So I recently decided to go back and rewatch the entire MCU saga from the beginning.

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The reason I’m doing this is because I haven’t seen a lot of these movies since I was in my teens, and I’m curious just how well these movies have held up. Everyone always talks about the good old days of Marvel movies. Well, I wanted to see if my memory matches up with reality.

I have to say, it has been a very interesting experience so far. Some of my opinions have not changed, and some of them are drastically different compared to before.

I’m a little ways past the entire first phase of the MCU at this point, and I figured I might as well give some quick thoughts on each of the movies. I’m pretty sure some of these are going to be hot takes for a lot of people, but I guess we’ll see.

At some point, I might break down each movie individually and explain the things that work and don’t work for me personally, but for now, I’m just going to give some quick overviews.

Iron Man

Iron Man is a great movie. It’s less an action movie and more a character drama that has action in it. The fight scenes tend to take a back seat to the overall development of Tony Stark as a character, and I think the movie is better for it.

Tony Stark changes a lot in this movie. His character development serves not only to tell a compelling story, but to get us invested in his journey, and I think the movie succeeds with that very well.

Iron Man 2

I certainly would not have said this when I first saw the movie, but here goes.

At the time of release, I thought Iron Man 2 was a bit of a step down from Iron Man 1—and a step back even, character-development-wise.

Boy, was I wrong about that. Iron Man 2 just might be a better movie than Iron Man.

I know people complain that Justin Hammer and Ivan Vanko are a bit lackluster as villains. Not only do I disagree with this, but I feel like there’s so much more going on in this movie.

Again, like Iron Man, it is more a character drama than an action flick, and if you constantly need to see things exploding in your Marvel movie, you’re going to be bored by Iron Man 2. If you want to watch what is just plainly a really good movie that also ha some action in it, you’re going to have a good time, and you’re going to appreciate this.

So if, like a lot of people, you see Iron Man 2 as being the weakest of the trilogy, I would highly recommend giving it another shot. I had a great time with it, and like I said, I think I might actually prefer it to Iron Man.

Thor

Thor is an okay movie. It’s not bad. It’s not particularly good. It is right down the middle.

As a fantasy film—which is what it basically is—it gets the job done. The effects have mostly held up, the casting for the characters is great, and the setup for the story is compelling. But I can’t say I love the way the rest of it plays out.

I suppose one way of describing it is that the movie is rife with contrivances—little convenient occurrences that, as the audience, we can tell are supposed to be taken a certain way, even if the setup and execution isn’t quite there.

For example, one of the most important aspects of the plot is that Odin is conveniently out of commission for a big chunk of it. He collapses—for no reason, that I’m aware—fairly early on in the movie and remains incapacitated right up until the last couple scenes of the film. The reason they do this is so that Loki can be elevated as a threat, and so that Thor is forced to meet that threat himself, rather than Odin stepping in and fixing everything in the first half hour of the movie.

And this would actually be one of my lesser criticisms. An even bigger deal is the fact that Jane Foster is a boring, shallow, uninteresting character. She has zero chemistry whatsoever with Thor, and the love story subplot between them is forgettable and bad. I was given literally zero reasons why they should be into each other, unless you count the fact that she’s cute and he’s…Thor.

I mean, think about it. The Jane Foster of this movie, who sees ‘magic’ as just another form of science, should be repulsed by the existence of a literal god. Instead, the movie attempts to bridge Jane Foster’s interests with the fact of Thor’s existence, as if meeting him and seeing the wormhole—or Bifrost—fulfills some lifelong dream of hers, tying them inextricably together. Somehow.

Oh, they’re sitting next to a crackling campfire and looking into each other’s eyes, they must be in love!

No, just no. There’s literally nothing there, which makes it all the more baffling later on when Thor’s attempt to destroy the Bifrost is shown to be some kind of sacrifice. Oh no, he’s never going to see Jane Foster again—that girl that he’s literally known for, what, twenty-four hours??

Anyway, it’s an okay movie. It’s a good introduction to Thor as a character, and it does make me feel invested in him. When we get to the end of the movie and we see the type of person that Thor has become, it’s hard not to want to root for him. I’m just not entirely sure how we got from A to B, because the movie does not spell it out all that well, in my opinion—certainly not as well as in Iron Man or Iron Man 2, where you can literally see the character development playing out in real time.

Anyway, moving on.

Captain America: The First Avenger

My opinion of this movie has largely remained the same. I think it is a good movie. I think it gets a lot of things right. I don’t think it’s a great movie, for one reason and one reason only: it doesn’t have an ending.

Now, I know that to some, the plane crash itself—where Captain America is submerged in ice and cryogenically frozen—is the end of the story. But how can it be? That might be the climax of the plot, action-wsie,, but it is not the end. That’s not how these movies work. You still need to cap it all off, let the audience know the story is finished, so they can walk away.

Instead of doing that, they positioned the Captain America movie as a sort of prologue, teasing the release of the first Avengers movie.

Now, I understand why and how they did this. It is the entire process of the Marvel Universe. After all, every story leads into another. But that’s just it—the ending of every story must be some kind of beginning, but it still needs to be an ending.

There are a number of different ways they could have done this. One way is that after waking up in the modern day, Captain America could have gone to see Peggy Carter and stood next to her while she was old and bedridden. I think that could have been interesting. I’m pretty sure they saved that scene for a later movie, but I think it could have worked just as well right here.

If not that, maybe you could have a sort of Star Wars–esque ceremony where Captain America is finally and publicly acknowledged for saving the known world. You put him up on a stage in front of thousands of people, you put a medal on him, you have Phil Coulson or Nick Fury or somebody announce that this is the man who saved the world, and then Captain America looks around and realizes this isn’t his world anymore. I don’t know, something like that. I think it needed just a bit more to take it over the line.

Other than that, I think Captain America is great. It’s less a superhero movie and more of a war movie, which is perfect. I guess one of the only other complaints I would have is that the villain, Red Skull, is not quite as strong as I would have wanted him to be, and that perhaps the clashes between him and Captain America could have lent to something a bit more thematically interesting. But I guess you can’t have everything.

The Avengers

The Avengers is absolutely incredible. It’s so much better than it has any right to be, and it has aged beautifully.

It has some of the best dialogue in the whole MCU. The best pacing. The best special effects. It’s an effective ensemble cast film that successfully keeps each character relevant and interesting all throughout. It does a great job of of putting a nice, neat, satisfying bow on the plot, while still setting up lots of great conflict ideas for the future.

It doesn't have the stellar development and thematic bite that Iron Man and Iron Man 2 have, but like I said about Captain America: The First Avenger, you can’t have everything.

All right, that’s all for now. I’ll be back at some point to talk about MCU Phase Two. And perhaps, at some point, to get into some deeper thoughts about each individual film.