The Incredible HulkWhat really kills this for me is the fact every single character is a worse piece of casting than it was in the Ang Lee movie. Norton has it twice as bad as anyone - great actor though he may be, he's inferior to both his predecessor Bana and his successor Ruffalo in the title role. Also the villain is basically just an evil Hulk, which feels massively uninspired after an opening
Iron Man movie where the villain was basically just an evil Iron Man.
Iron Man 2This was actually a lot better than I remembered it being. It's still kinda messy and Rourke isn't in it enough, but on the whole I really enjoyed seeing this again. It's also probably the first one in the MCU that feels like an MCU movie (for better or worse - lots of baddies blowing up cars but otherwise generally hurting nobody). Needless to say Downey, Jr. is still the star of the show, but Sam Rockwell is great too. Totally forgot about Elon Musk's cameo
ThorYou'd think a movie with such a rich backstory to work with would at least manage to be interesting, but mostly I just find this to be kinda boring and underwhelming. Hopkins feels largely wasted, and while Hemsworth and Hiddleston are decent enough in their roles, both would go on to far greater performances later in the franchise. I'd completely forgotten that this is the film where Hawkeye first pops up (for all of five minutes).
I also watched the one-shot
The Consultant. I've not seen any of these shorts before. It was OK. The central gag earned a laugh, but honestly it's hard to critique something that's only four minutes long and fully one third of it is just a scene from an existing movie replayed.
