die surrounded by the biggest idiots in the galaxy..." - Gamora.
(At a bar.) "Let us put more of this liquid into our bodies." - Drax.
"I don't know what came over me, but I couldn't let you die. I found something inside of myself...something...incredibly heroic!" - Quill.
"You got issues, Quill." - Rocket.
"Why would you want to save the galaxy?" - Rocket. "Maybe because I'm one of the idiots that lives in it?!" - Quill.
"When I look around, ya know who I see? Losers. I mean, like, folks who have lost stuff. And we have. Man, we have, all of us. Homes, and our families, and normal lives. And you think life takes more than it gives, but not today. Today it's giving us a chance." - Quill.
"We're just like Kevin Bacon!" - Gamora.
"And what if someone angered me and I wished to remove his spine?" - Drax. "Uh...yeah. That would be called 'murder', and that's...one the worst....yeah. Don't do that." - Dey.
Grade - 98, A.
1(7) - Iron Man 3 - Plot Summary - "Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, and what are you?" Steve asks in Avengers. "Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist," Tony flippantly answers right back. IM3 tries to discover the answer to that question. Everyone knows Tony Stark. On New Year's Eve 1999, he speaks at a conference where he meets Yinsen, and (at the time more importantly) Maya Hansen. She's working on the Extremis treatment, for recovering from crippling injuries. Aldrich Killian tries to hire them both for his think-tank company Advanced Idea Mechanics, and Hansen eventually accepts several years later, but Tony blows him off, which is deeply humiliating to Killian. Years later at Christmastime, Tony has pretty large cases of insomnia, panic attacks and PTSD after the Battle of New York, and more specifically, whatever he sat while in the wormhole. He's built roughly 35 new Iron Man suits in the year following to cope with the not-sleeping. (Compared to seven in the year-and-a-half between his capture and the Chitauri invasion.) Pepper's not too happy with him. A terrorist of the Ten Rings group called the Mandarin strikes randomly for no reason; televising his attacks, and Happy Hogan, chief of Stark Industries security, is hurt badly in one of these explosions. Tony issues a threat to the Mandarin via TV, giving out his home address, so it's not really surprising that Tony's house gets obliterated. Hansen reappeared and was present during the attack, too; along with Pepper. JARVIS directs Tony on a path away from the mess, but drops him in Tennessee due to reaching extremely low power. The world thinks Tony died in the attack. Befriending a 10-year-old named Harley, Tony investigates a local explosion which looks a lot like a Mandarin attack, and they realize that there was a common link to all the explosions: Someone with Extremis was there. And furthermore, there wasn't any bombings - they were the bombs; through spontaneous combustion. With a couple of operatives after him, Tony, with Harley's help, defeats them and tracks the Mandarin's location to Miami. After a shopping trip at Lowe's, Tony MacGyvers enough weapons together to infiltrate the Mandarin's compound, who he confronts. And the Mandarin is actually a narcisstic, alcoholic drug-junkie named Trevor Slattery. Killian expanded Maya's test-base to war veterans, and it kind of worked. Pepper's been kidnapped, and and injected with Extremis, in order to force Tony to solve the exploding problem. Killian also declares that he is the real Mandarin, that Trevor was only a puppet. Maya changes her mind; thinking that sacrificing Pepper is crossing the line, and Killian casually puts a bullet in her head. Killian has manipulated folks in the intelligence community to send Rhodey after him, in order to steal the War Machine armor(which has been repainted in patriotic colors and renamed Iron Patriot). Tony and Rhodey wind up aboard Air Force One trying to stop Killian from kidnapping the President; which is unsuccessful. However, they did save almost every crewmember before the plane was destroyed, so that's something. Also, Harley had been charging the armor enough that it was workable again and JARVIS could wake up, so Tony has his armor back. Killian plans to murder the President on live TV onboard an abandoned oil tanker. The vice president will serve as a front for Killian's leadership in return for healing his daughter's missing right leg. Tony saves the kidnapped Pepper while Rhodey rescues the President, Tony calls in the remote-controlled suits he's made as backup and blows Killian up inside a particularly defective model. This doesn't work, due to the Extremis Killian's taken. Pepper delivers the final blow which kills him. JARVIS blows up the rest of the suits, Trevor and the vice president are arrested, the Extremis is taken out of Pepper and the shrapnel out of Tony, and he throws the reactor into the Pacific. Tony's been telling this story to Banner in order to process everything that happened, and Banner's been taking a nap the whole time.
My Thoughts - Strip Stark of his armor, and what do you get? This is an interesting idea that makes this movie the best of all of them. And it further raises the question of exactly what Iron Man is; the suits or a part of Tony himself? Tony is his most heroic as himself, when everything else falls apart.
Quotable Quotes - "I seem to do quite well for a stretch, and then at the end I say the wrong cranberry." - JARVIS.
(Tony's knocked out two guards, the third is protesting.) "Don't shoot! Seriously, I don't even like work here. They are so weird..."
"Anyway, the point is, since that big dude with a hammer fell out of the sky, subtlety's kind of had its' day." - Killian.
"That....was really violent!" - Pepper.
"What have I got to complain about now?" - Pepper. "Well, it's me...I'm sure you'll find something." - Tony.
"I'm sorry, did I disturb your selective napping?" - Tony. "I'm sorry....I'm not really that kind of doctor...it's not my department." - Banner. "Your training?" "My temperament..."
Grade - 98, A.
For future installments, I think I'll give this list in chronological order...it'll flow more smoothly that way.
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