To Be Continued

Thor (Kenneth Branagh, 2011)

Captain America (Joe Johnston, 2011)

Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010)

Iron Man 3 (Shane Black, 2013)

The Incredible Hulk (Louis Leterrier, 2008)

Most of these movies are not very good. But I watched them anyway. So that I could watch The Avengers. Good god, why? What is this completionist urge for pop culture?

I seem always to wonder why I do this to myself, but I know it’s the same with art movies. I did not necessarily enjoy All of Tarkovsky’s movies, but I’ve seen them all. Ticking boxes can be satisfying and the Marvel Extended Whatever’d Universe makes watching these movies feel like Candy Crush.

I also watched the series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which is a pain to type. Actually, the television series might be one of the better formats for the super hero genre. Daredevil and Jessica Jones had nice character arks with occasional excessive action sequences. These movies were essentially one long action sequence. They try to function as previews for the next instalment. It’s a very peculiar idea

I don’t include the first Iron Man movie because it worked well as a film in its own right. The next two were a bit more forgettable. They all contained a post-credits teaser clip. While it is certainly nice for people who worked on the film to know that people are sticking around while their names roll by, I kind of liked it when films just ended. If you liked it or wanted to know where it was shot or what that song was, you could stick around for hints, but otherwise that was it. Now there’s this enormous fear of missing something. And the credits for these CGI orgies are long.

Are any of these real movies in their own right? Or is this just a weirdly expensive television series drawn out over years? I can’t honestly remember the plots of most of the above. It seemed like they were just interested in setting everything up. I don’t read super hero comics, generally, but I imagine cliff hangers are a regular occurrence.

I’m not saying I hated watching these. I have watched more of them. I will probably watch even more of them. And I’m grateful to some extent that they aren’t all origin stories. But it’d be nice for them to have real structure, real endings and not just ellipses. At least they’ve managed to keep the same actors by and large (Hulk an exception) and haven’t fallen victim to the Batman problem. Then again, Batman movies are pretty good. More on that later.