So I thought it would be a good idea to rewatch (or in about all of Phase One's case, watch for the first time) every movie in the MCU leading up to Infinity War, where I do about 1-2 films for every day I don't have school until the big day. So far I'm making decent progress and I figured I could give mini-reviews for everything I've covered so far
Iron Man: One hell of a great start to the franchise. This felt more like a character study than an action film, helped by the fact that Stark had an engrossing character development arc, and because of that this is felt more grounded than other MCU films after this. Definitely my highlight so far
The Incredible Hulk: This is where it starts to go downhill a bit. Edward Norton's performance as Bruce Banner was fascinating, and it was interesting to have his origin story done with by the start of the movie, but that's probably it. The movie spends a bit too much time on the romance with Betty Ross, who's about as interesting as paint drying on a block of wood, and Abomination was a rather one-note villain, which I'm going to be saying a lot from now on. Overall, major disappointment coming in from the previous entry
Iron Man 2: this was an iron man film right, not just an avengers advertisement
To be honest I thought that all of the hyping for the big crossover went a bit overboard here. While I never felt it overrode the main story, the ending was more focused on building that up instead of actually resolving the arcs of each of the characters. Also the climax didn't really have any stakes in it since, well, Iron Man and War Machine could destroy all of the drones with ease, and while Whiplash's actor gave a decent performance, he was still pretty generic for a villain and his fight was just a rehash of the climax of the first Iron Man movie so...yeah. the only things that saved this for me were that I did enjoy Tony Stark's personal arc that called back to his alcohol addiction from the comics, and the few action scenes that happened were fun, but basically I have really mixed on this one
Captain America: The First Avenger: maybe it's because I'm a sucker for early 20th century America settings but I really enjoyed this one. IMO Captain America's one of the most likable characters in the franchise and the perfect underdog to root for in the first part of the film. And while Red Skull wasn't exactly deep, his actor still hammed it up for the whole film and he has a cool design to boot, making him one of the more entertaining MCU villains in my book
