TLDR: Part 2 of who the hell knows of Phase 3? Holy balls! This one contains Thor: Ragnarok / Spiderman: Homecoming / Black Panther
Prior threads:
Phase 1 Reaction:
https://texags.com/forums/13/topics/3278723
Phase 2 Reaction:
https://texags.com/forums/13/topics/3285463
Phase 3 Reaction (Part 1): Dr. Strange / GotG Vol 2 / Civil War
https://texags.com/forums/13/topics/3287952
If you've been following these you know the score here. If not check out at least the Phase 1 reaction post linked above. Ranking these 3 amongst themselves:
3. Thor: Ragnarok (dude, chill)
2. Black Panther
1. Spiderman: Homecoming
Ok sports fans here we go!!!! *rubs hands together*
Thor: Ragnarok
Ok…first off I got to start this off by saying I didn't hate this movie and it's definitely a good film….but I didn't fall head over heals in love with it like a lot of other folks did and I'll get into why from a story stand point…but I also think my reaction to this is partly my own fault. Why?
Whelp…when we watched this film we had watched it the very day after we watched GotG 2. And if you read my prior post from this one you know how much I fell in love with that movie and watching this one right afterwards THE VERY NEXT DAY was probably a little much. Kinda like the Solo movie coming out a few months after The Last Jedi. Also, we watched it in the WRONG DANG ORDER! We should have watched Spiderman: Homecoming immediately after GotG 2 and that film would have been the perfect bridge between those 2. I only realized our error after looking up the release date order randomly later in the day and felt like an idiot. Plus the Spiderman films are NOT on Disney + so hopefully with knowing that y'all can understand the error.
Now, with that out of the way…
Man…Jeff Goldblum sucked. Just plain sucked. Again if you've been reading these posts you've gathered at this point how much I value a good well written / motivated villain. And he was by far the worst villain we've had so far in the MCU. No. Stop. I don't care how much you like the actual Jeff Goldblum and I'm sure he's a cool dude and loves his fans. But blue lip, melty stick, sucky cos-play Snoke rob bad guy was A-W-F-U-L. Why? Great question…
Why should anyone fear this guy? He has no power. No strength. No supernatural powers. His personal ship has no weapons on it (but he's known for having orgys on it???). All he's got is some weird buff chick that bobs her head too much and a stick that melts people. Oh no…..
On top of that what the hell Loki???? Loki????? Hello!!! Hello!!! Anybody home!?!?!?!?!?!? Think McFly!!!
This guy is the GOD of mischief. The friekin God of mischief! He took over Asgard! He banished Odin! He fights with the God of Thunder and was at one point the right hand man of Thanos and was only stopped from taking over Earth from a team of Avengers! And he can't handle Goldblum??? This made zero sense to me.
And while we're on the topic of villains, the hell sister with the 12-point Malificient horns wasn't that much better. Ok destroying Thor's hammer was a jaw dropper. But gosh darnit a huge opportunity was missed here! Don't show me a ceiling painting of her wielding the hammer…..SHOW ME her wielding the hammer!!! Show me her and Odin slaughtering thousands and taking over kingdoms for 10-15 minutes!!! Circumvent expectations here and actually show us Thor's lineage isn't as clear cut as we've thought it was instead of just having dialogue and a ceiling painting! Arg!!!!
Ok…so what did I like about this movie?
Whelp…pretty much everything else! Every time ANYONE was on screen without the villains was instantly awesome! Thor and Loki as usual are awesome together and the only thing better than them on this film (which is a very high bar to top) was Thor and Hulk on film together! Their arena fight scene was awesomely hilarious along with all their dialogue and interactions. And the new character…big rock guy (can't think of his name) was an immediate delight…I still find myself saying (or at least thinking to myself), "Goodbye new Doug" every time I think something is about to go wrong for someone on film or in person.
The Valkyrie from Asgard was also a lot of fun. My kids (along with my wife and myself) absolutely lost it with her characters first appearance, "He's mine" *drunkenly stumbles off platform into the garbage*
And the biggest deal here was the ending of Asgard! This is how you do a sequel!!! You give characters/story lines new challenges. Beelzeboss destroyed Asgard!! A homeworld we've spent 2 movies in and referenced multiple times. That was a huge turn that I did not see coming!
Bottom line: this was a good film. And you'll see where I rank it at the bottom of this post. Everyone was great in it I just wish the villains had been done better.
End credits scene: holy crap wasn't that ship a bad-guy ship from the first GotG movie???
Black Panther
This was A LOT of fun and such a different story from all the other MCU origin movies up to this point. Of course I can see how someone could argue it technically wasn't a true origin story but it's close enough.
The actor portraying Black Panther is perfect. Just perfect. I had mentioned from my Civil War reaction how much I loved his character having known nothing leading up to that movie about him and this film was the perfect balance of information and story.
Probably one minor thing that maybe some overlooked that I loved most about this film was the relationship between T'Challa and his sister. There's one scene where he's been kinged already and he goes to visit her in her lab…and their interaction with one another was the perfect balance of respect for his new position vs. brother/sister quirks and family history. Throughout the entire movie I genuinely feared something terrible was going to happen to his sister and if that had happened I probably would've lost it!
How about the dang villains in this?! Huh?? The Klaw guy (who I was convinced the entire time was actually Gerard Butler) was a really fun dude to watch on screen! There's nothing more entertaining to me than watching a bad guy genuinely having fun being a bad guy and dang he sure was! When he shoots BP (Black Panther) with his robot arm gun and was WAY too enthusiastic about "winning a grand" because he shot the money box that BP shielded himself with and sent money everywhere had me rolling!
But then what? He's dead? Now we're focusing on the child (now an adult) from the very beginning of the movie and this is the heart of the film right here!!! Without the messaging getting overly shoved down our throats we're shown how in the right (or wrong) circumstances how any person can become good or evil based on their upbringing (was getting Star Trek: Nemesis vibes here). The child who was COMPLETELY INNOCENT had his father taken from him from a character we thought to be pure and good and we were actually SHOWN this (you see how this works Ragnarok?) and from one poor decision an evil person was created.
And all of this was built up to a perfect climax!!! Our main protagonist who's as pure and good as you can get still wanted to save the villain. But the villain who because of their upbringing and experiences was impossible to change and chose death over life. That was a big deal to me and I was so happy to see they went with an ending like that.
Some of this story…let's be honest…was predictable as hell. There's no way BP was getting killed half way through the movie and it was obvious that "abandoned tribe" in the mountains was still going to play a huge role in the climax. But even though there were moments where it was clear where this was all heading the journey to those endings was a lot of fun!
End credits: Yeah I was wondering where the hell the Winter Soldier has been!
Spiderman: Homecoming
This was Spiderman. Hands down. Toby McGuire? You got the ball rolling. Andrew Garfield? Still kept it warm. Tom Holland? Dude. I love you.
So…how about the beginning? We have zero origin story because we don't need it! Thank you for respecting our intelligence on this super popular character. So instead we get how this character would ACTUALLY act/respond to these powers!! This kid who had literally fought with (and against) Avengers is thrown back into his normal high school life and is super eager to prove himself. So what does he do? He harasses Happy with constant phone calls about his every day happenings as Spiderman. And what are those? Random occurrences where half the time he thinks he's helping where he's making things worse! And that was something that always bugged me about super heroes in general! How did they always seem to be in the right place in the right time? Lazy writing perhaps? Cause this kid is doing random tasks half the time we all could be doing he's just doing them in a spidey suite cause HOW COULD HE POSSIBLY KNOW WHERE THE REAL CRIMES ARE??? So perfect.
And how about this villain? Again, he's a normal guy just trying to make a living and was dealt a bad hand. And with being dealt that poor hand he took the easy out with technology he found because he needed to make money to support his family. Then he discovered he was dang good at it and kept it up and fell into the life. I loved Harvey Birdman in this!
There's one scene specifically that I want to break down here…and that's the scene where Parker arrives at his dates house and discovers the villain of the movie is his dates father. This. Was. Perfection! Here we go!
We start off with…honestly…seeing how great of a father he is. He's cool. He's loving. He's supportive. Honestly if any of us were taking a girl to a dance and met this guy as the girl's father we'd probably feel pretty good about it. This helps even more drive home the idea that this is not a bad man…but a good man who made bad choices. So Parker obviously figures it out right away but Birdman is oblivious for now.
Then we get the three of them in the car on the way to the dance. Birdman puts 2 and 2 together when his daughter mentions Peter being at the party but being barley there and tying that in with the bad deal where Spidey showed up the same night. This whole scene was perfect and mirrored the Thanksgiving dinner scene from the original Toby McGuire Spiderman movie amazingly! The tension and realization from each character was paced very well! And even when stopped at a light when Birdman figured out that Peter was in fact Spiderman, the green light from the stoplight was shown right against his face (this was definitely intentional) giving me all the awesome vibes and callbacks from when Green Goblin himself discovered the identity of Spiderman.
And the father/son relationship between Tony Stark and Peter Parker was also incredible and I was 100% invested in that! I wanted Peter to show Stark just how much potential he had but at the same time I wanted Stark to keep him grounded for his protection.
All in all…this was the perfect Spiderman movie for the MCU and I absolutely loved it! Also…the very last scene…"WHAT THE FU-!!!???" Yeah…I was in tears from laughing so hard at that.
End credits scene: So Birdman's in jail…course he is…but he doesn't want to give up Parkers identity cause I assume he still has some standard of morals and I guess The Scorpion is going to show up at some point?
So how do these films rank now???
18. Iron Man 3
17. Captain America
16. Iron Man 2
15. Thor: Dark World
14. Thor
13. Ant-Man
12. The Incredible Hulk
11. The Avengers: Age of Ultron
10. Iron Man
9. Thor: Ragnarok
8. Black Panther
7. Dr. Strange
6. Spiderman: Homecoming
5. Guardians of the Galaxy
4. The Avengers
3. Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2
2. Captain America: Winter Soldier
1. Captain America: Civil War
Alright…next up…Avengers: Infinity War!
Oh…btw…I've already watched it. And it'll be my next post. And it's my new #1. Holy hell!
Prior threads:
Phase 1 Reaction:
https://texags.com/forums/13/topics/3278723
Phase 2 Reaction:
https://texags.com/forums/13/topics/3285463
Phase 3 Reaction (Part 1): Dr. Strange / GotG Vol 2 / Civil War
https://texags.com/forums/13/topics/3287952
If you've been following these you know the score here. If not check out at least the Phase 1 reaction post linked above. Ranking these 3 amongst themselves:
3. Thor: Ragnarok (dude, chill)
2. Black Panther
1. Spiderman: Homecoming
Ok sports fans here we go!!!! *rubs hands together*
Thor: Ragnarok
Ok…first off I got to start this off by saying I didn't hate this movie and it's definitely a good film….but I didn't fall head over heals in love with it like a lot of other folks did and I'll get into why from a story stand point…but I also think my reaction to this is partly my own fault. Why?
Whelp…when we watched this film we had watched it the very day after we watched GotG 2. And if you read my prior post from this one you know how much I fell in love with that movie and watching this one right afterwards THE VERY NEXT DAY was probably a little much. Kinda like the Solo movie coming out a few months after The Last Jedi. Also, we watched it in the WRONG DANG ORDER! We should have watched Spiderman: Homecoming immediately after GotG 2 and that film would have been the perfect bridge between those 2. I only realized our error after looking up the release date order randomly later in the day and felt like an idiot. Plus the Spiderman films are NOT on Disney + so hopefully with knowing that y'all can understand the error.
Now, with that out of the way…
Man…Jeff Goldblum sucked. Just plain sucked. Again if you've been reading these posts you've gathered at this point how much I value a good well written / motivated villain. And he was by far the worst villain we've had so far in the MCU. No. Stop. I don't care how much you like the actual Jeff Goldblum and I'm sure he's a cool dude and loves his fans. But blue lip, melty stick, sucky cos-play Snoke rob bad guy was A-W-F-U-L. Why? Great question…
Why should anyone fear this guy? He has no power. No strength. No supernatural powers. His personal ship has no weapons on it (but he's known for having orgys on it???). All he's got is some weird buff chick that bobs her head too much and a stick that melts people. Oh no…..
On top of that what the hell Loki???? Loki????? Hello!!! Hello!!! Anybody home!?!?!?!?!?!? Think McFly!!!
This guy is the GOD of mischief. The friekin God of mischief! He took over Asgard! He banished Odin! He fights with the God of Thunder and was at one point the right hand man of Thanos and was only stopped from taking over Earth from a team of Avengers! And he can't handle Goldblum??? This made zero sense to me.
And while we're on the topic of villains, the hell sister with the 12-point Malificient horns wasn't that much better. Ok destroying Thor's hammer was a jaw dropper. But gosh darnit a huge opportunity was missed here! Don't show me a ceiling painting of her wielding the hammer…..SHOW ME her wielding the hammer!!! Show me her and Odin slaughtering thousands and taking over kingdoms for 10-15 minutes!!! Circumvent expectations here and actually show us Thor's lineage isn't as clear cut as we've thought it was instead of just having dialogue and a ceiling painting! Arg!!!!
Ok…so what did I like about this movie?
Whelp…pretty much everything else! Every time ANYONE was on screen without the villains was instantly awesome! Thor and Loki as usual are awesome together and the only thing better than them on this film (which is a very high bar to top) was Thor and Hulk on film together! Their arena fight scene was awesomely hilarious along with all their dialogue and interactions. And the new character…big rock guy (can't think of his name) was an immediate delight…I still find myself saying (or at least thinking to myself), "Goodbye new Doug" every time I think something is about to go wrong for someone on film or in person.
The Valkyrie from Asgard was also a lot of fun. My kids (along with my wife and myself) absolutely lost it with her characters first appearance, "He's mine" *drunkenly stumbles off platform into the garbage*
And the biggest deal here was the ending of Asgard! This is how you do a sequel!!! You give characters/story lines new challenges. Beelzeboss destroyed Asgard!! A homeworld we've spent 2 movies in and referenced multiple times. That was a huge turn that I did not see coming!
Bottom line: this was a good film. And you'll see where I rank it at the bottom of this post. Everyone was great in it I just wish the villains had been done better.
End credits scene: holy crap wasn't that ship a bad-guy ship from the first GotG movie???
Black Panther
This was A LOT of fun and such a different story from all the other MCU origin movies up to this point. Of course I can see how someone could argue it technically wasn't a true origin story but it's close enough.
The actor portraying Black Panther is perfect. Just perfect. I had mentioned from my Civil War reaction how much I loved his character having known nothing leading up to that movie about him and this film was the perfect balance of information and story.
Probably one minor thing that maybe some overlooked that I loved most about this film was the relationship between T'Challa and his sister. There's one scene where he's been kinged already and he goes to visit her in her lab…and their interaction with one another was the perfect balance of respect for his new position vs. brother/sister quirks and family history. Throughout the entire movie I genuinely feared something terrible was going to happen to his sister and if that had happened I probably would've lost it!
How about the dang villains in this?! Huh?? The Klaw guy (who I was convinced the entire time was actually Gerard Butler) was a really fun dude to watch on screen! There's nothing more entertaining to me than watching a bad guy genuinely having fun being a bad guy and dang he sure was! When he shoots BP (Black Panther) with his robot arm gun and was WAY too enthusiastic about "winning a grand" because he shot the money box that BP shielded himself with and sent money everywhere had me rolling!
But then what? He's dead? Now we're focusing on the child (now an adult) from the very beginning of the movie and this is the heart of the film right here!!! Without the messaging getting overly shoved down our throats we're shown how in the right (or wrong) circumstances how any person can become good or evil based on their upbringing (was getting Star Trek: Nemesis vibes here). The child who was COMPLETELY INNOCENT had his father taken from him from a character we thought to be pure and good and we were actually SHOWN this (you see how this works Ragnarok?) and from one poor decision an evil person was created.
And all of this was built up to a perfect climax!!! Our main protagonist who's as pure and good as you can get still wanted to save the villain. But the villain who because of their upbringing and experiences was impossible to change and chose death over life. That was a big deal to me and I was so happy to see they went with an ending like that.
Some of this story…let's be honest…was predictable as hell. There's no way BP was getting killed half way through the movie and it was obvious that "abandoned tribe" in the mountains was still going to play a huge role in the climax. But even though there were moments where it was clear where this was all heading the journey to those endings was a lot of fun!
End credits: Yeah I was wondering where the hell the Winter Soldier has been!
Spiderman: Homecoming
This was Spiderman. Hands down. Toby McGuire? You got the ball rolling. Andrew Garfield? Still kept it warm. Tom Holland? Dude. I love you.
So…how about the beginning? We have zero origin story because we don't need it! Thank you for respecting our intelligence on this super popular character. So instead we get how this character would ACTUALLY act/respond to these powers!! This kid who had literally fought with (and against) Avengers is thrown back into his normal high school life and is super eager to prove himself. So what does he do? He harasses Happy with constant phone calls about his every day happenings as Spiderman. And what are those? Random occurrences where half the time he thinks he's helping where he's making things worse! And that was something that always bugged me about super heroes in general! How did they always seem to be in the right place in the right time? Lazy writing perhaps? Cause this kid is doing random tasks half the time we all could be doing he's just doing them in a spidey suite cause HOW COULD HE POSSIBLY KNOW WHERE THE REAL CRIMES ARE??? So perfect.
And how about this villain? Again, he's a normal guy just trying to make a living and was dealt a bad hand. And with being dealt that poor hand he took the easy out with technology he found because he needed to make money to support his family. Then he discovered he was dang good at it and kept it up and fell into the life. I loved Harvey Birdman in this!
There's one scene specifically that I want to break down here…and that's the scene where Parker arrives at his dates house and discovers the villain of the movie is his dates father. This. Was. Perfection! Here we go!
We start off with…honestly…seeing how great of a father he is. He's cool. He's loving. He's supportive. Honestly if any of us were taking a girl to a dance and met this guy as the girl's father we'd probably feel pretty good about it. This helps even more drive home the idea that this is not a bad man…but a good man who made bad choices. So Parker obviously figures it out right away but Birdman is oblivious for now.
Then we get the three of them in the car on the way to the dance. Birdman puts 2 and 2 together when his daughter mentions Peter being at the party but being barley there and tying that in with the bad deal where Spidey showed up the same night. This whole scene was perfect and mirrored the Thanksgiving dinner scene from the original Toby McGuire Spiderman movie amazingly! The tension and realization from each character was paced very well! And even when stopped at a light when Birdman figured out that Peter was in fact Spiderman, the green light from the stoplight was shown right against his face (this was definitely intentional) giving me all the awesome vibes and callbacks from when Green Goblin himself discovered the identity of Spiderman.
And the father/son relationship between Tony Stark and Peter Parker was also incredible and I was 100% invested in that! I wanted Peter to show Stark just how much potential he had but at the same time I wanted Stark to keep him grounded for his protection.
All in all…this was the perfect Spiderman movie for the MCU and I absolutely loved it! Also…the very last scene…"WHAT THE FU-!!!???" Yeah…I was in tears from laughing so hard at that.
End credits scene: So Birdman's in jail…course he is…but he doesn't want to give up Parkers identity cause I assume he still has some standard of morals and I guess The Scorpion is going to show up at some point?
So how do these films rank now???
18. Iron Man 3
17. Captain America
16. Iron Man 2
15. Thor: Dark World
14. Thor
13. Ant-Man
12. The Incredible Hulk
11. The Avengers: Age of Ultron
10. Iron Man
9. Thor: Ragnarok
8. Black Panther
7. Dr. Strange
6. Spiderman: Homecoming
5. Guardians of the Galaxy
4. The Avengers
3. Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2
2. Captain America: Winter Soldier
1. Captain America: Civil War
Alright…next up…Avengers: Infinity War!
Oh…btw…I've already watched it. And it'll be my next post. And it's my new #1. Holy hell!
R
