I’ve never been too much of a comics guy, but not for trying. I do dig me some DC stuff–Batman obviously and especially. Flaming Carrot and the Mystery Men? Absolutely! Watchmen and other graphic novel serials? Sure.
Marvel has never connected for me for whatever reason, which is weird. That said, I’m really having a good time in fits and starts with Marvel Heroes MMO, and I feel like if I could at least have a movie crash course in Marvel I’d feel a lot better. I’m not looking to drill deep on minutae…I just kinda wanna know what the heck SHIELD is, who the Avengers are, etc. etc. I figure the movies will at least get me there, and if I get some fun entertainment out of it, so much the better.
To open, I love the first two original Spiderman movies, especially the second. After the third got panned I gave up, but I gather that Spidey got a reboot. Worth seeing?
Loved Iron Man. Heard 2 was kinda bad, heard 3 was Ok. I’m guessing thought that along the way in 2 and/or 3 we get casual mentions of other Marvel heroes, right? If I liked the first, there’s at least some reason to see the next two, yes?
Captain America. Know there’s a new one coming out. How’s the first?
Hulk…I get lost here. There was an Ang Lee movie I didn’t see that got panned pretty badly and Marvel fans seem to like to pretend it never existed. Then there was another one. And then another one? I’ve seen one that I thought was a great summer popcorn movie, but didn’t realize there were two. Is one considered canon for the serialized Paramount movies we’re getting?
Ok, now really help a n00b out. There are X-Men, who are mutants. Saw the first two movies, liked them a little I guess. First Class is sitting on my shelf with shrinkwrap on it. There’s no X-Men crossover with the Avengers, right? X-Men are X-Men in one universe, Avengers are Avengers in their own. Or something.
And when you talk X-Men, you gotta talk Wolverine. Apparently while I wasn’t paying attention, a couple of Wolverine movies came out, huh?
Thor. I’ve gotta admit, Thor always seemed like the absolutely stupidest idea for a superhero–I mean…he’s a deity. The hell? Are the Thor movies any good?
Finally, The Avengers. I guess that’s what this is all building up to. I tried to watch The Avengers and about ten minutes in realized that I lacked the superhero vocabulary to know who any of these damn heroes were. I want to dig the Avengers a lot. It’s obviously this huge, well-reviewed and received movie. Is the TV series with SHIELD any good?
From the pure perspective of the movies it is important to understand who owns the rights to various character groups. For the most part, everything that has been put together my Marvel Studios has been of high quality and a single canon. But they are not responsible for Spiderman, the X-Men and spin-off movies and the early Hulk movies. They have been slowly clawing back their rights, but it is doubtful they’ll manage to get Spiderman and X-Men back for some time due to various contract clauses. The same clauses are the reasons we saw such things as a shitty Spiderman reboot and (a very good) X-Men First Class - as long as the other studios are producing movies (good or not), they can retain their rights for the moment. Spiderman rights are owned essentially by Sony Pictures (Columbia), X-Men by 20th Century Fox.
My interpretation of the various movies is as follows, though I am sure others will express their opinions as well.
Spiderman Movies
Spiderman 1 (2002) - Excellent
Spiderman 2 - Great
Spiderman 3 - Very Average
Spiderman (201x) - Complete reboot, Average, not even close to being as good the 2002 edition.
X-Men Movies
X-Men (2000) - Great
X2 (2003) - Average
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) - Average
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) - Poor, I really disliked this movie.
X-Men: First Class (2011) - Excellent
The Wolverine (2013) - Great
Avengers Movies - All done by Marvel Studios, all are worth watching IMO, though there are a couple of relative duds. The below is more or less chronological order. If you only want to grok The Avengers movie, I’d suggest the italic ones are required viewing, and watch the post credits teasers!
Hulk Movies - For the most part range from poor to average, though I have not re-watched any of them. I think there is three? Not really connected to each other in any way, different actors each time. ‘The Incredible Hulk’ was done by Marvel Studios and is considered canon with the Avengers movies below Iron Man (2008) - Excellent
The Incredible Hulk (2008) - Average
Iron Man 2 (2010) - Good Thor (2011) - Very Good Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) - Excellent
Marvel’s The Avengers (2012) - Excellent
Iron Man 3 (2013) - Very Good
Thor: The Dark World (2013) - Not Seen
I’m far from an expert on Marvel movies, but I’ll give as much info/opinion as I can. I’m dividing the movies into 4 categories (good/great, meh, bad, no idea/haven’t seen). Movies ranked in order within each class (IMO).
Good/Great
Avengers - my wife & I saw this having seen Iron Man 1, & both Hulk movies. I had seen Captain America as well. It’s awesome. I think you should be able to get up to speed pretty quickly if you stick with it.
X-Men First Class - As you said, X-Men are their own thing, separate from Avengers. X-Men First Class is even more different, because it’s set in the late 60s/early 70s. It’s pretty decent.
Meh
Thor - Quite honestly, there’s two reasons this makes the top of the average pile. a) Kat Dennings as a trusty sidekick to Natalie Portman, & b) Tom Hiddleston as Loki. b) is far more important. Hiddleston’s Loki is just a far more interesting character than Hemsworth’s Thor. I guess you’d have more backstory to Avengers if you saw this first, but I did fine without it. Short cameo by Hawkeye, who will be in Avengers.
Hulk (2003) - This is the Ang Lee one, & the first one that Marvel disavows. I didn’t think it was as terrible as most people did. Jennifer Connelly may have something to do with this. Non-canon, so not necessary for Avengers info.
Incredible Hulk (2008) - This is the one with Ed Norton as Hulk. I think it’s technically supposed to serve as the canon lead-in for him for Avengers, although Mark Ruffalo replaces Norton for Avengers. Liv Tyler isn’t Jennifer Connelly.
Iron Man 2 - Not nearly as good as the first. I guess gets points for introducing Black Widow, who’s in Avengers.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) - I have a soft spot for Ryan Reynolds, who’s in this for about 10 minutes. Liev Schreiber is decent as Sabretooth. In the X-Men, non-Avengers universe.
Captain America: The First Avenger - I didn’t actively hate it, unlike the films below. It’ll fill you in on his backstory for Avengers, but not a big deal. Also here, but you didn’t ask about it
Daredevil - separate from X-Men/Avengers/Spider-Man
Bad
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - The ABC television show. I watch it, but can’t justify putting it in the “meh” category. It’s boring. Does reference events of the Avengers fairly regularly, & has a couple cameos in the early episodes, besides the ongoing lead of Agent Coulson, who appears in each of the Avenger heroes origin films.
X-Men: Last Stand - The 3rd X-Men film. Crap resolution to Jean Grey/Phoenix. Not needed for understanding First Class, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, or Avengers. May help a little with backstory to the 2013 Wolverine film.
Spider-Man 3 - Too much singing. No connection to Avengers, as far as I know. Also here, & thankfully you didn’t ask about them - all separate from X-Men/Avengers/Spider-Man
Elektra - technically in the Daredevil universe
Fantastic Four (1 & 2)
Ghost Rider (1 & 2)
No idea/Haven’t seen
Thor: Dark World
The Wolverine (2013) - pretty sure it’s supposed to take place after events of X-Men: Last Stand.
Iron Man 3
Amazing Spider-Man (2012 reboot) You didn’t ask about them - not part of the Avengers/X-Men/Spider-Man trifecta
Blade I, II, & Trinity - I’ve seen parts of all of these on cable, but they all run together & I have no real opinion. Ryan Reynolds is in one of them.
Barring the usual comic rubbish of story arcs involving alternate timelines, separate universes, etc, etc, Marvel comics are all a single world and continuity. The X-Men and Avengers inhabit the same world, along with other groups like X-Force, The Fantastic Four, and of course the Guardians of the Galaxy (from the next Marvel film). There certainly has been various character and even team cross-overs, though we won’t see that in the movies until Marvel can get some character rights back. The most famous of these cross-overs is probably the Infinity Gauntlet series which essentially pits the entire Marvelverse against a juiced up Thanos looking to kill half the universe. There is speculation Marvel Studios would love to reproduce the Infinity Gauntlet series in movie form, based on various happenings in the existing movies. Probably will never happen, but we can dream…
Shield is less of a superhero group and more of a large shadow government agency that handles lower level criminal, supervillian and paranormal type activities that are usually below the radar of your superheroes proper. They hire extremely talented individuals and equip them with advanced gadgetry based on alien or captured tech or procured from the Stark Industries, Hammer Industries and Ozcorps of the Marvelverse. In the movies they are depicted as being responsible for pulling together the Avengers (a team of actual superheroes) in order to be a safety against large world threatening events. Not sure whether this is the case in the comics as well, though it probably is. Lots of other Marvel characters have been recruited into and out of the Avengers ranks over the years for various reasons (Spiderman for example). But what we see in the Avengers movie would be regarded as the staples - Captain America in particular.
Thor’s existence as a god is explained in the Thor movie. Thor is not actually a god, just an ‘alien’ from one alternate plane of existence (Asgard), of which there are many (Midgard, Niefelheim, Jotunheim, etc). Essentially Earth’s Norse mythology of gods and fantastic creatures such as frost giants, is explained as being historically derived from these planes intersecting over the thousands of years of the Earth’s past. A powerful alien such as Thor appears in Midgard (Earth), having traveled from Asgard and is lauded and worshiped as a god.
The TV Series of Shield is shit. Don’t bother. I stopped watching 4 episodes in, so unless anyone continued watching and contradicts this, just walk away.
Iron Man - Is really good, one of the times where the character and actor are such an incredible match if each other, it doesn’t really matter that the script was written on set and lot of it improved between Favreau and Downey JR.
Iron Man 2 - Is one of those times where the fact that they didn’t have a finished script really mattered. It’s just a mess. The first time i saw it, it skated by on texture and the actors’ charisma, now it’s just intolerable.
Iron Man 3 - Is really goddamn good. If you like Shane Black, you should really check it out.
Thor - All the weird cosmic stuff looks kind of cheap and chintzy, and it’s very nearly scuttled by the horribly underwritten Thor and Jane Foster romance. She’s hot, he’s hot, they meet and are in love forever. Because hotness. Kinda worth it for Thom Hiddleston’s Loki though.
Thor: The Dark World - They bigger budget really shows, I thought the finale was pretty inventive, and it was surprisingly funny. The Jane Foster relationship blandness, and a new non-entity of a villain means it can’t rise over mediocre though.
The Incredible Hulk - Whatever. You know who the Hulk is, you don’t need to see a bland Louis Leterrier action movie to understand The Avengers.
Captain America - The first half of Captain America might be the best marvel studios has done. It loses steam with all the montages in the second half, but it’s still a really fun, pulpy adventure. I like it more and more every time i see it.
The Avengers: Great. It starts kinda wobbly, but it gains steam as it goes along, and the final hour is really something.
X-Men
X-Men - I suppose this was groundbreaking at the time, but man has it ever aged badly.
X-Men 2 - Really liked it at the time, but I haven’t dared revisit it in case it’s aged as badly as the first one.
X-Men 3: The Last Stand - It might not actually be that much worse than the first movie tbh, but it loses a ton of points for pointless, desperate nerd-pandering (“I’m the juggernaut bitch”), mainstreaming of nerd stuff not being new anymore, and being directed by Brett Ratner.
The Wolverine - Character-focused, low stakes, put together by someone who knows what they’re doing. One of the biggest positive surprises of last year,
Blade
Blade - This is kinda ground zero for a lot ot late nineties nerd stuff - quasi-bullet time, a protagonist that is all sunglasses, trenchcoats sunglasses at night and other empty badass posturing. Still kinda holds up, and it makes me a little bit sad Stephen Norrington apparently flamed out.
Blade 2 - guillermo del Toro does one for them, but it’s ok, and has a lot more sense of humour about itself than the first.
Blade Trinity - This is why David Goyer should never be left to his own devices.
Mixed bag. Far too long and rambling, not as tightly-scripted as the first two Raimi ones, but Garfield’s pretty good in the role, he does some quipping while fighting (which was a part of Spidey’s character that rather missing from the first two Raimi films) and some of the action’s great.
Loved Iron Man. Heard 2 was kinda bad, heard 3 was Ok. I’m guessing thought that along the way in 2 and/or 3 we get casual mentions of other Marvel heroes, right? If I liked the first, there’s at least some reason to see the next two, yes?
IM2 isn’t all that bad. It develops Stark’s character nicely, and the relationship between him and Pepper. Great set pieces from the Mickey O’Rourke as a crazy Russian Whiplash, and superb rich-slime villain from Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer. But overall a bit more goofy than IM. IM3 is excellent. There’s a certain Big Revelation that happens in it that had fans in an uproar, but I think it was a master-stroke. Some shark-jumping at the end, but overall great script, dialogue, action, etc.
Captain America. Know there’s a new one coming out. How’s the first?
If you liked The Rocketeer, you’ll probably like this, it has a similar period feel (same director). The well-handled development from 90lb weakling to super-soldier alone is almost worth the ticket price, and there’s tons of superb action. Lots of great character acting and one-liners. But script a bit loose - difficult to put a finger on it, but just doesn’t flow very well somehow.
Hulk…I get lost here. There was an Ang Lee movie I didn’t see that got panned pretty badly and Marvel fans seem to like to pretend it never existed. Then there was another one. And then another one? I’ve seen one that I thought was a great summer popcorn movie, but didn’t realize there were two. Is one considered canon for the serialized Paramount movies we’re getting?
The earlier part of the film with Edward Norton as Bruce Banner on the run from the US military who want to weaponize what he’s got, set in the cinegenic Favelas of Rio, is actually very good. The film starts to lose focus and becomes more bog standard superhero film fare towards the end though. Some corny Beauty and Beast stuff. But a huge ding-dong between roaring CGI monsters at the end makes a satisfying, if somewhat exhausting climax.
Ok, now really help a n00b out. There are X-Men, who are mutants. Saw the first two movies, liked them a little I guess. First Class is sitting on my shelf with shrinkwrap on it. There’s no X-Men crossover with the Avengers, right? X-Men are X-Men in one universe, Avengers are Avengers in their own. Or something.
First Class is a must-see, definitely one of the best superhero movies of recent years, rivalling Marvel Studios’ own best efforts. There’s no cross-over because different studios (Marvel sold the rights to superheros like X-Men, Fantastic Four and Spider-Man to other studios long before Marvel Studios became a thing, so sadly there’s no crossing over yet, though we all live in hope that it will be made possible some day).
Beware though, continuity between First Class and the previous X-Men films is a horrendous mess, and likely to become even more messy with the upcoming X-Men film. First Class has very poor fan service. But it is a great superhero movie in and of itself, nonetheless.
And when you talk X-Men, you gotta talk Wolverine. Apparently while I wasn’t paying attention, a couple of Wolverine movies came out, huh?
First one is abysmal, but with some great action sequences. Second, recent one, is actually pretty decent, but with a sharkey-jumpy ending.
Thor. I’ve gotta admit, Thor always seemed like the absolutely stupidest idea for a superhero–I mean…he’s a deity. The hell? Are the Thor movies any good?
Part of the charm of the superhero genre is that it just growed to become a sort of genre-swallowing genre. I mean, you can have romance in a superhero story, but you can’t have superheros or magic in a romantic story; or you can have magic in a fantasy story, but you can’t have superheros or big science in a fantasy story. Gods, magic, big science, soap opera, etc., can all sit happily cheek-by-jowl, and this no-holds-barred aspect is part of what makes the genre so much fun.
Marvel lost their nerve a bit when it came to the movie (probably for fear of upsetting Christians), so they made Thor come from an Arthur C. Clarke-verse where their science is so advanced it looks like magic. Thor the movie is a bit of a mixed bag too, like Captain America. Many, many good aspects to it, and it’s got a lot of fun set pieces. But the beginning is a bit slow to develop; however once it builds up a head of steam, it’s pretty good. The moral development of the central character (and the parallel development of his villainous sibling) is either cheesy or quite moving, depending on how much slack you give it. If you swallow it, the movie is probably slightly better than Captain America, but not as good as the IM or IM3.
Finally, The Avengers. I guess that’s what this is all building up to. I tried to watch The Avengers and about ten minutes in realized that I lacked the superhero vocabulary to know who any of these damn heroes were. I want to dig the Avengers a lot. It’s obviously this huge, well-reviewed and received movie. Is the TV series with SHIELD any good?
Well, part of the fun of the Avengers was the build up through IM, Hulk, IM2, Thor and Cap. Waiting in the dark cinema for the post-credits sequences revealing bits of what was to come was also part of it. If you went through all that, I think even as a no-comics punter, you’d’ve been pretty much well prepared for the Avengers. For example, apart from Thor and Cap being introduced in their own films, the central McGuffin of the Avengers is introduced and explained in the course of Captain America, and one of the lines Cap says in the Avengers has deeper resonance if you saw his film. The Black Widow is introduced in IM2, and you see some of her character in that film, so that when it comes to the Avengers you already know and care for her. Hawkeye is introduced in Thor, and even though it’s just a cameo it’s strong enough to give you some context for when he’s there right at the beginning of Avengers.
So I’d recommend actually sittting through those films in order before watching the Avengers. None of them are shit films, at the very least they’re good, and the Avengers is a great, rollicking superhero flick classic, with a script and pacing that’s almost perfect apart from a wee bit of a lull in the middle.
I think you just summed up my thesis for this thread far better than I did, George. It sounds like there’s payoff and reasons to watch most of the films. Thanks!
The short version of the answer to this question is that some of the movies that came out before Marvel Studios started making movies are pretty good (spider-man 2, x-men 1 & 2) are pretty good…
but generally speaking only the Marvel studio movies are great. The recent x-men and spider-men movies are corporate, soulless affairs and usually boring to boot.
Indeed, Thor, Captain America and First Class are pretty damn awesome movies. While X-Men started the whole superhero movie thing, Ironman started the whole AWESOME superhero movie thing. Much recommended, and Avengers is exactly as it should be - the best of the movies.
I will say that the Asgard section of Marvel Heroes has a lot of direct ties to Thor - The Dark World. The rest of the game seems largely to be a mishmash of stuff out of fairly recent Marvel comics with nods to more classic comics and not much other than some costumes coming from the movies, and if MH is your inspiration for getting into this stuff, you’d be better off trying your hand at the comics again. But yeah, most of the Marvel produced movies are at least decent, and a few of the X-Men-related non-Marvel productions are worthwhile but skip X-Men 3 and Wolverine - Origins, as well as the FF and Ghost Rider movies.
I think everything has been covered above except for one important thing: Iron Man 3 takes place after the events in The Avengers, and references events in that movie. So don’t watch it until after you see The Avengers.
