Cranky T-Rex's Blog

Well here it is folks. Marvel's finally getting Thanos off his ass and putting him to work for perhaps the most ambitious movie of all time.  That's right, it's Avengers: Infinity War . Look what can you say about Marvel's movies by now?  Even the total stinkers are at least entertaining enough to get you through a couple hours at the theater, and the ones that are really good, are really, really good .  I guess the only question about Infinity War is "how the hell is this going to live up to all the hype?" I just couldn't imagine how you'd put THIS many characters in one movie and not have it turn into a complete debacle.  Plus Marvel's track record for villains is extremely hit or miss.  You're going to spend almost a decade hyping up this one bad guy and he's supposed to deliver?  It all just seemed impossible to pull off. And yet, they did it.  Now I have to try and explain how without spoiling the movie for those few of you who ...

Well it's here at last, the first black superhero movie ever to be released in February of 2018, Marvel's Black Panther .  Snark about the stupid amount of hype thanks to the politics surrounding this movie aside, my expectations for Black Panther were pretty much the same as I have for every Marvel movie, even though I wasn't especially sold on the trailers. Marvel's track record is making entertaining superhero romps, and even when they're rather mediocre, usually they're at least a good time at the theater. So that's basically what I expected here too. It's kind of what separates Marvel from its competitors, who tend towards either hitting a homerun like Deadpool or striking out so profoundly with something like Batman v Superman or Fant4stic that you want to find the nearest studio executive and drown them in their own blood.  Marvel on the other hand doesn't run from their comic book characters; they embrace the things that make them fun s...

IGN put up their list ranking the 12 Marvel Cinematic Universe films to date, and needless to say, I have to disagree with quite a bit of their list. So, I figured I might as well write up my own ranking and reasoning for your (and my) enjoyment.

"Let SHIELD go!" - Elsa auditioning for Avengers 2 It occurs to me I never reviewed Captain America:  The First Avenger despite the scathing rebuke I had written  about the director's plans for the character.  Suffice it to say, his first outing was actually a pleasant surprise that I rather enjoyed. Now we’re into Phase 2 of Marvel’s plan for their movie world, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier continues the story of WW2 super soldier Steve Rogers following The Avengers ( which was pretty awesome. )  It seems a common notion that The Winter Soldier has dethroned that movie as the best thing Marvel has done to date, and those folks do have a convincing argument. While Iron Man is Marvel’s most consistently good movie (and my favorite) and The Avengers is the most fun ride, The Winter Soldier is the best story they’ve told.  Instead of your standard Guy Becomes Hero/Supervillain Needs Stopping movie, we have a man trying to hold on to t...

The Avengers is quite frankly the most fun I have had in a theater in quite some time.  Not since Scott Pilgrim vs. The World can I recall myself grinning throughout an entire movie or legitimately bursting out in outright laughter.  Sure I've had some chuckles and some smirks, some "heh"s where one could tell laughter was more or less required, even the occasional "ohh that's awesome", but nothing approaching the genuine inner-child feelings invoked by The Avengers . It is the epitome of the good summer blockbuster.  Unlike the heady Dark Knight franchise, The Avengers doesn't cover itself in layers of grit and darkness in an attempt to take place in the real world.  It starts in the realm of fantasy and stays there, allowing for a much more natural suspension of disbelief and lighter tone in general.  On the flip side, it doesn't suffer from the frenetic editing or rampant stupid contrivances that infects fluff like Star Trek (2009) and the T...