A couple of months ago I got all excited about Game Of Thrones coming back on the telly, and decided that the time was ripe for a REWATCH of the whole series! This thrilling idea got somewhat derailed by me having loads of other stuff to do, so that all I'd managed before the new series started was to read one of those "here is who everybody is and who they have killed/shagged previously" articles.
HOWEVER, in the week before Easter I realised that there was ANOTHER long running series FINALE coming up which I COULD do a rewatch for i.e. The Marvel Cinematic Universe! We have ALL THE TELLY in our house, so I knew it was do-able, and a glance at my diary showed me I actually had some FREE TIME available in which to get it done. So it was that I sat myself down on the sofa and over the course of the Easter weekend watched a total of FIVE Marvel films i.e. "Avengers", "Avengers Age Of Ultron", "Captain America Civil War", "Thor Ragnorak" and "Avengers Infinity War". The three Avengers films were chosen because OBVIOUSLY they are Avengers films, with Civil War and the Thor one basically being two halves of another Avengers film. I have now completed this re-watch and have the following INSIGHTS to give:
They are ALL much better than I remember them being, ESPECIALLY "Age Of Ultron" which I was a bit disappointed by at the time but which actually ROCKS along like nobody's business.
The whole thing REALLY works - it's amazing how COMICS it all is, and how it all ties together so (seemingly) effortlessly. If I'd had time I would have definitely also watched "Black Panther" and "Ant Man" (as they are ACE) but even without them the whole thing flows beautifully. It was like watching one INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE series that also had huge chunks of MASSIVE ACTION every ten minutes.
It is LUDICROUS that "Civil War" is meant to be a Captain America film when CLEARLY it is an Avengers film from start to finish.
Tom Hollander as Spider-man is UTTERLY GRATE.
The Black Widow film cannot come soon ENOUGH.
Thor Ragnorak is probably my favourite because it a) is dead funny b) looks FAB with all the Kirby stuff and c) is probably the closest it gets to The Actual Comics without actually BEING like the comics.
I love the way that, in "Infinity War" the bits with Doctor Strange in are like the Doctor Strange FILM, and the Guardians Of The Galaxy bits are like THEIR films, and the same for everyone else AND YET it all mixes together so well.
Flipping heck, I thought it was INCREDIBLE that the first Avengers film had Iron Man AND Thor AND Captain America AND The Hulk in it, and could never have DREAMT that a few years later I'd be watching a film with them AND The Vision AND The Black Panther AND The Scarlet Witch AND Spider-Man AND Doctor Strange AND so on and so on.
As you can probably gather I REALLY REALLY enjoyed it, much more than I thought I would, and have now booked myself a ticket to go to the 06:30 showing at my local mega-cinema on Thursday. I am pretty sure that this is a BRILLIANT idea - I can't wait!
