MCU Rewatch Part 4

This fourth entry kicks off Phase 2 of the MCU, covering the sequels Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

From Iron Man 3 forward, almost every Marvel movie is about the sins of the past coming back to bite us in the ass. In a lot of ways, this mirrors a similar trend in superhero comics, and it’s easy to see why. Giving the hero a personal connection to the villain is a way to raise stakes that might matter more than the upteenth world-ending threat as well as building on the mythology in a way that feels more impactful than a new threat rising. Many of these also bring into questions of self-identity, and the past is a convenient way to address that.. And Iron Man 3 confronts this in the most direct way, as Tony Stark straight up narrates the moment in his past that is going to come back to hurt him in the prologue of this movie.

While Iron Man 2 used a threat from Howard Stark’s past in order to establish Tony’s Daddy issues, Iron Man 3 is about Tony wrestling with his own legacy, as well as his post-traumatic stress from The Avengers. The latter is more interesting than the former. Even though it is occasionally played for laughs, seeing the “genius billionaire playboy philanthropist” Tony Stark with crippling anxiety goes a long way to make him much more relatable. While the causes for Tony aren’t super relatable, the combination of self-doubt and feeling like you yourself are broken somehow, very much are. Tony is supposedly at his happiest and most fulfilled point in his whole life, and yet he is suffering more than ever. Because now he has something to lose.

Revisiting for this project, this has become my favorite movie in the Iron Man subfranchise. I think it’s aged really well, and has a sense of honesty to it, while also giving Tony Stark much needed character growth. At the end of The Avengers, Stark discovers that he is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice play, and that comes to fruition in Endgame, but here he actually has to deal with the fact that he almost died saving the planet. It’s a strong, and sort of bold choice.

Plus I also love how Tony is able to refute “you’re nothing without the suit” jab from Captain America in The Avengers, and Shane Black essentially gets to make an 80s actioner inside a Marvel movie. Tony sneaking into Aldrich Killian’s compound is like a mini-Lethal Weapon setpiece and I would love more sequences like that in other MCU things, please.

But there are still some problems. Aldrich Killian was brought in because Ike Pearlmutter believed they couldn’t sell toys of a female villain as easily (Where’s my Justin Hammer action figures?), but is a total waste. And then it gets worse when he goes shirtless, reveals a giant dragon chest tattoo and calls himself the real Mandarin. It’s awful and it’s dumb. And his underlings range from blandly evil to innocent victim, and doesn’t really communicate which is which. The whole point of the Extremis idea is that it was going to heal military veterans and other amputees, making them whole again or even super soldiers. But the film never articulates if everyone in this program (or in the AIM thinktank) was evil to begin with, or a rube that was manipulated (which means we should feel bad when they get exploded).  

And then there is the way this film treats Pepper Potts. Yes, she is still in charge of the company, but it plays into the tired trope of making her the damsel in distress in the third act. Yes, having Killian literally want her as a trophy (but also murder her with Extremis injections) makes him more of a slimeball, but this is already a dude who has a giant dragon chest tattoo. So redundant at best. But it’s a credit to the first two films that they don’t go there, and to use it in the fourth film these characters appear in feels awfully lazy. Ditto for both Iron Man sequels having Rhodey’s suit being hijacked by the villains.

Lots of “creative differences” behind the scenes with this one. Future Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins left the project because she wanted to make a film focusing on the forbidden romance between Thor and Jane Foster. It’s basically my dream project, especially because Natalie Portman is so good at looking at Chris Hemsworth like he is a supremely handsome demigod (I’m not saying it’s difficult to look at Hemsworth that way, but she does a great job selling a sense of awe as well as aww). 

But instead, Marvel decided that focusing on the relationship between Thor and Loki. After Tom Hiddleston’s performance made Loki one of the biggest breakout characters in Phase 1, it is hard to argue with that logic. So they made the A-plot all about Thor and Loki, and regulated Jane to a secondary plot (and ever worse, she’s the MacGuffin-as-person trope that Marvel has used too many times now). It’s not a bad choice necessarily, but there’s probably a better way to thread those two stories together.

Malekith from the comics not only has a more engaging visual design, but also a lot more personality. The version in this film is bland and generic, and never really makes a visual or character impact. Eccleston was a great casting choice, and the manic nature of his Doctor Who performance would have been fantastic. One of the biggest improvements the MCU has made over the course of the last few years is to embrace the colorful nature of comics, and while this film does a better job with the Asgardian elements of the film, everything else is pretty unremarkable. 

Those are the major problems with Thor: The Dark World, but as a whole this movie actually kind of rules. The interplay between Odin, Thor, Loki, Jane, and Frigga is great, with lots of passive-aggressive sniping. It’s played for comedy, but also has enough weight to show the characters changing and evolving. It’s great stuff, and highly entertaining. Also, it totally makes sense that Alan Taylor, most known for his directing work on Game of Thrones, was the ultimate choice to helm this.,

The film has a longer exposition than is maybe needed (sort of like part 1 of a Doctor Who story), but from the Asgard escape onward, it really comes together as a fantastical action-adventure with characters that are great to spend time with. The back-and-forth between Thor, Loki, and Jane is enough to make up for the blandness of Malekith. And the finale that involves interplanetary portals is really fun, with great comedy and character moments as well as action.

This one is underrated compared to some of the other films, and deserves a better reputation than it enjoys primarily because it wholeheartedly embraces the crazy nature of cosmic comic book stories. 

Unlike the other members of The Avengers, Captain America has only two members of the supporting characters from his first film still around in the present day, One is Peggy Carter, very well advanced in age (Hayley Atwell reprises her role under CGI “makeup”), and the other is Bucky, whose existence is a secret. So this sequel leans on the participation of other existing characters like Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), as well as adding new supporting characters Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) and Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie). But this film is very much about Captain America (Chris Evans) figuring out his place in modern times. He may be aware of the internet, but who is Steve Rogers in 2014?

Making Sam Wilson a veteran, and using that to build common ground with Steve Rogers is a great choice. It keeps Steve connected to the outside world a bit more. It also pays off when they’ve put Steve Rogers in a position where he can’t trust anyone. After this film, Falcon has been a solid supporting player, but I wish we had seen a bit more of him and Steve interacting with other veterans. 

Winter Soldier was Marvel’s first attempt to bring in the influence of other genres, with this film drawing inspiration from 70s political thrillers. It’s a great choice, and the Russo brothers are wonderful mimics of the form. This film has a gritty, bluish look to it, and occasionally feels like it was actually filmed in Washington, DC. Additionally, the decision to dismantle SHIELD by revealing it had been infiltrated by Hydra from the start is a bold one that really pays off dramatically, even if it adds a million questions to everything that’s been happening since 1945. 

The action mostly works, and the quick-cutting here feels more stylistic than it does in the Russo’s Civil War and other MCU films. The opening scene on the boat is probably the most genuinely thrilling action sequence, but I might be biased because of how much I love Batroc the Leaper (they even put him in subtle purple and gold like his comics costume).

Ranking after this viewing: