Henrik Carlsson's Blog

🎞 Watched: Ant-Man

I’d heard a lot about how this one was different from the earlier MCU movies and while it felt less serious – mostly in a good way – I don’t think it was this radical shift that some made it out to be.

Anyway, it was enjoyable but also a bit forgettable. I probably won’t rush to rewatch this anytime soon.

One interesting thing was the scene in the beginning that was set in the past, where they’d digitally de-aged Michael Douglas. I knew this was going to be a thing and after my negative reaction to Tarkin in Rouge One I expected to dislike this as well. Turns out I was wrong. Technology marches on fast and this digital effect looked really good. Funnily enough I actually though digitally de-aged Douglas looked more real than the real Douglas in the rest of the movie.

🎞 Watched: Avengers: Age of Ultron

When I first watched this movie a couple of years ago I really didn’t like it. Now, as I’m watching is as part of my MCU watching, it is definitely less terrible but it’s still a mess of a movie.

Even though I’ve watched countless hours of MCU movies, since I haven’t watched the Agents of Shield tv show, I still had to resort to google to understand the stakes of the first scene. Who is Avengers fighting? Why? And why should I care?

The action scenes feels impact-less overall and I can’t really relate to the characters. There are some good things though.

I like the scene with Hawkeye’s family. It humanises all of the characters and gives me some reasons to care about them. Also, Elizabeth Olsen is good as the Scarlet Witch. She is doing some actual acting in the final battle scene, something that no-one else in the cast bothers at this point in the movie.

All in all, a more or less terrible movie.

🎞 Watched: Iron Man 3

This movie has some serious problem with tone. Sometimes it’s great but sometimes it just can’t juggle its emotions correctly. The result is one of the worst Marvel movies. Though I have a feeling that the one I’ll watch next will be even worse.

🎞 Watched: Thor: The Dark World

Yet another Marvel movie. This one was definitely or the sillier side and parts of it felt really bad but as a whole still quite entertaining.

🎞 Watched: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Another highly entertaining movie. The spy thriller elements are more interesting than the action scenes.

🎞 Watched: The Avengers

Now this was a movie that absolutely benefited from me watching a bunch of other MCU movies prior to it. I originally watched The Avengers a few years ago, having only watched the first Iron Man beforehand. I was mildly entertained by The Avengers then, but nothing more. At times it seemed really silly and I didn’t feel engaged.

Fast-forward to yesterday when I was supposed to watch this for a few minutes during my lunch break. Since I had watched most of the preceding MCU movies, I suddenly felt myself caring about the characters and even understanding them. I cared about Captain America, a character that I’d never given a damn about before. I cared about Coulson because I’d seen him in multiple movies. I even understood where Thor came from. And I really cared about Erik Selveig, for more reasons that simply him being played by Stellan Skarsgård.

The result of this was that I blew off work for more than two hours and actually watched the entire movie in one sitting and I had a blast. Two and a half hours of solid entertainment!

🎞 Watched: Iron Man 2

Another entertaining Marvel movie. Not great by any means, I especially didn’t like neither the character Ivan Vanko not Mickey Rourke’s performance. Also the Iron Man fight scenes is kind of boring but the rest is fun.