Tuesday 30 April 2013

Review of the Phase 1 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe


So, firstly, what I wanna start off by is giving you guys a review of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
MCU began with the release of the first Iron Man in 2008. Iron Man just placed the basics of the back story of Tony Stark and his kidnapping, The Ten Rings, and The Iron Man. The movie was one of the very few movies based on comic heroes other than Superman and Batman. Iron Man was critically acclaimed. And it pretty much set everybody for the one of the best series of movies.  With Iron Man, MCU also started a trend of adding post-credit scenes, which created suspense and excitement for forthcoming movies. In Iron Man, we see Samuel Jackson as Nick Fury and a pretty subtle hint for something bigger to come.

Later in 2008 also released The Incredible Hulk. The second Hulk movie with a different actor portraying Banner/Hulk, it was better than the first, but did not do as well as Iron Man. We see another post-credit scene, with Tony Stark talking to General Ross. The good thing about the TIH was that it laid a pretty decent idea about the Hulk and his powers and popularized The Abomination.

Immediately following the successful release of Iron Man in 2008, Marvel Studios announced it was developing a sequel. Iron Man 2 came out in 2010, and people content with Iron Man were expecting something better. And it delivered. Iron Man 2 introduced four important characters of MCU – Nick Fury, Black Widow, Phil Coulson and Col. James Rhodes/War Machine. It introduced S.H.I.E.L.D and new suits and a new villain – Whiplash. And again another post-credits scene, made comic fans around the world go crazy with it hinting towards the arrival of Thor.

Thor released in 2011, with excitement at its peak because of the introduction of another superhero in MCU. Thor couldn't live up to the expectations, but gave us the general idea about Asgrad, Thor, Heimdall, and most important of all, Loki. Thor’s story line couldn't live up to the hype but it did what it was needed to do, give the audience the general idea of Thor and Loki, and set them up for the “Bigger” picture. Another post-creds scene shows Erik Selvig talking to Nick Fury about the Cosmic Cube and Loki looking on. It also introduced Hawkeye/Clint Barton with one scene.

2011 got the introduction of yet another superhero, The first Avenger, Captain America. We get to know Steve Rogers from his early days, met Howard Stark and The Red Skull, and see the familiar Cosmic Cube come back, with a bigger role to play. Nothing much for the “bigger picture” in this movie. Just the intro to Captain America, his defrosting and the Cosmic Cube. Something important for the future from this movie though, is the introduction of Bucky Barnes who we will see in the sequel. I’ll update you about that later on.

And in 2012, was released the largest joint-venture of superheroes till date, comprising of 7 heroes, 4 of whom have their own series. The Avengers made every comic fan and non-comic fan go nuts with excitement. What we got to know about every hero was used in this movie and the return of Loki was just a cherry on top of the cake. Mark Ruffalo became the third person to portray the Hulk and did it better than his predecessors.  Many people had a few problems with The Avengers, a few “mistakes”, but I have the explanation to them. More on that, later on. With the Avengers ended Phase 1 : Avengers Assembled of MCU.
What Phase 1 basically did was lay down the important information about every superhero for the upcoming Phase 2. The biggest post-credits scene was shown in The Avengers with Thanos being shown. This gave people the idea that more is to come. Thus ended Phase 1. And thus, ends my first post.

                                                                                                                        Dr. Marvel. Over and Out.

No comments:

Post a Comment