The Iron Giant (1999)

From Wiki- The Iron Giant is a 1999 American animated science fiction film directed by Brad Bird and written by Tim McCanlies^[a]. Loosely based on Ted Hughes's 1968 novel, The Iron Man, it features an ensemble cast, including Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick Jr., Vin Diesel, James Gammon, Cloris Leachman, John Mahoney, Eli Marienthal, Christopher McDonald and M. Emmet Walsh. Set during the Cold War in 1957, the film centers on a young boy named Hogarth Hughes, who discovers and befriends a giant robot of extraterrestrial origin. With the help of beatnik artist Dean McCoppin, Hogarth attempts to prevent the United States' military, who have been alerted by paranoid federal agent Kent Mansley, from finding and vanquishing the Giant.  Back to me:

HOTW- Iron Man

 

From Wiki- Iron Man is the superhero persona of Anthony Edward "Tony" Stark, a businessman and engineer who runs the weapons manufacturing company Stark Industries. When Stark was captured in a war zone and sustained a severe heart wound, he built his Iron Man armor and escaped his captors. Iron Man's suits of armor grant him superhuman strength, flight, energy projection, and other abilities. The character was created in response to the Vietnam War as Lee's attempt to create a likeable pro-war character. Since his creation, Iron Man has been used to explore political themes, with early Iron Man stories being set in the Cold War. The character's role as a weapons manufacturer proved controversial, and Marvel moved away from geopolitics by the 1970s. Instead, the stories began exploring themes such as civil unrest, technological advancement, corporate espionage, alcoholism, and governmental authority. Back to me:

the Marvel Superheroes have Arrived!

I never saw these as a kid, and didn't know any of the production history about them.  I saw them advertised in Famous Monsters and finally purchased one when they showed up at the local K-Mart.  I twas not ready for just how limited the animation was.  I had expected it to be like the Spider-Man cartoon or Hanna-Barbera.  It was disappointing to the younger me to say the least.  I never got any more of them on 8mm because of that, and kind of looked down on them for a long time.  Dang, that pickle was not pleasant, I'll tell you what.

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

 

This movie feels like the end of an era.  I have enjoyed the "Fourth Phase" movies and shows, but they don't have the same feeling all these movies do.  I know they had no idea how big these movies would get, but I am glad they went for it.  Thanos makes a great "big bad" since he also has the power to challenge all the heroes at once.  They even made time travel work (for the most part).  I had not remembered Loki actually causing the variant to happen.  I thought they played fast and loose with that bit.  I should have known better.  I was not one that got weepy at all the people getting killed in this movie.  It was more the little touches that got me.  Tony talking to his father, Thor talking to his mother, things like that.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

 

Well, at least A Captain Marvel sort of makes an appearance in the movie.  The movie starts with Thanos wiping out the Asgardians that were alive from the end of Ragnarok.  He also kills Loki again, but as we know, he is only sort of dead.  Of course, we didn't know that three years ago, but I'm OK with it.  I started with a real review, but really, the important thing in here is I went into the movie knowing what was (probably) going to happen to The Vision.  I mean, he has the Mind Stone embedded in him.  They did it so well I thought perhaps I would be wrong, but alas, I was right.   I will admit, I wished I was wrong.  At least I still got WandaVision.

Marvel Team Up: Homecoming (2017)

 

I gotta admit, I love Spider-man.  He and Batman were the first heroes I remember reading about and seeing on TV.  It's hard for me to be very objective about the character.  This is a good thing and a bad thing, as I am also overly attached to my ideas of HOW the character should be presented.  I really enjoyed the Raimi films (well, the first two) but never saw the Garfield ones.  I was happy when Peter showed up in Civil War because this is the first time Peter has actually looked like a 15 year old kid.  And he's a great.  So this movie happens after CW, and we get to see Peter try to find his place in both high school and the super hero world. He also has to contend with the Vulture and his gang of thieves.  It's all pretty predictable for some of us, but it's pretty great.

Civil War (2016)

 

I have never read the comic book version.  Just looking at the cover makes me think it has WAY too many characters in it.  One of the good things about this first run of Marvel movies is that they only had a handful of superheroes to use, whereas the comic books had literally hundreds of these heroes to put in any given story.  This movie uses most of the established characters, and adds T'Challa into the mix.  All the heroes get some good moments.  Baron Zemo- well, Colonel Zemo, is the only real villain (aside from that petok General Ross) and the story is more grounded.  We also get Spider-man's debut (along with Aunt Hottie) and that is great.  The best scene of all is Giant-man showing up in the middle of the day.  I loved that scene.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

 

I really enjoyed this movie.  Of course, it has the Vision making his debut, and even though I wish they had said something about using Professor Horton's amazing android (see Cap's first movie) it all worked out just fine.  What struck me the most while watching it this time was all the foreshadowing that began here.  The whole "why can only Thor lift Mjolner" scene is really great.  There might by one other Avenger who can lift the hammer, but he wisely decides not to let anyone else in on it.  Heimdall referring to Hel showing up.   All sorts of things I missed the first time around.  I do wish that Hank Pym would have been involved in the creation of Ultron as well, but in the MCU he is a hero from the previous generation.

Iron Man Three (2013)

 

This is the second time watching this movie.  I liked it more this time, even without any guest appearances from the other MCU superheroes (at least until the post credits sequence).  Pepper got to wear the suit for a minute or so, and she only sort of could use it properly.  Did the armor fit itself to her form?  She's not as tall as Tony, so the fit wouldn't work properly.  Here's a fun fact- after knowing Pepper for many years, I just found out her real name is Virginia.  It must have been said at some point in the comic books, but I never saw it.  The "Mandarin" is featured here, as is Aldrich Killian, the new head of A.I.M.  It's a misdirect, which works well enough the first time watching it.  Since the Ten Rings has reappeared for Shang Chi (since he can't be the Son of Fu Manchu these days) we eventually find out the Mandarin or someone like that is real.  It only took eight years.

Avengers (2012)

 

This was the first MCU movie that I saw in the theater.  There were a lot of reasons for this, but I had seen all the other ones, including The Incredible Hulk (2008).  And of course, I had read many Avengers comic books for most of my life.  I was looking forward to this movie.  I had been waiting most of my life to see the Avengers in live action.  It was a couple weeks after the release that I went, but dang, that was a great night, with the movie being pretty great as well- the cherry on the top of the sundae.

Iron Man (2008 ) and Iron Man 2 (2010)

 

I decided that I would watch all the MCU movies in release order.  I know there is also a chronological order, but I think it's more fun this way to see how things started and progressed, rather than how it ended up.  I have reviewed several of them here and there, so mostly this will be me finding things that made me happy about the movies, rather than actual critiques.  I did not see ANY of the Iron Man movies in the theater, though a few of the movies could actually be considered Iron Man movies in a way.  But I digress.  I enjoyed the first Iron Man movie a lot, even though I knew exactly who the villain would be almost immediately.  This happened a lot, even though I was never a big reader of the Iron Man comic books.  I was happy to hear the 60s Iron Man cartoon song adapted to a jazzy number as well.  It was a good starting point.  And of course, the post credits scene was great, especially Nick telling Tony he was NOT the only superhero around.  Since he had "already" met Ms Marvel, Ant-man and the Wasp, this makes sense.  Not to mention the whole world would have known about Captain America...

The Black Widow

She was supposed to be so good at what she did.  She failed all the time when she was a villain trying to foil Iron Man.  The only thing she succeeded at was making Hawkeye fall in love with her during that time frame.  She had help from everyone!  I know it's the way things are in the comic books, the villain has to be defeated, but sometimes they can get overused.  Of course, her country was finally done giving her chances and she defected to the US.  This book covers all those stories, plus her solo series in Amazing Adventures.  It shows her character development quite well.  And thankfully, they got rid of her rather bulbous bouffant hairdo when she sort of joined the Avengers.

Iron Man 3 part 1

Who would have thought ol' Shell-Head would have a franchise of movies, and that they would be pretty enjoyable?  I would have said you were out of your mind had you told me that seven years ago.  Shows what I know, right?  Still, I think it's a testament to the cast, how good they are, rather than the plots, which are pretty standard comic book fare.  So far it's been easy to pick out the bad guys and so on from every Marvel movie, but then, when you've read 843 stories about AIM battling every Marvel hero there is, you know that sort of thing.  And of course, I am nearly two years behind on watching this movie, which is par for the course.  I remember now why I didn't see it, though.

Iron Man and Captain America: Heroes United (2014)

Captain America and Iron Man team up to battle the Red Skull and the unimproved Taskmaster as well as the Skull's Hydra forces.  Steve thinks Tony never has a plan, and Tony thinks Steve is too rigid in his thinking, so naturally our heroes don't always get along, but in the end they have figure out a way to stop hordes of giant Cap clones that will help the Skull take over the planet.  Fortunately Iron Man has a large green ace in the hole.  I kind of figured this might happen, and it's a nice touch.

Iron Man : Double Disaster

I'm still surprised at how limited the animation for this series was. the first time I was introduced to these Marvel toons I was so disappointed they were static. now I really enjoy just seeing all the original artwork with some good voice acting to help it along. it's like the 70s recordings they did to go along with various comic books.

Iron Man 2

I thought I had reviewed the first movie on here, but using the search function I couldn't find it at all.

anyway, this was a fun sequel.  again, very predictable for the most part, and there were some disappointments to it, like never saying "Whiplash" or "The Radioactive Man" or even "The Black Widow".  I think they said "War Machine" once.  and really, was it too much to ask to see the Widow crawling on the ceiling or the walls?

and too dang many robots, it was hard to keep track of all of them. 

however, having said all that, the performances were good, RDJ looked like he was having fun and Paltrow got a slightly bigger role. also fun to see Happy Hogan get some time.  the music was very good as well, both the rock songs and the score.  it was a surprise to see Garry Shandling there in the movie, but he plays smarmy so well. 

slight spoiler:

groovy Iron Man

I thought I had posted all of these old time Marvel Comics cartoon intros from the 60s.  very enjoyable to me now.