One Film In Marvel Studios’ Library Is Its “Empire Strikes Back” — But It’s Not The One You Think

A deep dive into, and full accounting of, the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far

As Marvel Studios heads into Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), it will face a big challenge: topping one of its already released movies. Every film franchise has that one movie that hits all the right notes at the right time; a perfect storm convergence. More often than not it’s the first film followed by a succession of weaker sequels. However, that is not always the case. Whether it’s Star Wars’ The Empire Strikes Back, Star Trek’s second The Wrath of Khan (not to be confused with JJ Abrams’ well made but hollow The Wrath of Cumberbatch), or Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight, sometimes it is a later film where everything comes together.

In the MCU, I would wager most fans would point to Phase 1’s The Avengers as that film. It’s easy to see why, as it was a huge blockbuster that packed a wallop.

Reaching that level in a fantasy/sci-fi film that stands the test of time better than its franchise siblings follows a simple formula. It can be distilled down thusly:

(Good deep script + strong acting + great direction + great CGI [Computer Generated Imagery] ) — (% of any of those categories being out of balance with the others + studio meddling) = chances of having a winner that stands above the rest

It seems so simple, yet it’s so hard to make films that pull it off. Even in the MCU.

Iron Man was Marvel Studio’s first MCU film and was an unexpected smash. As entertaining as it was, it wasn’t perfect. It was carried by Robert Downey Jr. and a surprisingly light to the touch direction by Jon Favreau, but veered off course around the time Jeff Bridges’ wooden Obadiah Stane donned his armor in way too short a timeframe and in too awkward a manner. You can’t fault Bridges for that. He did what he could with a character that was two dimensional at best.

In other words, the script prevented the film from being anything more than a very good MCU film. But, it got the MCU rolling and it’s been on a tear ever since. Not since Pixar knocked the industry sideways with Toy Story has a Studio been able to churn out hit after hit year after year.

After Iron Man, Marvel rolled out The Incredible Hulk. This film was a letdown in more than one area. There have been two Hulk films, one by Ang Lee (done outside of the MCU) and the MCU version with Edward Norton. Neither is particularly memorable and both suffer from a fatal flaw; centering a film around a CGI-created green monster which does not talk. It’s tough to get into a film centered around such a character. You might as well substitute Godzilla.

That is a point which apparently has not been lost on Marvel as it was the last standalone Hulk film. Despite the fact that Mark Ruffalo’s take on Bruce Banner, combined with the relative lack of “the other guys” screen time in both Avengers films, shows Marvel has finally figured out how to utilize the character for maximum effect, Marvel has chosen not to risk another Hulk-sized flop in Phase 3.

Next up came Iron Man 2. It was okay, but a big letdown from the first film, despite the very impressive box office returns. Downey chewed up his scenery to the hilt, aided once again to no small extent by Gwyneth Paltrow. But Mickey Rourke’s cookie cutter villain wasn’t interesting. Scarlett Johansson was introduced as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow in this film and it’s interesting to see how Johansson played the role differently than she has in subsequent appearances in the MCU. That’s a roundabout way of saying she didn’t have it as dialed in (or, to be fair, the script didn’t have the character as dialed in) as in later films she appeared in. Film goers had to acclimate themselves to Don Cheadle in the role Terence Howard originated and played differently. Nobody cares about Howard being gone now. Cheadle has made the role his own. But at the time…it was an adjustment for audiences.

Thor was a needed bounce back for Marvel Studios, which up to that point had one critical profitable hit (Iron Man), one dud (The Incredible Hulk), and a so-so but very profitable Iron Man sequel. Thor established that Marvel Studios was not just a one trick pony that could only strike paydirt if the name Stark was involved. In Kenneth Branagh’s expert hands, Marvel had a film which nicely walked that fine line between Earthbound “reality” and the out and out fantasy of Asgard and the more ethereal aspects of the greater Marvel Universe which is an acquired taste for those not raised on the comics (which I was many years ago).

The plotting however sagged a bit when it came time to turn Tom Hiddleston’s Loki from relatively harmless malcontent to out and out baddie. That transition’s speed, like Jack Nicholson’s too quick turn to madness in The Shining wasn’t very convincing, but Hiddleston managed to paper over the script’s weakness with a bravura performance. This film essentially launched Chris Hemsworth, but Hiddleston is the one who stole the show.

Thor was followed by Captain America: The First Avenger. Like The Hulk, this wasn’t the first attempt at a Cap film. There was a non-MCU feature film in 1990. You can be forgiven if you don’t remember it. But with more than 20 years in between Cap film appearances, Marvel had basically a clean slate to work with; unlike FOX which tried to reboot a not-that-great-to-begin-with Fantastic Four franchise after just a few years and failed miserably at it.

What Captain America: The First Avenger did very well was establish a meme of doing the right thing, honor, never giving up or giving in, cheering for the little guy, and wrapping it all up in the American flag but without falling into that all too easy trap of taking the patriotism to the level of caricature (pick any Rambo film after First Blood).

It took me a while to warm to him but Chris Evans as Steve Rogers was the right decision. I can’t imagine anyone else in that role now, just as I couldn’t imagine anyone other than Downey as Tony Stark, Hemsworth as Thor, or Johansson as Romanoff. The plotting was typical WW2 fare, passable but too predictable. The Hydra stuff was handled with the subtlety of a rampaging bull in a china shop. I found the movie gave short shrift to Cap’s Howling Commandos (in the comics they were Nick Fury’s) but that would have made for a very long film.

But the weakest link, as we have seen too often in the MCU, was the villain. Hugo Weaving’s Red Skull, while acted to the hilt, was uninspiring. If Marvel Studios can be faulted for anything, it is this; their villains too often are done paint-by-numbers style. They spend so much effort on developing the heroes that the villains sometimes feel like mere afterthoughts. If not for Hiddleston’s acting, I might add Loki to that group.

So, after five MCU films Marvel had three well made, albeit a little uneven, franchises in its incubator (I’m excluding The Incredible Hulk for reasons outlined earlier). But it had something more. It had established a foundation to build upon. What it built with that foundation was The Avengers.

With The Avengers everything came together to form a mostly cohesive unit. The casting was chock full of previously established well-defined characters and the ones that weren’t — Ruffalo’s Banner and Renner’s Hawkeye — were able to easily fit in. The glue that held them all together, both in the story’s plot and the film itself, was Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson. Without Coulson, the script has a very rough road making this team mesh, particularly where Thor is concerned.

Joss Whedon’s direction was fantastic. The effects were (mostly) solid. The acting was excellent in amplifying how the script allowed for interplay between the heroes in lulls between the action, which further defined their characters. In short, it was the high point for Phase 1 and, for many viewers, the high point in the MCU.

For a while there I was with them. As Phase 2 rolled out, Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World, both had flaws, mostly with the plotting and the character development, or lack thereof, of the bad guys.

No, I’m not talking about reducing The Mandarin to a fake character in Iron Man 3…I can live with plotting decisions that make wholesale changes to the character’s comic book version. I’m no purist. If I was, I would have gone insane by now at all the cinematic retcons inflicted upon the X-films.

But at least give the viewer reason to root against the bad guy, beyond the fact that he’s a cookie cutter bad guy and you always root against the bad guy. Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian was only slightly more interesting than Jeff Bridges’ Obadiah Stane. And Iron Man 3 essentially copied, in broad strokes, the ending from Iron Man 2 — specifically, a bunch of CGI-mechanized suits flying around blowing stuff up.

With The Dark World, we are treated to a worn out Hollywood cliché: the never-before-heard-of alien civilization bent on revenge…not to be confused with the never-before-heard-of alien civilization bent on revenge that existed in the first Thor film, headed by a stiff as stone one dimensional baddie. How stiff? I kept thinking back to Gene Hackman in Superman 2…

What am I going to do with you people? I hold up my end. I deliver the blue boy — and what do I hear from my triple threat?

BOW! YIELD! KNEEL!

That kind of stuff closes out of town…

Oh…and then there’s Stellan Skarsgard being forced to demean himself repeatedly on camera with his Erik Selvig character now a parody of itself. Marvel needlessly killed off Rene Russo’s Frigga too.

Not even another Tom Hiddleston bravura performance could save this film from mediocrity.

So, two years after the first Avengers, with Marvel’s other two most popular franchises seemingly running out of creative steam (Iron Man 3 marked the end of Iron Man as a standalone franchise, we will have another Thor film in Phase 3 of the MCU), as 2014 began it appeared Marvel’s MCU had its Empire Strikes Back and it was The Avengers.

Then Captain America: The Winter Soldier premiered.

When I first saw the film in the theater, I didn’t “see it.” I found Winter Soldier a very well made film, better than the original - something neither the Thor nor Iron Man franchises could boast. Winter Soldier for me was right up there with Iron Man and the first Thor, maybe a little better even, but not on par with The Avengers.

But a funny thing happened. When the film hit pay-per-view and DVD I found myself watching it repeatedly. Each successive viewing revealed new things to me, as if I was peeling an onion. The more I watched, the more reverence I felt for it, and especially the job the Russo brothers did as co-directors, backed heavily by a superbly solid screenplay from Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

Remember that formula I cited way back (and congrats to you if you’re still reading at this point)…

(Good deep script + strong acting + great direction + great CGI [Computer Generated Imagery] ) — (% of any of those categories being out of balance with the others + studio meddling) = chances of having a winner that stands above the rest

Here is why Winter Soldier tops The Avengers for me. It strikes the better balance amongst all the above categories than The Avengers does. This is not to slight The Avengers at all, as it is a fantastic comic book film. But Winter Soldier is the more balanced and, in many regards, a deeper and darker film than The Avengers.

Ostensibly, Robert Redford is the bad guy but the real heavy is an institution — Hydra — and the concepts it represents. The writing team took an all too predictable and superficial Hydra from the first film and made it relevant by drawing parallels to the Edward Snowden/Wikileaks revealed world we now live in.

Instead of an over the top cookie-cutter throw away villain like the Red Skull (or Baron von Strucker in the mid-credits scene of Winter Soldier), we have a bureaucratic bean counter in the form of Redford’s Alexander Pierce. Redford isn’t given that much screen time but he makes the most of what he has. The threat from Hydra is more nuanced and unveils more slowly than the threat from Loki in The Avengers. As such it is more engaging.

You know what Loki wants within the first five minutes of The Avengers and you know how he’s going to achieve it before the film is half over. With The Winter Soldier you don’t find out about Hydra until at least one third of the way in and you still don’t know for sure how it’s going to go down until two thirds of the way.

Which theme more resonates with you: the end of the world because of an alien invasion or the end of our liberties because of the oppression of the state? Which strikes greater fear? Which hits you closer to home?

The casting of Redford was inspired as he’s playing against historical type here. It echoes Leone casting Fonda as a heavy in Once Upon a Time in the West. When Redford smirks to Samuel L. Jackson “You know how the game works.” in response to Jackson asking why Redford tried to have him killed or when Redford smiles as he reaches for a gun to shoot one of the Council or when Jackson says, “You know, there was a time when I would have taken a bullet for you” and Redford deadpans, “You already did. And you will again when it’s useful.” — those scenes just drip with evil in ways that a lesser actor could never pull off to such a degree.

Both Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson were dialed in to their roles better than they were in The Avengers. The rapport between the two was better than the one between Johansson and Renner in the first Avengers and even the one between Ruffalo and Johansson in the sequel though that one was sabotaged for reasons I’ll address shortly. No, really…I’m getting there.

Evans in particular delivers a more complex Cap than he had previously in either the first film or The Avengers. He effectively moves between self-deprecating, confused at his place in the world, and authoritative when the need arises. He gives Rogers new depth. Watch Evans’ scene with Haley Atwell when her Alzheimer’s resets her memory. Evans has to act both upset and reassuring at the same time, but have the former betray the authenticity of the latter while doing it. It’s his his best work in the whole film. Side note: If you haven’t, you must see Evans in Snowpiercer.

Johansson is essentially given a side-kick role here but still manages to take what in the script is more or less a two dimensional character into a 3rd dimension. Watch her scenes, particularly these four:

— When she watches Fury “die” and is discussing the shooter. Every bit of information that comes out about the shooter produces the most subtle of reactions as she puts two and two together. Her pleading “Don’t do this to me Nick.” shows Romanoff at her second most emotionally vulnerable moment in the film.

— When Cap corners Romanoff in the hospital and they have their to do about the missing USB drive. That hint of a lip curl and nostril flare when Evans says, “Yeah, I’ll bet you look terrible in them (bikinis) now.” is priceless.

— Her moment of truth when she asks if Cap would trust her to save him and he says, “I would now.”. Johansson’s wordless reaction shows Romanoff at her most emotionally vulnerable moment in the film.

— When she gets shot by The Winter Soldier and she knows this is it for her...until Cap shows up to save her.

Anthony Mackie, whose work I was most familiar with in The Hurt Locker and the criminally underrated Adjustment Bureau, delivers an understated performance here and his rapport with Evans is both immediate and genuine.

Jackson does his best take on Fury so far in the MCU with this film. He struck me as a little too flippant during parts of Iron Man 2 and was (too rigidly) tough as nails in The Avengers. Yes, he “opened up” when talking to Rogers and Stark about the Avengers Initiative after Loki broke jail. But it was at least partly an act. Later on he confesses to Hill, “They needed the push.”

In Winter Soldier, Jackson and the script take Fury into uncharted territory as we see him put his “Fury armor” down several times. Incidentally, did you catch the reference to Pulp Fiction on Fury’s tombstone?

Yeah, ok. I see too much.

Music won’t break a film. Most action film scores are not that memorable to begin with. But when they are, they stick with you for a long time. Think Star Wars. The Empire’s theme from Empire Strikes Back. The theme from Richard Donner’s Superman. Hans Zimmer’s work on Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.

The Avengers had a fanfare theme courtesy of Alan Silvestri. It was okay…good, but not earth shattering. I liked his work on the first Captain America film a bit more.

On Winter Soldier, composer Henry Jackman hit the musical equivalent of a grand slam home run. Mixing in a combination of sweeping classical, electronic music, and raw noise (for The Winter Soldier’s appearances), there is not one false note in Jackman’s score. It matches the scenes, tone for tone, perfectly. It is that good.

Winter Soldier is a CGI-heavy film, as are all Marvel films, but the CGI doesn’t detract from the film as can happen with CGI-based films where directors over embrace the technology and take the visuals in directions where the human eye starts to question at a rudimentary level whether what it’s seeing is somehow “off”. Think every “aerial” CGI shot in all of Peter Jackson’s Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. Just because you can do a CGI shot a particular way doesn’t mean you should. Directors at the top of their game know the difference. The gold standard is James Cameron’s Avatar. Cameron was aided in a huge way by his VR technology which allowed him to real time shoot the camera view in 3D space in any direction imaginable. This gave him the advantage of working out in advance what shot worked best. Avatar truly is a cinematographer’s 3D graphics film.

Obviously the Russos didn’t have that option available to them. What they did have bore the appearances of a minimalist vision; to use the CGI, the bulk of it courtesy of ILM, to its maximum impact, but without turning the shots into cartoonish images. You want the CGI to look like it fits in with the world around it even if what’s being shown is some futuristic thing that doesn’t exist in reality. I’m not dissing Whedon’s CGI usage here. When you get into a film’s vision you are entering a very subjective field. Let’s just say that what the Russos did with their CGI shots resonated with me more than Whedon’s approach on some of The Avengers’ CGI, particularly the final big battle in Manhattan.

So after repeated viewings, The Winter Soldier moved up past Iron Man and Thor, where I originally ranked it, and past The Avengers to take the top perch on my MCU list. But would it stay there?

Winter Soldier was followed by Guardians of the Galaxy. Guardians was a risk for Marvel. It was the MCU’s first film to dive headfirst into the more ethereal aspects of the greater Marvel Universe. The risk was that the audience wouldn’t follow along wholeheartedly. It was a necessary risk for Marvel however because without Guardians, the studio was going to have a lot tougher time getting Phase 3 of the MCU where it needed to go.

Guardians was an unqualified smash. It was the most perfect debut of any of the MCU franchises to this point and as a result vaults ahead of both Iron Man and Thor in my list. But it is a debut film with an overall tone bordering at times on out and out comedy, with new characters and an audience acclimation factor at play. As such, great as it was, Guardians could never compete with the breadth and darkness of Winter Soldier.

What could have is The Avengers: Age of Ultron.

By rights it should have bettered Winter Soldier. It seemed to have everything going for it. Age of Ultron had the most fully realized villain in the MCU to this day — and he wasn’t even flesh and bone. Ultron was an evil tragedy…a child with destruction hard wired in its circuits. Ultron had a purpose and yet it couldn’t understand why it was doing what it was doing. It just knew it had to do it. This is far more complex a villain than The Red Skull, von Strucker, Malekith, Stane, Ronan The Accuser, Laufey, Justin Hammer, Ivan Vanko, Alexander Pierce, and the rest (excluding Thanos who gets an “incomplete” from me because of his paltry screen time up to now). The only MCU villain that comes close to Ultron is Loki and that has more to do with Hiddleston than the character itself.

Whedon gets top marks for successfully navigating a character development process riddled with potential boobytraps. Ultron’s development could have easily veered off course into parody. That it didn’t is a result of Whedon’s vision (pun intended) and James Spader’s surprisingly effective matter of fact performance. Spader plays Ultron straight to a fault, and yet it is in the film’s favor that he does so. There’s no maniacal laughter. There’s some sarcasm but it’s genius sarcasm. The usual trappings of the evil comic book bad guy are shed in favor of a subtler deliberativeness. And it works. In spades (no pun intended).

Age of Ultron is darker than Winter Soldier. We have Romanoff and Banner contemplating a future together in a current lifestyle which does not nurture it. We have Hawkeye questioning his future. We have Tony Stark guilt tripping himself. We have the team falling apart after getting its collective ass kicked by The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Quicksilver gets killed leaving his sister to grieve (had Quicksilver been an established character instead of a newcomer it would have carried even more weight). The film ends with Tony Stark quitting (for reasons that are never revealed…plot hole?), the Hulk exiling himself from the team and the woman he’s come to care about, and Black Widow trying in vain to locate him.

Age of Ultron also boasts the best downtime scene in the MCU to date, the party at Avengers HQ. All the actors can now play off each other with precision. And it looks natural because we’ve had eight films to acclimate to these characters. I could easily sit through a half hour of that kind of scene, it was so good.

I watched Age of Ultron in the theater five times over the span of a month. I haven’t done anything like that for a film in a theater in well over a decade.

And yet, despite besting Winter Soldier with the most complete bad guy, a far darker tone, and some of the best character interplay the MCU has seen yet (excluding Guardians), Age of Ultron is not the better film. Here’s why:

First and foremost is the tortuous process Whedon had bringing that film to life. Some of the battles Whedon had with the Studio over content and length directly impacted how that film flowed and what it could and could not explore.

Whedon had to fight Marvel tooth and nail to keep the farm scene intact. I agree with Whedon that it is a key scene in the film. Whedon won that round but he lost on others.

I said earlier that the Johansson/Evans relationship in Winter Soldier played better for me than the one between Johansson and Ruffalo. The reason why is simple. Whedon had to shave off a chunk of it. Those omissions impacted what appeared on the screen for me. What I saw on the screen felt incomplete, as if something was missing. Only later did it emerge that something was indeed missing.

Whedon’s original vision for Age of Ultron would have resulted in a near three hour film. I, for one, could sit through a three hour Avengers film. But Marvel apparently had issues with film length and I’m sure it was on Whedon’s mind as well.

But, with a shorter film length, this created a big problem which the film tried mightily to get around but wasn’t completely successful at — the uneven screen times for all those characters and the uneven roles they had in the film. I do not refer to Cheadle, Mackie, or Jackson. Cheadle and Mackie were there as padding — to reflect the size of the ever increasing MCU and also to step in as new Avengers at the end. Jackson was there to turn things around for the team and provide the de-mothballed SHIELD helicarrier.

Well…that and to get his completely gratuitous Nick Fury bad-ass action dude scene where he annihilates one of the robots that got inside the helicarrier’s bridge.

I’m talking about the main characters. Thor does comparatively little in this film outside of fighting battles. Whedon cut down his scene in the cave, and as a result, the scene feels oddly unfinished. I don’t know whether it was in that scene or the fantasy scene with Idris Elba, but Tom Hiddleston’s cameo in the film was deleted.

Update 10/10/15: The Ultron Blu-Ray includes the intact cave scene (which was quite good and shouldn’t have been cut) as a deleted scene. No Loki. Apparently there was some sort of as yet not fully disclosed (and not included in the Blu-Ray) tie in between Loki and Ultron (through the Mind Stone/Scepter no doubt) which allegedly caused confusion amongst test audiences regarding who was really the power behind the threat and that’s why Loki got excised from the film. If that’s the case I would be in agreement with that decision.

This is the Achilles heel for The Avengers as a movie franchise. You have so many characters and a studio with an aversion to long film running times. In order to fit them all in the time allotted you may have to shaft someone’s character development and plot time. It can make the film feel uneven. It did here.

Winter Soldier had a smaller main cast and therefore had more room to maneuver in terms of letting the scenes flow well. Cap was the center of the universe and everyone else played off of him. Yet, despite this being Cap’s show, nobody goes hungry. Everyone gets their killer scene and, more importantly, the scenes don’t feel forced into place like the left turn the film Ant-Man took to Avengers HQ. That was not part of the original treatment for the film. Marvel wanted it there and I know why it wanted it there; to set up Ant-Man’s inclusion in the next MCU film. But with a sprawling Avengers HQ that showed one…just one character, The Falcon, it played out like it was shoehorned in there, as an afterthought.

“Oh, one more thing. We want Ant-Man in the next MCU film…let’s add a scene where Scott Lang stumbles across Avengers HQ.”

Not the best transition in the history of film, by far.

With Phase 3, cast size will only get worse. Captain America: Civil War will have every major hero in the Earth centered MCU including Bucky Barnes, Ant-Man, the B level characters from Winter Soldier, plus the debut of Black Panther. The only major characters who won’t appear are Thor, Fury, and The Hulk. Yeah, I too am still scratching my head at Fury’s omission.

And who is helming Civil War? The same team behind Winter Soldier.

There was a reason I spent too many paragraphs on the directors, the screenplay writers, and the composer of Winter Soldier; not just because I think they did a bang up job (and to further pad out an already too long essay most people have probably given up on) but to make a point.

That point is this was noticed by Marvel Studios. All of them were re-signed for Captain America: Civil War. That kind of commitment only happened previously with Whedon and the first two Avengers films. Favreau didn’t write either Iron Man film he directed and the writing teams differed on both films. What’s more, the Russos and the screenwriters were also handed the goose with the golden egg. They will helm the next two Avengers films (provided we don’t have an Edgar Wright moment in the future). Marvel saw what I saw — this group really delivered.

But it will take a juggling act of monumental proportions to make Civil War flow well without a three hour running time. If Whedon couldn’t get a three hour film through with Age of Ultron, I don’t see the Russos having a shot at it. So I expect a 2:10–2:25 minute film. This has me nervous. The fact that Disney changed the reporting structure with Marvel Studios while Civil War is in production doesn’t assuage my trepidations any. Maybe it was just a co-incidence that it happened now. Or maybe it was a reaction to trouble on Civil War’s production. Or pre-production. I guess we’ll find out in eight months.

Age of Ultron was sabotaged from being the all time great film it had a real chance of achieving. It was not deliberate. Nobody purposefully threw a spanner into the works. It should have been better though. I would dearly love to see a director’s cut of Age of Ultron. But, like seeing Edgar Wright’s version of Ant-Man, we may not always get what we want.

And with that awful segue, we get to the last film of Phase 2: Ant-Man. Let’s get the obvious out of the way. It was a fun film. The CGI is the best CGI of all the MCU films to this date; not because the CGI was so grounbreaking (I did find the insects a tad on the fake-y side) but because of how Ant-Man was visualized when shrunk compared to his world. It was very original.

Normally when we get films with characters that have been miniaturized, Hollywood has tended to take the view of showing the miniaturized world from one of two perspectives:

1. You see the character miniaturized but from a view that is relatively close. You’ll see a leg or an arm of a normal sized person in the scene and the miniaturized character takes up a good chunk of the screen.
2. The miniaturized character’s perspective: They look “full sized” and everything around them is huge.

We do get some of both in Ant-Man but, thanks to improvements in technology, a sizable amount of the CGI shoots the miniaturized Ant-Man from our perspective with a teeny tiny speck of an Ant-Man.

This movie took the miniaturization concept to a level not seen before to such a degree on film.

But all the visuals in the world cannot obfuscate the fact that this was Edgar Wright’s film, based on Wright’s and Joe Cornish’s screenplay, until he and Marvel had a falling out over direction of the film. If you read some of the commentary on the making of the film, you know that a good chunk of Wright’s story and themes made it into the final film. But this isn’t his film as he wanted to make it. It’s Peyton Reed’s version of Wright’s film with some script doctoring from Adam McKay and Paul Rudd.

I’ll stipulate that, for the most part, someone who had no idea of what happened behind the scenes would be hard pressed to tell that they were watching a film with something of a split personality. The script doctoring didn’t really manifest itself in any visible manner, if you exclude the aforementioned detour to Avenger’s HQ which did stick out like a sore thumb.

But the fact remains that Ant-Man under Wright was supposed to be a pure standalone film. What we got was something that ties Ant-Man a lot closer to the MCU.

But, even if Wright had made his film, its more whimsical aspects could never match the far more serious Avengers films, nor Winter Soldier, precisely because it was too funny.

For me, in the end, Ant-Man is just the latest in a long line of good MCU films. Nothing more.

So, as we celebrate the one year anniversary of you starting to read this piece, let me conclude by saying that I feel that Captain America: The Winter Soldier was Marvel’s Empire Strikes Back…up to this point anyways.

That doesn’t mean that the other MCU films were bad (oh…ok…The Incredible Hulk was bad). It just means that everything came together on that film in a way that is deucedly difficult to replicate. The odds are Marvel will probably not be able to replicate it as it goes into Phase 3.

There will be a phase 4 at some point, provided Marvel keeps getting this level of ROI on its endeavors. But none of the Phase 4 films have been announced so I have nothing to go on. But we do know what’s coming in Phase 3…

(This list was updated 10/12/15 to include Marvel’s last second change to Phase 3's slate of films and a re-ordering of the batting order.)

Captain America: Civil War — I already discussed my concerns at length so no need to repeat myself. But I will add that the mid credits scene in Ant-Man where Falcon and Cap have The Winter Soldier essentially captured bothers me greatly. I fear we are going to get shortchanged on the necessary exposition of Rogers and Barnes getting to know each other all over again and Barnes expressing the obligatory grief over what he’s been put through. My basis for this theory is I was expecting a lot more of von Strucker in Age Of Ultron based on the mid-credits scene in Winter Soldier. Instead we get a few frames of him and then he’s killed…off screen no less! Marvel made quick work of Hydra to move on to Ultron and I’m worried they’ll do the same thing with Barnes and Rogers’ re-acquaintance period on to the heart of Civil War. For the film’s sake, I hope my fears prove to be unfounded.

Update (9/22/15): Some hints have dropped that the mid-credits scene comes straight out of Civil War somewhere around the mid-point of that film. If true, then we should have nothing to worry about.

Update (10/25/15): Marvel dropped the first trailer and I do mean dropped…like a bomb!

I’m going to have to revise Civil War’s odds of besting Winter Soldier up…to even money. This movie is looking a lot darker than I thought it would.

Update (5/12/16) — With Civil War now out, I am going to have to take the “Empire Strikes Back” title away from Winter Soldier. I wrote up my reasons why here….

Doctor Strange — I love Cumberbatch but this will be an introductory film. The chances of an introductory film resonating with viewers to a degree that it surpasses Winter Soldier are near nil.

Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2 — It will be hard for Marvel to top the first one. Almost impossible. There’s a negative acclimation factor at play here. We weren’t expecting what we got the first time in terms of the characters and their personalities. Now we know and it will be tough to outdo that kind of established pattern without looking like you’re repeating yourself.

Untitled Spider-Man Film — I’m not a webhead fan…at least not a fan of what has been done with webhead in the last 5 films. Spidey has always been played as more of a characterization of the character and not as serious as the books have tended to play him. I fear more of the same here.

Thor: Ragnarok — I expect a dour film here based on the title. But we know Thor has to live to make it to the next Avengers films (unless they do what they did in the books and make Jane the new Thor). And Thor as a franchise hasn’t come close to matching either Avengers film, let alone Winter Soldier. There’s always a chance it could this time but I would not put money on it.

Black Panther — New franchise (though technically he makes his debut appearance in Civil War). New characters. New acclimation period for filmgoers. As with the other MCU “get to know you” films, it could be very good but I don’t expect a serious challenge to Winter Soldier here.

The Avengers: The Infinity War Part 1 — This is the Phase 3 MCU film that has the best shot at knocking off Winter Soldier. Why? Because Steve Rogers will probably die and Bucky Barnes will assume the role of Captain America.

Oh…no you didn’t!

Oh…yes I did! Read the comics people!!!

Evans has a six picture deal with Marvel and he’s done four of them. Civil War makes five and Part 1 of Avengers: Infinity War makes six. Unless Marvel somehow extends Evans’ deal for Part 2, the MCU will likely follow the comics and Barnes will become Captain America. Throw in the fact that it’s going to be something of a cliffhanger and we could be well on our way to the darkest MCU film yet.

Update (5/12/16) — Evans has extended his deal with Marvel to cover both Infinity War films. So the chances of him getting killed off and Bucky assuming the Captain America mantle have now plummeted to near zero. Furthermore Infinity War no longer has to best Winter Soldier…it has to best Civil War. I briefly touch on why the big looming battle with Thanos may prevent that from happening here.

Ant Man and The Wasp — Ummmmm…

no.

Captain Marvel — See Black Panther…

The Avengers: Infinity War Part 2 — Hard to say since we don’t know what’s happened in Part 1. But the conclusion of a two-parter is usually not as heavy so it’s unlikely to top Winter Soldier.

Inhumans — Not sure what’s going to happen here. There must be some kind of tie in with the last Avengers film so this will likely be a more cosmic film and these Inhumans are going to probably be not just the Agents of Shield variety but Black Bolt and Co. I can’t see Phase 3 closing out with the deepest darkest film in the MCU so I don’t expect this to challenge Winter Soldier.

Update (5/12/16) — Inhumans has been dropped from Disney’s schedule and looks to be in limbo as far as Marvel is concerned. It may not happen now.

Winter Soldier’s crown is looking pretty secure to me. Then again, the beauty of the MCU is that it has been maddeningly consistent in confounding expectations.

How I rank the MCU films so far. Your mileage may vary. The way to properly read it is to understand that the gaps between them all are not equidistant. The distance between 1–2 is not that great. The distance between 3–6 is wider but more equally spaced. There’s a much bigger gap from 6 through 8.

1. Captain America: Civil War
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3. The Avengers
4. The Avengers: Age of Ultron/Guardians of the Galaxy (tie)
5. Iron Man/Thor (tie)
6. Captain America: The First Avenger/Ant-Man (tie)
7. Iron Man 3/Thor: The Dark World (tie)
8. Iron Man 2
9. The Incredible Hulk

P.S. One last thing on Age of Ultron which I couldn’t make fit in anywhere in the main story so I broke it out here…

There was a huge plot hole big enough for the SHIELD helicarrier to fly through. This plot hole was generated by Age Of Ultron but it was a plot hole that traveled back in time to impact the first Avengers film.

Nobody seems to have picked up on the fact that in the first film Thanos gave Loki his scepter to help retrieve one of the Infinity Stones. And what was in that scepter? It is revealed in the sequel that it was an Infinity Stone.

Does anyone seriously believe Thanos would give up an Infinity Stone in order to retrieve an Infinity Stone when he needs all of them to form the Infinity Gauntlet (ooops…Phase 3 spoiler alert!)? What…you’re going to tell me he didn’t know it was there? Um…yeeeah.

This nonsense should have been avoided and could have been avoided since Age of Ultron caused this to occur. I’d love to hear an explanation from Whedon seeing as he wrote and directed both films.

(Inside Cable News is run by an anonymous blogger who calls himself “Spud” and has written about the goings on in the world of cable news for over a decade. But, as his alias suggests, Spud’s interests have de-volved beyond cable news. After all we are all Dev-o!)

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