Star: Robert Downey Jr

Avengers: Endgame (2019) – Robert Downey Jr and Chris Hemsworth

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Avengers: Endgame starts off a lot slower than Avengers: Infinity War did, as if it’s a direct & straightforward continuation from the depressing cliffhanger ending of Infinity War. Endgame could easily be called Infinity War Part 2.

Fortuntely the mood lifts slightly before the end of the first 10 minutes, as Captain Marvel (Bree Larson) appears and rescues a stranded Tony Stark, returns him to Earth and what remains of the Avengers have a little get-together, counting their losses and consoling each other. This of course is very timely since the dedicated Captain Marvel movie was released on Friday 8 March 2019, just 7 weeks before Endgame was released on Friday 26 April 2019.

By the 15th minute, most surviving members of the core team of Avengers have agreed to go after Thanos with the help of their new ally, Captain Marvel. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned, since Thanos has already destroyed the infinity stones so there’s no way to reverse what’s happened now. Thor impulsively kills the now defenceless Thanos, and everyone is depressed again by 20 minutes in. Half an hour in, people are still sobbing, and it’s starting to look like the only reason it’s a 3 hour long movie is because it’s not been condensed into a richly entertaining one – they just left all the junk in as if it’s a sci-fi drama sitcom.

Fortunately, Ant-Man shows up with a plan to build a time-machine using the quantum realm, to go back in time before Thanos did his thing, and prevent it from ever happening. Now things are starting to get a little interesting – it’s just a shame we had to sit through half an hour of sobbing to get here. 1 hour in and not much more has happened – thus far, this movie seems like way more drama, way less action than Infinity War.

90 minutes in and it’s looking like it’s only half way done – at this rate it will need all three hours to properly complete things.

Nearly 2 hours in and it’s still looking like a season finale to an action drama series.

Overall I rate Avengers: Endgame as an OK movie considering its pros and cons. It’s kind of Bang Average for an action hero movie reviewed by this site. It’s considerably weaker than Infinity War – the previous Avengers movie, which I rated slightly Above Average.

All the usual Avengers cast members are here, and then some. Thanos returns as the main antagonist too. They killed him at the start, but then they went back in time for a rematch. How very uncreative! Still, it’s not the worst plot of all time – it’s no worse than any other Avengers movie with the exception of Infinity War. Plotwise, Endgame could easily be the last of several chapters from Infinity War, even though it’s a longer movie, it feels like Infinity War covered several chapters to Endgame’s one, or one long chapter to Endgame’s short final one.

Some of the strange things that happened in this movie include Thor gaining a belly; Captain America being equally worthy of wielding Thor’s weapons and somehow having some of Thor’s lightning powers when he does so; and many of the core cast members meet their long lost lovers or family members when they go back in time.

Even though Thor (played well by Chris Hemsworth) is fat in this movie, I’d say he’s still the best member of the Avengers and this movie massively underplays his powers, giving both the Hulk and Iron Man a chance to wear the six infinity stones but never Thor. Iron Man (played well by Robert Downey Jr) is one of the busiest characters in this movie, as is Chris Evans who does a fair job as Captain America. Hulk is also a very significant character here, and is played quite well by Mark Ruffalo with the help of ample CGI which looks quite odd in how he’s made to stand in a wobbling slouch like a RPG video game character. In terms of powers displayed, Captain Marvel (played adequately by Brie Larson) is made to look like the most powerful Avenger – she’s involved early in the movie, then disappears until she re-joins the action very late into the final battle scene at the end. She basically saves the day, although still needs help since she still gets knocked around a bit by Thanos momentarily. Thanos himself makes a great adversary, and is played well by Josh Brolin with the help of loads of CGI.

Once the grand finale battle is done, with the best part of half an hour remaining, the last half an hour can easily be skipped by action hero movie fans, since it’s pure drama. There’s not even an interesting teaser clip among the closing credits like there usually is on a Marvel movie. Maybe they really thought the world was coming to an end after 2019? There have been further Marvel movies released in pretty much every year since Endgame was released in 2019, but there’s not been many new good ones – the recent Marvel movies have been mostly quite poorly made. For this reason, after watching Endgame, you may like to go back to watching the earlier Marvel movies from prior to the modern Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Perhaps try X-Men (2000) and its sequels next. There’s a trilogy from the early 2000s, then a Wolverine trilogy mixed in with 4 prequels culminating in Dark Phoenix (2019) which bears a striking resemblance to Captain Marvel and was released just a few months later but is not part of the MCU with its endless Avengers and endless crossovers. The X-Men and Wolverine movies also feed into the modern Deadpool trilogy in case you’re into toilet humour – not my cup of tea personally – but if you like Deadpool you’ll probably like DC’s Shazam and vice versa.

Strangely, the DC superhero called Shazam is a relatively new name, since that character was originally called Captain Marvel in comicbooks – not to be confused with Marvel’s own Captain Marvel of course, who is a completely different character made specifically for the 2019 movie (development began in 2013).

Development of the Captain Marvel character by Marvel Studios began in 2013. The basic concept was announced in 2014. The story was written in 2015. Brie Larson was cast & announced as Danvers in 2016. The directors were hired in 2017 at which point the script was also rewritten, and filming began in 2018 in time for the movie’s release in 2019.

As you can imagine, there have been all kinds of trademark & copyright issues going on ever since the DC’s Captain Marvel (now Shazam) was created in 1939 just in time to rally the troops for WW2 (coincidence much?) although initially the main qualm was with how this Shazam / Captain Marvel character (published initially by Whiz Comics and Fawcett Comics, both owned by Fawcett Publications) bore too much similarity with DC’s Superman. DC won a copyright lawsuit in the 1950s and Fawcett stopped publishing Captain Marvel – they also allowed their unusable trademark to expire in the 60s at which point it was quickly picked up by Marvel Comics. Then in 1971, Fawcett sold the remainder of their copyright stake in this Shazam / Captain Marvel character to DC – at least, whatever was not already ruled the legal property of DC due to its resemblance to their Superman character. This sale consolidated all rights of the early Shazam / Captain Marvel character for DC, except of course the trademark name which was picked up by Marvel in the 60s. So DC used the name Shazam instead, for the purpose of selling comics, while still getting away with referring to the character as Captain Marvel from within the comicbook scripts. DC allowed this strange scenario to exist until 2010 when they finally fully renamed their character to Shazam. Within the decade, Marvel Studios released a movie dedicated to their own new Captain Marvel character, which was to be their first female-led project, and just 1 month later, DC released their own movie dedicated to Shazam, thus jointly putting to bed the best part of a century’s worth of dispute & confusion.

Alternatively, check out the Fantastic Four movies (2005 & 2007) if you haven’t done so in a while – these movies are starring Jessica Alba (from Dark Angel) alongside a young Chris Evans (who took on the role of Captain America a few years later) – this movies will set you up nicely for Marvel’s 2025 remake of the Fantastic Four, 20 years on from Alba’s version and featuring a completely new cast since everyone’s now much older – Alba’s already in her mid 40s, and Evans is too well known as Captain America these days.

Captain America: Civil War (2016) – Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr

This movie has a deadly biohazard theme from the start, just in time for what allegedly happened in the real world just a few years later. Pre-programming much? Fortunately this theme quickly disappears and doesn’t spoil the rest of the movie.

Chris Evans stars as Captain America – the main character in this movie; although there are a few other major characters from The Avengers also playing roles here, including Wanda Maximoff aka The Scarlet Witch, played by Elizabeth Olsen with vibes of Hillary Clinton. And Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson – the camerawork during her fight scenes is particularly shaky, presumably to hide the fact that a stunt double is doing all the work for her, and this makes for rather unpleasant viewing during action scenes. There’s also plenty of action from the start by Anthony Mackie who plays Cap’s flying negro sidekick called Sam Wilson.

Later on we also see Tony Stark aka Iron Man played by Robert Downey Jr, and Clint Barton aka Hawkeye (Marvel’s equivalent of Green Arrow) played by Jeremy Renner. Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland) even get involved, as does T’Chala aka Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), and Iron Man’s sidekick War Machine aka Iron Patriot (Don Cheadle) and even Bruce Banner aka The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) – they all have roles in this movie as if it’s just another big Avengers get-together, but I guess it’s fine, because let’s be honest, it would be quite boring if it were all Captain America unless they had an interesting & creative storyline as good as the original from 2011.

There’s some good action in this movie – it may even be Chadwick Boseman’s best outing as the Black Panther – better than his work in the first dedicated Black Panther movie which came a couple of years later. But there’s also some unpleasant arguing in this movie, followed by a divide between the order-following Avengers and the ones who think they know better (including Cap). The script is a bit messy too. It’s a real mixed bag of a movie, and for this reason, I’ll rate it Bang Average just like both previous Captain America movies and both prior Avengers movies too.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) – Robert Downey Jr and Chris Hemsworth

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) by Marvel Studios

The first 10 minutes are quite action packed, although more on the theatrical drama side than fast action for the most part. These early scenes do a decent job of establishing Thanos as a potentially awesome antagonist – significantly stronger than the Hulk and wielding better control of the energetic world than the magician that is Loki – Thor’s adoptive brother and the main antagonist from the second Avengers movie.

This sets the tone nicely for what’s to come in the rest of the movie, which generally has a higher quality and better consistency of action and much better plot than previous Avengers movies.

This movie has some great humour in places. The action is a bit muddled like the previous Avengers movies, but is better coordinated such that this is clearly the best of them thus far. It’s not quite on a par with the first Thor movie. It even falls slightly short of lesser but still Decent movies in the MCU like Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Black Panther. But it’s got the most clear direction, focus and script coordination of all the groupie Avengers movies thus far. As such I rate it Above Average, which is still an accomplishment.

To say this movie ends on a cliffhanger is probably an understatement. The whole movie can be likened to hanging on the edge of a cliff, then it ends with a big splatter where half of everyone in the universe instantly dies (at the click of Thanos’ fingers). Quite a strange negative note to end on – probably setting us up for the next Avengers movie, called Endgame, released in 2019 – a year when something else, no less depressing, begins to be unveilled in the real world, spawning rumours of similar levels of deaths due any time now. Coincidence much?

As usual, in this Avengers movie there’s a large number of superhero characters working together. The team battling Thanos – the main antagonist, played by Josh Brolin with the help of ample CGI and makeup – includes: Tony Stark aka Iron Man played by Robert Downey Jr; Captain America played by Chris Evans; Bruce Banner aka The Hulk played by Mark Ruffalo; Thor played by Chris Hemsworth whose scenes are probably the best of all scenes in this movie; Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow (played by Scarlett Johansson); Spider-Man played by Tom Holland; The Scarlet Witch played by Elizabeth Olsen – her powers are pretty cool too, but seem underplayed by this movie; Vision played by Paul Bettany whose powers also seem underplayed; Doctor Strange played by Benedict Cumberbatch; Chris Pratt as Star-Lord along with the rest of his team from the Guardians Of The Galaxy movie series; and Chadwick Boseman as the Black Panther along with several of his colleagues from the Wakanda. And that’s not nearly all the significant actors in this movie but we’ll be here all day if we try to name them all so that’ll do for now – its easy to look up the rest of them, or just view the poster or watch the trailer and see who they’re feel play the most significant roles here.

Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015) – Robert Downey Jr and Elizabeth Olsen

Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015)

This movie tells the tale of an AI being, determined to kill all life on Earth, and the Avengers try to stop it. These Avengers include those we’ve met before, plus a few new ones.

Doubling down on the mind-control theme from the first Avengers movie where Loki was able to turn Hawkeye into his puppet and caused everyone else to argue among themselves; this movie sees Loki’s sceptre used to create a woman (played adequately by Elizabeth Olsen) with the ability to trap people’s minds in their own worst nightmares, and when she eventually becomes an Avenger she starts throwing red Chi Balls around with her mind. Her normal name is Wanda Maximoff but she’s due to eventually become known as The Scarlet Witch (the main antagonist in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, 2022). Only the AI antagonist called Ultron is immune to her mind control powers in this movie, and becomes her leader early on. As a result, all the superheroes start daydreaming and living out their worst nightmares – a sneaky way to bring an extra large dose of horror, or at least irritation, to our screens. This, combined with a much larger helping of slow & muddled drama throughout, means I can’t rate this movie any higher than Bang Average, on a par with Guardians Of The Galaxy from the year before.

Disappointingly but unsurprisingly, they’ve also doubled down on fighting among themselves (even when not mind controlled). It’s like an episode of Eastenders on steroids. Not what a smooth action hero movie connoisseur really wants to sit through. But there are some good bits of course. There’s even a good bit of humour once or twice.

Like most Avengers movies, Robert Downey Jr playing Tony Stark and Iron Man is probably the main character here. Chris Hemsworth has some good screen time as Thor, but not as much as I’d like, and Chris Evans has a lot of screen time as Captain America – probably more than I’d like. Samuel L Jackson makes a strong contribution as always, playing Nick Fury, the Director of SHIELD. Mark Ruffalo puts in a curious performance as Bruce Banner and The Hulk. Scarlett Johansson puts in a decent performance as Natasha Romanoff, although not as strong as her appearance in Iron Man 2 when she seemed younger and more energetic. There were many more significant characters besides these ones too.

Iron Man 3 (2013) – Robert Downey Jr

Iron Man 3 (2013)

The first 10 minutes are a mix of plot-building drama with mild humour, and a couple minutes of irritating anti-Islamic conditioning. We also get a nice little action scene where Robert Downey Jr shows off some of his Wing Chun skill, before putting on his latest Iron Man suit at super high speed.

The plot takes some refreshing twist within the first hour, and although it dries up a bit in the second hour, the action is generally decent throughout – there are some really strong scenes from time to time, and plenty more mediocre. There’s also several instances of good humour in this movie. So I have to say it outperforms Iron Man 2 (2010) as well as The Avengers (2012) where Iron Man was one of the main characters and pretty much stole that rather muddled show. But Iron Man 3 is not quite as original or awesome as the original Iron Man 1 from 2008 of course, so ultimately I rate Iron Man 3 as just Above Average for an action hero movie – just one step down from the original which I rated as Decent. With a bit more of a smooth & comfortable, confident vibe, and a bit less scary, depressing and irritating, I would have rated this movie equal to the original. It would have been nice to see at least one of the women being kind of happy but every single one of them is a tormented soul – especially Iron Man’s woman Pepper Potts played by Gwyneth Paltrow who is literally tortured throughout this movie. It’s not meant to be a horror movie, it’s meant to be a cool action hero movie, but what do you expect from Hollywood – they’re addicted to horror and usually find a way to make it ruin an otherwise pretty cool movie.

Guy Pearce plays the main villain in this movie, called Aldrich Killian. He does a decent job of it.

Ben Kingsley plays the villain early on – a terrorist called The Mandarin who’s really just an actor called Trevor Slattery who didn’t think anyone was being hurt. His acting was excellent here.

Don Cheadle also returns as a core character, Tony Stark’s old friend Colonel James Rhodes who has his own suit and calls himself Iron Patriot – formerly called War Machine. He does an alright job here.

Iron Man 3 is eventually rounded off with a strong dose of conditioning against those who preach caution toward technological advancement. I’d guess this plus the anti-Islamic conditioning earlier on were probably what got this movie sponsored.

The Avengers (2012) – Robert Downey Jr

This movie is an overload of messy drama and uncoordinated action. It’s as if a kid became the director and was spoilt for choice which superheroes to focus on so he picked every superhero and put them all together but none of them really had a chance to shine. Well, Iron Man (played quite well by Robert Downey Jr) has a few good bits, but for the most part, it’s like too many cooks are spoiling the broth.

This reminds me of Ocean’s Eleven – when it came out with both Brad Pitt and George Clooney in the same movie (not to mention Matt Damon and Julia Roberts too), although I were only a teenager at the time, I expected it to be twice as good as the average Pitt or Clooney movie, but no, it was a massive disappointment, like they were too busy partying to produce anything worth watching. Of course I can look back these days and appreciate what little that movie has to offer, but it’s still far from what it should have been, and this movie – The Avengers – suffers from pretty much the same problem.

The most interesting part comes 1 hour and 40 minutes into the movie, when the sky opens up and the aliens invade earth. But 1 hour and 40 minutes is a time when the average movie has already finished – it’s a long time to sit through drama and spurts of uncoordinated action while waiting for the really good scenes to arrive. Having said that, it doesn’t play out nearly as well as it initially seemed like it might have done. The fight scenes when the aliens come down from the sky are mostly barely any better than something you’d expect from an old episode of the Power Rangers. But there’s a good half an hour left in this long movie to play out the ending properly if it wanted – this longwinded movie goes on for nearly 2 and a half hours but it’s mostly boring filler drama, full of verbal arguments – not a good headspace to be in, which is why it took me several sittings to get through this movie, and this should never be the case with a thrilling action movie – I shouldn’t have mostly forgotten the first hour by the time I get round to watching the third hour – this makes for a weak review, but hey, it’s a weak movie, and that’s one thing I remember thinking since the start. I rate it Bang Average, on a par with Iron Man 2 which came out 2 years prior and was disappointing compared to the first Iron Man movie which I rated a couple of levels higher.

The very ending was alright – it’s one of the best bits, but it’s nothing incredible really.

The main antagonist in this movie is Tom Hiddleston who plays Loki (adopted brother of Thor). He does a fair job, especially for those familiar with the Thor movie series, but doesn’t wow.

It’s also a pleasure to see Scarlett Johansson playing a significant role in this movie, as Natasha Romanoff (the star character in Black Widow, 2021). She was one of the best things about the Iron Man 2 movie.

It’s also good to see some action from Chris Hemsworth – his character Thor is one of the most entertaining in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, although he doesn’t do much in this movie.

Samuel L Jackson adds value as always, as the leader of the agency called SHIELD tasked with putting together The Avengers to defend the Earth from otherworldly threats.

Chris Evans does a standard job as Captain America, promoting an institutional angle, barking orders from the front even though he’s one of the weakest superheroes in the crew – this is obviously part of a military recruitment campaign, designed to appeal to those who want to act like the main man in the room, even when they’re not. Cap’s powers are nothing compared to Iron Man and Thor for example, but I guess his character is meant to be super smart (although so is Iron Man, especially with the help of Jarvis) and of course Cap has military leadership experience – it just seems terribly out of place him barking orders to a team comprising several far more powerful superheroes than he. Having said that, he’s probably just as powerful as Romanoff and Hawkeye. The Avengers team seems half comprised of natural & near-natural humans with unrealistically perfected skills, while the other half seem to be physically indestructible freaks.

Clark Gregg returns as Agent Phil Coulson from the Iron Man movies. He’s always makes an entertaining character, and gets far too little screen time for my liking.

Jeremy Renner takes on a major role as Arrow (another seemingly feeble Avenger who somehow fights perfectly enough to compete very effectively with much more powerful warriors than he). I’m not really a fan of this actor, but he fills a role. He’s not terrible, he’s just giving me Daniel Craig vibes – he seems more made for soppy drama, not action heroism.

Mark Ruffalo plays the Dr Bruce Banner who turns in & out of his alter-ego, the Hulk, played by Lou Ferrigno with the help of plenty of CGI of course. They both do an adequate job of it.

Stellan Skarsgård does alright as Dr Erik Selvig – a man we met in the Thor movie series, who is controlled here by Loki who needs him to help open the portal.

Iron Man 2 (2010) – Robert Downey Jr

While there are some interesting aspects to the plot and some decent action scenes too; for the most part this movie is one or two levels less entertaining than the previous one. They seem to be doubling down on the drama aspect, to boost the plot, but it’s not working well for me as an action hero movie fan – it even gets quite boring from time to time, although it ends quite strong. Obviously there’s no revelatory unveiling of the Iron Man superhero to the world in this movie, since the world already knows all about him, including his identity and his capabilities, so this sequel is in dire need of additional creativity to keep the plot fresh and the action captivating – this movie is noticeably lacking in these departments, so I rate it a couple levels down from the first Iron Man movie.

It’s good to see the return of Robert Downey Jr, and alright to see the return of Gwyneth Paltrow.

It’s also great to see the addition of Scarlett Johansson into the core cast of this movie. Her character initially seems a bit too consistently cold-hearted and blank-faced for my liking – a touch of warmth wouldn’t go amiss – but it keeps us on our toes about who she is and what are her intentions, until it’s all revealed after an hour in, and then it suits her role nicely. Scarlett Johannson and Jon Favreau (from Stark’s company) make a great team in some awesome action scenes towards the end, which includes multiple moments of good humour too. Credit to the writers, producers, directors and actors for that. It’s good to see Jon have a more significant role this time round too – he had only a minor role in the previous Iron Man movie but deserved something better and this has been remedied in Iron Man 2.

Samuel L Jackson makes a refreshing appearance at the top of the second hour, causing the movie to gain positive vibes and become generally more interesting. Better late than never, although I’ll never be able to justify rating this movie as highly as the first, after sitting through its weak first hour.

The intrigue and positive vibes are cranked up another notch about half an hour before the end, as Tony Stark finds a message from his late father with a clue towards creating a new element that can replace the plutonium in his power core (his artificial heart) which is slowly killing him.

Mickey Rourke plays the main antagonist (with techie brain plus brawn) quite well, while his new partner (with business brains, money & influence) is adequately played by Sam Rockwell.

Don Cheadle plays the role of James Rhodes – a black man with quite a senior position in the military, who is friends with Tony Stark, but when Stark is dying and goes a bit crazy, Rhodes steals one of his Iron Man suits believing he’d make a more worthy superhero himself. Don does an adequate job, but he’s no Wesley Snipes or Michael B Jordan.

Don and Sam both carry a bit of a beta-male vibe. Very much lacking that ‘main man in the room’ vibe; although that may be the intention, since Sam shouldn’t overpower Mickey, and Don shouldn’t overpower Robert, but Mickey and Robert are both so-so themselves, half way between Alpha and Beta I’d say. And/or maybe Sam & Don sold their souls to be rewarded with these roles, as is often the way in Hollywood.

Iron Man (2008) – Robert Downey Jr

This already feels like an old movie because it’s been around so long and was one the very first movie produced by Marvel Studios, and the first to come under the umbrella of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it’s still pretty cutting-edge by today’s Marvellous standards.

Of course it’s not the first movie based on Marvel Comics – there were over a dozen before it, including the early Blade, X-Men and Spider Man movies, and even Howard The Duck going back to 1986.

Iron Man stars Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark, the main shareholder and chief inventor for the world’s top weapons designer & manufacturer. Then he sees the damage his weapons are doing even to Americans and turns his back on the former business, instead focusing on developing his Iron Man suit that turns him into a one man army and a superhero.

Gwyneth Paltrow (in her mid 30s) plays Pepper Potts – Tony Stark’s beloved PA.

The main antagonist – initially the friendly VP of Stark International, called Obadiah Stane – is played quite convincingly by Jeff Bridges. He eventually builds his own Iron Man suit after analysing the wreckage of Tony’s prototype, and becomes known as Iron Monger.

Of course, as with any war related movie, there’s a lot of narrative pushing and conditioning built into this movie, which sickens me, but looking past that, the budget is good, the action is good, the acting is good, and the plot development is not bad either.

Iron Man has some slightly stomached churning moments, bordering on horror, such as when Tony realises his heart has been replaced with a device powered by a car battery, and when the main antagonist pulls out that device later on. This, and the rotten America vs Middle East typecasting, also brings down my overall score of the Iron Man movie, causing me to rate it about equal to the likes of Doctor Strange, Venom, Black Panther and Blue Beetle. I rate it slightly weaker than the likes of Aquaman, Black Adam and Wonder Woman, mainly because their most thrilling moments are a bit stronger and/or their plots are a bit richer, and/or their downsides are less of an issue – but there’s not much in it. I rate Thor even higher. If we compare the best moments in Iron Man (such as when he makes his escape from the terrorists’ cave, and when he has a run-in with the F-22 raptors) vs the best moments in Thor (such as when Thor infiltrates the black site to go after his hammer, and when he regains his powers just in time to deal with the Destroyer robot that Loki is controlling) – they’re not massively dissimilar in terms of entertainment value. Thor’s scenes – especially the one where he goes after his hammer – may possibly be more credible, relatable and built up with better momentum, but the general entertainment value including good humour and healthy vibes throughout the movie Thor go a long way towards its ranking too.