Unreality Companion: Ranking Marvel's Phase 1

In which I expand on the content from my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

There are times where I find myself at the perfect crossroads of things that I want to write about and things that are timely to write about.  While it does happen with some amount of regularity, rarely do all of the cinematic stars align so perfectly as they did the other week.  I had finished reviewing all of Marvel's Phase 1, had just ranked all of Marvel's Phase 2 movies (thus far) for Unreality and had just come back from seeing Age of Ultron .  How could I resist the chance to rank all of Phase 1 as well?

6) Iron Man 2 - This is without question Marvel's worst outing to date.  That doesn't make this a bad film necessarily, just a bad one for a company with such an absurdly strong track record of churning out exceptional pieces of action cinema.  As far as action movies go, Iron Man 2 was a solid showing that was just as good as many of the typical summer blockbusters it was competing against and even quite a bit better than most.

That being said, however, this was undoubtedly the most problematic Marvel movie.  It's clear by now that nobody at Marvel expected Iron Man to be the breakout success that it became and were understandably eager to greenlight a sequel as soon as possible.  What resulted, however, was a sequel that didn't quite understand why the first movie was so great to begin with: complete with a tractionless plot and the company's two least memorable villains to date (further exacerbating the so-called "Marvel problem.").

5) Thor - While Thor certainly does have its issues, the reason why it's such a joy to watch and revisit is because of the incessently earnest emotional core of its narrative: Loki's deranged lust for acceptance within his adopted family and Thor's boundless - if troubled - love for his brother.  We don't walk away from the movie going on about Thor pounding Jotuns into the ice nor The Destroyer tearing apart Puente Antiguo.  We walk away haunted by Loki's confrontation with Odin about his Jotun heritage and Thor putting the good of the Nine Realms before his own happiness by destroying the Bifrost to save his ancestral enemies.

When taken at face value, however, the plot of Thor doesn't work as well as it's supposed to.  Perhaps that's because of the alleged behind-the-scenes friction between director Kenneth Brannagh and producer Kevin Feige (supposedly the reason why Brannagh didn't return to direct Thor: The Dark World).  The scope of the narrative is far too condensed to be believable and the Human half of the story is downright boring.  Jane isn't an especially interesting character and the only reason why we care about her is because Thor himself does.  The story does, however, get what it needs to right (Thor and Loki), and plays that dynamic up as much as possible.

4) Captain America: The First Avenger - Of all of Marvel's Phase 1 solo movies, Captain America is easily the most confident, complete and robust.  While this doesn't make it the best of them, it does make it the easiest to repeatedly revisit, even if it does lack some of the umph of the films that show up further along on this list.

Whereas other Captain Americas try to get around Cap's old-fashionedness by getting him into the 21st century as soon as the story can possibly manage it, director Joe Johnston solved this problem by making the movie at it's core an old-fashioned action movie: closer to a period drama than what we've come to think of as a superhero origin story.  It feature's Cap punching, kicking and shield-bashing his way through Nazi soldiers for almost two hours before it brings him into the 21st century: a denouement that's more tragic than reaffirming.

3) Iron Man - I'm sure that this movie's relatively low placement on this list will raise more than a few eyebrows.  Iron Man's what launched the whole "Marvel experiment" in the first place.  Most would call it the best of the Phase 1 solo movies, a few even daring to go so far as to call it the best of Phase 1.  But while it's reputation is certainly well-earned, it could never quite beat out one particular Phase 1 origin story for me.

The Iron Man franchise probably features the coolest array of cinematic hardware than any other movies around.  Robert Downey Jr. is such a phenomenal Tony Stark that it's impossible to imagine the MCU without his personal brand of jackassery.  While the third act does basically tread water until the now-iconic "I am Iron Man" line, the first two were more than good enough to carry the narrative weight for it.

2) The Incredible Hulk - I know that this is far from most people's favorite, but I just can't help myself.  Outside of The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk is the most viscerally exciting Marvel movie of its phase.  Edward Norton was basically Marvel's way of apologizing for the first Hulk movie on behalf of Universal and the significantly upped special effects sealed the deal.

Like Jaws, The Incredible Hulk understands just how valuable a tool restraint is in what essentially amounts to a big-budget monster movie.  We don't get a good look at the Hulk until the second act and don't give him anything meaningful to fight against until the third.  The rest of the movie is Banner's desperate attempts to not transform and to science himself a cure for his peculiar condition.  This makes the scenes that actually feature the Hulk that much more exciting and, and times, genuinely terrifying.

1) The Avengers - It's been argued by some that The Avengers matters only in a technical sense: as a historical footnote for why every blockbuster franchise needs to be part of a shared universe these days.  The Avengers, these people would argue, is nothing but a fireworks show: a party thrown in its own honor with no more weight behind it than any number of the vapid, cartoonish action movies that came before it.  These people couldn't be any more misguided about its merit.

A movie doesn't need to be deep to be exceptional, nor does it have to be "important" to be meaningful.  The Avengers is "just" a blockbuster, true.  It has no deeper message than "friendship is magic" and only a comically rendered 9/11 metaphor for a social conscience (most of which wasn't even apparent until Captain America: The Winter Soldier's release).  That, however, doesn't make its battles any less exciting, its characters any less deep nor its stakes any less real.  The Avengers, in short, is really that good.

So what is your favorite Phase 1 movie?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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