(FINISHED) Infinity Countdown: WhoBob reviews every single MCU movies before Infinity War

[Clappy]

Patty Jenkins didn't leave for Wonder Woman by choice.  She and Marvel had creative differences over the direction to take the film that neither would budge from, so they dumped her.  Apparently, she wanted to make Thor 2 a space opera stylized Romeo and Juliet, which I'm not sure would have worked out for me since Jane Foster is such a flat boring character, but who knows how that would have turned out as is.  Anyway, she went back to doing television shows until a year or two later when DC offered her Wonder Woman.

[WhoBibbles]

12 hours ago, Waddles said:

Patty Jenkins didn't leave for Wonder Woman by choice.  She and Marvel had creative differences over the direction to take the film that neither would budge from, so they dumped her.  Apparently, she wanted to make Thor 2 a space opera stylized Romeo and Juliet, which I'm not sure would have worked out for me since Jane Foster is such a flat boring character, but who knows how that would have turned out as is.  Anyway, she went back to doing television shows until a year or two later when DC offered her Wonder Woman.

Alrighty then. My mistake.

[WhoBibbles]

I could watch this movie all day...

Airdate: April 4, 2014

Directed by: Joe and Anthony Russo

It's a bit funny when I thought this movie would take place in winter XD. 

Just like Avengers, I watched this movie three times and each time this aged better and better. This movie made me love Steve Rogers/Captain America as a character, it made me appreciate MCU can tackle serious subjects and try out different tone and genres. This wasn't just a spy thriller. This was a great commentary on how USA is a flawed country just like every other country and themes of trust in your country, order and control in the world.

Sam Wilson, aka Falcon, was on his daily run and he came across to Steve who was also on his daily run and managed to outrun him each time. It introduced Falcon and the relationship between them already started off really good. Cap needs more friends <3. Steve was discussing with Sam on how he has been catching up to the world and Natasha arrived to take Steve for a mision on a ship. Steve started working for S.H.I.E.L.D. after Avengers and the mission was to rescue S.H.I.E.L.D. agents from pirates and the plot started off really quickly. I love how this movie is really fast paced but it never felt so forced. We learned enough of Sam who got a bigger role in the movie and Steve's whole arc of being out of time and how the world felt different to him. And later we had amazing action scene with Steve and Natasha kicking butts. Shaky camera kind of bothered me but the action was thrilling enough, so I can let it slide. During the action scenes, Steve discovered that Natasha was taking S.H.I.E.L.D. datas from the ship and he didn't like that Nick Fury kept him in the dark. He want to Nick and started to talk about why he wasn't told about this. Speaking of Nick, I was so happy we learned more of his backstory. Nick was someone that has trust issues in the world. His father was surrounded by good people but also people that wanted to steal from him. That rubbed on Fury but that effected him even worse when someone shot his eye. Nick loves Steve but he didn't feel like he needed to tell him about the data and this was why. Nick told Steve that they were working on Project Insight. Three hellcarries would be linked to the satellites and they would take down any threat before they arrive. That bothered Steve because that just seemed like control. This was the big theme of this movie and that was the control of humanity as a whole. This works so well in a Captain America story because Steve lived in World War 2. Times where USA was battling against greater evil and they needed someone to give hope. Now that war was over, the world evolved into a more morally grey area. That's not saying that wasn't the case in World War 2 but it didn't matter much on that time because it was more about gaining freedom than controling the world. Nick called out on Steve about War because even then Americans did bad stuff in WW2 like launching a nuke to Japan but Steve knew that those bad actions stayed in them, so USA gaining control felt nothing like USA he knew. Again, that made sense because Steve lived in tough times and he kept seeing things black and white. USA and any other nation isn't like that anymore and Fury thought it'd be best to eliminate its targets before they do much worse. After leaving S.H.I.E.L.D. H.Q., Steve visited Peggy Carter who was old now. That scene was so emotional and brought tears to my eyes. After Steve was frozen and found in the future, he lost everything. His best friend, his team and his lover Peggy. So seeing Peggy again was so bittersweet to him. It was even more upsetting that they couldn't dance once. This movie was a big emotional roller coaster and little moments like this makes me love it even more.

Fury was unable to open the data Natasha gave it to him and that concerned him. He told his right man Alexander Pearce to delay Project Insight. Then Nick was attacked by Winter Soldier. Fury survived the attack and went to Steve's apartment because he couldn't trust anyone but Steve. Nick told Steve that S.H.I.EL.D. was compromised but their place was bugged, Winter Soldier shot Nick and managed to escape but after Nick was shot, he gave Steve the flash drive of the data they got in the ship. We also learned that Steve's neighbour was an agent that was protecing Steve. Nick was sent to the hospital but he was presumed dead. That really upsetted Natasha,  Maria Hill and Steve, especially Natasha. I loved that Natasha showed more emotion in this movie because even in Avengers, she was basically a badass fighter but barely showed much emotion. I don't know If that was the intention but even her talk with Loki was a part of her plan to expose him. I felt like Russo brothers are the only people that truly understood that Natasha isn't just some amazing spy. She kept joking with Steve, she even tried to hook up Steve with some girls because Steve didn't need to be alone and she cared about him and she was sad about Fury's death because Fury was the one that gave her a second chance. Steve didn't trust anyone anymore, so he put the flash drive in a wending machine and he went to S.H.I.E.L.D. H.Q. to report Pearce. Steve told Pearce that Nick told him not to trust anyone but Pearce told Steve that he hired those pirates and then he made Steve a figutive for having information about Nick. Now we got some really intense fight with Steve fighting with S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to escape H.Q. and man, he was so awesome in those scenes. The movie turned Steve into the ultimate fighter and I loved every second of it. Steve went to the hospital to take the flash driver but Natasha took it before him. They hid themselves to take a look at the driver but they had to be careful with that because many agents were looking for them. Steve and Tasha's friendship was so sweet and throughtful here. I loved seeing them developing a mutal trust on each other, as well as teaching each other from their experiences. They could have even ended up heing a good couple but sigh, Age of Ultron. They found a secret S.H.I.EL.D. base in New Jersey and Steve met Zola in an A.I. form. We got a twist that Hydra has been inside S.H.I.EL.D. the entire time and and Pearce was their leader. For someone that never read Secret Warriors run by Jonathan Hickman, that twist was a huge shocker to me and how they managed to do that was explained it made sense. I loved seeing Zola again and we got even some quick information on people that knew Hydra was inside S.H.I.EL.D. but they died beofre they told anyone and that storyline was carried in Civil War movie. S.H.I.E.L.D. found Steve and Natasha and they launched a missle to them but they survived thanks to Cap. They went to Sam because they couldn't trust anyone. We got a quick information on Sam's past and I was happy they had time to develop Sam's character in the movie. He was a pararescueman but he had to quit it because his friend died doing that job and that effected him but he couldn't let Steve and Natasha trying to take down Hydra , so he took Falcon suit to help them. Falcon, to me, is a friend we need but we don't deserve. Despite leaving his times as a soldier because of his friend's death, he had to help Steve and Natasha because he didn't want anyone else as friend to die again. Sam was caring and a hero in the entire movie. Even though he knew Steve for a little time, he knew that th world needed Steve, so he helped him Without thinking otherwise.

The trio began their dicovery on what was Hydra's plan. They learned form one of Hydra's moles that Zola made an algoritm that Hellcarriers were going to eliminate anyone who coıld be potential threats to Hydra. But then the trio was attacked by Winter Soldier and the movie kept going as an awesome action thriller. Steve had a great fight with Winter Soldier and dear lord, Winter Soldier was just brutal and dangerous. Steve accidentally took Winter Soldier's mask and he found out he was Bucky all this time. His best friend he thought he was dead ended up being a brainwashed soldier for Hydra. The trio was arrested by S.H.I.E.L.D./Hydra combo but they were rescued by Hill. Hill took them to a secret base and the trio found out Nivck Fury was alive. To be fair, thank god because MCU is nothing without Nick Fury (and Phil Coulson. Shaddup all of you.). Hill told the trio that the only way to stop Hellcarriers was to put three chips into each three Hellcarriers and they would be shut down together. Steve went to H.Q. and he warned people that S.H.I.E.L.D. was taken over by Hydra but he also told them he hoped he wasn't alone in the situation. now this scene was amazing and it told a lot on how a country that was against Nazims had Nazis grew in them. This was a great portrayal of how USA isn't that much of an American dream and it could be nightmaring filled with terrible people. You can clearly see that most of Nazis/Hydra agents in the movie were Americans. True that they were manipulated by some German agents but no excuse for them to act all evil. Nevertheless, some people did turn out to be good people. One dude that had the keyboard to launch Hellcarriers didn't do that because he wanted good in the world, even if that meant his death. This movie explored how people could be just awful but also there was still some hope left that some peole are better than we pictured them to be. This began the divide in S.H.I.E.L.D. and Pearce showed his true colors. And I personaly thought he was actually written well. Definitely not someone that is very memorable as a villain but I understood his goal even If it was evil. This movie made Hydra a bit more complex villain than just people who wanted world domimnation. The first Captain America movie was all about order and control but the second movie took a deep in those ideas and made them more compelling. As much as freedom is a good thing, it's not always good when it creates chaos to the world and Hydra knew that peole had to be controled, so they couldn't hurt each other anymore. Even if it meant to kill those who had potential to take down Hydra, Hydra thought what they were doing was the right thing. Checking on people makes them less dangerous and that is true sometimes. Nevertheless Hydra were still doing evil and Steve knew he had to stop them. I loved that regardless of how the world turned upside down for Steve, he still believed that the world could be in the hands of justice and peace without resolving it in murder of innocent lives. 

We got a big climax of USA being in danger of total genocide but nevertheless, the climax was extremely awesome both visually and dramatically. Steve had to stop Bucky to save USA and even make him remember how he is. Meanwhile Natasha was undercover in H.Q. to release Hydra and S.H.I.EL.D. secrets to the world and Nick Fury arrived in time to make that happen. Both of these characters had great developments in the entire movie. In Avengers, all Natasha wanted was to right her wrongs because she was so ashamed of her past, now she released every single secret of her to the public and she knew that even if it meant the world seeing her bad side, she did it to make sure Hydra agents were taken down. Nick was broke by Pearce betraying him and keeping this hidden all this time, so it resulted in Nick killing Pearce and that felt really satisfying to see. Natasha and Nick both came out as great characters in the movie. Sam had enough time to be so amazing and I really loved his fight with Brock Rumlow, who later became Crossfire in Civil War. Steve and Brucky scenes in the climax tho, oh man, it got way personal. I really felt bad forh both of them because all Steve wanted ws to get his friend back but Bucky couldn't even remmeber him. Bucky shouting Steve was his mission but Steve giving up fight and being okay to be killed by him was acted so purely by Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan. Luckily Steve and others stopped Hellcarriers but Steve was inured badly. It turned out Bucky saved him and Bucky went hidden. Natasha was in the press of explaining that no matter what people would think of her past, she was ready to do the right thing at all cost. Fury said goodbye to the Steve/Natasha/Sam trio and Steve and Sam began to track down Bucky. Two post credit scenes of a Hydra agent called Baron von Strucker experimenting on Wanda and Pietro, as well as having Loki's scepter and Bucky visiting his memorial.

What can I say? After watching it three times, I still love this movie and I'll continue to do that. This basically turned Captain America into more than just an American boy scout. He was naive and out of time with barely having idea how the world works now but he was still a nobel, caring and honest man. Hydra became more interesting. Natasha and Nick Fury had great characterizations and Sam Wilson as Falcon was so awesome. I loved how it tackled on order, peace and control of the world and doing the necessary good and evil to acomplish that. Spy aspects of this movie were refreshing to see and Russo Brothers made this movie a great mix of Jason Bourne/James Bond type of movie. It was so emotional and really serious which is something MCU does need a bit more often, while having its usual epic entertainment. I wonder If Civil War will manage to be better or worse than this movie again but right now, this is my favorite MCU movie ever. This was the Captain America movie people needed. I love First Avenger with all my heart but this movie was complex, bittersweet and epic. I would even say this is one of my favorite movies ever. It's that good.

MCU movie ranking:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - A+

Avengers - A

Iron Man - A

Captain America: The First Avenger - A-

Iron Man 3 - A-

Thor - B+

The Incredible Hulk - B

Thor: The Dark World - B-

Iron Man 2 - C+

 

[WhoBibbles]

Announcement to be made.

This project of mine will be put in hiatus.  Sorry for this happening.

Why?

Because of constant headaches and not getting enough focus on my one exam left. After I see Infinity War, I'll finish this project with Black Panther being the last movie to cover. I had to do this because I wanna see Infinity War with clear head. That's why I'm also gonna be absent for a week. Thank you all for understanding.

[WhoBibbles]

so sorry for this delay. I had reasons. Yesterday I was gonna post a review but crappy things happened during that day and I just couldn't have time to deal with it anymore. Today was a bit better for me at least, so I'm ready to continue this countdown (yeah yeah, Infinity War has already been premiered but better late than never).

Airdate: August 1, 2014

Directed by James Gunn

Who would have thought this movie could have worked? But sure as hell it did. As someone who have never seen Guardians of the Galaxy in any other media or read Dan Abnett's cosmic Marvel saga in 00s I had no clue who the hell Guardians of the Galaxy are supposed to be. Even though I knew the reception of this movie, this was still a big surprise. They were such weird characters in a great way.

This movie started off different from other Marvel movies. It had a cold opening of the time in 1988 when we were introduced to Peter Quill as a kid. He was beaten up by bullies because he wanted to protect a frog and his mother was dying from cancer. He was listening to his mother's mixtape in a hospital and his mom called him to take her hand. Peter didn't and later his mom died. Peter ran away and he was abducted by aliens. Darn it E.T.! This perfectly set up how Peter as a character throughout movie and man, the first scene broke me, even if I knew little about Peter. Seeing his mother dying and then getting abducted must have been a horrendous situation. Then we went back to present where Peter is an adult. Now he called himself Star-Lord, lived with thefts called Ravagers and he went to some planet to get an object called Orb. He danced with some sweet music and you could already tell this was going to be a fun movie. I just loved that scene not just because it represents Peter still listening to his dead mother's mixtape over and over to remember her. It was a nice exchange in a superhero movie where all you see is your protagonist having fun in his job but unlike other protagonists in a superhero movie, Peter wasn't some heroic person. He was an outlaw like he said. He barely gave crap about trying to do something good. He just wanted to steal or collect some stuff and sell them to someone else. Bad for him tho because he was attacked by soldiers of Ronan, who was the villain of the movie. The movie was already fun from Peter dancing but the action scene with Peter escaping was so exciting. He went back to his ship and it was shown he had some company lady but then she opened a call from Yondu, the leader of Ravagers and the one that kidnapped Peter. Yondu wasn't exactly my favorite character of this movie but he was fun as some sort of bad guy who later did good. Yondu was pissed off Peter did this without warning him, so he put a bounty on his capture and decided to learn what Orb is. After that, Ronan, the leader of Kree empire and a partner of Thanos, was introduced and we were later introduced to Gamora, adopted daughter of Thanos, and Nebula, also adopted daughter of Thanos? Ronan sent Gamora to find Orb. Not a bad inroduction to any of these characters but It didn't excatly hype me up for these characters. Although Gamora and Nebula got more interesting as the movie went on. Thanos was also introduced couple of minutes later in the movie but he was just sitting in his chair, moving on.

Peter went to Xandar, the place that made a peace treaty with Kree empire after battling with them for so long. He went to a dealer to sell him Orb but then the dealer realized Ronan was looking for him, so he kicked him out. Gamora found Peter she kicked his butt to get the ORB. We were later introduced to Rocket and Groot and from the beginning I was loving them. I loved Groot being a sarcastic racoon, while Groot being just a silly walking tree. Rocket found out about bounty on Peter, so he attacked Peter. This was such a great way to unite our protagonists together because they literally started off them trying to capture something and/or each other. This created a funny but also entertaining action scene of them fighting with each other and of course they were arrested by Nova Corps. Now that Nova corps are a thing in MCU, I hope we get a Nova movie. Off-topic but even as a person who don't know much about Richard Rider as Nova, I wanna know more about him, so MCU better make that happen. They were sent to the most secured prison in the galaxy. We got some nice music scequence of them being turned into prisoners and some details on them. Peter is such a childish person, Rocket is engineered racoon, there seems to be more than one Groot and Gamore is daughter of Thanos and allies with Ronan but Gamora thought that selling Orb was the only ticket of her to be away from Thanos as possible. And of course, with a prison of people that had their friends and familes murdered by Ronan and Thanos, this wasn't so easy for Gamora. Gamora finally got to be a more interesting character as we learned a bit about her backstory. Her family was killed by Thanos and Thanos turned her into a living weapon. Just like Peter, Gamora had nobody in her life. Okay, Peter got Yondu but Yondu kidnapped Peter for being useful in theft and he always threatened him to hand him to Ravagers to eat him. Later Drax The Destroyer was introduced and he was this naive but a scary person for a reason. Just like Gamora, his family was killed, except Ronan was the one to do it and it was commanded by Thanos. So, when Drax wanted Gamora to die, I was worried for Gamora but Drax's action made sense and it made me connected to his character. Rocket and Groot met each other somewhere because it also seemed like they had nobodies until they met each other and they became friends. This movie has a big theme on family and that was refreshing to see this being tackled in a much more different way than Fantastic Four or Thor's troubled family. Each protagonists of this movie had lost someone or they had been alone. And their rational behaviours united them together and that made me see them as one bigt dysfunctional family. Because of their team up, they were able to escape the prison (except Peter who went back to get his mixtape and then escaped from ship) and it was nothing but pure awesomeness. Meanwhile they were still caring for themselves because Gamora told them she knows a place to sell it, so they teamed up only to sell Orb to split the money. Except Drax who wanted nothing but revenge for his family. They traveled to Nowhere to sell Orb. Man, I just love how this movie explored so many different locations in Galaxy and it felt like one big space opera. Of course, first two Thor movies had different planets but Guardians took a more depth into cosmos, thus we finally got to see more cosmic side of Marvel. As someone who loves space and aliens, this movie didn't disappoint me on that aspect, even if the main protagonist was a human (okay, half--human but more on that later.). 

While they were waiting for the buyer, Guardians were having some innocent fun. Rocket, Drax and Groot went to see animal aliens fighting, while Peter taught Gamorra music and dancing. The moments here were really important because those minutes were just great character interactions and our  characters enjoying themselves and learning to know each other more. Gamora and Peter's interaction were already turning into a romance and I was actually enjoying that. Of course, Gamora knew Peter making a move on her was kind of a bad move but then they heard of Rockt and Drax fighting. Man, this movie knew when to have some quality fun but when it comes to seriousness, it was just sad im a good way. It's hard to not feel bad for Rocket because all this time he had been called animal names but he was never asked to be made this way. He was drunk but Rocket feeling depressed for his existence and beinbg angry at Drax crushed me. Drax and rest of Guardians splited up. Peter, Gamora, Groot and Rocket met the buyer who is The Collector and he explained Infinity Stones to them and Orb was actually Power Stone. I really liked this scene and I shouldn't have but sometimes exposions are cool if they are short, understandable and look epic. This movie was the first to introduce the concept of Infinity Stones and this planted the seeds for rest of MCU movies.

One of The Collector's slaves used Power Stone in orb but they quickly killed her and destroyed The Collector's place. Drax, for being a stupid drunk hoe, called Ronan to kill him. Ronan showed up in Knowhere and attacked the place to find Gamora and get Orb. Guardians noticed that and Peter, Ganora and Rocket took some small ships to fight them. And man, the action scenes were on point. I love me some space ships battling with each other. It gave me Star Wars vibe but it didn't even feel like it was ripping off from that. Drax and Ronan started to have a fight and Ronan quickly won and he got Orb. Luckily Groot managed to save him. Meanwhile Gamora's ship was exploded by Nebula and she was slowly dying in cold space. Peter called Ravagers to get them but before that he gave his space mask to Gamora to keep her alive for a few seconds. Now that scene right there was so emotional and powerful for Peter's development. Before they went to battle with them, Peter still thought about gaining money from Orb, depsite the fact that Orb contains a dangerous weapon and Gamora felt this was so dishonorable for him. It made sense why he would act like it because he was raised by bunch of outlaws but Peter believed in goodness as a kid and saving Gamora's life proved that he could be worthy of a hero. Peter made peace with Yundo after talking about Ronan wanting to destroy Xandar and rest of the galaxy. Before that, Rocket was acting like a jerk to Drax for acting so stupid for a right reason but that disappointed Groot. Rocket told Groot to escape far away, so Ronan could never find themb ut Groot refused and he decided to stay to rescue Peter and Gamore from Yondu. And Rocket finally agreed to help him, as well as Drax. They attacked Yondu's ship and that was actually a really funny scene of Rocket threatening to blow up the ship with Peter and Gamora in it. Rocket is such a cruel jokester but that's what I like about him overall. Later Thanos ordered Ronan to give him Orb but Ronan betrayed Thanos, so he used Power Stone in Orb to destroy Xandar and Nebula dediced to help him, so she can be away from Thanos as well. And there you go with Ronan, a generic Kree emperor that wants to destroy the galaxy. What a let down he turned out to be because the characters had personal conflict with him but the villain himself wasn't interesting. Just like with first two Thor movies, the villain talked about how he wanted to get revenge on seemingly good guys. Ronan talked about the war between Kree Empire and Nova Empire and how he wanted to get revenge for what they did but we didn't get more about that conflict. It would have been more interesting if Nova Empire killed his people for something but that's it really. Even without that, Ronan wanted to destroy the galaxy, so he was already your typical bad guy. He's called Ronan the Accuser but all he seemed to do is accusing people for no reason. I know making leaders villains aren't that easy because most of bad leaders have power lust but they could have fleshed out his character to make him feel more unique but they didn't do that. I was so glad they developed Guardians but the villain was a bore. Still a bit better than likes of Justin Hammer, Abomination and Malekith and his design was cool but that's not saying much. At least he is gonna reappear in Captain Marvel, so he better have some development there.

Guardians finally had a conversation about them teaming up to save the galaxy and Yondu and rest of Ravagers agreed to help him, as well as Nova Corps. What I love about this movie and Guardians in general is that they are just a dysfunctional family. You could say they are space Avengers but I disagree. Yeah, they had issues with each other and later they reunited to save Galaxy just like how Avengers did in their first movie ubut the thing with Avengers was that those people were already heroes. Guardians were bunch of criminals but at the end, they learned to give a crap about each other and others and they united to put a stop to evil for good. The climax was really exciting with Nova Corps fighting alongside with Guardians, Yondu using his whistle to kill Kree warriors with an arrow, Groot sacrificing himself to save rest of Guardians, Gamora and Nebula having a small conflict, Star-lord's dance and the big epic scene of them using Power Stone to kill Ronan, who shall not be missed. We learned that Peter was half human, half something so powerful enough to keep the stone longer than rest. Nova Corps took Power Stone, Guardians left somewhere else to do a bit of good and bad. Nice credit scenes of baby Groot appearing and dancing and Howard the Duck voiced by Seth Green.

I gotta say this movie was still so much fun to watch again. it made me connected to cosmic Marvel, it was a mixture of both funny and serious movie and it introduced me to superheroes that I have never even heard of. And not the mention this movie was so much fun and that's part of MCU's charm. Sadly the villain sucked, so this movie didn't feel as interesting as it should have been. It had everything ending senario that MCU kind of stuck with that for a bit but the theme of family kept me going and the movie delivered such a huge popcorn fun.

MCU movie ranking:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - A+

Avengers - A

Iron Man - A

Guardians of the Galaxy - A-

Captain America: The First Avenger - A-

Iron Man 3 - A-

Thor - B+

The Incredible Hulk - B

Thor: The Dark World - B-

Iron Man 2 - C+

From now on, I review the movies twice a day, so expect the review of Age of Ultron on friday and oh boy, I can't wait to talk about that one.

[WhoBibbles]

Here it is. The long awaited review of this.

I remember being hyped as hell for this one. It was the first MCU movie that I was waiting to be aired and the first superhero movie I've seen in theaters. And I remember loving so much of it, maybe even more than the first Avenger itself. After thinking more into it, it wasn't as amazing as I once remembered and I saw first Avengers again and reminded myself why I loved that movie in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I actually still liked this movie in a way but this wasn't that well-written and it came out as a bit mess.

 

Airdate: May 1, 2015

Directed by Joss Whedon

So what exactly did this movie do wrong? Honestly I didn't think this was as badly-written or poorly made as some people made it out be. It has a great theme called humanity and I think that's an important theme in a superhero movie. Our protagonists are heroes in their own way but there's no way they aren't flawed or they didn't do bad things to achieve that goal or their projects didn't end up hitting them in the face. This theme was explored nicely for the most part but the problem was that this movie felt all over the place and some parts of it just felt like it was setting up a bigger picture for MCU but it didn't mash well into the movie. Lets explain why it didn't completely do the job great.

The movie started off with Von Strucker, last remaning leader of Hydra or that's what the movies think and some people didn't watch Agents of S.H.I.EL.D. I'll shut up. trying to experiment on people with Loki's specter in Sokovia and Avengers arrived just in time to stop him. Just like the first movie, Avengers started off with a bang and the action kept entertaining me. We got some nice character interactions and some jokes here and there. Captain America managed to stop Von Strucker but none of Avengers saw the twins, Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, coming. They were introduced in post credit scene of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and while I sort of liked them in this movie, I didn't like how they were set up. That's one thing to not make them mutants because no mutants allowed in MCU (yet) but it felt so wrong to see them siding with Hydra, the Nazi science division, to get revenge on Avengers. I know they were villains once and their reasoning for attacking Avengers made sense but for goodness sake, their father, Magneto, was jewish and they were jewish too. I would perfectly accept if they were brainwashed by Loki's specter but seeing supposedly jews that have a holocaust survivor father voluntering Nazis was just wrong. I didn't know their history on comics before but after knowing, that was disrespectful of their origin and Whedon and Fiege should have reconsidered this decision to make their origins different. I know I ranted a bit too much on it but it had to be brought up. Moving on from this, Wanda mind controled Stark to bring up his worst fear and that was him seeing all of his friends being dead. I liked this concept because It was good seeing Tony still trying to recover from PTSD of the first movie and seeing him fearing for his friends made sense for him to do something about it. Another related thing is that Tony brought up his robots to protect people in Sokovia but Sokovia citizens threw tomatoes at him. Okay, I know why some people wouldn't trust Avengers but it felt weird seeing it so sudden with barely build up to it. It's just a minor nit-pick. Of course, the twins continued to attack Avengers, as a result Hawkeye was injured but they managed to stop all Hydra agents, Tony got the spectre and the twins were gone. 

Avengers returned to their home bases  and Barton was recovered. Stark started to talk to Bruce about how Tony's vision felt real and it would happen sooner than later. So Tony decided to make an A.I. with Bruce called Ultron and mix him with Jarvis to make sure Ultron is the one that would save the world this time, instead of his friends. Tony didn't wanna bring this up to people yet and he started to work on it with him for days. As some of you know, Ultron wasn't really created by Tony, it was Hank Pym, original Ant-Man, that built him, so it was sort of disappointing to find out Tony was the one to build him but I can let it slide because it still fit in his character. After Iron Man 3, he promised to tone down the suits and start a better life for himself, so he decided to make robots to make sure they would save the world. Tony wanted to retire but he still cared about saving lives, why get rid of that? Instead of Tony, A.I. would do all of his work and that made sense. So I appreciated how they used Tony to build him, even though I wish it was Hank Pym with Tony helping him. Days later, they were almost complete with A.I.. Meanwhile Avengers came together to celebate their victory. It was nice seeing Hill, Sam and Rhodey in the party, kind of shame Sam didn't get to do much in the movie tho. Bruce and Natasha started to flirt with each other and I started to feel awkward. When did this happen all of a sudden? Bruce and Natasha having feelings for each other? I know Natasha was the person to recruit Bruce to S.H.I.E.L.D. but I never felt they had some sort of connection and they barely even interacted in the first Avengers movie. Here it all seemed like Joss Whendon just wanted some romance, so he created this mess. I know Natasha and Barton being a couple would feel predictable but predictability isn't bad if it makes sense. Natasha and Barton had a history together and I wish this movie would explore that and develop feelings for each other. Fine, it didn't need to be romance if they saw them as partners but why Bruce and Natasha? We'll get to how they set them up and how it was bad is coming later. Avengers started to hang out with each other more with them trying to hold Thor's hammer. I actually loved this scene so much. I know being lighthearted and humourous can be a flaw in MCU but sometimes it works when it highlights the characters and make them feel more human. I liked that nobody was able to life it because they were unworthy. Steve almost lifted tho, just saying. When all of that was happening, Ultron was born and he delved into Internet to learn. And he was terrified with results. Jarvis, Tony's first A.I., tried to calm him down but later Ultron attacked Jarvis and started to attack on Avengers. Many people saw Ultron as a weak villain in this movie and while I kind of disagree, I definitely agree that the whole set up of him becoming a villain was rushed and most of the time he was talking all villainy, so I didn't happen to care for him as I should have been. Now I get his motivation for it, he watted to destroy humanity because that's only path for peace and he was right. That makes Ultron an interesting villain to Avengers and a part of a good theme in this movie. He hated humanity for their sickening crimes and he hated being a slave to them but like I said, he happened all of a sudden and because of the awkward pacing, lack of sympathy and him making jokes sometimes, he didn't end up being a menacing villain. I actually loved him a lot more in Avengers: Earth's Mightest Heroes cartoon and that was because he felt scary and he had a slow but a good build up. I kind of wished we'd see him saving lives first, later being invested in destroying it. That being said, he had a good voice and he was more fun than most of MCU villains at that time. 

Ultron started to attack on Avengers and that was pretty awesome to see, not gonna lie. Ultron escaped the tower and found the twins to plan evolution. Another weird evolutionary plot because WHERE ARE MUTANTS WHEN YOU NEED THESE PLOTS? It definitely felt weird to see two supposedly mutants who aren't mutants to side with a robot for evolution but that's the closest thing to X-Men, besides inhumans becoming more like mutants in MCU lol. We learned a bit about Wanda and Pietro's backstory and why they wanted Avengers dead. It was because their home was bombed and it was Stark's bombs that made it happened, so they have a reason to kill them. Yeah, other Avengers didn't do that but they sided with Tony, so. Ultron and the twins went to Africa to find Earth's strongest metal called vibranium to make him a better body. They met Ulysses Klaue, aka Klaw, to get some of that sweet vibranium. Klaw found the vibranium from a place called Wakanda but he was attacked when he stole it. Avengers went there to stop them because Tony knew where they would find vibranium. Ummm, Tony knows vibranium is in Wakanda but nobody else does. How did he know that information and why didn't he tell anyone? We'll never know. Also this was the first set up to Black Panther and I didn't notice that until I saw Civil War and Black Panther lol. Avengers attacked Ultron and the twins, as a result Klaw's hand was cut by Ultron and Wanda gave each Avengers a vision of their fear, loss and regrets. Except Tony. And Barton who got sick of mind mind control because the dude had enough with that crap. While there's one aspect of Hawkeye I didn't like in the movie, this movie was the best usage of him. I likd that he was sarcastic and more of a slide of life character than rest of Avengers. He was tired of being like anobody and he wanted to prove he's worth something. Well, that wasn't explored as much but still that's the closest characterization of Hawkeye we'll ever get. Maybe Avengers 4 will fix that and give us more Hawkeye's characterization and even some of his past? Please? In their visions, Steve saw his regret of never being able to be with Peggy and his life being taken away. Thor saw his people's death and Infinity Stones, Natasha saw her childhood and her becoming an assassin. Last person to be nind controled was Bruce and that turned him into an uncontrolable Hulk.Tony noticed that and he stopped fighting with Ultron and brought Hulkbuster to stop Hulk.Now that scene was really awesome to see. Seeing Hulkbuster and tht fight against Hulk was so much fun and it made us see how much of a threat Ultron could be. Well, Wanda did that but still. I loved the fight but I walso felt bad for Hulk after being out of mind control and seeing how he wrecked the place and endangered innocent lives. Tony knocked him up tho, sad Hulk.

After their defeat, Avengers went to a safe house. Well, that was a quick transition from having some quick action scenes to slower and calmer moments. Even during the theaters I felt the shift in pacing felt rushed. It was like they saved most of character interactions and developments for a brief moment of slow pace and it felt unevan and weird. Avengers had a mix of both slow pace and fast pact but neither arrived that quickly. Even in the party scenes, Ultron's development happened too fast. So the dafe house was where Hawkeye stays and it was revealed that Hawkeye has a family! Yeah, that was what the heck? I get what they were doing, they wanted to make him more relatable by making him a simple family man but it came out of place and it was like giving him a family would make him a more compelling character. It wasn't. And It was like they really had to remove the concept of Natasha and Barton romance for sake of Natasha and Bruce romance. Speaking of Natasha/Bruce, here we go to one of the worst aspects of MCU movies ever. We got to learn morea bout Natasha's past, isn't it great? We learned that she was trained to be an assassin and she hated killing innocent people. Shouldn't that be an interesting backstory? Yeah but they ruined all of it with thefact that Natasha was sterlized, so she can't have babies. And she found herelf monster because of her crappy past. Look, Whedon can stay the her monster line was all related to her being an assassin. And just like similar failed ideas of this movie, I understood what he was going for. Natasha felt herself as a monster for killing people. But why add sterlization into that? What was the point of giving us that info? To hook her up with Bruce because he can't have babies too? He said the same thing and the next thing you are gonna say Bruce felt himself as a monster too and you are right but WHY WAS IT IMPORTANT TO HAVE BOTH OF THEM NOT BEING ABLE OT MAKE BABIES? Just to mke them smooch? That's awful romance. Heck, even setting the romance up just because both of them felt monsters wasn't good to begin with. No relationship is perfect but a good relationship should be partners finding best versions of each other. Yes, both of them seeing themselves as bad people makes them sympathetic towards each other but that's not healthy romance. If the point was to show them as an unstable couple, I would understand but that wasn't the point and that was why the relationship failed for me. Another bad thing about this was that this movie's theme was that even good people can be bad and they failed on Natasha's character badly. Not the mention that scvene feels more messed up since Scarlett Johanson, actress that plays Natasha, was pregnant during that scene. And people say why is Joss Whedon so hated. That's why, people. Meanwhile Steve and Tony started to have an argument about saving lives and how much they can do this now. That scene was actually good because it not only set up their conflict in Civil War movie, they had a good interaction on their idealogies about what it means to be a hero. Plus Steve ripping the log in a half was super sexy, shrug. Then we saw Nick Fury again, this time and encouraging the team. I like seeing Fury as a supporter of the group and while his appearence was short, it was good seeing him again.

So Avengers left the safe house to find Ultron, except Thor who teamed up with Erik Selvig to have a vision quest to see what was his vision saying. And here we have another out of place plot, except it shouldn't be. It served almost nothing to the plot and it was only there to set up Thor: Raganarok and Infinity War, althrough Thor's information on Infinity Stones didn't need to have a plot because that wasn't the plot of Ragnarok and it wasn't even necessary to set up destruction of Asgard. Thor could have left to check on Asgard because Loki started to rule. And Thor could have learned more about Infinity Stones in Infinity War. Also this was the last time we saw Erik, press F of rpay respects (he's not dead but he's written off without a trace). Ultron started to build a new body for evoltuion with vibanium and Mind Stone taken from the spectre. Wanda got in contact with the stone and saw what Ultron was planning and she didn't like it. Ultron's plan was to destroy all of humanity and replace it with betterspecies . Avengers found Ultron and started to fight with him. They took the new body, Wanda and Peter betrayed Ultron but Natasha was kidnapped by Ultron. Tony realized that Jarvis was okay, so he wanted to bring the new body into life with Jarvis because this time they wouldn't do wrong. He convinced Bruce but other team members stopped them until Thor arrived and discovered that Tony's plan works. They created Vision, an android that understands life better than anyone. He managed to lift Thor's hammer and we all got wet. We finally arrived to the big climax where Sokovia was used by Ultron as an astroid to extinct humanity. While the climax was so much fun, I didn't feel as emotionally invested as the first Avenger's climax and I know it feels like I compare this movie with the first one but I felt like this movie could have been much better at the story than the first Avengers. Bruce managed to rescue Natasha and he was turned into Hulk by Natasha cuz Natasha kissed him. Again, not a good romance. They fought and saved as many lives for a while, even Rhodey as War Machine and Fury came with S.H.I.E.L.D. to rescue lives and stop Ultron robots. That was also the last time we saw S.H.I.E.L.D. on the big screen. During the fight, Wanda started to blame herself for this and It was understadable why she felt that way. I felt like she was the only new character that got some character focu, aside from maybe Vision because Pietro was just there and Ultron wasn't that interesting. Hawkeye gave her a speech on superheroing and that was probably the best scene of the entire movie. Clint finally shined as a character and it was great to see Wanda quitting blame on herself and starting to be a hero. Sadly Pietro died and that pretty much added bonus to Wanda's character. What a waste but eh, Pietro was much better in X-Men universe. They managed to get almost everyone to safety, although I felt like the movie should have addressed some lives the team couldn't save besides Pietro because that was a big plot point in Civil War. I get this movie wanted to have some fun but It would have been better if it didn't feel like a victory. They saved the day but not everyone. Finally the team stopped Ultron for good and how they did it was honestly underwhelming, except Wanda and Vision's scenes of them killing him. Those felt good. So Thor left Earth to find out more about the stones, except he didn't in his next appearence in MCU, Hulk left Earth because people hate him now, Tony took a break from Avengers to have a life, Steve and Natasha set up a new line of Avengers. And one end credit scene of Thanos doing everything by himself.

Yeah, the more I saw it and thought about it, this is one of the weakest entires of MCU. That doesn't mean I didn't like it. I liked it but I didn't find it good of a movie. It was a fun popcorn experience that had good character interactions and humor but it had many issues with a weird pacing, out of place sequences, some characterizations being written badly, Ultron's development being rushed and your typical world ending stakes with not enough interesting aspect of it. Maybe I was being too harsh on it because this movie had a good theme of humanity and I felt like I didn't properly explain at some of the issues I have with this one. But the movie should have been important to me and It didn't feel that important. It benefitted Civil War but the movie didn't benefit itself enough.

MCU movie ranking:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - A+

Avengers - A

Iron Man - A

Guardians of the Galaxy - A-

Captain America: The First Avenger - A-

Iron Man 3 - A-

Thor - B+

Avengers: Age of Ultron - B

The Incredible Hulk - B

Thor: The Dark World - B-

Iron Man 2 - C+

 

Damn, I got tired from writing this review. Ant-Man should be more fun to discuss.

[WhoBibbles]

You all know the drill.

IT'S ANT-MAN TIME BABY.

Airdate: July 17, 2015

Directed by Peyton Reed

It's kind of weird that nobody, outside of comic book fans, seems to be heard of Ant-Man. Ant-Man (Hank Pym) and The Wasp (Janet Van Dyne) are the founders of Avengers. Heck, Hank Pym was the one that built Ultron in the first place and sad stuff happened afterwards. After Age of Ultron movie, I've heard of this movie from my friend but I don't recall being that interested to see this. I mean we all care about a character named Spider-Man but Ant-Man? So he's just gonna shrink and we are gonna watch his shrinking adventures? Yes, sir. But we aren't gonna watch Hank Pym as Ant-Man. There's another Ant-Man character in the comics and that is Scott Lang, the movie is all about him but they did a pretty good job at introducing an unpopular character and making him popular. Perhaps not as popular as Guardians of the Galaxy right now but still.

The movie had a cold opening of a 1989 flashback and we were introduced to Dr. Hank Pym, a brilliant scientist who created Pym Particles that shrinks Ant-Man suit. Around that time, Hank Pym stopped working for S.H.I.E.L.D. but S.H.I.E.L.D. tried to replicate Pym Particles and Hank Pym was so pissed off about it that he smacked one of the workers of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the head. Pym said as long as he lives (I wonder If he's gonna die in Ant-Man and the Wasp for that, please don't kill him off.). We learned a bit about Hank Pym from the opening. He's someone that used to do good for the world with his Ant-Man suit but now he saw that his tech can be a threat If it gets in hands of others. We went back to the present and we were introduced to Scott Lang. A thief, excuse me, a burglar who spent some time in prison and he finally got out. His final day was him fighting with a dude as a goodbye. Man, I thought prison wasn't supposed to be friendly, I thought prisoners were supposed to try to murder each other! Scott met his pal Luis who is still a thief and he tried to offer Scott another theft but Scott said no because he wanted to redeem himself and provide for his daughter named Cassie. Unfortunately, despite being an electrical engineer, Scott couldn't work as an engineer, so he started to work on a stand but later he got fired for his criminal record. Then he sneaked into his daughter's birthday but his ex-wife and her new husband stopped him. His ex-wife said if he really wanted to see his daughter again, he'd have to provide for her. As a result Scott had no choice but to steal again. I love Scott as a character already. He's clearly someone who wanted to stop making his past mistakes but nobody gave him a second chance to do so, so he started to make the same mistake for his daughter. He's not some rich playboy or an experiemental boy scout or a doctor or a God or a spy. He's a screwed up man who tried to be better but circumstances didn't allow him to. Meanwhile we went back to Hank Pym, whose company was taken from a scientist named Darren Cross and his daughter Hope van Dyne worked for him. Cross introduced Pym and the military a new suit named Yellowjacket which he would sell it as a weapon but Cross wasn't able to correct his own shrinking particles yet. Pym didn't like that one bit, so he set up a plan to make Scott steal Ant-Man suit, so he can steal Yellowjacket suit for him. Hope was also in this plan but Pym refused to give her Ant-Man suit. Scott found out from Luis and his friends about some old man was having lots of money in his home and he wasn't there. So during night, they went there to steal it. Scott managed to steal it but all he found was Ant-Man suit. He was disappointed by it, yet he took the suit, wore it and he got shrunk. Hank Pym contacted with Scott and implied that he made Scott steal the suit. As a result, Scott took the suit off and brought back the suit to Pym's home but he was arrested by cops. Scott's ex-wife's husband was so disappointed by him for wasting his second chance. Scott was taken to see his lawyer and it was none other thank Hank Pym! Hank Pym talked to Scott about giving him an actual second chance because all Scott wanted was to make things right with his daughter. Hank Pym clearly saw a lot things in him with Scott. Someone that was a lew down by his daughter, so he wanted to make sure that wouldn't happen to Scott. That made Hank Pym a much sympathetic character because he still cared a lot of about the world but he didn't exactly know how to solve world problems. He made bad decisions and that led to a bigger danger. That's a lot like Hank Pym in the comics and in Avengers: Earth's Mightest Heroes cartoon I've talked about. Although I wish there were certain things that were used for his character just like in the comics but we'll get to that later.

Pym freed Scott from prison with his ants and he explained that Scott has to steal Yellowjacket from Cross because Scott was a brilliant burglar. Of course, Hope didn't like that he was gonna be the one to wear Ant-Man suit and steal it, despite her knowledge of the building and Cross. In fact, she was the one that called the cops to arrest Scott. That was a dick move from her but it made sense why she did it. Which brought to us to talk a bit about Hope's character but before that, we gotta talk about some funny and entertaining scenes of Scott trying to understand Ant-Man suit, learning to fight better from Hope and talking to ants. So getting back to Hope, Hope was upset that Hank Pym still lied about her mother's actual death and she left the home for it. Hope's characterization of this shined here. She was disappointed by her father for not trusting her enough and always lying to her face. Hope was like Scott's daughter if he didn't make thing right with his daughter before. Scott explained to her that her not wearing Ant-Man suit had a reason. It was because her mother, Janet shrunk to atomic level and beyond that she couldn't grow more, she did that to save USA from a missle, so that was why Hank didn't want her to take the suit because he feared that'd eventually happen to her. I usually don't like this trope of people lying to their closest ones or keep them away from dangerous business to keep them safe but I thought it worked here because Pym was traumatized by his wife's death and he didn't want same thing happening to her. That was why Scott was picked because he was expandable. Although you can say that that was a bit cruel for Hank because Scott had a daughter and If he shrunk to atomic level or died in hands of Cross, she wouldn't see him again. And you are right but nevertheless Hank would do anything to keep her daughter from danger. Neither Scott and Hope refused to do this job from knowing the danger Scott was gonna face. I liked the parallels between Scott and Hank as a I mentioned. I don't even think this was in the comics that Scott and Hank had dynamic of two screw up dads and I was glad that was a part of the movie.

Scott finally mastered Ant-Man suit and his first heist was to steal a tech for their actual heist from an old Stark building but it turned out it was the new Avengers H.Q. and Falcon noticed Ant-Man suit. The duo fought together and even had some funny dynamic with each other. Scott managed to steal the tech and they went to Scott's company to steal Yellowjacket suit. And they had help from Scott's funny friend Luis and his funny friends. Okay, they kind of made me laugh a few times in the movie, I can't complain. Hank and Hope got into building but Cross noticed them and Scott, so he managed to stop Scott from stealing the suit and Cross was gonna sell the suit to Hydra. Oh, Hydra still continued in the movies after Age of Ultron, my bad. We got to explore some of Cross' character but honestly I didn't care that much about him. He wasn't a bad villain but I couldn't find myself caring for his situation. I got that he worked for Pym and eventually he looked up to him but Pym let him down and Pym particles was driving him insane. But idk, I wish there would be some sort of a better reason why he wanted to sell the suit to bad people than being let down by Pym. Maybe it was because of just Pym particles but why didn't those drive Hank Pym insane? Iirc, Ant-Man helmet was keeping his mind safe but I was disappointed by how the villain was written to be just someone that was disappointed by his boss for not selling Ant-Man suit and wanted revenge. There was even some comprasion to Pym and Cross but Pym didn't seem to be effected by Pym particles. I'll say that I wish they'd stay more true to Hank's character in the comics to make the villain a bit more compelling because Pym turning insane by Pym particles is important to his character arc. He became mentally unstable that he was banned from Avengers team, he built a robot to stop it, so he can get back to Avengers but when he had a mental breakdown he smacked Janet with Yellowjacket suit and name and he was banned from Avengers again. As a result, Pym felt more bad about the situation and how he treated Janet in the situation,Janet divorced him, everything went bad for Pym and eventually Pym drove himself to suicide but he recovered from it and made himself a better person. I didn't read old comics but that's Pym's history and I found that aspect of his in the comics to be interesting. What he did in the past was so wrong like building a dangerous robot and smacking Janet one time but he felt pain and he wanted redemption and after rewatch, I wish that aspect was included in the comics. Definitely not him smacking Janet but him being a mentally ill person and Pym particles making it worse to the fact he drove her daughter away from him and being depressed about it. I know that'd be a bit too much in a fun universe but MCU tackled serious issues like PTSD, Nazism and suicide before. If they inject some of more seriousnes sinto Pym's character and Cross' character, I felt like Cross would have been a more interesting foe and a perfect mirror to Pym (or Hope for being disappointed by Pym), as well as making Pym a bit more broken. I'm not saying we should take away fun stuff in the movie because this is freaking Ant-Man but that's also my issue with MCU sometimes. I wish they would be more complex and serious in some of their movies. Don't get me wrong, I still liked Hank in the movie but I didn't like Cross much, not even after he wore Yellowjacket suit.

As a result, Scott managed to escape but Cross already took the suit. Hank was shot by a gun but Hope was there to save him. Scott's friends made it alive. Lasly Scott went after Cross to stop him. Cross wore the suit and Scott and Cross started to fight. Scott managed to stop Yellowjacket for a while but he got arrested before he took Yellowjack. Later Yellowjacket attacked Scott's ex-wife's home and took his daughter. If we started to talk more positive about the movie, I liked that the situation was global but stakes and overall climax didn't feel big or convuluted. That provied more interesting and enjoyable action scenes, as well as more personal for Scott. Scott fought with him and finally he shrunk to atomic level to stop him and it worked but he shrunk more and more that it felt like there was no hope. That scene was really emotional and breathtaking ftom great visuals. Thankfully Scott found a way to grow himself and he hugged his daughter afterwards. Then finally Scott redeemed himself in front of his ex and her husband and he hooked up wth Hope. Hank realized that there'll always be something that will take away his tech but now he started to rely on his daughter to keep them safe by giving her Wasp costume and in the last end credit scene, Sam and Steve found Bucky but there were some issues they were facing, so Sam informed Steve about knowing Scott.

I'll say that I wish there would be a bit more depth into this movie but I still really liked this as a good movie for protagonists deserving redemption in their lives and it's always good to see a different style injected in a MCU movie. This was a heist movie and it made it so much fun and well-written. Scott, Hope and Hank turned out to be really great characters and I can't wait to see Ant-Man and the Wasp to see them more.

MCU movie ranking:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - A+

Avengers - A

Iron Man - A

Guardians of the Galaxy - A-

Captain America: The First Avenger - A-

Iron Man 3 - A-

Ant-Man - B+

Thor - B+

Avengers: Age of Ultron - B

The Incredible Hulk - B

Thor: The Dark World - B-

Iron Man 2 - C+

[WhoBibbles]

hello there. Sorry that I haven't updated this list in a while, I got too lazy but the ride ain't over yet. Oh wait, wrong movie.

Airdate: May 6, 2016

Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo

I remember that I used to call this to be my all-time favorite MCU movie during my first watch and now that I've seen it again, that was changed entirely. Still this movie is one of my favorite MCU movies and It's definitely a great closing chapter for what have become a great Captain America movie trilogy. But that doesn't mean this movie is flawless. Lets find out.

It's cold opening again and this time, we go to 1991, where we see Bucky Barnes, aka Winter Soldier being waken up by Russian soldiers (who work for Hydra? Weird considering Nazis and Communists can't get along but Hydra did shut themselves off from Nazis, yet they are still in a way Nazis, so?) and they gave him a mission to get a serum from a car. Bucky was obviously in pain but they used some words to activiate Winter Soldier since they brainwashed him. Then the movie went back to presdent where we saw new Avengers team led by Steve Rogers, aka Captain America to stop a biological terrorism attack in Lagos. Is it weird to call this a Captain America movie or is this just Avengers 2.5? Either way, it's both movies but it's not really a issue. I'm just pointing it out. It turned out Brock Rumlow, aka Crossbones now, was the one to release the virus to the city. Captain America managed to stop Crossbones but he delivered Steve a message from Bucky and he tried to blow himself but Wanda stopped him from killing Steve but she threw him in a building with 11 Wakanda citizens. They were all dead, as well as Crossbones. I just wanna say that MCU really loves wasting their villains sometimes. Crossbones was so brutal in the movie and I expected him to be the villain of this movie but sadly he was wasted. At least he wore a supervillain costume, yay! Meanwhilşee Tony was delivering a speech in a college funded by him and a woman showed up after he finished speech and she told hm her son died in Sokovia attack and she put him responsible for this. As a result of Sokovia and Lagos attacks, Alex Ross (ayyy, isn't that guy who was the whole reason Abomination existed in The Incredible Hulk and why wasn't he arrested for this? If so, where's fucking Betty Ross? Are we still gonna forget she was Bruce's girlfriend? Okay, MCU. We can have our shitty Hulk/Black Widow romance.) told Avengers that they need to work with the goverment or they shut them off. Tony agreed with this because of how reckless he was with Ultron and now Wanda was reckless with her mission. Rhodey agreed because he worked for the goverment for years and he believed he trusted them. Vision agreed for being logical That's so A.I. of him  . Natasha also agreed, despite being the one to tell goverment to screw themselves. On the other hand, Steve refused it because after working with S.H.I.E.L.D. and how it betrayed him. Steve believed that people had agendas and everyone deserved their help, so if the goverment told them not to save people in some other countries, they'd just feel controled. Sam also agreed with that for working with Steve and how he trusted him. Wanda wasn't so sure about this situation. Clint, aka Hawkeye just retired for his family. I gotta say that the movie did a great job at estabilishing the characters' motivations on it and it was setting up a great conflict between them. Before this movie, everything was set up great in Winter Soldier. Although Age of Ultron didn't do it as properly since we didn't see anyone dying from Sokovia, aside from Quicksilver (thx FOX), tho that was a flaw in that movie and Tony's actions still had consequences. Even though I was mostly on Steve's side, I could still understand Tony's reasons for it and that was pretty important aspect of the movie. If you wanna make a great rivalry, make both characters reasonable and this movie did just that. Suddenly, Steve got a text that Peggy Carter died and he went to her funeral. Okay, that was pretty quick. IMO with this much of character, this movie's pacing was pretty good but during first 30 minutes some of scenes did happen to be rushed. It doesn't bother me as much but it was still jarring to see some situations happening so quickly and it felt like this movie was trying a bit hard to remind us this was still a Captain America movie at times. Tony's introduction was also kind of rushed after how Lagos situation was ended. Nevertheless, the movie did a good job at setting up the conflict. During the funeral, it was revealed that Sharon, the spy that protected Steve in Winter Soldier, turned out to be Peggy's niece. One disappointing aspect of this movie was that we didn't get enough of Sharon's feelings of Peggy's death and she felt mostly chill. I like Sharon but I felt like this movie didn't do a good job at portraying her character well and that carried on later in the movie. We also got our villain of the movie, Helmut Zemo, who found out the notebook that contains words to brainwash Bucky quickly. 

Later on, we were introduced to King T'Chacka and Price T'Challa of Wakanda in United Nations to sign Sokovia Accords, which would give Avengers to USA goverment. Tony, Rhodey, Natasha and Vision already signed it but not others. During that happening, a terrorist attack happened and UN thought it was Bucky that did it. T'Chacka died and T'Challa swore to kill Bucky for revenge on his father. So UN went after Bucky, as well as T'Challa but Steve didn't want that to happen because he knew they'd kill him. This really showed that Steve was slowly becoming a vigilante than a goverment product and I really liked seeing more of that in this movie. First two Captain America movies were so solid for Cap but this movie made him a more flawed character, yet it was someone that you could still root for him. Meanwhile, Wanda was cooking and Vision was there to help her. Wanda talked about how she felt responsible for all of this. I was waitin for Wanda's characterization to be properly developed in this movie and the movie gave me just that. I really understood how she must have felt so bad about everything she has done. Working with Hydra, Ultron and then causing people to die. At the same time, she didn't wanna be feared by people anymore. Vision felt like it was no time for Wanda to go outside because people were still fearing on her and she was still dangerous but Vision wanted Wanda to wait for a better time to reintroduce herself to the world. Even though Vision wasn't allowing Wanda to go outside, mainly because of following Tony's orders, Vision wasn't entirely wrong. He was a dick about it but Wanda was dangerous and she did need more time to be accepted into society. But I'm with Wanda on her situation and I really wanted her to actually do something about this. 

Steve went after Bucky and he found him but military found him as well. We got to see more cool action scenes with Captain America and Bucky getting out of this situation, as well as finally seeing T'Challa in Black Panther costume. The entire chase sequence was just thrilling to watch and Black Panther's introduction was so cool. Meanwhile Unfortunately UN found them and they captured Bucky. Tony and Natasha arrived to check on Bucky as well and Tony was just pissed off to Steve. I loved seeing more tension between Tony and Steve and their dialogue was so engaging throughout the movie. That scene was a proof that even before their conflict went personal, they were bitter with each other. Zemo managed to get in the building and he pretended to be a doctor. He shut down electricty and brainwashed Bucky again. Zemo was already a great planner and oh boy, he was so enjoyable to watch. Bucky got out of his jail and started to attack people. Before he went to helicopter to escape, Steve grabbed the helicopter and stopped him. Me when I see Cap muscles:

WHY DIDN'T RUSSO BROTHERS LET CHRIS EVANS SHIRTLESS IN THAT SCENE? HE WANTED THAT BUT THEY REFUSED. IT'S A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY!!!

I just lost my mind for a minute. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, muscular, strong and sexy Steve escaped with his boyfriend Bucky and his other boyfriend Sam followed them. That's my canon, shut up. Bucky told Steve that there were more than one Winter Soldiers and Zemo was actually after them. In that time, Hawkeye arrived in Avengers building to let Wanda escape. The whole fight between Vision and Hawkeye was so awesome and Wanda went pure badass level towards Vision. She knocked him to the ground. He deserved it so. Even though we didn't get as much of Hawkeye's motivation on why he suddenly wanted to quit retiring and went by Cap's side, he was still a fun character in this movie. Sharon got Steve and Sam their weapons and during that, Steve and Sharon kissed and Sam and Bucky looked jealous (you thought that happy smiley faces were genunie?). WHY??? Totally not because I wanted Cap all mine. It just felt wrong to see Cap kissing his first lover's niece. I get that they both look around same age and Peggy died, so why not take Sharon? They did flirt a bit in Winter Soldier, fine. BUT! How Sharon and Steve would kiss each other after Peggy died? That felt such an injustice to Sharon's character, as well as Steve's. I don't care if it was in the comics. It was the biggest romance mistake MCU ever made and I don't know what were Russos or the screenwriters were thinking. They are better than this. Oh well, at least that was never mentioned in Infinity War. Lets keep it that way. Hawkeye and Wanda showed up and they introduced Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man to Steve. And of course, Scott was aroused by Steve so much that he couldn't stop shaking his hand or fanboying him. We all know this movie wasn't about some superhero fight. It was about people wanting to get laid by Captain America. God, I love this movie. Tony realized something needed to be done, so he recurited Black Panther and he found another superhero to join their battle and that's none other than SPIDER-MAN!!! RESPECT THE HYPHEN!!! Now as someone that finds shoehorned set ups for future movies to be tiresome, this worked out well imo. From the minute, Peter Parker had his entire characterization to be ready without having a need to talk about his uncle's tragic death like all the time. Yeah, it's an important history for him but I was happy for once Peter was Peter without reliving his history again because we already know it. I liked seeing Peter believing what needs to be done to save people and fix his mistakes and Tony was really impressed with this because Tony saw Peter in himself and that played a bigger part in their latter interactions. All of our superheroes (except Hulk, Thor and TV superheroes) came together on an airport to fight each other. Now this whole fight sequence was the most fun aspect of the entire movie Not my favorite but I couldn't stop having fun at this conflict. Although I'll say this was more of a small battle compared to an actual civil war but eh, the title of this movie sells. They fought and the interactions with the heroes were really interesting and funny. The fight lasted a while and then big changes happened. Rhodey got injured badly from Vision because Vision felt confused by this feeling between him and Wanda and Vision felt sorry for acting such a jerk towards Wanda. Natasha betrayed Tony for Steve and I was shocked to see Black Widow being a double agent again. Other superheroes, except Cap and Bucky were captured. Cap and Bucky went after missing Winter Soldiers before Zemo wakes them up.

During the hospital scene with Rhodey being checked on, Tony told Natasha they are gonna come for her becaause of her betrayal and Natasha just kept it cool, called out Tony acting like an egotistical again and she walked away. Okay, that was an cool scene. Tony found out that Bucky wasn't responsible for UN bombing or him being free, it was all because of Zemo and he went after Cap and Bucky to stop him. And rest of superheroes were captured in The Raft, a highly secured prison for supercriminals. And Black Panther went after Tony. Tony arrived to Steve and he told him he was on their side until Zemo arrived to make sure they became divided once again. Zemo's plan wasn't to use Winter Soldiers, they were already got killed. His e3ntire plan was to tear our heroes apart and he did by showing a video footage of Bucky killing Tony's parents and Steve knew this all along but he didn't tell him to keep him safe. As a result, Tony was pissed off to Steve and Bucky and he tried to kill Bucky and the final showdown began with a bang. Airport scene was amazing but this scene right here was where the climax happened. It was just a superhero fight and it felt so satisfying. It became so personal for Steve and Tony and when Steve finally defeated Tony, Steve gave up Captain America name. Nobody won in this battle and that finally tore Avengers apart for good. Zemo was the first MCU villain that wasn't Loki to finally break the trope of being a cliched supervillain. I was sad that we didn't see him in full costume and it was weird to see him not being a Hydra agent or Baron Zemo's son but he was really sympathetic. He lost his father, wife and kid during Sokovia attack and he blamed Avengers for this. He knew he couldn't kill them, so he wanted to see them killing each other or at least the idea of Tony and Steve built would be dead. And he succeeded. He was the first MCU villain to win, even if he lost his freedom by killing innocent people. But it was a fact that it was Steve and Tony that killed Avengers team up. Zemo just made sure it would happen. Black Panther realized that he was after the wrong person but he gave up on revenge and he stopped Zemo from killing him. This movie sold me on Black Panther as a character and it made me hyped for Black Panther movie. Tony went back to Rhodey for his recovery and he got a delivery from Stan Lee. Steve sent a message on how sorry he was and he wished things would be different between them but nevertheless he gave him a sellphone to contact with him just in case he needed him. And Steve arrived to The Raft to free his friends. In the two post credit scenes, we saw Bucky being frozen in Wakanda and Spidey using the gift Tony gave it to him. 

Admittedly, this movie had more flaws than I didn't notice as much during my first watch but it still holds up as a great ending to Captain America trilogy. It was a thriller movie with great themes of revenge and flaws in superheroing and the movie felt even dark at some points. Steve's arc was completed from him being a symbol of American justice and freedom to a full vigilante hero mode. Tony had a great arc that made him more human and flawed. Superhero fight scenes were cool and the villain was great.  We can all agree that Steve Rogers is one sexy guy that everyone wants to get him.

MCU movie ranking:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - A+

Avengers - A

Iron Man - A

Captain America: Civil War - A-

Guardians of the Galaxy - A-

Captain America: The First Avenger - A-

Iron Man 3 - A-

Ant-Man - B+

Thor - B+

Avengers: Age of Ultron - B

The Incredible Hulk - B

Thor: The Dark World - B-

Iron Man 2 - C+

 

[WhoBibbles]

here we go again...

Airdate: November 4, 2016

Directed by Scott Derickson

After successful Civil War, it seems like a perfect time to get back into good but not so amazing movies from MCU. After seeing it again, I felt that this movie was rather decent than amazing and there could have been so much better material here.

Kicking off with the villain named Kaecilius and his followers sneaking into Kamar-Taj, the home of mystic arts, and they went to a library to find a book. They quickly cut off one dude's head and escaped with it, as well as some missing pages of a ritual on the book. A person named Ancient One followed them and started to manipulate reality, which led to Kaecilius calling her hypocrite. I really enjoyed how we started off with some amazing action with Kaecilius and Ancient One and I was already enjoying Kaecilius as a character here. I always found him to be an underrated MCU villain and I liked that he wasn't some evil for sake of it during the scene and his relationship with Ancient One got more interesting as the movie went on. Meanwhile we first saw the main character, Stephen Strange, a really good doctor and he does everything to save lives of people but he came off as such an arrogrant and sarcastic doctor. That totally doesn't remind me of Tony Stark or Thor... Yeah, Stephen Strange was mostly just a doctor version Tony Stark and that was kind of disappointing to see another arrogant and (sort of) a rich character. Don't get me wrong, I still liked him in the movie and there were definitely some differences with him than Tony or Thor but idk, I just didn't feel that much uniqueness to his character as I wished him to be. Nevertheless, Benedict Cumberbatch is a perfect role for Doctor Strange. He has not only perfect looks as him but he portrayed the character so well. He talked briefly with his love interest, Christine and while their relationship wasn't that interesting to me, they were alright enough. Strange left the hospital and was on a road for a ceremony but he was crashed by a car and that injured his hands so badly that he had nerve damage. He could no longer fix his hands, thus making him leave his carreer as a doctor and he went to an argument with Christine, which led to him alienating her. Later on he found out about some guy who broke his legs that shouldn't have been fixed but they were fixed. He went to find him and the guy told him a place called Kamal-Taj where they fixed his legs. Strange gave up his fortune to go to Asia to find it and ne guy named Mordo realized that and he brought Strange to Ancient One, which was revealed her as a white woman. Now here's what bothered me about Ancient One being a white person. Look, I get what Scott Derickson did there, he wanted to avoid asian stereotyping, so he turned Ancient One into a white person but that just felt wrong. I thought Ancient One was already an interesting and complex character in the movie, so I couldn't even care less if she was a stereotypical asian male in the comics. There are not enough asian heroes/protragonists of superhero movies, so what the movie did to him was just insulting and disrespectful to the source material. Not the mention these other aspects made it worse. We have another sorcerer called Wong and he can be an asian but not Ancient One and the scene played out Strange finding an asian dude looking exactly like Ancient One from the comics but he turned out to be just a normal sorcerer, yet he still made him look stereotypical and how he handled the situation in the scene was just offensive. Luckily he admitted it was a bad thing to whitewash him but it was a mistake that could never be undone, what a shame.

Now If we are going to back to positives, Strange was so confused and pissed off that the heal of the guy's legs was some nonsensical magic crap but then Ancient One seperated his soul from his body and he sended Strange to some acid trip. That scene was just mind blowingly awesome. Imho this movie has like the best visiuals in a Marvel movie and the scene proved it. It looked so magical and trippy, kind of stuff that I wish the movie would make more but the scene was so much fun. Of course, because of Strange's disrespect, Ancient One kicked him out and Strange waited hours to be back in. Remember what I said Strange reminded me a bit much of Tony? Now here's a scene that actually made me interested in his character. Just like Tony, he was injured but unlike him, Strange lost his gift and the damages were so bad that he stopped being a doctor. He gave up everything and he already regretted how he treated Ancient One. He was so desperate to find a cure that he would do anything for it. Not the mention, I liked that he was guy that believed in realistic and scientific results but he didn't believe in magic or any of that crap because he was too close to biology than believing the impossible. Any of us would be in his shoes if we had some permanent damages and found a cure that is actually nonsensical and be pissed off about it. Mordo and Anicent One talked a bit about him, as well as Kaecilius planning on something dark. Ancient One talked a bit about how she didn't want another person in hands of dark magic but Mordo was surprised she would still trust him. That scene created a good dynamic between Ancient One and Mordo and I liked seeing Mordo looking up to Ancient One just like Kaecilius, except he had a moral compass about laws of magic and how that played out was so good later on. Because of Strange finally believing in magic, he waited to be back in Ancient One gave him a second chance. Strange trained with Mordo and Ancient One to learn some tricks like teleportation and making their own weapons, weirdly enough not much unique magic tricks or spells that I kind of expected to see like in the trip scene. Part of me was still enjoying the magic of the movie but I felt like there should have been more spells and weirdness to make the movie feel more wild. Strange met a person named Wong, who is guarding the library with mystical books from now on. I really liked Wong in the movie but I wish we'd see more development from him and most of his scenes with Strange being comedic was kind of a let down for me. Wong introduced Strange the library where he can learn all sort of spells and he found out "the eye of Agamotto", as well as Ancient One's book. He used the eye to bring back the missing pages from the book, used the spells on it and Wong told him not to do it. He told that this sanctuary protects the world from mystical threats like some evil dude named Dormammu and Kaecilius was the one that betrayed Ancient One to work with him. And there were three Sanctums in New York, London and Hong Kong that renerated a shield for the world. So they told Strange to not break the laws of nature. Knowing Strange, it made sense for him to not deal with this sorts of things anymore because he just wanted to fix his hands but suddenly Kaecilius attacked them. 

Kaecilius came across to Strange and he talked briefly about his plan to bring immortality to the world. I still stand by Maecilius to be a decent villain in this movie. His plan actually made sense and he was not some evil for sake of it. It actually played out well with the theme of the movie. The movie was all about life and death (constant reminds of time, Strange's broken hands and him being a doctor and Kaecilius mentioning Ancient One staying this long because of dark magic). My only gripe with this was that I wish we'd see why this motivated him. That was why he wasn't such a memorable villain and the one that got criticized more than some others seemed to (his name doesn't help either but oh well). Ancient One mentioned he lost everything but we didn't see what he lost. Was it his career or his loved one(s)? I think he could have been handled better or be interesting if he was the guy that believed in doctors and they didn't manage to save his loved ones. Sadly it was just tell, not show kind of thing, which is ironic for a movie that spent too much time on visuals. Doctor Strange got injured by Kaecilus' attack and he teleported himself to the hospital he used to work. He found Christine to heal him but one of Kaecilius' followers attacked him in astral plane and he had no choice but to kill him. Strange was healed and he decided to confront Ancient One. This resulted in a really great character moment of him being a doctor and breaking the rule of saving lives to save himself. I think Strange is really great when he is making the hard calls and him dealing with moral dilemma because of it. Him and Mordo decided to trap Kaecilius in mirror dimension but that resulted in them becoming more powerful. The entire scene with mirror dimension was amazeballs. Once again visuals were on point and the entire sequence was big and exciting. Kaecilius finally caught Strange but before he kill him, Ancient One saved Strange and Mordo with dark magic. Mordo was so disappointed by Ancient One being just what Kaecilius said. Ancient One fought with Kaecilius but he stabbed her, as a result Strange brought her to a hospital but he realized Ancient One didn't want saving. Despite the shitty whitewashing, I found Ancient One to be a complex character. Someone who would break the laws to prevent mystical threats like playing with the nature or making herself immortal but the characters still called out on her hypocrisy, which resulted in her finally giving up her life. The moment between Strange and Ancient One was so sweet and I liked that Ancient One told Strange not everything's about him. That resulted in Strange's development to still be a helper, even if he wasn't a doctor anymore but he'd use extreme measures to do it. 

Now we are in the climax of the scene with Kaecilius and his followers destroying Hong Kong to make sure Dormammu's dark dimension crosses over with Earth. Strange started to reverse time to save Hong Kong but that resulted in him breaking the law of playing with nature. He stopped time but Kaecilius realized it and he escpaed from the frozen timeline and fought with Strange but later Strange went to the dark dimension to bargain with Dormammu. Oh boy, here comes the memes. The entire scene was so amazing because Strange finally gave up his life to make sure Dormamu is stuck in a time loop, not the mention we went back to some of craziness of the movie. One disappointing aspect though was that I wish Dormammu's CGI would be more like his comic design.

but his CGI was so well done and so scary I can let it slide. Dormammu bargained with Strange to never release dark dimension to Earth and as a result, Kaecilius and his followers went to dark dimension to suffer. Strange made a joke and Wong laughed because why not? Once again, Mordo was pissed of that everyone around him just did nothing but break the rules, so he quitted being a sorcerer in Kamar-Taj. Strange returned the Eye but then he realized inside Eye, there was time stone, which gave Strange the ability to control time. One post credit scene was Thor coming back to Earth with Loki to find Odin and he met Strange and the other one was Mordo stealing the magic from the guy that his leg was healed because of it. If there's gonna be Doctor Strange 2, I'm definitely excited for it mostly for Mordo because his development from a moral compass to someone who wants to stop magic around the world was great and I hope to see more of his backstory later.

This movie was nothing but a visually stunning experience and a ton of fun but I felt like certain things could have been improved, whitewashing was a big mistake and the movie still reminded me of some of other MCU movies, so there's that. I'd recommend this movie but I no longer think it's one of MCU's strength's, especially considering other movies used Strange much better imo.

MCU movie ranking:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - A+

Avengers - A

Iron Man - A

Captain America: Civil War - A-

Guardians of the Galaxy - A-

Captain America: The First Avenger - A-

Iron Man 3 - A-

Ant-Man - B+

Thor - B+

Doctor Strange - B

Avengers: Age of Ultron - B

The Incredible Hulk - B

Thor: The Dark World - B-

Iron Man 2 - C+

[WhoBibbles]

It's been a while...

Excuse my unnecessary slack. Like almost all of my projects, I lost interest in this before I actually finished this whole thing. But now It's back and I plan to finish this as soon as possible. Lets go back to reviewing MCU.

Airdate: May 5, 2017

Directed by James Gunn (MISS YOU!!!)

When I first watched this movie, I thought it was almost as great as the first movie. Kind of a hot take I suppose but I thought it was better than what people give credit for. After rewatch, not only that thought stays with me, I actually found myself enjoying this movie the second time. Don't get me wrong, it's not without its flaws but as a sequel of the first movie, It did its job exactly well.

The movie started off with a flashback of Peter Quill's father and mother hanging out and Peter's father showing a plant from outer space. Hmm, good to know Quill's mother knew he was an alien. Later we went back to the present with Guardians of the Galaxy being back to protect batteries of the planet of the alien species called Sovereigns from a giant interdimensional monster, while Baby Groot was dancing and having fun. The movie was off to an excellent start with a cool song and an enjoyable Baby Groot sequence. When Guardians finally defeated the monster, Rocket stole some of batteries from Sovereigns and Drax was cool with it. Drax is always cool with everything. Later they met the leader of the race named Ayesha and she questioned about Peter Quill's family and how he's a hybrid. Quill got offended with no surprise and we got ourself a cool joke about Rocket winking with the wrong eye. Meanwhile Guardians got their reward from them, Nebula, who was also there to steal their batteries. They got off the planet with her but Ayesha noticed the stolen batteries and she sent empty space ships to attack Guardians ship. The entire sequence was bloody amazing with visuals and how it was directed. It made me laugh constantly and it made me go edge on my seat (no pun intended), though I could have done without a poop joke. Quill and Rocket were arguing, Gamora was trying to shut them up, Drax was having fun outside space with blasting the ships, Baby Groot was chill and Nebula was hungry. It's all classic Guardians having fun or having amusing arguments. They finally got away from the ships because a mysterious man stopped the ships but they crashed into another planet. Quill and Rocket kept arguing, some of it was funny but It also gave us some insight on how much of a jerk Rocket was, which shouldn't be surprising but he was more of a jerk here this time. Then suddenly the man from the space crashed his ship and it was revealed that the man that saved them was none other than Quill's father and his name was actually Ego. This was a cool introduction of his. We saw it in trailers but it was still a well done scene with him just coming out of nowhere to save Guardians and then quickly revealing himself to Peter. Meanwhile we got see Yondu and his crew being out by Ravager community for abducting kids in the past, even though Yondu didn't know what he was doing was wrong and later Yondu's crew was hired by Ayesta to bring Guardians to her, so she can execute them there. I had my issues with Ayesta and her race being one of the antagonists of the movie but after seeing this twice, I warmed up yo her. If anything, this was actually not a bad set up for a third movie.

As a result, Rocket and Baby Groot stayed with Nebula in the ship, which Rocket will fix and other Guardians joined Ego and Mantis, who is companion to him and they went to see Ego's planet. During the journey, we got to explore more of Mantis and what's she capable of and from that moment, I already loved her character. Guardians are usually written as jerkwards, so it was refreshing to see someone with awkward social skills and very naive. I can relate to a character like that. Not only that, I laughed how she can feel people's thoughts and she made Peter bring up his feelings about Gamora. That entire scene was pretty hilarious and it sets up Peter and Gamora's romance later on. When they arrived to Ego's planet, I gotta say that it looked incredibly beautiful just like it should be. It definitely represented how Ego loved creating marvelous life around him, so this much thought into the visuals of the planet were well done. It looks so realistic and colorful. I just love stuff like that in a cosmic story. And we finally got a cool exposition on Ego's past and Peter's birth. I can get behind expositions If they give me interesting ways to tell it and this was exactly like that. Meanwhile Yondu's crew went in the planet Guardians crashed first to capture them but Rocket was smart enough to put traps in them. The entire thing was so much fun. It made me appreciate how smart Rocket was but also it made me enjoy all the shenanigans he made with his traps. It was pretty funny and undoubtfully energetic. Of course, the plan didn't succeed for long and Yondu managed to capture him but Yondu didn't want to capture Quill. So Baby Groot had no choice but to free Nebula to save them but obviously Nebula betrayed them, blasted Yondu's fin in his head and they went to Yondu's ship. Peter finally learned why Ego had to abandon Quill's mom, Ego made Quill reveal his powers since he's half a celestial and Peter made it a ball to play catch and pitch with his dad. I shouldn't exactly feel so heartwarmed about that scene, especially considering what comes next but darn it, it hit me in the feels. I'm usually a sucker for cute cheesy moments like that and I loved that scene so much. And then we cut to another emotional scene with Drax and Mantis. Drax got the least focus in the movie considering he was focused a shit ton in the first movie, here he was more of a comic relief, which was one of my biggest gripes. Their scene started out comedically but later it turned out to be really touching and sweet. I liked the way Mantis and Drax's dynamic was developed here just from that scene. This made Mantis wanting to reveal something to Drax but Gamora interrupted them and Mantis went silent. This made Gamora worried and she decided to tell Peter but Peter felt like he was trying to take this all away from her, as a result Gamora left to be alone.

On the other side of the movie, Rocket and Yondu were imprisoned and Baby Groot was turned into a mascot. HOW DARE THEY TREAT HIM LIKE THAT!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, Rocket was making fun of the new guy in charge, Taserface and Taserface was about to kill him but Nebula stopped them because there's a higher price for Guardians and Yondu with Kree because of the first movie. Nebula decided to be on her own to kill Gamora and this was when I actually felt something for her character. She was alright in the first movie but here, we got to see her storyline with Gamora and Thanos and how she hated everytime Thanos made them battle and Gamora always won, and the loser, Nebula, got her organs taken away from her only to be replaced by robot parts. This might be one of the most tragic backstories ever and it shows how ruthless Thanos was and how it effected Nebula so deeply. I know not everyone was fond of her over the topness in the movie but I personally dug it. It made me care for her and it turned her into a fun and sympathetic character. Rocket was put in the same cell with Yondu later and this started another great thing about the movie and that was Rocket and Yondu's dynamic. I liked seeing two jerks clashing each other and Yondu was actually self aware, while Rocket was the bigger pain in the butt. Later they talked to Baby Groot to get Yondu's fin from Taserface. That sequence kind of dragged on for a bit, some of stuff were a bit funny but it got tiresome later on. But after that, it was pure awesomeness. Might be my favorite scene in the whole movie. Yondu was already kicking butt in the first movie but he was just awesome here. I loved him taking out his bad side of the group one by one with his arrow and Rocket and Baby Groot joining him was cherry on top. Music choice was also sweet as well. I could watch it all day and never get tired of it, except the song did stick in my head for too long lol. Cutting back to Ego's planet, Nebula made an apperance to kill Gamora but she couldn't whe she had the chance. Instead, they fought and Nebula won at it. I loved how this played out. Nebula just crashed it to do some attacking and it was just over the top amusement for me and we went to exploring Nebula and Gamora's relationship. I liked that Gamora was a flawed character that all she wanted to do was surviving but she didn't consider Nebula's life and she even admitted it. Gamora was another one of those characters that I liked but didn't love but here, I loved her. She cared more about Nebula enough now and Nebula made peace with her. If anything, this movie was definitely better than the first movie on exploring some of other characters we didn't care that much. Same goes for Yondu here and Rocket got to be developed further. During their escape, I liked how Yondu and Rocket were mirror versions of each other. Both were criminals who pushed away other people from their lives and did terrible stuff but Yondu actually admitted his faults and there was an actual reason why he kept Quill all this time. Before they went to Ego's planet, we got some amusing space jump scenes with them and a sweet Stan Lee cameo with The Watchers.

After Quill went mad at Gamora, him and Ego talked more about it and Ego took him to show something. Mantis went back to Drax to warn him about Ego's secret. Gamora and Nebula also discovered something shady. Lastly Ego actually revealed his true color that he was disappointed in humanity and he felt so alone in the universe that he literally tried to make children of other species to make them half celestial, so two celestials can create enough energy to recreate the universe with planted seeds before. From that moment I actually liked him as the villain. I'm always a sucker for existential character motivations and seeing a villain with the motivation of existentialism was actually neat to see. Not the mention, him being an actual planet, thus making him so lonely in the world must have been hard for him. But of course, it wouldn't be a villain without having dead kid bodies and adding a tumor to the main protagonist's mother. That was actually really disturbing to see in an otherwise comedic and colorful movie, so I appreciated how they included it. Ego was just this cruel and I liked it, I also liked that they went all accurate on his comic image and it was just scary. We got an actual personal climax with the team and It was really exciting to see them coming up with a solution to kill an actual planet. I loved the stuff with Rocket trying to teach Baby Groot about the bomb. That was in the trailer but it was still really cute and funny here. Mary Poppings scene was one of the funniest jokes in the entire movie. Mantis trying to make Ego sleep was pretty awesome. I also loved the whole superhero shot, except when Mantis was hit by a rock, that didn't r need to happen this quick but whatever. Ego finally woke up to gain full control and he forced Quill to reboot the universe but Quill managed to stop him with releasing what his family really is. Although that was also his character development in the first movie but they really became more family here. Quill vs Ego was just really epic to see. After Baby Groot activated the bomb, Rocket took all of Guardians in the ship but Gamora wanted to help Quill, so Rocket shot her to pass out. It was good seeing Rocket to be actually more caring for his team and not affording to lose another friend. After the bomb finally went off, Yondu managed to save Peter but died because he gave his breathing suit to him. That moment right there is why Guardians are just so good with touching moments and they know how to make people cry. I'm so sad that Gunn was fired over stupid jokes 10 years ago because we might not get to see scenes like this in the third movie. The entire moment was bittersweet to me and it shows how much effort was put in these characters. Yondu was someone I didn't expect to love and here we are. Guardians movies are so well at redeeming characters and this movie did this even better than the first movie. We got a really sweet Ravager funeral, Nebula parted aways with Nebula to hunt down Thanos and the movie ended with 4 hilarious end credit scenes and one with setting up Adam Warlock.

This movie ended up being just as great as I remembered it once was. Maybe even better. My biggest issue with this is that some of comedy didn't work for me. I laughed at couple of gags but some others were just trying too hard and becoming too childish even and Drax went more of a comic relief character but everything else was pure solid for me.The character development, the villain, visuals, music, more Galaxy tripping and cool easter eggs. All packed in this funtastical movie. I understand why this wasn't everyone's cup of tea but I found myself really liking this one. Maybe not one of the strongest MCU put out but it had every bit of heart as the first movie did.

MCU movie ranking:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - A+

Avengers - A

Iron Man - A

Captain America: Civil War - A-

Guardians of the Galaxy - A-

Captain America: The First Avenger - A-

Iron Man 3 - A-

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 - A-

Ant-Man - B+

Thor - B+

Doctor Strange - B

Avengers: Age of Ultron - B

The Incredible Hulk - B

Thor: The Dark World - B-

Iron Man 2 - C+

[WhoBibbles]

Your friendly neighbour Spider-Man is up for another movie!

Airdate: July 7, 2017

Directed by Jon Watts

It's about time we get to see Spider-Man in MCU and this is totally the way to do it. Well, It's not exactly one of my favorite movie MCU movies or my absolute favorite Spider-Man movie, It's still such an enjoyable treat and it's a nice movie to be away from usual city/world/cosmic shattering threats.

During its first scene, we got a nice backstory on how New York City is cleaned up after a disaster alien attack and it's none other than Damage Control who stepped in your normal salvage company's business and the man who was behind the company was none other than Adrian Toomes, aka Vulture and he felt betrayed that bigger people stepped in to clean up the mess and we got ourselves an actual good motivation for him to step up and he did it with stealing some alien tech. We cut back to the present, which says 8 years after New York attack, which is a really bad error. MCU is known for its tight continuity and they messed this whole shit up and that was a shame, especially considering in Infinity War, it was mentioned that New York attack was six years ago and this movie takes place 1-2 years before Infinity War, I was honestly so confused by this and it was not even a nit-pick, it was a major flaw in the movie. Well, back to the movie, we got a scene of Peter recording the whole Avengers experience with him fighting superheroes like Captain America and meeting people like Happy to make him in contact with Tony Stark. Later, Tony took Peter to his home and he told Peter whenever there's something happens in Avengers business, he'll call him. That was a pretty nice way to set up Tony and Peter conflict with Tony being like a mentor figure to Peter and Peter looking up to Stark to become a big superhero. While I have to agree that the movie barely connects with why Peter wants to become a superhero due to his uncle dying, this is still a really good characterization of Peter and the one that I like. Peter just wants to help people and fight some bad guys. He's not fully aware of it being a hard work and that's actually an interesting aspect to see a teen experiencing his strange superhero life and learning to become what he's meant to be. And yeah, Uncle Ben's his motivation but many of us already know this and we don't need countless origin stories or mentions to realize why Peter's a great superhero. The movie's big theme is that he's your average everyman and that's already Spider-Man's theme in the comics. Someone who lives in a grounded era of the world, learns with experience and grows as a person. Peter dealt with what many teens experienced. Going to school, doing homework, going to parties, having a crush and enjoying time with his friends and family. And when Peter was Spider-Man, he dealt with basic stuff like helping an old lady or stopping a theft. It makes Peter a really compelling character. I like that he was not great at superheroing yet but his heart was in the right place.

When Peter was with Ned in their high school, they talked about Peter having a crush on a girl named Liz and it set up Peter trying to have a date with someone he really likes. While we didn't get enough of why Peter likes Liz so much, it's a high school crush, so it's not really anything complicated and I liked how a character named Michelle was there to mock Peter about his crush. We later got a scene of Peter literally quitting his academic decathlon team to do more superheroing to impress Tony. He went after a burglary and he noticed some big guns used to attack there and the store next to it was blew up because of it. Then Peter got to his apartment but Ned was there to catch him as Spider-Man and it was an unexpected moment I loved. Also we didn't deal with Peter being so secretive from his best friend, so it helped a lot. Peter and Ned started to talk about Spider-Man more and then some other high schoolers around Liz discussed about their superhero crushes and Liz mentioned her's was Spider-man and Ned quickly said that Peter knew Spider-Man. From that moment, he was invited to Liz's party, so he can come to the party with Spider-Man costume. That makes sense in his character, he just wants to impress people and he hates being seen like a total loser, which is a really relatable thing for me and for many other people. Although Ned pushed Peter to do that, Ned was on the same level as Peter, so it made sense for his character to act like it. Later on, Peter decided to suit up for the party but he saw some crazy stuff happening in the woods and thus, he tacked down the weapons that were used in the burglary and he discovered Toomes' workers were there to make trades with other people, so he started to fight with them, which led to his first confortation with Vulture. I actually really loved the design of Vulture. His comic costume wasn't techy and it wouldn't be adapted well on the screen, so I loved that his costume had techs to make him fly, which made him even more awesome and the whole Vulture feel was still there. He managed to get rid of Peter and throw him in the ocean but Tony managed to save Peter with an empty Iron Man suit and later warned him to stay away from this kind of criminals. That obviously disappoints Peter and when he was hesitant to go back to the party, he was told by Ned to not go to the party. One of the most consistant aspects of Peter (and arguably one of the most annoying ones) is that Peter's normal life gets to be pushed away because of his superheroing and that makes a lot of sense for his life to be like that. Although it gets a bit irritating after seeing this trait of his, it works here because this is still his first movie as a teen and he's still new to all of this.

In the morning, Peter and Ned started to study one of the weapons that was dropped in the woods but not until Toomes' people came to school to find it. He managed to put a tracker on Shultz, aka new Shocker, to track him where they are headed and he found out it was Washington, so he rejoined the team to go there. After road trip was over, the team stayed in a motel with a pool and Liz asked Peter to join the pool party but Peter had to ditch the pool party to track down Vulture and leave the weapon with Ned. This is the Peter I know so well. Putting his desires above his responsibilities and even when the movie was about Peter wanting to become a superhero, Peter's heart is in the right place. And my god, I liked seeing Vulture being a scavenger like a true vulture and the whole heist sequence was so cool. During Vulture entering a Damage Control truck to get more weapons, Peter snuck in the truck as well but he got stuck after Vulture got out and Peter just headed to Damage Control warehouse. And... this is the part that I kind of just lost interest in. There wasn't much wrong with the warehouse scenes, it was just I was kind of bored by it and I was waiting to see the plot kicking in again. If there's one major issue I have with this movie, it's that it was a bit too long for me. No worries though, the movie picked up the pace after Peter headed to Washington  and found out weapons can be triggered. After the team won without Peter and headed to Washington Monument, the weapon was triggered and it went all over the elevator the team were in, including Liz and Ned. So Peter rushed in there to help. The whole scene was one of my favorite scenes of the movie. Pure heroic moment from Spider-Man who'll help anyonen in need, especially his closed ones. Peter managed to save people but he got detention from ditching the competition. Yea, the price of heroism sucks ass. Although that didn't stop him to escape from it and headed to find the guys that was gonna make trades with Toomes. Peter managaed to capture one of the guys but he sucked at being intimidating, so he decided to ask him instead and he helped. That moment alone was very funny and important to Peter's Spider-Man persona. He's just a guy who is to silly to be scary, so I liked that they made a joke about heroes who do nothing but scare criminals.

Peter managaed to track down Toomes' people in a ferry during an illegal deal with a guy named Gargan but Shocker's device damaged the ferry, so Peter rushed in to keep the ferry together from falling into two pieces. The whole sequence, despite reminding me of the train sequence in Spider-Man 2, was really fun until Tony came with Iron Man suit to help. But because Peter screwed up, Tony took Spider-Man suit back. It was an emotional scene to watch because all Tony's trying to do is not let Peter to be in danger after Civil War and you can tell that Tony does care a lot for Peter and Tony does have a point. Later Peter had a talk with Aunt May on how he skips his detention, goes outside late and it just worries her. Aunt May didn't get too much screentime in the movie but this scene right there was just heartbreaking to see. Not the mention, Peter mentioning how he lost Stark internship was, while not the full reason for Peter's faults, still true and sad. Peter went to school this morning to apoligize to Liz for ditching and Peter's crush on her was revealed. I just really liked Liz as a character here. She's not too focused in the movie but she's not the typical jerk popular girl but she's still allowed to be upset by Peter's decisions. Nevertheless, Liz accepted Peter's date offer for homecoming and when Peter arrived to her house, the holy twist kicked in. Toomes was actually Liz's father and man, that twist was so shocking to see, yet it doesn't feel out of place from Toomes' character from the beginning. Toomes' learned Peter's secret identity as Spider-Man after Liz's explaination of it and after he drove both to dance and Liz left them alone, Toomes cut to the threatenening part. Man, I just got chills from the whole scene. Toomes just works so well as a menacing villain here. From  excellent acting by Keaton to brilliance of his well-written dialogue. He forced Peter to forget any of Vulture stuff happened with him If he wanted to stay alive. Peter left the car and went to dance with Liz only to leave her again. Another part of why I just love Spider-Man and Peter Parker so damn much. All he does is sacrificing his normal life to help people in need and stop the criminals like Vulture. He is one of the most giving superheroes ever and he gets my love for that reason alone. He wore his old costume and he managed to find Toomes as Vukture in his lair and Vulture gave his point of view to Peter. Now here's why Toomes/Vulture has become an exceptionally great villain. He didn't look for world domination or destroying the Earth or some petty rivalry against our hero. He was a simple thief criminal who wanted to provide for his family but bigger people always took over his work. This parallels with how Peter is also belittled by Tony. Great villains are ones to mirror the hero and of all Spider-Man rogues, Vulture got to mirror Peter's ideals. He was both cunning and reasoable. And his plan was rather simple. Just get more weapons from the plane that carries Avengers stuff to a new base. It was up for Spider-Man to stop him but Toomes crashed the whole lair into Peter. The whole situation was awful for Peter, being under a building with potential of dying but he didn't give up. He standed on his feet and saved himself. That part might be the best scene alone. Such a powerful and inspirational moment and amazing acting by Tom Holland. It gave me the goosebumps for the climax and I liked how the climax seemed big, yet not as chaotic to the city or the world and it was a personal battle between Spider-Man and Vulture. It was a really enjoyable climax and when Peter landed the plane, Vulture still attacked him but later Vulture's suit was damaged to a point Vulture would die but Spider-Man saved him and made him arrested. Because of that, Liz had to move to a different school and Tony congratulated Peter for it and Peter got accepted into Avengers but Peter declined to keep the neighbourhood safe mostly. I really liked this development from Peter. He went from wanting big things to small things. He appreciates the school and his life more. He likes being friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. Speaking of ending it with Aunt May finding out his secret identity was hilarious. The movie ending with the guy named Gargan, who is Scorpion from the comics, came across to Toomes in prison and I just got goosebumps that they might be doing Sinister Six, hopefully. And end-credit scene of Captain America video take.

The movie was all around a good and simple Spider-Man movie and that's all I wanted. Peter is top 3 superhero-tier for me, so this movie pleased me so much. Admittedly it could have been a bit better and the movie could have used a shorter time but I enjoyed the whole MCU Spider-Man experience. Pretty solid, mostly street level adventure with good hero/villain study and good coming of age story.

MCU movie ranking:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - A+

Avengers - A

Iron Man - A

Captain America: Civil War - A-

Guardians of the Galaxy - A-

Captain America: The First Avenger - A-

Iron Man 3 - A-

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 - A-

Ant-Man - B+

Spider-Man: Homecoming - B+

Thor - B+

Doctor Strange - B

Avengers: Age of Ultron - B

The Incredible Hulk - B

Thor: The Dark World - B-

Iron Man 2 - C+

[WhoBibbles]

Finishing this project in 4 months not before Infinity War, before Endgame, this is a joke. I shall make up to this.

Airdate: November 3, 2017

Directed by Taika Waititi

PLEASE FORGIVE ME, MCU STANS OF SBC. 

It has been months since I've rewatched this movie, so this is gonna be weird to review this just now. Without a doubt, this is the funniest MCU movie ever existed. I know, I know humor is soooo overdone in MCU. I can always agree to that criticism because at times I feel like they are forcing the humor, rather than play it naturally but this was the movie that knew what it was doing. I can see why this would be a bit turnoff from Thor fans from comics and I can't say too much about this since I've only read one Thor comic thus far and that was about Loki but If you ask me, this was Thor done right. Before this movie, I always found Thor to be a cool character but he didn't stood out to be and he didn't have much of a clear arc. First Thor movie had that and we've seen an arrogant god turned into a caring and wiser superhero but even that one was missing the pure over the topness and epicness Thor should be. Second movie tried to do that but It didn't have any arc for Thor to overcome. He was just bland there and only character that carried the movie was none other than Loki. It's actually bad when the only thing in Thor mythos people actually cared about was Loki. But this movie changes all that. It turned Thor into a more comedic, more self-aware and more badass character.

Firstly we see Thor chained up in Surtur's place, the monster that is gonna cause the Ragnarok, aka the end of Asgard but Thor managed to stop Surtur and his army single handedly. We got the first scene already covered with a ballsy action sequence that show why Thor's such a cool character. Before all of this, he just goofed around with some really hilarious gags and how he kills Surtur and his army was pure comic booky moment for me. Before he returned to Asgard with Surtur's skull, one guy named Skurge was showing off his guns to ladies instead of guarding the door to Asgard since Heimdall was missing. Oh man, that moment right there was amazing and it showed a lot about Skurge's character being some loser who has nothing going on. After Thor returned and found out that Odin was watching a play of Loki's death and that right there was great comedy right there. It knew how to be silly and when it was revealed to Thor that Loki was Odin, it added more to the humor. Granted, the movie having too much humor would be a bothersome for me but I found myself enjoying these jokes because they come around at the right place at the right time. As a result, Thor and Loki went to Earth to find Odin just when some fangirls showed up and told that it sucked how Thor and Jane broke up, off-screen. Ngl, Jane wasn't adding much to Thor franchise anymore, so I was kind of okay with her being written off. Plus this means Thor's single, so he is mine . But suddenly Loki was teleported, as well as Thor but Thor went to Doctor Strange's place because Strange was questioning why would Thor take his dangerous brother to Earth. Thor explained that they were searching for Odin. Some shits and giggles happens with location switching while Thor's trying to drink his beer. Strange found Odin's place, he brought back Loki from falling for 30 minutes and he teleported them to Odin's hideout. This was just peak Doctor Strange moment that was sort of missing from his own movie. Granted I liked his own movie but here, I liked how magic was more nonsensical and weird and Doctor Strange was this calm weirdo that did some magic tricks. Normally, this would be a cheap fanservice, OH HEY LOOK A CHARACTER FROM ANOTHER MOVIE SHOWED UP but here, he was used not only to help Thor, it added a bit more into his world. I liked that and I hope this type of weirdness is translated in Doctor Strange sequel as well.

When Thor and Loki encourtared Odin, they found out that Odin was dying and when he died, Goddess of Death Hela would appear to take his place and rule Asgard. Oh and Hela is Thor's sister YAY. I admit that I wasn't all that into another family issues plot since they already did this with Loki and Hela wasn't even Thor's sister in comics but it just worked. Hela's introducion was nothing more than a savage villain taking down both characters without breaking a sweat. She fucking destroyed Thor's hammer with the touch of her hand. That was legit badass, even if it was shown a lot in theaters. Not the mention that she could have been another Loki but she was more brawn than brain, yet she was smart and cunning. She was the ultimate threat to Asgard and when she tried to go there and Thor and Loki followed her, Hela just stopped them and they were teleported to another planet and Thor had no powers to protect himself. Yeah, this type of plot is a bit familiar. Thor loses his powers and he was sent to anothe planet to change. Yep, first movie, except that worked better here... Let me explain why. I still consider first thor movie to be good because it was a good exploration of Thor, a god finding humanity in himself. So him being on Earth powerless perfectly made sense but at the same time, lets be real, Earth's kind of a boring place for an almighty god to spend his time. So here, he was sent into some weirdass planet with alien scavengers, slave gladiators and jerky alien rulers. That was much more interesting to watch as opposed to some "grounded" journey on Earth. Plus it delved into a much more compelling storyline that I'll get into later. Meanwhile Hela went to Asgard to use Bifrost bridges to rule the realms but Heimdall took the sword that controls the bridges and him, along with most of Asgardians went to hiding. Back to Thor, you see that Thor was a powerless and he was kidnapped by some bounty hunter lady that sold him to some douchebag named The Grandmaster, ruler of gladiator matches. Stan Lee (Rest in peace ) shaved Thor's hair and tbh that was much much better. Thor met the lady that kidnapped him and she was actually the last Valkyrie, female warriors of Asgard. Later he met two guys named Korg and Miek and they are the most cinnamon rolls out of all characters in MCU, despite how Miek is actually an asshole in comics but hey, another time for that. Thor was sent to the arena to fight the best champion of gladiator matches. He noticed how Loki was alive and BFFs with The Grandmaster and Loki looked embrassingly. Grandmaster sent his best fighter ever and it's none other than THE INCREDIBLE HULK!!! That's right, Thor vs Hulk, now that's a civil war you have never seen. . Thor and Hulk's fight sequences were incredible. Hulk managed to show how badass and savage he can be whereas Thor, someone without no power, can kick Hulk's ass just as much. Later on, Thor's lightning powers have started to occur and he used those to stop Hulk from winning but after that, Grandmaster put a stop to the fight. What a shame, no one won .

Hela began to take over Asgard when she finally arrived. She turned Skurge into The Executioner and she tried reclaiming the Asgard throne from Asgard warriors. Sadly during this time, Thor's warriors friends were murdered, as well as others. The entire scene was a great example of how Hela is literally a powerful Goddess who can take down an entire army without breaking a sweat. She's just so much fun to watch overall. When she entered Odin's palace, this was when we finally get to see the Asgard lore in the movie. I usually didn't like when other Thor movies tried to portray Odin as this righteous and wise king, yet his enemies keep shouting Odin's not a great person. It was more tell than show for villains and this was why Frost Giants and Makekith turned out to be so bland af, they were villains who wanted to control Asgard or all other realms blah blah. Hela had the same goal but what makes her unique is that not only she was charismatic and fun, her backstory was actually pretty interesting for a villain who wanted to control the realms. Hela was born as a weapon for Odin to take control of realms. See? This is how you actually show a villain backstory. She was literally raised a as killing machine. A true Goddess of Death. Unfortunately, her passion became more unstable that Odin had to lock her away for thousands of years and try to become a peaceful king. This right here was a great example of how to write a compelling villain who wants to take control of things. Marvel suffered quite enough for villains who wants power and we don't even know why but Hela's motivations make sense, especially how horrid of a move for Odin to imprison her and never tell Thor and Loki about her. Granted she was a monster but a monster created by Odin's own selfish goals, yet Odin didn't pay the price for it until the very end. And because of this, Hela resurrected her own army and giant wolf to start a war. Turning Hela into a deadly warrior definitely was the mistake of Odin that Thor had to fix this. Speaking of Thor, oh lord... Why were women cleaning his abs??? Dammit!!! Those ladies were LUCKY. Stupid Sexy Odinson. Everytime they find a way to make Thor hotter, I lose my mind but Thor was not the only hottie in the movie. Hello Hulk dammmmmmmm, delete all of this. Thor had just woke up and kind of pissed off to Hulk for not helping him escape. Well, as a shocker, Hulk loved to be a gladiator. Thor wanted Hulk's help but Hulk rejected her. Later, the drunk warrior Valkyrie showed up to hang out with Hulk. Thor asked her why did she stop being a warrior. She told him that in the backstory, during Odin's command to stop Hela, she killed all of the Valkyries but her, therefore, she didn't wanna be involved with another Asgard situation. One another big problem I have had with other Thor movies were that his supporting characters were very underdeveloped or that his human supporting cast were just forgettable. Although I didn't like how they killed off his warrior friends in this one, Valkyrie was a step up in the right direction for giving Thor a good supporting cast. Her motivation to stay away from Asgard made sense and she was just a charming and compelling character to engage into. Hulk was already a good character, so this was a big plus for someone who's not the biggest Hulk fan. I liked that they made him smarter than his other appearences. He still acted like a goofball around the time but his speech has gotten better, he had a mind of his own and he was just much a anger and brutal machine he was. If this was the closest we could get to a great Hulk story, this might be it. Hulk and Valkyrie didn't agree to go to Asgard with him but Thor reached to the ship Hulk got to Sakaar. As a result, Hulk followed him and the ship was destroyed while Hulk was turning into Bruce Banner after seeing Natasha's hologram, ew.. and Bruce's naked. Bruce has realized that he has been Hulk for 2 years and If he does into Hulk phase again, he can never go back to being Bruce. I actually like that they finally acknowledge that Bruce has a double personality disorder and it plays a big role in this movie. For all the Hulk stories, this was def their best material.

Since Thor has escaped Grandmaster insisted Loki and Valkyrie to catch him and Hulk but Loki made Vakyrie angry and they started to fight, therefore Valkyrie defeated him and captured him to help Thor instead. Valkyrie managed to track down both Thor and Hulk, except it was Thor and Bruce. She later took him into her place where Loki was tied up. Thus begins the godliest story ever told. Kid Thor once saw a snake that he took it in his hands and it turned out it was Loki who stabed him. The end. There's no better backstory than this ladies and gentlemen. As a result, Vakyrie agreed to help Thor to escape and Loki suggested to steal one of Grandmaster's ships. After how Thor freed the slaves and Korg and Miek started a revolution, Thor and Loki had a nice conversation about their relationship and how they pretty much grew out of each other over the time. Thor and Loki dynamic is one of the best ones out there in the movies, so I was glad it was explored further here. It was great to see Thor no longer following Loki's tricks, so he pretty much left Loki in Sakaar. Now Thor, Bruce and Valkyrie tried to escape but Grandmaster's squad tried to attack them. This entire action sequence was so much fun and there's not much else to say here. They finally found a way to escape Sakaar and went back to Asgard. Loki, on the other hand, was saved by Korg and Miek, and he joined them to get out. 

Hela soon found Heimdall and the citizens of Asgard, so she decided to attack them to get the sword but Thor, Bruce and Valkyrie managed to arrive just in time to kick Hela's army's ass. While Bruce decided to jump off the space ship and fell this miserably, Valkryie joined the battle and Loki arrived just in time to save the citizens, Thor went to the throne to claim his right from Hela. Thor and Hela had a brutal fight in which Hela removes Thor's right eye from him and therefore, Thor had a vision of Odin. Now this was the biggest deal of the movie. Thor, close to being defeated, told Odin that he's nothing without the hammer to stop Hela and Odin reminded him that he's not God of Hammers, he is God of Thunder. Well, that shouldn't be much of a shocker for anyone and we've all known that Thor is God of Thunder but what made this scene so powerful was that Thor finally found a way to channel his powers without needing the hammer, this led to him accepting that he has been a God all along and his powers were finally loose. Thor managed to get away from Hela and destroyed many of her warriors single handedly, while the movie playing the Immigrant Song. The entire sequence was so badass for one thing. Thor was just as powerful as he should have been. He got rid of his identity crisis and became the almighty god he was meant to be. Many Thor fans didn't like the fact that Thor and Asgardians were more or less aliens with high technology and it didn't work as much for Thor. So it was good seeing they embracing the Thor mythos. In the mean time, Bruce became Hulk and started to fight with Hela's giant wolf. And Thor finally realized something big. In order to defeat Hela, they had to let Ragnarok happen. I, for one, enjoyed that aspect of the climax. Usually superheroes have to defend their home from being taken over or destroyed but Thor wanted to do the opposite. Instead save his people and destroy their home. That was pretty unique for a superhero tale, even if it meant destruction of Asgard. Korg and Miek got as many citizens as possible (although that was one particular thing I didn't like in the movie, you can't just save every citizen, so that didn't feel as believeable enough for me) but Hela's army was getting in the way, Skurge wasn't as into being The Executioner anymore, so he decided to hide among the citizens but he later sacrificed himself to save the people. His death was very noble and it added a lot to his character more than I expected. In the mean time, Loki went back to the palace to summon Surtur to bring the Ragnarok but during that, he took the Teserract as well. Surtur finally showed up and started to destroy Asgard but Hulk, as angry as usual, attacked Surtur. That moment was pretty unexpected and funny. So Thor, Valkyrie and Hulk escaped and Hela and Asgard itself was destroyed by Surtur. Thor finally became the king of Asgard he was meant to be and he decided to took his people into Earth but sadly, Thor's ship was caught by one giant ass ship that is totally not Thanos' ship!!!! And Grandmaster is doomed in Sakaar.

This movie was how you do justice to Thor that many of his previous appearences didn't try. Thor finally ended up being as charismatic and badass god-figure as he should have been, his supporting cast got a boost, they spent more time in space than Earth, which was a big plus, story was pretty simple, yet engaging enough to be colorful and fun, humor was strong with almost every joke being a hit, Hela was a menacing and fun villain etc. When I think about this movie more, it's just that this movie isn't even close to being one of the most compelling and original superhero movies ever but what it made work is that it became this much fun and yes, you can say that to a lot of superhero movies but this one knew how to use its comedy and it had a style of its own to make itself seperate from others. I don't even have as much complaint to say here, aside from that the movie could have been darker than it should have been considering this is the destruction of Asgard and It's nonsensical that every citizen was alive (not for long tho!!!) but for what its worth, this movie was a great way to spend some fun time.

MCU Movie Ranking:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - A+

Avengers - A

Thor Ragnarok - A

Iron Man - A

Captain America: Civil War - A-

Guardians of the Galaxy - A-

Captain America: The First Avenger - A-

Iron Man 3 - A-

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 - A-

Ant-Man - B+

Spider-Man: Homecoming - B+

Thor - B+

Doctor Strange - B

Avengers: Age of Ultron - B

The Incredible Hulk - B

Thor: The Dark World - B-

Iron Man 2 - C+

Today or tomorrow, idk, Black Panther review is coming soon and finally we can end this thread once and for all.

[WhoBibbles]

with every broken promise I gave and every time I delayed this project so much that it took me 1 year to finish this, the topic can finally rest with this Academy Award winning movie... Yes Patty, this review is 100% "fuck oscars" written 3000 times.

Airdate: February 16, 2018

Directed by Ryan Coogler

Before Infinity War was ever premiered, there was this little movie, the very first black superhero/comic book movie that isn't Blade trilogy and it's soooo overrated, it tells us white genocide is the answer, black people dominates my superheroes, sjw culture ruins Marvel, this shit won Oscar, unacceptable!

Jokes aside, this movie is the one that finally push the boundaries for studios to make an actually great diversive movie. Not just that, it's a superhero movie that is more than just saving lives, stopping the bad guys and big climaxes with explosions and damage. This is a story about a king who rules an isolated country for being the most highly advances and civilized country in the world and now his kingdom and country faces the ultimate challenge to whether they should introduce themselves to the world or not. The concept is actually very unique and the exectuion with this made this movie one of the most unique and well-thought superhero movies that made the audience think more than just making them have fun.

The movie started off very different. It actually explained the history behind the most advenced country called Wakanda and why it looks like a third world country when it isn't. Exposition can be a boring thing when it's all about telling history behind our main story and not much else but what the movie did was explaning the mythos of Wakanda with fantastic animartion and short narration that audience can get without getting themselves tired from it. So the scene gets a plus for that. Who narrates the story is actually J'Nobu, the brother of Wakanda King named T'Chaka and ye, this scene was set in the past. He told that Wakanda used to be like any other African tribe until a vibranium meteor hit the surface and it turned Wakanda into the most advanced country in the world and they used vibranium to make a liquid that turns a warrior into a more skilled and powerful warrior and he named himself "Black Panther" and it carried on generation to generation. Because of vibranium, it brought attention of other countries, so they decided to attack Wakanda but it failed, yet some vibranium was stolen from it. As a result, Wakanda had no choice but to keep their technology and vibranium a secret from the world and present themselves a third world country. The king at that time of narration was T'Chaka and his brother went to USA to have a kid and he wanted to help African Americans who couldn't defend themselves with his friend but as it turned out, he was a Wakanda agent named Zuri and King T'Chaka accused of J'Nobu to work with a guy named Klaue (aka Klaw) who stole vibranium from them. Something happened to J'Nobu that caught a kid's attention. We later went back to the present where the story took place after T'Chaka's death in Civil War. T'Chaka decided to wear Black Panther costume and help a Wakanda agent named Nakia to rescue citizens of Wakanda from some terrorists/kidnappers with the help of the leader of a warrior group named "Dora Milaje" named Okoye. The fight sequence was nothing but amazing stuff. I really enjoyed Black Panther kicking ass once again and it was a cool introduction to Okoye and Nakia at the same time and they'll play a big role in the movie. After the mission was a success, T'Challa headed to his home Wakanda to become the king, companied by Okoye and Nakia. Now that they have returned home, we got a cool introduction of T'Challa's sister Shuri and his mother Ramonda. 

Now that T'Challa was set to be a king, all of the tribes of Wakanda came together for a fight with him to be the king of Wakanda and claim the Black Panther title. And since no one wanted to challenge T'Challa, i guess there was no option but to choose T'Challa as king EXCEPT, one person dared to challenge him and that was the leader of Jabari Tribe named M'Baku. T'Challa was removed from Black Panther strength (that must be painful) and he started to fight with M'Baku, yet he actually won the challenge and became the king. However, one person that really wished T'Challa to do things differently was Nakia, who wanted to introduce their techonology to help the World but T'Challa wanted his kingdom to remain hidden. Both ideologies represented by T'Challa and Nakia played the big part of the movie and why that theme mattered. Firstly, T'Challa wasn't exactly wrong on wanting to keep his country hidden. Many people like Klaue wants to use their vibranium and technology for their benefit and not others. And this could also lead Wakanda to have a war with other countries and it could backfire just for that. His argument made sense but Nakia's as well. Wakanda is already civilized and well taught to deal with this situation and other Africa countries, as well as many African people all over the world, do need the help of Wakanda to live well. I like a movie that actually makes me think of these concepts and this movie was good at that and it added a lot more to superhero genre than some of MCU didn't. That's not to say MCU didn't have groundbreaking stories but this movie showed how they can still stay fresh with introducing new ideas to superheroes, while also entertaining people. Speaking of entertainment, we cut to some museum in London and we got a glimpse of our main villain Erik Stevens, aka Killmonger and his partner in crime Klaw to steal a vibranium artifact. Their introduction needs no further explanation, it was a kickass introducion of them and man, both of them killed as threatening and powerful villains. We'll talk more about Killmonger but I'll just saw that Klaw managed to stay as one charismatic and entertaining over the top villain with his wacky robot arm that shoots lasers. He may not be as well developed as he should have been but he stayed as a really memorable villain to me. Oddly enough (well maybe not that odd), I forgot his existence in Age of Ultron but this movie introduced him far better with how over the top and fun he was. This caught one of the tribe leader's attention and that's none other than Okoye's husbando W'Kabi who wanted justice to catch Klaw. T'Challa accepted this offer and he decided to capture him, along with Okoye and Nakia. Shuri, with as her hilarious moments of embarassing T'Challa, made a brand new Black Panther suit for him and a really beautiful car that I wish that was mine, even though I'm scared of driving... moving on!

T'Challa, Nakia and Okoye tracked down Klaw to South Korea, where Klaw wanted to sell the artifacts but coincidentally Agent Ross (no, not that Ross in The Incredible Hulk!) was there to capture him as well. T'Challa noticed his presence and they decided to argue over who should arrest Klaw. I really enjoy Everett Ross in the movie. His comic book reputation is a bit mixed bag but he managed to be a good character here that wasn't some comic relief. I liked his dynamic with T'Challa and while he can be funny, he's definitely someone you can take seriously enough. Sadly their cover was blown and Klaw took the oppurtunity to run away but T'Challa, as well as Okoye and Nakia tried to catch him too. Before the car chase, we got a really great fight sequence with Okoye and Nakia kicking Klaw's men's asses and man, it was so much fun to watch. And we went to the car chase sequence, which is my favorite action sequence in the entire movie. Not that the movie went downhill with its action sequences like people claim but it's just the whole thing was played out so wonderfully. The visuals, the thrill of the chase, the music, how the cinematography looked amazing at night; all these aspects made the sequence the most standout to me. Luckily enough T'Challa managed to capture Klaw. Now here comes the part where I've heard complaints about the movie feeling like two movies mashed together and honestly as much as I can see that criticism, it didn't exactly bother me here. The whole thing was played out as a subplot and I don't think it went too far from the actual storyline of the movie. Even if the criticism was valid, the movie still doesn't work to me without the subplot. Klaw was a fun side villain but the movie wasn't about him, he just happened to be one of the characters that was connected to Killmonger. Speaking of Killmonger, we'll be getting there soon. 

After capture, Ross decided to integrate Klaw on why he stole vibranium artifacts. Klaw turned the question around and told Ross that Wakanda wasn't some third world country and T'Challa had been hiding it from him. But it turned out he was stalling him to make his escape thanks to Killmonger. During the assault, Nakia almost got killed but Ross took a bullet for her, thus saving her life. Sadly Klaw got away with Killmonger but T'Challa noticed that Killmonger was wearing the exact necklace his father had. Later he had no choice but to take Ross to Wakanda to heal him. During them taking Ross, Shuri's comment on "another white boy to fix" got a good laugh outta me but the line was a good way of showing how well connected the movie was to MCU. Despite how BP is its own movie, it was cool that the consequences of Civil War was stilll there with Bucky being on Wakanda frozen and T'Challa's father being dead. T'Challa then decided to confront Zuri, who is now older about the necklace of his father and it was revealed that Killmonger was none other than Erik Stevens, who was J'Nabu's son and his father was killed by T'Chaka. Ross eventually woke up from his coma and he controned T'Challa on his advanced country being hidden. Later he explained how Erik grew up to be a black ops soldier who counted each person he has killed and marked in his body. That villain origin story right there showed exactly how tragic Killmonger's backstory was. His dad was killed because he was accused falsely and he wanted to help African Americans, therefore Killmonger's passion of rage for Wakanda made so much sense and it turned him into a ruthless killing machine. Meanwhile Klaw was happy for his rescue but he noticed that Killmonger had bigger fish to fry. Klaw actually noticed that Killmonger was none other than half Wakandian and Killmonger knew he had to join Klaw to gain his trust. As a result, he killed him. Now I have to admit that his death felt like a waste of potential cuz Klaw could have been gone to even better villain but he lost his chance. I do hope that one day he's revived but for what's worth his death played a big part for Killmonger, so it wasn't a total waste lol.

Killmonger did what he had to do. Sending body of Klaw to W'Kabi's tribe, which lead to him finally revealing he's from the kingdom family and he wanted to claim the throne. Meanwhile T'Challa was having a conversation with Nakia on how his father wasn't as noble as he thought he was. I really love that scene because it showed how much T'Challa was angry with the way his country worked. Just so they can stay hidden, they would do whatever was necessary for them. They left Erik grow up without a father and his presence was a big karma towards his country. Once he believed his ideology on wanting to keep Wakanda hidden was no longer optional and he decided to do something about it but later he has learned that Killmonger was in Wakanda and he challenged T'Challa into a combat to defeat him. We enterted the arena again and this time, the visuals of the movie felt cheapened. If there's one big criticism I have to agree was that, as much as I enjoyed the movie. CGI looked more obvious and it made their fight sequence a bit hard to watch through. It was still an exciting sequence but the visuals were definitely jarring in the middle of it. After their fight, Killmonger finally won the battle and he threw T'Challa off the cliff and it left Shuri and Ramonda have no choice but to escape from Killmonger's wrath. Killmonger did what was the best he thought. He literally burned down the old traditions of Wakanda And his first order as a king was to bring weapons to Africans all over the world to defend themselves. I ain't shitting when I say that Killmonger was the best MCU villain since Loki. His motivation and how he thought he was the good guy of the story were told extremely well. Not the mention the heartbreaking scene with him in his father in the soul tripping sequence. He was not only a threaening villain with complex goals, he was very sympathetic. Yet the movie didn't shy away from him being the villain as he had no trouble killing people of his own kind for his own benefit especially hurting women. Before he burnt down the vibranium garden that had flowers to make the Black Panther liquid, Shuri and Ramonda stole one piece vibranium from flower. Meanwhile Okoye was determined that her royality was to her country, so she had no choice but to stay with Killmonger as her king. This pretty much set up Okoye's characterization as a whole. She was a noble warrior for her own country that she'd die for it. Yet she was so displeased with Killmonger and him eventually being supported by her husband W'Baki and his tribe. Nakia didn't exactly agree with Okoye's decision, later on she ran with Shur, Ramonda and Ross to go to Jabari tribe to give M'Baku the strength of Black Panther but he refused. He later revealed that T'Challa was actually saved by his tribe (no surprise there) but he was in a coma, so they gave the BP strength to heal them, therefore he had a vision of him finally confronting his father on flawed old ideology of Wakanda. That scene right there proved how powerful Chadwick Boseman's acting was and how he sold the role of T'Challa. His anger over his father for him killing his own brother and leaving his child all alone was a heartbreaking sequence, especially with him yelling at all of past kings on how they were wrong with Wakanda. I see that some people do find a flaw in the movie that T'Challa wasn't as focused enough in his own movie and while I can agree to some extend since the movie's biggest character was Wakanda as a whole, T'Challa had good character moments like that one I've just mentioned. 

Eventually T'Challa woke up from his coma and he assisted of M'Baku's help but he rejected it. Since I have spoken enough of T'Challa, lets go to M'Baku, who turned out to be one of my all-time favorite characters in the movie. I like how he has his own agenda on Wakanda as a whole, yet he's a man of his honor for rescuing T'Challa because T'Challa spared his life in the first combat. He's actually a villain in the comics named Man Ape and while I would be interested to see that aspect being played out in the sequel, I enjoyed him as this anti-hero type of character here. Not the mention he was a sarcastic and comedic character too. T'Challa went back to center of Wakanda to fight with Killmonger but it was later revealed that Killmonger got a Black Panther suit as well. For a man that destroyed old traditions of Wakanda, that was a bit hypocrtical. Ngl, I really loved Killmonger's costume and design, so I could have done without him having a suit. They started to fight and eventually Okoye was tired of being Killmonger's warrior, so she turned against him with her entire Dora Milaje warriors. Surprisingly enough M'Baku have returned to fight alongside T'Challa with his entire Jabari tribe against W'Kabi's tribe. Sadly CGI got weaker with the climax of the movie but since the movie was written so well, the climax was still enjoyable on its own with weak visuals. T'Challa and Killmonger went to vibranium mine fields to fight, Ross took an airship to stop weapons from getting outside Wakanda and Nakia and Shuri got some weapons to fight as well. In the mean time, Okoye got one of the most powerful character developments when she contronted W'Kabi that she would kill W'Kabi for her own country to improve. Normally, that doesn't sound right but since W'Kabi betrayed his country to side with Killmonger, what Okoye said made sense. T'Challa and Killmonger had one last battle in the mine fields and the fight sequence looked really mediocre after how well fight sequences were in this movie before. Nevertheless, I still got a kick out of it because of the characters. T'Challa and Killmonger's conflict was something that was really engaging and impactful that I couldn't have rooted for T'Challa to win. Not shockingly he did win but at the cost of killing Killmonger. Ross managed to stop the ship from going outside and rest of the cast defeated W'Kabi's tribe. Then we got one last scene with Killmonger watching the sunset with T'Challa and he wished to heal Killmonger but Killmonger rejected cuz he would rather be dead than be a prisoner. Sadly, this meant another villain down to being killed off but shockingly, Killmonger's death was handled so damn well. With how MCU wasted many villains to death, his death was poetic and it had some weight to it cuz we got invested in the villain for once. After all of this, T'Challa finally made a difference for his own country. Reveal itself to the world and help those in need with its high technology. He bought the building where J'Nobu died to make a outreach center and he put Nakia in charge because despite Killmonger pushing T'Challa to help people, he didn't use his extremist methods, he went with Nakia's way of helping people. Nakia's a character that didn't get the most shine in the movie but her role was the most important because she was the first person to convince T'Challa to help outside African people in need and share their wisdom and knowledge. Killmonger may be the force but Nakia was the reason and that's why her role was so incredible here. The movie ended with T'Challa finally revealing himself to the world in public and Bucky waking up from his sleep because well............. THANO-

To sum it all up, the movie was incredible for being such a well written commentary on wealth of rich countries on whether they should aid the world or not, racial movement and history of corrupt goverments. One of the most complex MCU stories that made me think more than It entertained me but it was still a really great sci-fi fantasy popcorn flick. It did not have the best visuals of MCU but for its tight script, well written characters and its wonderful mythos, the movie had a big praise and it's well deserved. And yet Wakanda looked absolutely beautiful, can't lie there. The country itself was a great in itself, villains were either engaging or memorable threats and T'Challa carried the movie just fine with some big emotional payoffs. I can see where people were coming from the flaws and the movie could be exaggrated but I think the movie was just as amazing as people have said and it definitely deserved those Oscars, oops.

MCU Movie Ranking:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - A+

Black Panther - A

Avengers - A

Thor Ragnarok - A

Iron Man - A

Captain America: Civil War - A-

Guardians of the Galaxy - A-

Captain America: The First Avenger - A-

Iron Man 3 - A-

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2- A-

Ant-Man - B+

Spider-Man: Homecoming - B+

Thor - B+

Doctor Strange - B

Avengers: Age of Ultron - B

The Incredible Hulk - B

Thor: The Dark World - B-

Iron Man 2 - C+

Man, this has been one incredible, amazing, invincible, unstoppable, uncanny, fantastic adventure that I got to make. Rewatching MCU was such a wonderful moment and it made me rethink of my thoughts on these movies but mostly it stayed same. Some movies got better viewing, some others didn't age well, some stayed same but regardless of MCU's flaws and praises, this one big universe means so much to me and I'm happy to share it with you guys. Thanks for reading my countdown and I'm sorry it took 1 year to finish this project but I hope the wait was worth it. Well, at least I got to finish this piece before DC Comics finished Doomsday Clock event, which is still ongoing for 2 years ar ar ar.

Until next project, Excelsior!