Both Iron Man 3 and Thor The Dark World were released in 2013. Meanwhile, Warner Bros and DC had launched their cinematic universe with Man of Steel in that year as well, which was met with a disappointingly small box office intake and less than stellar critical reception. Many of the complaints lobbied against Zack Snyder's take on Superman were about how downbeat and overly bleak it was.
Read MoreIron Man 3 is the final standalone outing for Tony Stark, released at a time when audiences were assured that six different superheroes could indeed occupy the same film successfully. What they needed to be reminded was that these heroes could still be interesting in their own flicks.
Read MoreThe Avengers was by no means the first film to cross different characters from different series together in one film. Freddy vs Jason, Alien vs Predator, Zatoichi and the One-Armed Soldier, King Kong vs Godzilla, and Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, just to name a few. But what it was the first of this kind of movie to treat like a serious stepping stone for its characters’ arc. It didn’t just bring these heroes together because it would be fun to see that. It brought them together because that’s why they made them in the first place.
Read MoreThe summer of 2011 saw the releases of four major superhero movies: Green Lantern, X-Men: First Class, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger. The former was DC's first crack at establishing a cinematic universe for themselves, but it came massively short. The latter three Marvel branded films, however, solidified that company's progressing dominance of this new stage of the genre. Thor and Captain America especially were noteworthy for continuing the Marvel Cinematic Universe's winning streak, proof that audiences were becoming more and more welcoming of these larger than life characters in their own standalone stories before seeing them together in one flick.
Read MoreThor came out in a time when audiences were starting to accept the fact that a certain group of Marvel heroes could exist in the same cinematic universe. Iron Man and Hulk were two characters that fit neatly in the science-fiction genre, albeit the former being somewhat more practical than the latter, so the idea of them teaming up wasn’t that big of a stretch to moviegoers. But there was another hero on the horizon, one that belonged in the fantasy genre in a way few other Marvel heroes did, so much so that his creators weren’t Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, or Jack Kirby, but the Norsemen of centuries past: Thor. It didn’t help that Marvel’s depiction of the god of thunder was extremely goofy, with all the insane worlds he visits via a rainbow bridge while donning his flying helmet.
Read MoreIron Man 2, the first direct sequel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was made at a time when Iron Man went from a relatively obscure hero in the comics to an instant star in the movies. So, it only made sense that Marvel would give Tony Stark another outing before they dove into their truly esoteric characters like the even more obscure Thor and the explicitly patriotic Captain America.
Read MoreThe Incredible Hulk is a fascinating chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was released when people still had the unusual (however you felt about that film) taste of Ang Lee’s Hulk from 2003 in their mouths and had to deliver what that movie failed to promise in the eyes of many fans of the not-so-jolly green giant, it brought forth a star that audiences agreed was a good Bruce Banner and wanted to see more of in future installments, and it was still in a stage where the Marvel films were keeping their interconnectivity subtle.
Read MoreAs I said in the prelude to this review series, the 2000s were the decade that superhero movies were becoming the next big Hollywood genre, after being deemed the kiss of death in the 90s. They were becoming more adult and complex and had their creative voices as shown by the success of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins and the failure of Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, which to many filmgoers and critics, relied too much on nostalgia for the original Christopher Reeve films. But an even more unique take on the comic-book flick came in the form of Jon Favreau’s Iron Man.
Read MoreMarvel is a word that, when said as a noun, means something that elicits amazement in the eyes of someone. For eleven years, to an entire world of filmgoers, a series of movies was precisely that, representing the changing tide of the whole cinematic landscape and a time when superheroes were not relegated to pulpy pages read by teens who frequented the nearest conventions. It was even the word that it went by.
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