There’s tons of strong action hero movies in recent years & decades based on classic DC and Marvel comicbook characters like Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Black Adam, Aquaman, Thor, Wonder Woman, etc.
Although the opening scene is pretty cool, with Logan defending his limo from a gang of thieves, this movie still gets off to a depressing start as Logan is getting old, struggling to move around and even bring his claws out, and is babysitting Professor X who’s gone a bit mad and feels trapped and keeps getting pinned down and put to sleep with injections. There are signs of something a little more interesting brewing, but it takes a while to come round.
A little over 20 minutes in, and finally the plot is heading somewhere interesting.
This vibe of mixing the odd cool scene with an excessive amount of long slow gritty depressing patches generally defines this movie. It could easily be developed and condensed into a more concise, exciting movie for action hero movie fans – as it stands, it’s a bit lost between genres.
It takes until 2 hours in – when there’s less than 20 minutes left of the movie (including time for closing credits), for Logan to actually start looking like a serious force to be reckoned with, no longer acting crippled by his old age and injuries, due to the fact he’s just taken a dangerously high amount of repair serum. This scene resembles a scene near the end of the movie Blade, when Blade drank the blood of his doctor girlfriend, after escaping and needing to bring himself back to good health fast. In both cases the main protagonist became a temporarily super-charged version of their former self, at a time when they were disabled by their condition but needed to put up a good fight asap. Blade also took a serum throughout his movie, but that was a weak alternative to the real blood he drank before the final battle.
Hugh Jackman stars in this movie as both Logan (the main protagonist) and X-24 (the final boss antagonist, who looks just like Logan but is cleaner shaven).
Charles Xavier is played by Patrick Stewart – he dies half way through the movie – killed by X-24.
Laura is played by Dafne Keen – she’s a child who has the same abilities as Logan and X-24 (long claws and quick healing).
What’s next?
Next up – if you’re following the X-Men movie saga in order of release date, including all the spin-offs that fall within its cinematic universe such as the Wolverine trilogy and the Deadpool movies – next up is Dark Phoenix (2019) which has a lot in common with Captain Marvel which was released in the same year, except Dark Phoenix falls within the X-Men universe and Captain Marvel falls within the Avengers universe (commonly called the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) but I’m not a fan of that name since both the X-Men universe and the Avengers universe are based on Marvel Comics). We’ve already seen the power of Jean Grey in X-Men Apocalypse (2016) as well as other X-Men movies prior to that where Jean Grey was played by a different actress (Famke Janssen), but none of those movies were really dedicated to her like Dark Phoenix is, so if you’re a fan of the Jean Grey character, especially the version played by Sophie Turner from X-Men: Apocalypse, be sure to check out the Dark Phoenix movie next, although it’s not nearly as good as X-Men: Apocalypse in my opinion.
After a 10 minute warm-up, giving a bit of a backstory, an exciting early development occurs where the X-Men are persuaded by the POTUS to take an unsafe outer-space voyage in their own plane to investigate and rescue the crew of a mysteriously stopped shuttle mission where all communications strangely died.
After this, the movie dwindles into one big gritty drama fest with very little action. Massively underplaying the potential of the movie based on the awesome core concept that’s scarcely even a significant factor in the minute-by-minute script of this movie.
Quite a contrast with X-Men: Apocalyse, which builds up nicely and ends on a high – this movie attempts to start on a high then forgets all about it and bores us with way too much cheap emotional stuff. Then when there is action, it’s generally good X-Men fighting other good X-Men without thinking too much about it. What on earth kind of mindset is this movie trying to fester in our children? A lack of thought process, a lack of cohesive mindset, and a tendency to fight violently with good friends for the pettiest of reasons, it seems.
Arguably the best scene of the movie comes 90 minutes in, when the X-Men team finally decide to work together against the aliens, after the humans finally decide to let the captive X-Men free after most of their men have been killed by the aliens. I guess that’s the silver lining to the dark grey cloud that pretty much covers this entire movie. This scene then morphs into the grand finale battle between Jean Grey (played by Sophie Turner these days) and the leader of the aliens, after a bit of an emo-fest of a telepathic chat between Grey and Xavier. The grand finale battle itself is a bit of a girl-power fest too – it even goes so far as to debate the power of being emotional. I would have liked to see some better tai chi postures, to add a touch of realism to the fight scenes which are all about projecting energy, which to the trained eye look quite silly due to being full of typical rookie mistakes like bending the hand back too far when doing a pushing action which to the untrained looks like extra powerful posturing but to the trained eye is just a very weak way to direct energy and is a potential broken wrist. The final fight scene ends with a big explosion where nobody knows what happened to either one of them. This, followed by 5 minutes of common drama, make the grand finale somewhat anticlimactic and the entire movie significantly weaker than X-Men: Apocalypse, and one of the weakest X-Men movies of all time – possibly the worst one. I’m going to rate it Bang Average considering it’s got some pretty good bits to it, but even that may be being a bit generous since it’s 2 hours long and the good bits are few and far between, and what’s between is really quite bad so keep the fast-forward button handy especially if you’ve seen this movie before.
It’s tempting to liken the disappointment of this movie, with the disappointment of Avengers: Endgame from the same year, since both followed on from the cast and storyline of a much better movie beforehand. In the case of Endgame, it was a poor “part 2” to the much better Avengers: Infinity Wars (“part 1”), and in the case of Dark Phoenix, it was a poor continuation of storyline from the much better X-Men: Apocalypse where Sophie Turner’s character Phoenix / Jean Grey showed her true power to save the day at the end.
This movie gets off to a good start. It seems better coordinated, more focused, and more consistently captivating than any other X-Men movie to date. So while I’ve rated every other as around about Bang Average, I have to say this is a few clear levels better. Indeed, for now I’m going to rate it Pretty Good, alongside Black Adam – a movie to which this one bears a striking resemblance. The ending was particularly strong here (much like in Black Adam), but the plot building up to that was also quite cohesive, and the drama was quite well balanced with action throughout. It’s not trying to do too many things at once, like previous X-Men movies have often been guilty of; and it’s not stuck between genres like Wolverine (2013) was for example, since that more depressing vibes and the horror factor was hitting home a lot more, while in this movie the dark forces are much more grandiose – much less raw & uncomfortable – thus making it more digestible for a smoother entertainment experience.
Jean Grey is the main hero of this movie, and Famke Janssen no longer plays that role – she’s played by Sophie Turner here and will continue in that role for Dark Phoenix (2019) although that movie is relatively disappointing. Sophie Turner is not the only cast member who’s been replaced either – Storm, Nightcrawler and Angel are played by new actors here too, for example. Several familiar characters have returned though, such as James McAvoy‘s Professor X, and Michael Fassbender‘s Magneto, and Jennifer Lawrence‘s Mystique, Nicholas Hoult‘s Beast, and Evan Peters‘ Quicksilver (who is revealed in this movie to be Magneto’s son, unbeknown to Magneto himself).
The main antagonist is an ancient Egyptian mutant – the first ever mutant – with strong telekinetic powers, who’s been brought back to life from his tomb, within a collapsed pyramid, where he’s been kind of comatose for thousands of years. He’s called Apocalypse and is played quite well by Oscar Isaac.
Sequels
Next up in the X-Men saga, is Logan (2017) – another spin-off Wolverine-focused movie – which we got a little teaser for at the end of this movie, after the closing credits. Then after that, there’s Dark Phoenix (2019) – zeroing in on Sophie Turner’s Jean Grey aka Phoenix or Dark Phoenix. That movie bears a striking resemblance to Captain Marvel (2019) which was also made by Marvel, released shortly before Dark Phoenix and was Marvel’s first ever female-led movie which had been in planning for many years prior to its release. Captain Marvel is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), so that character is also featured in Avengers: Endgame (2019); while Dark Phoenix is a character within the X-Men cinematic universe which includes several Wolverine and Deadpool spin-offs but doesn’t ever overlap with the MCU for some reason.
This movie gets off to a weird but interesting start, with cool but confusing action scenes played out by low quality young actors.
As the movie continues, the confusing weirdness continues along with lots of hot-headed drama and a bit of cool action, right through till the end. It’s too drama heavy for my taste, but still it’s not a bad movie – I’d rate it Bang Average along with all the other X-Men and Wolverine movies to date since they all have a similar mix of pros & cons. Just enough good stuff to pique our interest, but not enough to thoroughly entertain and make it frequently rewatchable. It’s worth watching as part of a marathon of viewing all the X-Men movies in order of release date, but I’d avoid watching it as a standalone movie on its own merit outside of the wider saga since it provides valuable context for understanding what remains a weird & unclear movie even with that context.
Unlike previous X-Men and Wolverine movies, this one features a good amount of screentime from both the younger generation and the older generation of Professor X and Magneto, although the younger generation gets a slightly priority here.
Hugh Jackman plays Logan / Wolverine as usual. James McAvoy plays the younger Professor X, and Patrick Stewart plays the older Professor X. Michael Fassbender plays the younger Magneto, and Ian McKellen plays the older Magneto. Jennifer Lawrence plays Mystique who has a very vital role in this movie.
Peter Dinklage plays arguably the main antagonist, Dr Trask, although the real enemies to the X-Men are the Sentinels he creates to hunt down and kill all mutants, and movie revolves more around the team stopping Mystique from killing him since it’s his death that gets his Sentinel program funded so Wolverine went back in time to stop her from killing him in order to prevent the extinction of all X-Men and mutants in the future.
Halle Berry gets a little screentime as Storm, and Famke Janssen gets even less screentime as Jean Grey. Nicholas Hoult gets a fair amount of screentime as Beast, although his character was not particularly vital to the plot. There were a few other characters from the usual squad too, but the important core characters have already been mentioned.
The movie ends on a happy note, with disaster averted and everyone alive – even Jean Grey and Scott Summers who were both killed off in previous movies. Then at the end of the closing credits there was what seemed to be a little teaser scene – indeed it was a sneak preview of X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and it looks quite captivating.
This movie gets off to a good start, with a highly memorable scene where Logan aka the Wolverine is set free by a prison guard in Japan, when Japan is seconds away from getting nuked. Whether you believe nukes are real is another matter – this movie promotes the mainstream narrative and we’ll leave it at that. Logan instantly returns the favour, by saving the guard’s life, by helping him hide down his prison tunnel and shielding him with its door. This scene was set back in the days when Logan had organic claws, before his entire skeleton and claw system was replaced by Stryker with practically indestructible Adamantium.
Then we see logan wake up from a nightmare, in a more recent time, and he’s accidentally killed his X-Men comrade and girlfriend, Jean Grey, having dug his metal claws into her belly while sleeping. Then he wakes up again, in the present day, now living on a snowy mountain, and he’s let his hair grow long. Then he strolls into town, and the movie begins to get much more into an exciting genre. Firstly, he comes across some extra irresponsible hunters, then when he’s in the process of dealing with them and about to take things to the next level, some red-haired Japanese samaurai chick called Yukyo steps in, takes over the show, and escorts him to her car in a befriending manner. The script that follows is an intriguing one, especially considering the interesting characters involved.
This appears to be a much classier Wolverine movie than the last one from 2011 – not only due to its setting in Japan, although that may be a big factor because it allows for the more decadent and intense culture of top Japanese warriors & businessmen creeping in. Backed by themes of Samaurai, Ninja, Yakuza and a touch of witchcraft-type supervillainy plus plenty of plot twists, this makes for quite a captivating movie for the discerning action hero movie connoisseur.
The pace, sound and cinematography are also well executed, giving this movie a modern, premium feel.
Having said that, there’s a good hour in the middle of this movie, from 35 mins till 95 mins, where the Wolverine is weakened and unable to heal himself – this gets a bit depressing at times. There’s still plenty of good action during this hour, but there’s a very depressing overtone to it all. Fortunately after 95 minutes he finds the source of the problem and cures himself, then the movie is capable of a higher grade of entertainment for those who like smooth, no-nonsense action hero performances. Unfortunately though, this only lasts 15 minutes until Logan is trapped and put in another very uncomfortable situation. This movie misses a lot of opportunity for cool Ninja antics minus the uncomfortable stuff, but I guess Hollywood can’t help themselves when it comes to mixing Horror and Drama in with every other genre, and this is really the key reason why I’m rating this movie just Above Average when it could easily have been more highly rated if it swapped most of its horror genre material for some cool extra action and ninja training scenes for example. Still, you can’t please everyone – there will be those who want more of the ugly Horror and irritating Drama. Indeed, this movie seems to be getting a bit lost between genres and that’s really the basis of its downfall I think, irrespective what my personal preference favours.
One of the most intersting scenes is at the very end, amongst the closing credits, where Magneto appears, along with Professor X back from the dead, both asking Logan for help due to dark forces threatening the fate of the world. Now why couldn’t they have a bit of that going on within in the main body of the movie itself? Especially since there were so many scenes of Jean Grey speaking to Logan from the dead – she could have helped out in a more significant way at least once.
The main cast members of this movie include Hugh Jackman as Logan aka Wolverine; Rila Fukushima as Yukio; Svetlana Khodchenkova as Viper; Tao Okamoto as Mariko Yashida; Hiroyuki Sanada as Shingen Yashida (Mariko’s father); Hal Yamanouchi as the Silver Samurai (Mariko’s grandfather, and head of the corporation, making him officially the most powerful person in Japan); and Will Yun Lee as Kenuichio Harada (leader of the ninja clan)
This movie tells the backstory of most of the core X-Men characters including: Professor X (Charles Xavier) played mostly by James McAvoy (co-star of Wanted alongside Angelina Jolie; also in Glass alongside Samuel L Jackson and Bruce Willis) to be a generation or two younger than Patrick Stewart’s version of Professor X; and there’s Erik aka Magneto played by Michael Fassbender (star of Assassin’s Creed) to be a generation or two younger than Ian McKellen’s Magneto. There’s also Raven aka Mystique played by Jennifer Lawrence; and Hank McCoy aka Beast played by Nicholas Hoult. We also see Alex Summers aka Havok (played by Lucas Till) – in theory his character is the younger brother of Scott Summers (Cyclops) who featured in the original X-Men trilogy from the decade prior. And there’s several more weird characters besides these.
The main antagonist is played by Kevin Bacon. His character, Sebastian Shaw, is the doctor responsible for torturing young Erik (Magneto) and killing his mother; and most of this movie revolves around Erik’s mission to get even. Sebastian Shaw also has mutant powers himself, including the ability absorb energy from all kinds of weapons, then transform it and throw it back as he pleases. He also wears the original version of what eventually becomes Magneto’s hat, preventing Xavier from reading his mind.
We also get a brief cameo from Hugh Jackman as Logan/Wolverine, when Charles & Erik originally approach him, but he immediately tells them to get lost without even asking what they want, and they do, and that’s as far as his role in this movie goes.
Other significant characters include Emma Frost, a telepath with diamond skin played by January Jones; and Angel Salvadore, a fireball shooting girl with butterfly wings played by Zoë Kravitz. There’s also CIA agent Moira MacTaggert played by Rose Byrne, and a disappearing red-skinned devil type character called Azazel played Jason Flemyng. And that’s not all but we’ll be here all day listing every significant mutant in this movie – we’ve covered the main one I think, there’s just a few more.
Considering how drama-heavy this movie is, and how childish it often is from time to time, I have to rate is OK – no better than the original X-Men trilogy – in fact it’s probably slightly worse, on a par with X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) but the margins are small so I’ve rated them all Bang Average.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine tells the story of Jimmy aka Logan aka Wolverine (played by Hugh Jackman) and his brother Victor Creed (played by Liev Schreiber) growing up, from when they were young boys and ran away from home, to participating in several old wars (seemingly not aging much through the centuries). Logan’s brother seems to have more of a bloodthirsty mischievous side – he even has pointy canine teeth. Still, Logan’s got his brother’s back. So they both get captured and sentenced to death but they don’t die, which is when Stryker (Danny Huston) picks them up and brings them into his team which includes Wade Wilson (played by Ryan Reynolds) who has super-human sword skills and will gain a lot more powers by the end of the movie where he’s known as Weapon XI – the final boss, and an early version of Deadpool. The supporting role he plays here, adds a nice bit of humour to the movie. His own Deadpool movies are too much toilet humour for my taste, but when he plays a supporting role it really brings out the best of him and adds good value to an otherwise alright action movie I think.
Within the first hour we learn where Logan got the name Wolverine from, and we see how he went from having claws made from organic claw type material, to having practically indestructable adamantium (derived from meteorites) replacing his claws and being bonded with his skeleton to make him bulletproof all over (not that our bones completely shield all our vital organs, but that’s the story here nonetheless).
The middle of the movie is dominated by the fact that Logan’s brother killed Logan’s wife. But in the second hour there’s an interesting plot twist, as Logan catches up with his brother and Stryker, only to find that they’ve got his wife and she’s still alive – they only faked her death.
Considering its balance of strengths and weaknesses, I rate this movie Bang Average, on a par with the three X-Men movies that came before it – probably slightly weaker but there’s not much in it.
There’s a lot of drama in this movie, and some decent action, and some intriguing aspects to the plot. Overall I rate it Bang Average on a par with the last couple of X-Men movies.
This movie is centred around the non-mutants (in this movie called ‘humans’ for some odd reason as if being a mutated human is equal to being a non-human) having found a mutant who has the ability to strip powers from any mutant who goes near him. From this ability, a ‘cure’ has been made, delivered in needle format. Magneto and friends team up against the ‘humans’, with the core team of X-Men trying to prevent a war. And the key concept that really defines this movie, aside from the ‘cure’ and Magneto’s antics, is Jean Grey coming back from the dead and having unlocked her Class 5 powers making her more powerful than anyone else – she even kills Professor X although that’s because she has a split personality between malevolent and benevolent sides, due to Professor X having repressed her powers for everyone’s protection since she was a child. Eventually, Magneto’s crew wage a siege on Alcatraz where the ‘cure’ is being made, but Magneto gets hit with the ‘cure’, then just as things are about to end amicably, the military fire on Jean Grey and this makes her angry, which is a big problem – only Logan can stop her by appealing to her heart before stabbing and killing her. What kind of culture is this movie trying to nurture with behaviour like this?
The cast is pretty much the same as usual, with Hugh Jackman playing Logan aka Wolverine, Ian McKellen playing Eric Lehnsherr aka Magneto, Patrick Stewart playing Professor Charles Xavier, Famke Janssen playing Jean Grey aka Phoenix, Halle Berry playing Ororo Munroe aka Storm, Anna Paquin playing Marie aka Rogue, James Marsden playing Scott Summers aka Cyclops, Rebecca Romijn playing Raven Darkholme aka Mystique, Shawn Ashmore as Bobby Drake aka Ice Man, Aaron Stanford as John Allerdyce aka Pyro, as well Daniel Cudmore as Peter Rasputin aka Colossus the metal man who always seems missing from the main set of credits for some odd reason.
Plus we get to see a lot more of Kelsey Grammar playing Dr Henry ‘Hank’ McCoy aka Beast, who’s involved in politics with the humans. And we get to see a bit more of Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde who can phase through walls, floors and ceilings, or people – anything really.
We also get the odd interesting new character, such as Vinnie Jones playing Juggernaut who can walk through walls and anything else – he is an unstoppable object when on the move. And Ben Foster plays a mutant with large wings like a bird, called Angel, and his father runs the lab that developed the ‘cure’, and his father wants to ‘cure’ him, but he escapes, then comes back in the end to save his father’s life, using his unique abilities.
Speaking of Ben Foster, the LGBT theme is a bit over the top in this movie, with men dressing up in women’s clothes too, and even calling themselves girls. It’s a bit weird, but that’s Hollywood for you – sometimes they can’t help themselves, and sometimes it seems like a key driver that helped get the movie sponsored.
Sequels
Now that we’ve completed the early trilogy, since Xavier died in this one, the following X-Men movies go off on a tangent to focus on the story of Logan / Wolverine, and simultaneously a few prequel general X-Men movies are made. So there’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), then X-Men First Class (2011) and it alternates back and forth between Wolverine movies and prequel movies, with releases in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, and then there’s Dark Phoenix in 2019 which very much resembles Captain Marvel from the same year (strong lead female with energy powers). By this time, Jean Grey (aka Phoenix) had been re-cast and is now played by Sophie Turner, the star of Dark Phoenix – the same Class 5 mutant that should have stole the show in X-Men 3: The Last Stand but her role as the most powerful mutant ever wasn’t properly capitalised on and most of the marketing placed more emphasis on Halle Berry (Storm) who was a big star at the time since she played the main Bond girl in Die Another Day (2002) and took the lead role in Catwoman (2004). Dare I say, there’s also been a recent X-Men spinoff in the form of the Deadpool trilogy starring Ryan Reynolds, which features Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. I’m not a big fan of that toilet humour genre myself though, so I’m not recommending those Deadpool movies – just mentioning it for completeness.
This movie gets off to a better, much quicker start than the first X-Men movie, as an angry mutant storms the White House.
It’s nice to see the concepts of the school and of Cerebro being expanded upon early in this movie too, after being briefly established in the last movie but not very much capitalised on.
The action builds up to really interesting crescendo after the half hour mark, when Stryker invades the mutants’s school after Magneto’s tip-off, with only Logan and a few kids to hold down the fort against swat team style special forces operatives pouring in from helicopters. And the action gets even more interesting when Magneto makes his escape from his plastic prison, before the one hour mark.
The action in the back-end of the movie is a bit less intriguing, and a lot more chaotic with plenty of tense moments. This is a classic example of how more action doesn’t necessarily equate to a better action movie. While the quality of the first hour was on a part to be Above Average, the less pleasant second half brings down the overall rating to Bang Average in my opinion. There’s a pretty cool scene around the 2 hour mark though, as Xavier has a little word with the POTUS while making time stand still for everyone else in his office.
The cast is much the same as the last movie, with Hugh Jackman playing Logan aka the Wolverine, Patrick Stewart playing Professor Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen playing Magneto, Halle Berry as Ororo Munroe aka Storm, Famke Janssen as Jean Grey, James Marsden as Scott Summers aka Cyclops, Anna Paquin as Rogue, Rebecca Romijn as Raven Darkholme aka Mystique, Brian Cox as William Stryker, Alan Cumming as Kurt Wagner aka Nightcrawler, Aaron Stanford as Pyro, Shawn Ashmore as Ice Man, and a few more interesting characters besides them, but that covers the extended core cast pretty well already.
The distressing opening scene that builds the backstory of this movie’s main antagonist (Magneto) consists of little more than screaming, crying and white noise sound effects. Not a good start for those who prefer smoother action hero movies while trying to steer clear of horror and unpleasant drama genres. Fortunately, this only lasts a few minutes, and then the drama scenes become increasingly interesting until we see Logan (aka the Wolverine) in an old-school no-holds-barred cage fight around 10 minutes in. That scene is still full of white noise though – not particularly pleasant on the ears. Someone needs a word with the atmospherics director, else at least the head of sound.
The real top-tier action begins at 13 minutes in, as the losing cage fighter suspects Logan of being a mutant, then tries to stab him in the back, at which point Logan then reveals his hidden weapons and his true colours.
By the end of the first hour, we’ve had a good dose of action, the sci-fi plot is quite intriguing and the drama scenes are generally quite interesting for an action movie fan. The miserable gritty stuff from early on seems well behind us now, thankfully.
Core Cast & Characters
All the main characters were quite well established in the first hour, including all the main members of the X-Men team led by Professor Charles Xavier aka Professor X, a powerful mind-reading & mind-controlling telepath played well by Patrick Stewart (perhaps best known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek), as well as the main antagonist (Magneto, a powerful telekinetic of metal, played equally well by Ian McKellen who looks a bit like Ron Paul), and his main accomplices.
The movie mainly follows the life of Logan aka the Wolverine, played very well by Hugh Jackman. Among his fellow X-Men, are Ororo Munroe aka Storm who has weather-control powers like wind, thunder & lighting, while occasionally displaying glowing eyes like Thor and is played adequately by Halle Berry; as well as Famke Janssen (with vibes of Jennifer Garner from Marvel’s Elektra, or Gal Gadot from DC’s Wonder Woman) who is also a telepath (called Doctor Jean Grey) but has not yet learnt to fully control and harness her powers. There’s also Cyclops who shoots a laser beam from his eye and is played adequately by James Marsden. Logan also befriends a girl called Rogue who has the ability to take people’s powers from them, and is played adequately by Anna Paquin. On the baddies’ team there’s Sabretooth who’s like a stronger but slower version of the Wolverine and is played adequately by Tyler Mane (behind heavy mask & makeup); as well as a weird shapeshifting unclothed blue woman with reptilian scales called Mystique played by Rebecca Romijn, and an equally weird leaping long-tongued creature called Toad played by Ray Park.
The X-Men vs The Avengers
This whole setup of so many people with different superpowers in one movie, reminds me of the more recent Avengers movies by Marvel, although I have to say, everyone seems a lot better co-ordinated in the X-Men movies. This is probably mostly due to there being a single clear leader in Xavier who everyone generally trusts & respects, but it may also be partly due to there being a different intention behind the script.
In the Avengers movies, Captain America tries to take the leadership role but he’s clearly one of the weaker Avengers, or at least somewhere in the middle, so it doesn’t really work, and Iron Man tends to steal the show every time although it should probably be Thor since his scenes are generally the best and he’s a practically indestructible deity, as opposed to a feeble man in a suit or an enhanced man with a shield.
But they have to downplay Thor’s abilities and role to prevent him overshadowing the other Avengers since they’re all pretty feeble in comparison. Even in his own movies he’s frequently stripped of his powers to make his dilemmas credible. I mean Thor alone is not much less powerful than Thor with all the Avengers by his side, considering how he sometimes mows down entire fields full of alien warriors with his lightning powers and his practically unstoppable weapons, so people like Captain America and Black Widow and Hawkeye by his side can’t really add much value on the battlefield unless Thor’s role & powers are heavily downplayed while the others are massively overplayed. Guys like the Hulk and Iron Man and the Scarlet Witch seem powerful enough to add value to Thor’s team, but even their powers are typically downplayed in order to allow the weaker Avengers to still look good. Why not just bunch the best ones together to form a better version of the Avengers? Because it doesn’t suit the agendas. They need Captain America as their front man at all costs, it seems, even if he’s the least interesting of all and is feeble in comparison to the likes of Iron Man, Hulk and Thor.
The second hour
The second hour of X-Men continues with a lot of scene setting still. There appears to be a lack of direction to this movie – the introduction phase seems hard to move past. But eventually we switch into a serious battle which merges into the final action scene. These final action scenes certainly have plenty of time to be delivered diligently – they’re well built, not rushed at all, and the mild drama scenes that finish off the movie are pretty well poised and well delivered too. But as a result of going from a prolonged bout of scene setting, straight into the semi-final and final action scenes, it seems like we’re missing a layer or two in the middle somewhere. This movie seems a bit one dimensional for this reason. Fortunately, it can be treated as the first movie of many in the X-Men movie series, and this is kind of its saving grace, turning it from a movie that’s too short, missing plot development in the middle, to a movie that can be treated as just the first chapter of a well developed story – not dissimilar to an old comicbook in this respect. Nevertheless, when rating this as a standalone movie, I have to acknowledge its lack of plot direction and lack of development in the middle. While the team is well coordinated, and the sides are well opposed, and the scene setting was decent, and the ending was cute and nicely multi-layered, it seems Xavier was out of action for the most part, offering no leadership of any kind in the second half of the movie. His powers are massively under-utilised and the heroes seem short of a mission, aim or direction. For these reasons I have to rate this movie just OK, but if these things were corrected it could have been rated several levels higher.
The school setup, with kids having superpowers being trained in a secret school for mutants, could have been a bigger factor in this movie too, adding plenty of value to the script, but that could have caused the main characters to lose screen time, or made the movie inappropriately long. So I don’t blame them for keeping this aspect of the plot quite simple and untapped into. Still, if I remember correctly, this school setup becomes a big thing in at least one of the future movies in the X-Men movie series, so the opportunity’s not totally wasted.
Sequels and Spin-Offs
If you enjoyed X-Men (2000) and wish to watch its immediate sequels next, check out X2 (2003) then X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) to complete the initial trilogy from the noughties.
After that, you may wish to move on to watching the spin-off Wolverine trilogy (released 2009, 2013, 2017) alongside watching the four X-Men prequels (released 2011, 2014, 2016, 2019). Since they have inter-splicing release dates they’re probably all worth watching in one long list in order of release date rather than separating them into Wolverine spin-offs and X-Men prequels.
Following all of that, you may wish to move onto the Deadpool trilogy (released 2016, 2018, 2024) where Hugh Jackman also features as Wolverine. Or if Ryan Reynolds’ toilet humour is not your cup of tea, you may wish to swerve all the Deadpool movies. Perhaps instead move on to the Fantastic Four movies from the noughties (released 2005 & 2007) starring Jessica Alba, if you haven’t already seen them recently, since they’re also based on Marvel Comics, and just like the original X-Men trilogy, were also released prior to the beginning of the modern Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) by Marvel Studios, Phase One of which officially began with Iron Man (2008) then The Incredible Hulk (2008).
There’s also been a recent Horror genre spin-off from the X-Men movie series, called The New Mutants (2020), but that’s the wrong genre for this website and for me personally, so I’ll be swerving it. It appears to lack strong cast members anyway.
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.
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.
Continuing the jovial musical theme from the last movie, Guardians Of The Galaxy: Volume 2 begins with a bit of similar music and the appearance of Kurt Russell as Peter Quill’s dad. Although the vibe is lighthearted it makes an interesting early plot development and of course it’s very cool to see Kurt Russell involved this time round, working alongside Chris Pratt – or against him, as the movie unfolds. Both are outstanding actors. Two of my favourite action hero movie stars, coming from different generations.
The second scene is overwhelmed by jovial musical and dancing too, as this movie is beginning to look very childish and uninteresting, but we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt for a while since it’s still gradually rolling through the opening credits.
Before the end of the first half hour we see Kurt Russell as Ego Quill introduce himself to his son, and we see Silvester Stallone make an appearance as the head of the 100 clans of Ravagers, of which Yondu leads the only one that Sly’s character is displeased with and has exiled. Stallone has an extremely minor role in this movie, but it’s good to see him nevertheless. Russll has a major role in this movie, and it’s a shame to see him turn out to be the main antagonist, but it was kind of entertaining.
Chris Pratt has gained a little weight since the first Guardians movie – but it’s not a big deal – he still has plenty of character for doing a good job in his range of roles ranging from action to drama to humour to weirdness. His weight is actually the butt of a joke in his next outing – Avengers: Infinity War (2018) – so when Guardians 2 was released in 2017 and they were writing the script to Avengers 2018 they probably clocked on to the same thing I clocked on to, but by then Chris had actually lost a little weight so the joke didn’t work so well.
Although this movie goes on for over a couple of hours, it still seems a bit one-dimensional, as if it would benefit from another 30-45 minutes to add another layer of rich plot to the movie.
Overall, I rate it just about OK – no more, no less.
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.
Captain Marvel is an OK modern Marvel movie. It’s not very well made, but it’s not very poorly made either.
It’s got subtle and not-so-subtle undertones of a girls’ girl theme, but this doesn’t massively detract from the core plot or action scenes so it’s tolerable for those whose cup of tea it is not.
The action ranges from so-so to pretty good, and although its best scenes have most of the constituents of an awesome experience, they falls short of what the best Marvel movies have managed to achieve (both in action and in drama). The best action scenes, while still pretty good, are a bit limp and end up being a bit of a sissy version of what they could be.
The plot is fairly enjoyable when you’ve not seen it in a few years.
Brie Larson plays the main character, Captain Marvel, born as Carol Danvers and renamed Vers by her kidnappers who may have also wiped her memory. Her acting is alright but nothing special.
Samuel L Jackson plays the next main role, as Nick Fury, a senior agent of SHIELD and as Earth’s main liaison for Captain Marvel – initially trying to arrest her, then eventually helping her when he realises his own agency has been hijacked by the alien race who he initially thought were the enemy but eventually discovered were the good guys. Samuel does a good job and kind of saves the show from what would otherwise be little more than a poorly made, uncoordinated in drama interspliced with mediocre action, only a few scenes of which are sort of good.
Lashana Lynch plays Maria Rambeau, the tomboy-type forgotten ‘best friend’ (and maybe more) of Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel. Her acting doesn’t impress me.
Ben Mendelsohn plays Talos (the shapeshifting alien) and Keller (the agent who Talos impersonates, who is Nick Fury’s boss). He does a so-so job.
Jude Law plays the main antagonist in the second half of the movie, who initially appears to be a good friend of Vers – her senior comrade, supervisor and training partner (and secretly the guy who originally kidnapped her, before her memory were wiped). Jude does a decent job here, and significantly helps to make this is kind of respectable movie.
The main antagonist at the very end, who Jude Law’s character answers to, is Ronan (played by Lee Pace although you can’t really tell who it is behind the CGI, mask, outfit, makeup, etc). Ronan was the guy who served under Thanos in Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014) before going rogue when he acquired an infinity stone and became the most powerful man in the universe and the main antagonist of that movie, until the Guardians took the stone back. He’s a cool character and wields hammer a bit like Thor.
Djimon Hounsou and Gemma Chan play members of Jude Law’s team – initially comrades of Vers (Captain Marvel). They add value. They’re at least as good as Brie Larson.
Annette Bening with weird contact lenses plays the AI character who helps to deceive & control Vers – modelled on Carol’s forgotten friend, a renegade pilot who developed the technology that gave Captain Marvel her superpowers when it crashed (shot down by Jude Law’s character, who also killed Bening’s character, kidnapped Carol and wiped her mind).
Clark Greg plays Agent Phil Coulson from SHIELD, working under Nick Fury. He’s a good character but only has a very minor role here – I’d be pleased to see him in a bigger role.
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.
This move gets off to a bad start, with a boring-come-irritating drama scene that attempts to conjure up a traumatic experience while building a backstory for the main character. Fortunately this only lasts a few minutes, and then the better stuff gets underway.
Chris Pratt (with vibes of Seann William Scott) stars as Peter Quill – the main man in this movie. He’s a fun character with convincing acting, and carries the occasional moment of humour very well too.
Dave Bautista adds substantial value as a strong powerful ally called Drax The Destroyer, although he gets beaten easily by the main antagonist called Ronan – himself played quite well by Lee Pace with a massive dose of CGI and masking up so much that we can’t really see who he is.
Zoë Saldaña (star of Colombiana, 2011) is the main female in this movie. She’s a green woman called Gamora, and a trained killer. She joins the team of misfits, to save the galaxy, and has the odd moment of romance with Chris Pratt’s character. Her performance is adequate but nothing outstanding. She wears heavy makeup including some bits to make her look less human.
Michael Rooker plays Yondu, the head of the Ravagers, quite well.
Bradley Cooper provides the voice of Rocket, the bounty hunting raccoon; and Vin Diesel provides the voice of Groot, the talking, walking warrior tree.
Considering the ratio of tedious drama to exciting action, the ratio of easy viewing to irritating viewing, the general quality of acting, the half-smooth half-muddled script, and the general strength of cinematography, I have to rate this movie Bang Average, on a par with Captain America 1 and 2.
But if Chris Pratt had some kind of super power or incredible talent that made him special, and the main crew were not a bunch of weird alien misfits, this movie could have more of a classical superhero vibe, but as it stands it’s far more casual than exciting (when it’s not a noisy mess of drama). Although it has the odd bit of good action and the odd bit of good humour, it’s hard to get behind the main characters, some of whom are not even human, and most are weird looking beastly aliens with bright red, blue or green skin. I wouldn’t even call it childish, I’d call it too goofy or wacky-minded to relate to, and too nonchalant to really get behind. Thus, although some parts belong in a much more highly rated movie, the overall production is so full of pros & cons, it ultimately boils down to a Bang Average action hero movie by Marvel Studios. Having said that, after a long tedious patch, the ending is pretty strong and shows the specialness in Pratt’s character Peter Quill for the first time, as well as another level of ability in his main comrades (Saldaña’s Gamora, Bautista’s Drax and Cooper’s raccoon) as they’re officially dubbed the Guardians Of The Galaxy by the main antagonist, Ronan. Question is, why so late? Why suffer two hours of weak drama for one strong ending? There should have been more bits like that, to prevent this movie getting lost between genres and never surpassing mediocrity in either genre. With a few more scenes like that, this movie could have easily gone up several rating levels.
Credit also goes to Josh Brolin who barely recognisably plays Thanos (with the help of ample makeup & CGI) – the most powerful being in the universe, and Ronan’s boss (until Ronan acquired the infinity stone). Prior to Guardians, Thanos also appeared in Avengers (2012) where he was played by Damion Poitier instead; then Josh Brolin took over the role of Thanos for every subsequent movie until Avengers: Endgame (2019) where he dies.
Sequels
Next up, if you’re following all Marvel movies in order, is Avengers 2: Age Of Ultron (2015) featuring a multitude of superheroes just like the first Avengers movie from 2012, including Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Captain America, Black Widow and more, but no Peter Quill or anyone from the Guardians movie series yet, although Avengers 3: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers 4: Endgame (2019) both feature the entire Guardians team. Or if you just want to skip to the next true dedicated Guardians movie where Chris Pratt and his team of misfits get all the screen time, that would be Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 (2017). There’s also a Guardians 3 (2023) in case you’re going down that route.
No amount of loud music during simplistic high kicking, or non-martial gymnastic tumbling by stuntmen, is going to make Captain America any less dead dry in character or any more cool in superpowers. But they seemed to think it might, with all that kind of noise in the first 15 minutes. Then again later on.
Sure, there’s some decent action bits here, and I mean fractions of bits, from time to time, but that’s literally the limit of this movie’s coolness. Having said that, it’s still mostly easy viewing, while they try to work through an attention-worthy script. So I can’t give it less than a Bang Average rating, but I can’t rate it any higher either. It’s about equal to Chris Pratt’s Guardians Of The Galaxy as well as Chris Pine’s Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit – both also from 2014. It’s also about equal to the original Captain America: The First Avenger from 2011.
Chris Evans stars in this movie, as Captain America himself, and while he’s a bit of a boring superhero, he seems like a pleasant guy which makes for easy viewing that’s neither very awesome nor very distressing.
Further cast members include Scarlett Johansson who plays Agent Natasha Romanoff (aka Black Widow). She’s not bad, but she looks like a Ghost in the Shell of her former self (pardon the pun). At first I really thought she were someone else brought in to be a poundshop or dollarstore version of Scarlett Johansson, then I realised it’s actually her. Maybe it’s the hair style, or the outfits, or she gained weight, or all of the above, but something’s definitely off. She seems drained of energy here. A Stark contrast to when she appeared in Iron Man 2 (pardon the pun). It’s like she aged heavily in those four years.
There’s also Anthony Mackie playing Sam Wilson – he’s probably been casted mainly to represent the ethnic audience and to replicate the chemistry Robert Downey Jr had with Don Cheadle in Iron Man. With vibes of Jamie Fox crossed with Snoop Dogg, he does a fair job.
Frank Grillo also adds value to this movie, as one of the swat-type guys in the SHIELD strike team. He’s got a bit of character to him, and holds down the role of a tactical team member quite well. He’s a familiar face since he’s worked his way into a lot of cheap action hero movies in recent years.
Samuel L Jackson, as Director of SHIELD, does a decent job in raising the standard of the slower scenes from what would probably otherwise be quite boring, into something that’s ultimately quite watchable. He also does a great job of adding value to the occasional high-octane action scene he’s involved in, such as the car chase that results in him being kidnapped. Very rarely does a car chase scene so long drawn out as that one manage to sustain attention so well as that one did.
Shortly after 30 minutes in, after the car chase, this movie becomes increasingly interesting as Samuel L Jackson’s character is waiting in Cap’s apartment, hiding out, telling him silently that SHIELD is compromised, then gets shot by a sniper who Cap pursues only to discover he’s just as physically gifted as himself. That sniper is the main antagonist for much of the movie, played adequately by Sebastian Stan mostly from behind a mask.
By contrast, the last half hour is pretty weak. It’s a fairly non descript one-dimensional long-winded drama-oriented dull-action-based ending, so while at times this movie gets exciting, overall I can’t rank it any better than Bang Average, as mentioned earlier – on a par with the original Captain America: The First Avenger.
Further sequels
If you’re following the Marvel movies in order, next up is Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014) which has an original set of characters, followed by Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015) where Captain America returns alongside Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk and Black Widow just like in the last Avengers movie. Then we get Ant-Man to round off MCU Phase 2, then Phase 3 kick-starts in 2016 with a third movie dedicated to Captain America, called Captain America: Civil War. Several Marvel movies later, towards the end of Phase 5, we get the fourth Captain America movie called Captain America: Brave New World (2025) no longer starring Chris Evans who says he is happily retired from the role already.
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.
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.
This movie gets off to an interesting start – the plot early on is pretty good. The action initially is not bad either. But in the second half, the action becomes little more than white noise. The plot loses track and the whole movie drops off. The very ending is an interesting one, but we went from a great build-up to a load of senseless, uncoordinated action & drama, such that ever since half way through this movie I’ve been mostly looking forward to what’s to come in the sequels because it never looked like any interesting plot developments were likely to happen in this movie.
Chris Evans himself does a decent job acting in this movie, and the CGI effects are quite legendary in how they make his body very small and feeble early on, before he takes the magic serum to become Captain America. He had help from a smaller body double for some scenes, where Evans’ head was placed on his double’s body, but most of it was based purely on footage of Chris Evans which was rendered through CGI to shrink his face & body.
Hayley Atwell is the main female character in this movie. She has a pretty face here, and makes an interesting character.
Samuel L Jackson plays a minor role in an authoritative position – he does a good job as always.
Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith from The Matrix, over a decade older now) plays the main antagonist quite well.
There’s a strong military theme in this movie, as it’s mostly staged back in World War II (with the exception of the very start and the very end).
The superhero himself is quite a simple man, pushing American patriotism and military sentiment, and while the early story and early action are pretty good, this is a relatively weak superhero that I struggle to get behind, especially in the aimless back end of the movie. Having said that, when Captain America was first created, and chased after the man who killed the doctor, that was a great set of scenes which showed a flavour of the potential of this character in future movies. So while I’m keen to watch the sequels next after watching this movie, I am left quite disappointed by the level of this movie, especially in the second half, and for this reason I have to rate it just OK, roughly equal to Iron Man 2 which came out the year before and just as dull itself, with an equal amount of good bits, in stark contrast the first Iron Man movie, if you’ll pardon the pun. Did I mention Tony Stark’s father, Howard Stark, had a minor role in this Captain America movie? It’s an interesting crossover between Iron Man and Captain America movies, and sets the scene for many more crossovers to come in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). So far, at the time of this movie, we’ve seen Iron Man (2008) kicking off Phase One of the MCU movie series, followed by The Incredible Hulk (2008), then Iron Man 2 (2010), then Thor (2011), then Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), and next in the Marvel movie series, to round off Phase One, is The Avengers (2012), then Phase Two kicks off with Iron Man 3 in 2013, followed by Thor 2 (2013) and Captain America 2 in 2014. So feel free to jump ahead and watch Captain America 2 next, or take it slower and watch The Avengers (2012) next where Captain America also plays a major role. You may even wish to back-track a bit, and watch Iron Man (2008) first, to work your way through all MCU movies in order from the start.
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.
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.
This movie gets off to a great start, with a funky yet chilling opening delivering vibes reminiscent of The Matrix or Equilibrium which both came out just a few years prior. It’s a relatively simple opening scene but sets the atmosphere very nicely – not perfectly, but not far off either – it’s got to be one of the best opening scenes ever made in an action hero movie I think. You could call it an understated masterpiece thus far.
The following scenes are quite interesting and captivating, and carry an element of the same vibe from the opening scene, but to a lesser degree, as the antagonists pose a real threat to Elektra, and the movie turns out to be Decent but not nearly as good as it could have been. I would rate this movie just one level down from the best action hero movie with a female lead (such as Wonder Woman which has a better plot as well as better peak adrenaline moments, but a similar level of horror and drama creeping in).
Jennifer Garner stars as Elektra in this movie – she’s an assassin with subtle superpowers. Aside from lacking the animalistic side, her character has a lot in common with Halle Berry’s Catwoman which came out the year before this movie, and the year after Daredevil where Elektra was also featured as a major character. That’s three years running of this type of lethal female action movie heroine. There was also Æon Flux in 2005 and Ultraviolet in 2006 – both respectable female assassin movies from around the same time, with similar levels of martial arts and athleticism too, although not on the same level as Marvel’s Elektra and DC’s Catwoman production-wise.
Elektra has some kind of Spidey Sense, like Daredevil’s super hearing ability, giving her an early warning when anyone potentially dangerous is approaching from very far away. But much more than that, she has the ability to see the near future, giving her the chance to change it and catch people by surprise.
That’s not even the height of unrealism in this movie – there are also demons taking the form of ninjas (within the antagonist ninja clan called The Hand) who turn to smoke when they die. And there are some weirder demons looking like oddball mercenaries, having special powers to do certain magic tricks. For example, one called Tattoo, played alright by Christopher Ackerman, has tattoos of animals that come to life. Another, called Typhoid Mary, played adequately by Natassia Malthe, blows kisses and waves hands that suck the life out of plants and people. Then another, called Stone, played alright by Bob Sapp, is big bulletproof black man, like Marvel’s Luke Cage, while also throwing sticks powerfully enough to chop down big trees. This team of weird demons is led by the boss’s son (from The Hand), played adequately by Will Yun Lee whose scenes work well in a way, but he’s also a bit too fresh faced for the role, like some kind of K-Pop boyband member, unlike his father played more convincingly by the scorched face of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. Fortunately, they’re still not quite good enough to kill Elektra.
Garner pulls off the lead role pretty well. She’s a talented actress and is not terribly unattractive either (although the beauty contest in this movie is won by Norwegian-Malaysian actress Natassia Malthe playing Typhoid Mary). Garner’s a bit of a tomboy, but no more so than most female leads of action hero movies. She’s is quite athletically built and this makes her well suited to the role of Elektra – a martial arts expert and assassin who moves like few others in the world can (due to camera tricks).
It’s also good to see Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Shang Tsung from the 90s Mortal Kombat movies) playing the leader of The Hand (the ninja clan that’s been trying to kill or capture Elektra for a long time). He does a great job as usual.
Croatian actor Goran Višnjić (with vibes of a cross between Charlie Sheen and Matt LeBlanc, minus the comedic touch) does a good job as the father of a teenage girl who is being hunted because she’s “the treasure” – the main prodigy child within her generation showing great potential to be a top assassin. Kirsten Prout plays the girl adequately – she’s a decent young actress who has plenty IQ for the role but not nearly so much athletic talent as would be ideal. She has a puffy goldfish face, poor coordination and a gormless bratty demeanour – the sneaky, impatient bratty side of her seems intentional but her lack of athletic poise stands out when she’s meant to be a top ninja prodigy with partly established skills.
Terence Stamp does an alright job as Elektra’s former ninja clan master, called Stick, who comes to her rescue when she’s on the verge of defeat, and takes her back to the dojo along with the father & daughter she was sent to kill but decided to protect – her contract was sponsored by Stick, somehow knowing Elektra would protect them instead of kill them. These are some cool scenes to enjoy – from the near assassination to the protection to the rescue to the training back at the dojo and the feeling of it being a safe place for a while.
In stark contrast to the awesome opening for action movie junkies, the last 5 or 6 minutes of this movie is little more than an extended soppy mess for drama mushes. What a missed opportunity and switch up of genres. These drama-loving directors just can’t help themselves, even when they have 95% of a good action movie completed already. Given the lack of depth to the plot, the excessive dose of horror genre creeping in as the movie matures, and the undesirable soppy ending, I have to rate this movie no better than Decent, on a par with movies like Daredevil (which came out 2 years prior and also featured Jennifer Garner as Elektra in a major supporting role). Just one level down from the best female-led action hero movies of all time (like Wonder Woman), even though from the outset Elektra clearly had the potential to be so much better – it just went gradually downhill as the movie progressed and unfortunately shifted genres from smooth action to borderline horror to soppy drama in the end.
Unbreakable (2000) begins with a few minutes of torture in the form of loud crying babies. I simply couldn’t listen properly to any of the dialog here – I had no choice but to mute the entire scene and ready the subtitles. Not a good start!
10 minutes later, after a slow but watchable scene with Bruce Willis on a train, we discover why this movie is called Unbreakable and it becomes quite intriguing. Bruce Willis’s character basically has the same superpower as Marvel’s Luke Cage – an unbreakable body; and by contrast, Samuel L Jackson‘s character easily breaks all his bones like they’re made of glass, but never dies – hence the memorable threequel called Glass (2019) which came after the sequel called Split (2016).
This 100 minute long movie doesn’t get really cool until around half an hour before the end. The movie is like all drama for plot build up until near the end, then findally it becomes really interesting as everything that’s been set up unravels as Bruce Willis’s character finally entertains the ideas of Samuel L Jackson’s character, and Bruce accepts that he probably is a real-life version of a comicbook superhero with multiple superpowers. Nice plot twist at the very end too, as we discover what Samuel’s character is really all about.
All in all, I think we can say this is a strange “mild sci-fi” mostly-drama movie with just enough action, and superhero concept, and cinematography, and star power coming from the lead cast members, to make it Watchable for action hero movie fans who aren’t really into the slow drama genre. I’m certainly in no hurry to rewatch it though – this is one of those movies to be watched once in a lifetime, and maybe again with a friend who’s never seen it before, and maybe again if you’ve completely forgot all about it. Best to enjoy it sequentially before its threequel (Glass). I’d skip the first sequel (Split) though. As weak as they are on the action side of things, Unbreakable and Glass just about manage to sustain attention and be quite emotive and memorable to action fans thanks to their star power in Bruce and Samuel plus decent cinematography.
Sequels
The first sequel – Split (2016) starring James McAvoy (from Wanted) – is of zero interest to action hero movie fans who aren’t into slow gritty drama and find horror repulsive. There are no action heroes in this movie except for a seated 1-liner cameo appearance by Bruce Willis in the final few seconds of the movie. It’s just a serial killer-kidnapper drama-horror movie with zero relevance to action hero movie fans.
The threequel – Glass (2019) – gets off to a better start with the return of Bruce Willis as the unbreakable superhero. His age is really showing here though, as he’s in his mid 60s already and doesn’t try to hide it.
Spencer Treat Clark also returns, as Bruce’s son in Glass, although he looks nothing like him and never did, and looks even less like supposed mother. Still, he makes a good office-based sidekick in this movie.
James McAvoy also reprises his role from Split, as the serial killer-kidnapper with split personalities, but fortunately his role is far less one dimensional here, and the entire movie doesn’t revolve around him like it did in Split. Bruce Willis gets an equal share of screentime this time round.
This movie has some strong action scenes as well as some entertaining non action scenes between a lot of slow & cold drama – not dissimilar to most Batman movies – a role which Ben Affleck took over in 2016.
The fight scenes have a lot of flashing light & dark to disguise the lack of real martial arts skill on display – not recommend for those suffering from epilepsy. Good music accompanies much of the action in this movie.
The first half hour is mostly boring plot-building, then the movie warms up considerably when Jennifer Garner‘s character Elektra is introduced. Note that Elektra has her own movie a couple of years later, which is just as good as Daredevil.
Supporting cast includes Michael Clarke Duncan as Kingpin – he’s a great fit for the role; Colin Farrell as Bullseye – a hired-help baddie – he also does a great job here; and Coolio who adequately plays someone wrongly accused of a crime, who Ben Affleck‘s character defends (no matter how much it costs him). Jon Favreau also does well as the main character’s partner at their own law firm.
Batman Begins (2005) is a star-studded action-drama thriller starring Christian Bale (of Equilibrium, 2002) as Bruce Wayne and Batman. In Batman Begins, we see Bruce Wayne’s growth from childhood into adulthood, we see how he became the Batman, who he formed his initial friendships & alliances with, who he became early enemies with, and we follow his first few missions as the Batman.
Also starring Liam Neeson as the Ninja clan leader who helped train Batman near the start of the movie, while harbouring a dark intentions that come back into the plot towards the end of the movie.
Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman play the roles of Batman’s senior helpers – Alfred the butler, and Mr Fox the technologist who was a former board member and friend of Bruce Wayne’s late father.
Gary Oldman (from Léon and The Book Of Eli) plays the detective who Batman forms an early alliance with, and Katie Holmes (ex-wife of Tom Cruise) plays the lead female who Bruce Wayne grew up with and Batman rescues.
Tom Wilkinson plays the main bad guy early on, and Cillian Murphy plays the main baddie in the middle of the movie.
Generally, it’s a great cast with great acting ability expressed throughout the movie. Batman’s car and technological gadgets are also very nice.
But it’s disappointing that we get some annoyingly hard-to-see fight scenes where everything’s dark and the camera keeps switching between pieces of unclear footage – this is not the kind of action scene I enjoy to watch, but I appreciate there’s no real martial arts skill to be demonstrated by any of these guys and this is a way to cover it up and make it still look credible for drama lovers and suspense or even horror genre fans. Indeed, this movie gets a bit boring with a lot of drama genre creeping in, but when the plot gains legs and the action picks up it becomes very entertaining from time to time.
There’s a great plot twist about half an hour before the end of the movie, when Liam Neeson’s character comes to Gotham.
All in all, I rate it pretty good for fans of this kind of mixed action-drama genre; but for pure action hero movie awesomeness, I rate this movie just ‘OK’ on a par with golden oldie action dramas like Lethal Weapon that have minimal special effects and gadgets etc.
Sequels
If you loved this movie, you might also love its immediate sequel The Dark Knight (2008) which brings back most of the same major cast members and gets regularly called a masterpiece by movie critics, although it doesn’t work so well for me – the star of that movie is actually the Joker rather than the Batman. Maybe it’s good for drama and horror movie fans, but it’s not so pleasant for smooth action hero movie connoisseurs to enjoy. But if you do enjoy the sequel, you’ll be pleased to know most of the same guys come back again for a threequel, The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
This superhero movie by Marvel is a bit of a disappointment for action hero movie fans who loved the original Doctor Strange (2016). This sequel is so bad, Google doesn’t even classify it as an action movie – Google calls it a Horror instead!
The plot lacks cohesion, lacks originality, and lacks awesome action hero moments. Granted, there is a bit of a plot, there are some kind of new concepts, and there are some sort of decent moments in this movie; but it’s generally several levels below the bar set by the original – it’s not on the same level in any way except in the special effects department. So it should be no surprise that critics worldwide are calling it a flop. Actually, there is one thing it does a bit better – Horror – and we know that’s really what Hollywood loves most! But for fans of comfortable-yet-buzzing action hero movies, this sequel really kind of stinks.
Benedict Cumberbatch doesn’t perform poorly though – he does alright, considering what he’s working with here. Elizabeth Olsen plays the ‘bad guy’ – the Scarlet Witch, and does a fair job of that too. Xochitl Gomez plays the butch female superhero born from two mothers (trust Hollywood to push stuff like that) who works with Doctor Strange against the Scarlet Witch. Xochitl gave a very basic performance here – she’s not the best actress – not by a long way – but to her credit she was only in her mid-teens at the time of this movie’s release.
Stylistically, Catwoman (2004) is like a cross between Batman (in core concept) and Dark Angel (down to the same kinds of superpowered stunts and musical effects).
Halle Berry stars as the Catwoman superhero in this movie. She’s in her late 30s here – somewhat past her prime physically, but still only a couple of years since she played the role of a Bond girl alongside Pierce Brosnan in Die Another Day (2002). Her acting is pretty good here too. She makes a convincing feline furry.
The supporting cast is pretty good too.
Sharon Stone stars as the main supervillain after killing her husband and framing it on Catwoman towards the back end of the movie. Sharon’s in her mid 40s here – far from being in her physical prime but she does a good job of acting nevertheless.
Lambert Wilson does alright as the main antagonist through most of the movie, until he gets out-done by his estranged wife played by Sharon Stone.
Benjamin Bratt plays the detective who unwittingly gets romantically involved with Catwoman before eventually arresting her. He does a good job in his role here. He has a bit of a Mark Dacascos vibe.
It’s also good to see Byron Mann playing a minor role as a security guard (with half a conscience) for the baddies – his face gets around a lot in action hero movies of this era. His colleague Michael Massee (the guy who shot & killed Brandon Lee (Bruce Lee’s only son) on the set of The Crow with a real gun & bullet and pretended it was an accident) performed adequately as a security guard for the baddies here too. Brandon was killed because he was finally persuaded to investigate his father’s murder (which was also officially ruled an accident) – of course Hollywood couldn’t allow that.
Overall, considering the density of adrenaline-packed creative scenes vs the less entertaining slower drama scenes, and considering the general quality of cast, plot, script & action at work here, I rate Catwoman (2004) to be a Decent movie – a level better than just OK. Not quite on a par with the very best female-led action hero movies out there, like Wonder Woman, Colombiana and Ghost In The Shell, but it’s only one level shy of those movies, from the perspective of a smooth action hero movie connoisseur who isn’t so fond of slow or gritty drama.
This movie is a bit sickly at near the start, with talk about harvesting organs from a still living man, followed by surgery visuals, the likes of which we get again in an unexpected close-up about half way through the movie. There’s also slightly too long of a car crash scene near the start. This movie clearly wants to traumatise the audience a bit, and/or incite bloodlust in those prone to it. Due to its name I guess we shouldn’t expect clean action – a touch of horror shouldn’t be surprising here.
Mood setting is generally excellent, with great timing where it matters. There are also a few great touches of humour in this movie.
The action gets very interesting at times, and is satisfactory at other times.
The combat is fanciful – hardly realistic – but the sentiment is frequently on point.
Benedict Cumberbatch plays the lead role very well, as if he were made for this role. Additional cast members are generally pretty good too.
All in all, due to its qualities, with the odd drawback, plus the fact it’s not so realistic a movie as what I normally review, I’d rate this movie Decent – no more, no less. It’s a fun movie to watch every now and again, but its depth of vibe is limited due to its near cartoony nature. For this reason it’s comparable to movies like Bloodshot and Black Panther which have a similar mix of realism vs unrealism (albethey generally more believable), and a similar level of action.
Sequel
If you enjoyed this movie, you may also enjoy its sequel: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). However, that movie is a lot messier and of course less original since the lead character has already been fully established. And unlike the original, the sequel is not even classified as an Action movie by Google – it’s classed as a Horror instead!
Doctor Strange (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) was also featured in a few other Marvel Studios films released between the two actual Doctor Strange movies, including Thor: Ragnarok (2017); Avengers: Infinity War (2018); Avengers: Endgame (2019); and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021).
This movie has rich action, a creative story, powerful screenplay, and decent acting. But it’s intentionally sacrilegious in so many ways – not least the plethora of antihuman undertones & overtones conveyed by its main antagonists – the human baddie and the alien baddie.
The genre is a cross between a typical Marvel sci-fi fantasy action hero movie and some kind of creepy sadistic horror movie. Fortunately, for those who are here for the former, not the latter, this movie is generally bearable for who generally don’t find the horror genre palatable.
A great replay-worthy bespoke theme tune from Eminem kicks in after the 90 minute mark, as credits start rolling when there’s still strangely 20 minutes to go. When they’re done we get a few minutes more of the movie, then the same credits seem to be rolling all over again, a bit more comprehensively this time. Then there’s a strange 5-minute spiderman cartoon at the end. I wonder if this is in every version of the Venom movie. Seems a little off-genre. I mean it’s all Marvellous stuff, but I’m generally not into animated movies.
Anyway back to the actual movie called Venom, starring Tom Hardy – he does a great job of acting in this movie. He becomes a familiar & likeable actor by the end. Michelle Williams is adequate as the lead female, and Riz Ahmed is pretty good as the main baddie through most of the movie (till he’s out-done by Venom’s counterpart – the alien supervillain). That’s as far as the core cast goes. The next most notable roles are played by Jenny Slate (the doctor who gains a conscience) and Peggy Lu (the convenience store keeper). They’re both about adequate too – no better.
Overall, I rate Venom (2018) as a Decent movie. It’s got too much rich action, strong acting, and high quality cinematography to be rated just OK. But the horror element and the antihuman sentiments shining through, leave a bitter taste in my mouth and prevent me from rating it as highly as Pretty Good.
Sequels
If you enjoyed Venom (2018), you’re in luck, since there’s a sequel called Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021). Unfortunately though, it’s a couple levels down from the standards set by the original. It’s far less creative, mostly just piggybacking on the concepts already established in the original, and has an even more sickly vibe so much that it’s barely watchable at times. It’s not as good as most of the movies that I’ve rated OK, let alone Decent like the original – this is mainly due to the conflict of genre, since I’m tuning in for smooth action-packed entertainment, not repulsive horror material.
There’s also a threequel that hit the big screen recently, called Venom: The Last Dance (2024). Hopefully that’ll be the end of it now, and Marvel can put more energy into their stuff like Thor, Black Panther and Doctor Strange. No disrespect to Tom Hardy though – he’s a quality actor – but this Venom stuff is putrid.
Black Panther is a very modern blockbuster movie with all the special effects you’d expect from any modern Marvel Studios movie.
The combat scenes are rapidly flickering between cameras, while being saturated with special effects depicting impossible things, on top of stuntmen doing fancy tricking moves. This is probably to mask the fact the actors themselves don’t have any real martial arts skills. The special effects are occasionally impressive, but the moves generally lack realistic efficiency which makes for a less impressive experience to the trained eye, and brings headaches to anyone suffering from epilepsy or heightened stress levels.
The dialogue and mannerisms displayed in this movie are clearly attempting to push unintelligent, even belligerent forms of communication as an example for our kids to follow. I would even say much of it is childish, while coming from adult actors, but that would be disrespectful to well raised kids. I don’t think this is a racial thing, because all similar modern high-budget movies and TV shows targeting kids and young adults are doing a similar thing – dumbing down and warping the attitude of our next generation.
Chadwick Boseman does a mediocre job as T’Challa, the lead character in this movie. He’s no Wesley Snipes, but that’s not the end of the world, it’s just a missed opportunity. He has a face for friendly mid-level leadership, but he comes across too demure, too emasculated for a major action hero leadership role. Add this to having an all-female crew of bald-headed warrior guards, and it’s clear the Marvel bosses are enamoured with some kind of gender bender fantasy.
Michael B Jordan (of Creed) does a pretty good job as Erik Stevens aka Killmonger, the main antagonist in this movie – the main rival of T’Challa.
Supporting cast members include Letitia Wright who does a pretty good job as Shuri, the younger sister of T’Challa. Winston Duke does a fair job as the leader of a rival tribe, who eventually joins forces with T’Challa in an effort to overthrow the nasty new leader, Erik Killmonger. Andy Serkis is quite convincing in his role as one of the bad guys – he’s just a bit cheesy with his over-acting, it’s borderline satirical, but that’s probably what this movie calls for considering how the lead character has such dry and disconnected humour, and other characters are often childishly bickering. Danai Gurira puts in a dry yet aggressive performance as Okoye, the main royal guard – she’s about as good as Chadwick Boseman (T’Challa) in this movie – in some scenes they do very well but for the most part they fail to foster an appealing vibe. Danai’s best moment is when she decides to turn on the bad new king, she delivers that performance spot on. Lupita Nyong’o does a decent job as Nakia, the female warrior spy who’s set to marry T’Challa. Daniel Kaluuya does a basic job as the royal right-hand man, leader of the male warrior group and commander of the strange robotic rhinos who appear when he blows his special horn. Martin Freeman does a fair job, as a CIA agent familiar with Wakanda – he brings decent acting but with a face made for juvenile drama, not action heroics – this is perfectly in-keeping with the common flaw of this movie, which is accentuated at the very end when the energetic climax morphs into a bratty pop song as the credits begin to roll. It’s good to see Forest Whitaker (the black FBI agent from Bloodsport) playing a supporting role here – he does a decent job as the tribal elder who officiates the leadership duels and associated rituals. That’s all the significant cast members covered. Overall they range from mediocre to pretty good. Nothing too desperate, but no stunning performances either.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) is the sequel to the original Black Panther (2018) movie by Marvel Studios.
If not for the ill motives shining through on so many levels in this movie, I would rate it higher than the original, but as it stands, I’ll rate it equal to the original, alongside several other classics that are excessively one dimensional and a bit dull in patches.
Who is the star of this movie, by the way? I’ve gone for Tenoch Huerta (the bad guy) and Letitia Wright (the female Black Panther), but several others were on a similar level here. I would have personally loved to see a version of this movie starring a benevolent Michael B Jordan and maybe Lupita Nyong’o in an even more prominent role; or a more heroic version of Tenoch Huerta. Nothing against Letitia Wright though, she makes a good supportive sister to an action hero, she just isn’t lead role material in this genre, at least not the way her character comes across here. Come on Marvel, get it right for Black Panther 3, if there will be one. DC blew you out the water with Black Adam in 2022 – they had all your epic new sound effects PLUS a strong lead character (even if he had a dark side, he was mostly heroic).
The original had a tidier concept; with an aggressive young male antagonist and a softy for a main action hero; plus terrible bratty pop music throughout; warped gender roles; and belligerent behaviorism.
The sequel, Wakanda Forever, takes the plot to another level, which is probably necessary because the cat’s out the bag in terms of the basic concept from the original. So we could say the plots deserve equal rating.
But the sequel has no strong male character we can get behind. It’s actually hard defining who is the star in this movie, since it’s so messy and void in this department. The nasty antagonist (Namor, played by Tenoch Huerta) is a strong male figure; and there’s a brief scene featuring the antagonist from the original movie (the Black Panther version of Erik Killmonger, played by Michael B Jordan – his short scene is one of the best things about this movie). But in terms of the good guys, all the action heroes in this movie are female except the very minor role by the leader of the tribe that hides in the mountains (M’Baku played by Winston Duke). The Black Panther in this movie only appears near the end, and this role is taken by T’Challa’s sister from the original movie – Shuri, played by Letitia Wright – an androgenous female who has a nice smile and is a decent actress but is hardly a powerful action hero. Aside from her, there’s the spy Nakia, played by Lupita Nyong’o, who plays a major role again that includes rescuing the princess this time; there’s a new girl Dominique Thorne who plays Riri Williams, a world-leading teenage scientist that dons ironman-type suits (representing the comicbook character called Ironheart); there’s the leader of the female warrior guards Okoye played by Danai Gurira who gets a new supersuit, has a more dynamic role this time and excels at it; and there’s Ramonda, Queen of Wakanda, played by Angela Bassett – her character is the mother of T’Challa and his sister who is the new Black Panther this time round. So basically the main action hero and all the similar roles this time round are occupied by women, as if Chadwick Boseman didn’t seem demure & emasculated enough last time round. Boseman actually died in 2020, allegedly of colonic cancer which he’d been battling since 2016 – that’s why he wasn’t in this movie.
The script contains various health related messages from the outset, touching on infections, heart issues, and unexplained sudden deaths. There’s also a strong element of hypnotic entrancement (a zombie innuendo). Considering the year this movie came out, all this can be construed as a nod towards certain institutional foul play that our website would be suppressed for mentioning.
On the plus side, the music is outstanding this time round – much more authentic in terms of traditional African music, and much better in terms of harmonious & enjoyable modern music also – last time it was just a patronising satirical version of African music plus a selection of modern pop songs that barely qualify as noise, having zero benevolent art or real talent within them. Isolated sound effects are also on point this time round. It’s like the sound & music team changed from immature to immortal this time round. It makes a massive difference to the quality of atmosphere generated, and the overall experience, and clicks very well in certain scenes, especially when the new Black Panther jumps out of the sky and announces herself to the mountain tribe, not far from the end. Just a shame this movie is still massively disabled by lack of a strong benevolent male role – we don’t even get a weak male like we had the last time. This movie could have been several times better if Michael B Jordan somehow came back to take care of business towards the end – with a compassionate heart of course.
Blue Beetle (2023) is a fairly fun & engaging movie that forms part of the DC Extended Universe alongside characters like Superman and The Flash who incidentally both get namedropped in this movie.
Blue Beetle has some well composed action, some fresh humour, some funky music, some cool special effects, and some entertaining cast members.
The lead character is played entertainingly by Hispanic American actor Xolo Maridueña (from Cobra Kai, the recent Karate Kid spin-off satire series) and the lead female protagonist is played by Brazilian actress & model Bruna Marquezine who is equally attractive so they make a convincing couple. In real life, Bruna is nearly 6 years older than Xolo, and is almost the same height as him but looks taller than him when wearing heels. Nevertheless, this movie has them in suitable enough roles to make the chemistry convincing – it even makes jokes about them having a reverse of the classical roles, since he’s a broke college graduate in need of a job and she’s a famous businesswoman capable of dragging him out of the dirt.
As far as this movie’s core concept goes, the Blue Beetle is some kind of hard-to-control sentient alien technological lifeform with a mind of its own. It bonds with a host body and protects it, like a cross between Iron Man, Deadpool and Venom. Like Venom, it’s initially hard to control, and there’s some black goo going on as the Blue Beetle initially bonds with its host. It can also transform into any shape imagined. Like Iron Man, there’s a digital visor and force fields when it’s flying & fighting, and it shoots energy beams and things like that. And like Deadpool, it does a few ninja moves and has a tight rubber body suit with a pair of horn-like adornments coming up the back and over the head (a pair beetle claws in this case; a pair of swords in Deadpool’s case).
The main antagonists in this movie are played by Susan Sarandon (brains) and Raoul Trujillo (braun). They both do a fair job of acting here – especially Susan considering she’s already in her mid 70s here – she’s got a bit of a Killary vibe about her in this movie. Raoul plays the man whose life she saved, then altered with alien energy & technology from the Blue Beetle to give him superpowers to rival Xolo’s character. He eventually becomes a good guy and kills Susan’s character by unnecessarily blowing himself up, as if suicide is not one of the biggest sins of all. Bad influence much?
The main down side to this movie though, is how it’s pushing pills and massively over-glorifying college from the outset, then proceeds to show the star of the movie getting way too affectionate with his smartphone, resting it on his chest, promoting extremely unhealthy levels of exposure. So ultimately, this movie boils down to just another Hollywood con job. No surprise, is it? Still, if you’re able to overlook these filthy shortcomings, to enjoy the strengths of this movie for what they’re worth, you’ll probably be sufficiently entertained upon first viewing, and probably also when re-viewing a year later. There’s no macho superhero here – it’s got a soft male lead – but he’s a likeable character and is well suited to the fun, lightly comedic and somewhat juvenile vibe of this movie. It’s not a streamlined grown up martial arts action hero movie by any means. It’s nothing like Bloodsport. It’s probably mainly made for kids, which makes the downsides even more disturbing.
All things considered, I rate this movie as Decent, for action hero movie connoisseurs, compared to everything else that’s out there. I rate it on a par with the likes of Black Panther, Bloodshot and Jupiter Ascending, since it has similar levels of pros and cons to those movies.
I deem it most suitable for mid-aged children, but stress it needs a highly educated form of parental guidance to counter the problems mentioned earlier. It can also be very suitable for older children and even adults if they feel young at heart.
Wonder Woman (2017) is a pretty entertaining movie starring Gal Gadot as the Amazonian warrior tasked with killing Ares, the ‘god of war’. It’s an interesting opening, as Wonder Woman grows up on a protected island inhabited only by special Amazonian women, then she meets Chris Pine’s character as his plane crashes through the forcefield-like cloudy veil making the island invisible to outsiders.
The plot develops as he takes her to the frontline of the battle, set in “World War 1”, at the time known as the “Great War”, which of course was not great at all. Was it even the first worldwide war of that scale? I doubt it.
Anyway, for a brief moment, Wonder Woman works wonders on the battlefield – this is probably the best part of the movie, as the rest of the troops are both shocked and encouraged by her abilities.
I’m not big on watching women act like tough guys. I don’t mind women playing slick skill-based combatants like Elektra, Colombiana, Catwoman, etc, because they retain their femininity, but when it comes to tough-guy warriors I prefer to see men in that kind of role. Having said that, Gal Gadot retains just about enough of her femininity to make this a good movie. She’s not acting like a tough guy with balls & muscles – instead, she’s performing with god-given enhanced abilities, so it kind of works well. Her acting is not bad either.
Chris Pine does a respectable job of acting in this movie too. He’s in a bit of a beta-male role, compared to what he’d be doing if he were the lead star of a movie like this, but he retains just about enough manliness and charisma to be passable without criticism on that note. That’s quite a feat in itself – well done Chris.
All in all, I rate this movie slightly lower than the likes of Thor and Black Adam which have strong & manly men in the lead roles. Well, Dwayne Johnson is strong and quite manly, and Chris Hemsworth is at least more strong & manly than Gal Gadot, I think? Plus, those movies have just as many awesome moments as this one.
And I rate Wonder Woman slightly higher than Black Panther and Doctor Strange, since they’re both led by beta-male men, and have a similar level of awesome adrenaline-buzzing moments – in fact they’re probably slightly inferior to Wonder Woman in that respect.
Indeed, I rate Wonder Woman (2017) about equal to Ghost In The Shell from the same year, starring Scarlett Johansson – another woman who is equally just about feminine & attractive enough but still powerful enough a character to take the lead role in an action-packed superhero movie and make it work quite well.
The sequel
If you enjoyed Wonder Woman (2017) don’t forget to check out its sequel Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) which is a bit less delicately composed in the action early on, but is generally still of a decent quality. It has a substantially new plot that’s a bit quirky and is a bit more depressing, as Wonder Woman slowly loses her powers and the world turns to pandemonium, but it’s not a bad sequel still, it’s quite well made, and like the first, the sequel also goes on for over two hours.
I would rate the sequel one or two levels below the original; equal to or slightly inferior to Black Panther and its sequel; equal to or slightly better than The Matrix Resurrections. Because it has strong plot development early on, and retains its fun aspect quite well, but when it gets depressing it never really opens back up, which makes for an experience far less comfortable & enjoyable than it should be – I guess this goes hand in hand with world events of 2020 – maybe that was the vibe DC were going for.
Wonder Woman also appears in various other DC movies – most notably Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017) where she has substantial roles. She also has short cameo appearances in Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023) and The Flash (2023).
Although this movie was not made by Marvel Studios and is not considered part of the modern Marvel Cinematic Universe, the character Blade still originated from Marvel Comics and did eventually appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a character in the 2024 movie Deadpool & Wolverine.
Wesley Snipes is a top-tier action movie hero when given the right movie to work on, as we saw earlier in his career with Demolition Man and Passenger 57; and this movie brings out the best of him. Undoubtedly inspiring the Matrix to some degree, which came out the year after, with agents instead of vampires dodging bullets, and a larger team instead of a single man against them. Wesley Snipes has less of a cool ‘hacker’ feel than Keanu Reeves, but more of a convincing martial artist vibe about him, so this movie is very close to the level of the Matrix in terms of acting performance and convincing execution of plot. Wesley Snipes makes a very convincing animalistic/vampiric human being – his moves are sharp and slick, helped very much by great camerawork but also largely thanks to Wesley’s real life martial arts background and his general on-point demeanour.
It’s a very combat oriented theme, with fists and blades and guns from start to finish. Adrenaline is pumping intermittently throughout. Cast wise, we have the odd strong character and a few less strong – this movie could easily benefit from an additional very strong cast member if the plot would allow.
Blade is a rare example of a ‘vampire horror’ that appeals to people who prefer non-gritty, fast-paced, martial-arts-packed action movies that thrill rather than scare. I don’t personally enjoy horror movies, but this one’s just about bearable as it’s more of an action thriller than anything, however, it becomes a bit more sickly when you realise how closely it resembles what really goes on in this world.
Like The Matrix, Blade also has a couple of sequels, which is inevitable considering how strong the original movie was; and like The Matrix, Blade’s sequels are not quite as good as the original but are still worth watching sequentially.
It’s far from the busiest movie, but Thor (2011) is still one of the best action hero movies from Marvel – it’s a joint best movie of the DC & Marvel genre, in my opinion. Its plot is far from complicated, but is not overly simplistic either. The script is well made and the screenplay is well executed. It’s emotive in its mix of realism and fantasy, with good patience and momentum around its points of climax.
Cast
Every member of the star studded cast acts very well in this movie. Core cast members include Chris Hemsworth as Thor himself – the main protagnoist and the namesake of this movie; Natalie Portman as Jane Foster, an independent researcher from Earth who becomes Thor’s girlfriend; Anthony Hopkins as Odin, the original King and benevolent father of Thor; Tom Hiddleston as Loki, who is Thor’s treacherous adopted brother; Idris Elba as Heimdall, the guardian of the gateway between planets; and Stellan Skarsgård as Erik Selvig, a fellow researcher and colleague of Jane Foster. There’s also strong CGI around the antagonists in the movie – the Frost Giants – so much so that it’s not really evident which actors are behind them.
Summary
All in all, I rate this movie on a similar level to Black Adam – a great modern movie from DC which has a similar mix of CGI-powered fantasy to human-based reality, a similar level of simplicity of plot, a similar level of plot twisting, a similar strength of cast, and a similar level of atmospherics. Both movies are comfortably rewatchable every year or two, although of course, the longer you leave it, the more effective it is.
Sequels
Since Thor was such a hit, it had many sequels.
The immediate sequel was Thor: The Dark World (2013) which is a respectable movie, following the same cast and genre as the original, but is a lot messier in script, and is lacking in the area of patient & powerful scenes. As such, I’d rate it a clear couple of levels below the original.
The third movie in the series was Thor: Ragnarok (2017) – it’s on a similar level to the previous movie in the saga, perhaps with a bit more going on, and a cheesier vibe, but is equally weak in terms of building & sustaining the moment of powerful scenes, to the point of even playing irritating pop music during Thor’s most active moment near the end. This movie momentarily features Dr Strange; plus The Hulk has a significant role here. The main antagonist (Thor’s forgotten evil sister) is played quite naturally by Cate Blanchett, and Jeff Goldblum played a cheesy bad guy role on another planet Thor was on for a while. Tessa Thompson did well as the lead female (aside from the main antagonist), who initially captures Thor but eventually assists him – she has vibes of Rihanna.
The fourth movie in the series was Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) – this is about as messy and cheesy as the last one, but with a weaker plot.
All in all, I rate the original Thor (2011) as a very good action hero movie, and its three sequels are all mediocre action comedies. Of the three sequels, Ragnarok (2017) is probably the better one, while Love and Thunder (2022) is probably the worst of them all.
Aquaman is an action-packed movie with a very original plot (compared to other movies, although it’s obviously based on the much older DC comics).
It’s quite consistently entertaining, for well over two hours. A slight downside is the ignorant pride-driven war mentality pushed at times in this movie, but to its credit, it also presents a counter-narrative in the way Aquaman shows mercy and aims for peace from time to time (just a shame he still gets stuck into ignorant warrior behaviour occasionally).
The sound effects, visual special effects, camerawork and general cinematography is of a fine standard, making for some epic scenes including several that are quite emotionally powerful and get the adrenaline buzzing. In these ways, I rate this movie similar to Thor as well as Black Adam, which are on a similar level with their own pros & cons that balance them out about equal to this one in the end.
Cast members
Jason Mamoa does a good job as Arthur aka Aquaman – the lead man, main hero and namesake of this movie.
Amber Heard does a fair job as Princess Mera – the lead female – the princess who rescues Aquaman from a premature duel that was likely to kill him.
Willem Defoe does a decent job as Vulko, the wise old visier who trained Aquaman when he was young, as a promise to his mother, in the hope Aquaman would become king one day.
Patrick Wilson does a fair job as King Orm, the Ocean Master – one of the two key antagonists, and the guy Aquaman fights in a big scene towards the end of the movie. Wilson sometimes seems a bit nerdy for such a vicious warrior role, but his outfit disguises it well, and he acts quite well, plus there is some truth to him being a close likeness to the kind of people who have stole their positions of nobility in the real world, so it’s a credible casting in a way.
Nicole Kidman (in her early 50s here) plays Atlanna, Queen of Atlantis, and the mother of Aquaman. She does does a fair job in this role and is involved in the odd strong action scene although she doesn’t get much screen time.
Dolph Lundgren (around 60 here) plays King Nereus very convincingly – his demeanour is ideal for this role. He’s the father of Princess Mera, and the king of one of the seven kingdoms – the first and main one that King Orm joins forces with. He doesn’t get loads of screentime either but he makes short appearances quite frequently and does very well in this role.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II does a good job in playing Black Manta – the other key nemesis of Aquaman, who battles him near the start of the movie as a regular pirate with strong human attributes, then battles him again half way through the movie but this time with the help of Atlantean technology, and then he reappears yet again at the very end in a scene semi-hidden between closing credits.
That’s all the significant characters in this movie. Aside from them, we also get a few short appearances of Aquaman’s human dad, Tom Curry, played quite fittingly by Temuera Morrison. And Michael Beach puts in a strong but brief performance as the Manta’s father, left to die after fighting Aquaman near the start of the movie. Randall Park also puts in a quirky but strong performance as Dr Steven Shin, the TV show commentator on Aquaman and the Atlanteans. Dr Shin eventually rescues the injured Manta and joins forces with him at the end of the movie.
Honourable mentions go to the six boys who each did their bit in playing a younger version of Arthur (Aquaman) – they include Tainui Kirkwood, Tamor Kirkwood and Denzel Quirke who all play a 3 year old version of him; plus Kaan Guldur (9 year old version), Otis Dhanji (13 year old version), and most especially Kekoa Kekumano who plays the 16 year old version of Aquaman, having a slightly similar but quite different facial appearance that’s no less quirky-yet-striking than Jason Mamoa himself, at least when given the strange coloured eyes and probably some more CGI-based alterations.
The sequel
If you enjoyed this movie, be sure to check out its sequel, also starring Jason Mamoa. It’s called Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) and is a fair enough sequel although it doesn’t have quite the same level of plot originality, nor action finesse, as the original – sequels rarely do. And it pushes the climate and disease narratives hard – I guess they built the brand with the first movie and are selling out in the sequel. They went hard with a demonic theme in this sequel too – not dissimilar to Thor 3 (Ragnarok). Still, to its credit, the demonic twist is an interesting new plot concept for the Aquaman sequel, and the general action is of a fair quality.
Powerful music and sound effects, and a top class lead cast, make this movie emotive and enjoyable from start to finish, and easily rewatchable. There aren’t really any boring bits. It’s let down somewhat by a pair of immature, low-IQ supporting superheroes (Cyclone and Atom Smasher) but the rest of the supporting cast range from decent to excellent.
Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) is made for this role as Teth Adam / Black Adam – he performs outstandingly in this movie. Pierce Brosnan was also a great fit for his role as Doctor Fate – he also gives a very strong performance.
Aldis Hodge does quite a good job as Hawkman.
America-born ethnic-Iranian actress Sarah Shahi (real name Aahoo Jahansouzshahi) does great in her role as Isis, the benevolent researcher who found the Crown of Sabbac and set free Teth Adam.
Bodhi Sabongui does a decent job as Amon Tomaz, the son of Isis, who befriended Teth Adam.
Mohammed Amer does a decent job as Karim – he’s a bit of a camp comedian playing a semi-serious role as Isis’s brother / Amon’s uncle.
Marwan Kenzari does a good job as the research team member who was hiding his true intentions to become Sabbac – the demon tasked with delivering hell on earth.
