MCU refresher course

Whenever I think about rewatching entire series of movies than run longer than just a trilogy, I think of things like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter ... and yes, the MCU, though that would now be more of an undertaking than rewatching all of the James Bond movies.

So this year, sort of by accident, I'm just rewatching some of them. 

You'd say it was in preparation for Avengers: Doomsday later this year, and perhaps it is -- but not because I feel I need to rewatch the MCU to prepare for it. No, this is all about my 12-year-old son.

He's long been a fan of Spider-Man, having watched the last of those movies at the time it came out (and getting excited about the new one in a couple months). But he was previously prevented by his parents from seeing most of the MCU, since much of it was considered just a tad too intense for younger viewers. I believe we watched Captain Marvel and Ant-Man & the Wasp with him, but we stayed away from the slightly more bruising entries. You may recall from this post and this post that I consider Avengers: Infinity War to be one of those. (It's all about the strangulation of that one character, no need to spoil it in case you haven't seen it.)

But my son is 12 now. He's in high school, which starts in year 7 here in Australia. Even if he doesn't personally have one yet, most of his friends have phones. (He's making do with a watch he can text from.) Any previous restrictions on MCU content have now been lifted.  

And so, sort of informally, we agreed earlier this year to run through a number of these movies he hadn't seen -- as many as he wanted, really. 

And he's wanted to run through a lot of them.

Since the start of the year we've watched Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and just this past weekend, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. And just for good measure, one movie that features Spider-Man but is not part of the MCU, Sam Raimi's original 2002 Spider-Man for Sony. 

Clearly our syllabus has been informed mostly by trying to get to the Spider-Man movies he hasn't seen, though Tom Holland's character has only been in one of those movies. I encouraged him he should watch the first two Captain Americas before getting to Spider-Man in Civil War, and he seems to have been happy enough with that decision. 

So to clarify, these aren't the first MCU movies he's seen other than the two I mentioned earlier. On his own he had seen the original Iron Man and the original Avengers, plus all the Spider-Man movies. As the instructor of this course, so to speak, I told him he could skip the last two Iron Man movies, the first two Thor movies, The Incredible Hulk, and anything else I might be forgetting about now. (I think he did see the original Ant-Man also, and oh yeah, he definitely saw the third Ant-Man and last year's most recent Captain America movie.) 

Anyway, I've encouraged him to go more or less in chronological order, especially after we realized we didn't have the full context for some of the things discussed in Civil War because we hadn't watched Age of Ultron yet. (Well I did, back in 2016.) This means we're about to get to the really good ones: Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. These were the films that turned me from an occasional appreciator of the MCU, and a fan of all the Captain America movies, to fully on board with the entire MCU. (Though of course the returns have diminished since then.)

I'm not here to present you some grand unifying theory of the middle MCU, though I did think it was worth giving you one short impression I gleaned from each of my viewings. I'll stick to the MCU, though, and leave the original Spider-Man out of it. 

Captain America: The First Avenger
Watched: January 23, 2026
New thoughts: This is actually my third viewing of this film, the only of these five films that I'd already rewatched. And it has probably dropped just a little in my estimation with each watch, though I clearly retain the memory of how surprised I was by this back in 2011. It occurred to me, as I was watching, how it might be tough to make this film like this today, given how it's set in the distant past -- distant, at least, by the standards of today's young people. I think it's the only MCU film in which the vast majority of the film cannot be thought of as taking place in "present day." (Most of Captain Marvel takes place in the 1990s, but that movie at least has aliens.) It's a bit like the MCU's Wonder Woman, though of course this came first. I could tell my son was liking it well enough and was being polite in his appreciation, but he also made little comments clarifying that the next Captain America movies were set in modern times. While I think older viewers can appreciate the design details that went into recreating the 1940s -- and I think that was one of the main reasons I liked it so much initially -- a younger viewer is more eager to get to the modern-day team-ups with other superheroes. 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Watched: February 6, 2026
New thoughts: This one I also saw through my son's eyes, and though it gets Cap to "present day," I was really noticing how much talking there is in this movie. It's the Marvel movie that is most like a spy thriller, so that shouldn't be a surprise, but I sensed some impatience on his part to get through this one as well. I can't remember if it was this movie or the next, because both of them feature Scarlett Johannson's Black Widow, but I thought it was funny how my son failed to identify the character from one scene to the next. He frequently confused her with Emily Van Camp's character, which I guess just goes to show you that not everyone is as mesmerized by ScarJo as everyone else. (I was especially mesmerized by her in this movie.) When the action does come, I was reminded that it's pretty top notch. 

Captain America: Civil War
Watched: February 7, 2026
New thoughts: Before these rewatches, if you'd asked me to rate the Captain America movies, I would have told you they were all 4/5 star movies, but I would have put The Winter Soldier at the top. Well I guess I'm more of a new school MCU fan than I thought, because this is easily the most entertaining in the series, whether or not it's the best. You just can't beat the team-up of all these superheroes, which was maybe the biggest MCU team-up to date since we hadn't had Avengers: Infinity War yet. And while it feels sort of shallow to prize that entertainment value over a movie that is sort of constructed as a 70s paranoia film, the fact of the matter remains: I had a much better time watching Civil War than I did The Winter Soldier (or The First Avenger, for that matter, which is an implausibly low third out of the three movies). Maybe part of it was knowing that, on the other side of the couch, my son was enjoying this much more, finally getting his Tom Holland fix, and enjoying the presence of the others as well. He also enjoyed seeing some of the Scarlet Witch and Vision, knowing them from having watched Wandavision a few years back. (He also watched the Loki series, I should say, since I'm trying to cover all the bases here.) 

Avengers: Age of Ultron
Watched: February 21, 2026
New thoughts: So I said earlier that I was not fully on board with the MCU during its early stages, even after the Captain America movies had brought me further on board. Avengers: Age of Ultron was Exhibit A of that phenomenon. Not only did I not like this movie when I saw it in January of 2016, having missed it in the theater, but I felt superior to it, and scoffed at it. Watching it now, I really have no idea what offended me so much about it. It is probably the least good of the Avengers movies, but it's still a good movie. The only real problem I have with it is the motivations of the villain, Ultron, who goes from coming into existence, to deciding the world needs to be cleansed of human beings, in basically no time flat, for no reason that I can find sensibly articulated in the dialogue. But if the worst problem a superhero movie has is that the villain doesn't make sense, then that's certainly not something unique to that particular superhero movie. I think what Ragnarok and the most recent two Avengers movies did for me is that they made me realize that yes, there's a reason why watching a bunch of superheroes teaming up is fun: you get a little sampling of all the personality types, instead of being stuck for a whole movie with one you might not like that much. Age of Ultron is a pretty good version of this, and I appreciated it a lot more once I realized that's something I wanted from these movies. 

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Watched: March 15, 2026
New thoughts: I knew at the time I watched this, also on video rather than in the theater, that I liked it more than the original Guardians of the Galaxy, which I was famously not a fan of. What I didn't remember, until this viewing, was just how goddamn funny it is. I tend to think of all the stuff that makes me laugh about Dave Bautista's Drax the Destroyer is in Infinity War or possibly Endgame, but he's frikking hilarious in this movie. Both my son and I were laughing quite a bit, and there's no guarantee we would both find the same things funny. We're still quoting Drax lines to each other a few days later. Although this is not the best movie featuring Guardians of the Galaxy characters, it's the best Guardians movie and I don't think it's particularly close. Only in the climax do I think it loses a little steam, but before that it's great, it's colorful, it's staged well, and it makes me LOL like a dozen times. And again, complaining about the overblown climax of a superhero movie is just about as fruitless as complaining about the confused motivations of a superhero movie villain.

I may have more to say about the movies we're getting next, which will probably also include Black Panther, since I think it makes sense to watch everything forward now until the end of Phase 3. (That's Endgame, if you don't have your Marvel phases memorized.) I guess that would also mean a viewing of Doctor Strange, although did we already watch that? (I keep remembering other MCU movies my son has seen, which include Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.) In terms of their essential role in the Infinity Saga, as well as my personal opinions of them, I could let both Black Panther and Doctor Strange pass, and I've already seen both of them twice so I don't really need a third viewing of either.

But given the way I am overall enjoying this reacquaintance with these movies, I'm happy to let my son take it in whatever direction he wants. I just might have to think twice about continuing this for the movies that have come since 2020. 

Not the type of Marvel fan I thought I was

Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger were released consecutively in the summer of 2011, exactly ten years ago today in the case of the second movie, which came out July 22nd of that year. When I started writing this a couple days ago, I noticed the fortuitous timing related to the anniversary and ended up being able to hold it until today. (Numbers guys like me get off on stuff like this.)

The release of First Avenger -- when I saw the movie six months later, anyway -- was kind of a watershed moment for me in terms of my MCU fandom. I had greeted Thor with a kind of perplexed bemusement, considering the whole idea of superheroes from space to be anathema to what I expected from the genre. I recognized some strengths to the film, but overall, I didn't like it, and this was already a pattern in the movies that Marvel had released to this point. I rated Iron Man significantly lower than most people, thought The Incredible Hulk was okay but forgettable, and didn't even see Iron Man 2 until more than a year after its release (11/27/11), and about six weeks after I saw Thor (10/15/11).

Despite the way the MCU was regularly disappointing me, I dutifully saw Captain America: The First Avenger on January 3rd of the new year, or another six weeks after that. Something about this film finally unlocked these movies for me. I loved the World War II setting -- a similar setting worked for me in Wonder Woman -- and I really appreciated the set design and artistic direction. The action scenes had a kind of kinetic quality that I hadn't seen before in the MCU.

After that, it was rare that I disliked any other MCU films. There were a few -- I wasn't hot on Doctor Strange when I first saw it, and the second Avengers seemed like a turd at the time, though I bet I'd think differently if I watched it today -- but overall I've been mostly on board with what they do. (He says, with the selective memory of just having not liked Black Widow.)

One thing that was consistent was that I always liked anything with Captain America in it. It didn't have anything to do with Chris Evans, though I've grown to love his political activism and the fact that he's from the same hometown as I am (Boston). No, there was just something about these stories, about how Joe Johnston and then the Russo brothers were telling them, that clicked with me, as the sequels to those movies (The Winter Soldier and Civil War) remain personal favorites. Captain America was my gateway into the larger MCU.

Of course, in time, I grew fond of Thor. Ragnarok is top five MCU for me, which is no small statement given that they now have 24 films, and will be over 30 before you know it. (Sometime next year, to be exact.) The whole "superheroes from space" thing still seemed sort of weird to me, but given how many other times Marvel has gone to that well -- Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel being prime examples -- my objection to dosing the superhero movie with science fiction started to seem arbitrary. I had to accept it or not even bother watching these films, so accept it I did.

Ten years after my Thor/Captain America watershed moment, there happen to be two TV shows on Disney+ that have grown out of those particular storylines, one of which I've just finished (Loki) and one of which I am now just over halfway through (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier).

And you know what? I've done a complete reversal.

If Marvel movies are generally split between things that might happen (Captain America) and things that could not happen (Thor), I now find myself in the other camp.

I suspect I'd still love those Captain America movies -- The First Avenger is the only one I've seen more than once -- but this show that uses characters first introduced to us in that storyline? I'm finding it to be a slog. The second episode was better than the first, but then the third and fourth took a step backward again.

Meanwhile, Loki was a constant delight, an example of the imaginations of creative people turned up to 11. It built on what WandaVision had done, the latter also being an example of the outlandish multiverse-type thinking that originally bothered me about a planet populated by Viking gods.

The comparative realism of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier just feels gray and drab and stunted by comparison. In fact, the only thing that really draws me to the show is Wyatt Russell's new Captain America, and only because something about it reminds me of The Boys. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier themselves? Yawn.

Then you've got Loki, fronted by an actor (Tom Hiddleston) whose status as a treasure is just revealed to me more and more all the time. It's colorful, it's shot in a grand style relying on great digital landscapes, it's got a noodle-twisting narrative, and it's even got the best use of Owen Wilson in at least five years. 

And if you told me five years ago, when I was fully in the grip of my Captain America infatuation, that I'd be this enchanted by a show about people trying to fight a purple smoke monster that guards a gate that takes you to the man who watches over the end of time, I'd have thought you were crazy.

Yet here we are. Not only am I fully on board with all things Thor -- Love & Thunder might be my most anticipated movie of 2022 -- but I can't get to the end of this brief six-episode Captain America spinoff fast enough.

Could it be that the thing that initially made me skeptical of Captain America -- its probable self-seriousness and jingoism -- has finally caught up to it? After all, the anointing of a new Cap in this series feels pretty quaint, reflective of a set of values from the past. (As I've watched it I can't help but think that this show is a bone thrown by Marvel to its more conservative audience, who just can't understand Loki and WandaVision.)

But I don't really think that's it. I think that I finally accept that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not just a series of stories about small twists on reality, featuring characters who are super in scenarios that are ordinary. Rather, the MCU is a place for people to dream up crazy ideas, based in whole or in part on existing material, and to get those crazy ideas filmed. 

Its only limits are the limits of our imaginations, and after ten years as a fan, I've decided that's how I like it. 

O Captain, my Captain

Avengers: Endgame spoilers near the end of this post.

It's funny, though not surprising, how social media gets a whiff of your preferences and then doubles down on them. For example, I once looked at a picture of Cara Delevingne on Pinterest -- a site I signed up for just so I could look up a recipe -- and the site began inundating my email notifications with other pictures of the model-turned-actress. Since I'm getting all these pictures of an admittedly beautiful woman, sometimes I look at one or two more, and the intensity of Delevingne-related notifications just escalates again. It's a vicious cycle. (And given how many times she hits my inbox, you'd think I'd have memorized how to spell her last name, but no, I have to look it up every time.)

A similar thing has happened with Twitter and Chris Evans. I tried tweeting for about two months something like six or seven years ago, maybe longer, as an enhancement to this blog. I've since been dormant, but I do still receive email recaps from Twitter related to people they think I'd be interested in, based on the few people I follow and other tweets I've randomly looked at over the years. For a while they were giving me the tweets of everyone who ever appeared in a Star Trek franchise, though that has died off. Now Chris Evans leads my email notification every time -- though I have encouraged this more than I ever did with Delevingne.

In the nearly ten years since Evans debuted as Captain America, he has grown immeasurably in my estimation. At the start I think I thought of him as sort of a poor man's Ryan Reynolds, someone who was charming enough but had no real substance. He could display an acting chop now and again but he was mostly forgettable.

I was initially opposed to his casting, because I agreed with the logic that Marvel missed an opportunity to cast someone who more directly represented what we think of as America today, or at least in 2010: even more of a multi-ethnic melting pot than it ever was. A black or Latino Cap really seemed like the way to go, and Evans' unavoidable honky-ness felt particularly retrograde. But Marvel stuck true to the origins of the character and I went into the movie with great wariness.

But then Captain America: The First Avenger was my favorite Marvel movie to that point, and its two sequels only increased my affection for the franchise and its main character. Evans had done the role proud, though he admittedly may have benefited from the strong directing of first Joe Johnston and then the Russo brothers. How much of my love for the franchise was due to Evans, and how much to other factors, was difficult to discern.

Evans has since proven his worth in a way that is decidedly his own -- off-screen.

I don't remember why I first clicked on an Evans tweet, but I think it was because it was critical of Donald Trump. I have since realized that Evans is relentless with Trump, even having his own pet nickname for him: Biff. He addresses him directly as Biff in his tweets, and his tweets usually focus on the dumbest things Trump is guilty of, in a hilarious way. I can imagine Trump is out there squirming every time Evans hits send, or submit, or whatever you do to send out a tweet.

Lately, I've noticed Evans tweeting more set photos and videos from Avengers: Endgame, and he's been quite generous with that stuff. But this morning I saw he tweeted out a video in which the leader of a youth organization devoted to fiscal responsibility gave the OK sign to alt-right "white power" chants. "Garbage people in this thread," Evans tweeted.

What I love is that this man who is so clearly meant to be a symbol of America has made such a clear statement about what side of the political debate (the correct side) he is on. You could say it's the character who's a symbol, not the man. But if we're being honest, you don't cast somebody in a role without knowing that the actor him or herself is going to take on a similar iconic, symbolic status as the character. If Evans had been a different type of person, or if Marvel had been a different kind of company, he/they would have seen it as their responsibility to truly "represent America" -- to be cagey about political affiliations and give people on both sides of the aisle a hero to look up to that represents them in some way. Instead, Evans doesn't hesitate to imply that half of his potential constituency -- his viewing audience -- might be "garbage people." Either they're garbage people themselves, or they give safe harbor to garbage people, which amounts to the same thing.

Chris Evans has made Captain America into truly the type of ambassador we should want to give out to the world. He is, or was, a type who fights for justice for the downtrodden, and presents to the world a face of acceptance of the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We have in our collection of kids books a Captain America storybook that spends a weirdly long amount of time on the origins of the U.S., specifically on its status as a home for immigrants who came through Ellis Island and became Americans. It's corny, but the way Evans has embodied those virtues fills a person with pride.

And Marvel has the best of both worlds as they now do get to give us a Captain America who actually embodies that multi-ethnic melting pot in his own ethnicity. As Evans has obviously retired from that role, he's now passing on the shield to Anthony Mackie, the black actor who has been playing Sam Wilson/Falcon since Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Mackie should do the shield, and America, proud. But Evans has made sure he's had big shoes to fill.

The fine line between Captain America and The Avengers

The following post contains very minor spoilers about Captain America: Civil War, not much more than what the trailers already show you.

Captain America: Civil War is, for all intents and purposes, an Avengers movie.

Except it's good.

Like, really good.

Which makes no sense.

Marvel Studios and Disney so tightly control the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and therefore the look and feel of their films, that when a director wants to bring his own vision to one of these movies, they just push him out. Bye bye, Edgar Wright. We want Ant-Man to be less interesting than you want it to be.

But for some reason, the Captain America movies have stayed above the fray. Civil War is no exception.

Which makes no sense.

These movies should be of a piece, yet the Captain America movies -- be they directed by Joe Johnston (the first movie) or the Russo brothers (the last two) -- are consistently superior products.

I'm sure someone could figure out why, but it's not going to be me.

As Joss Whedon has gone from Marvel golden boy to Marvel whipping boy, it's easy to just suggest that Johnston or the Russos are better directors than he is. But that's a pretty weird conclusion. None of those guys has the track record Whedon has, and just because his last Avengers movie was a stinker, it doesn't taint his previous output -- both for Marvel with the original Avengers, or in general as a writer/director/creator. Can we really say that these other guys "get" Marvel more than Whedon does?

And yet this is basically an Avengers movie. The Avengers are called out by name constantly in Civil War. Like Superman before them (about a month before them), they are culpable for wanton destruction and accused of being indifferent to the resulting loss of life. Just because the Hulk, Thor, Nick Fury and, um, Cobie Smulders are missing from this, it doesn't mean it's not really an Avengers movie. They've just replaced those guys with Spider-Man, Ant-Man, Black Panther and Bucky Barnes. (And who knew, by the way, that Captain America's movies would be so much about Bucky, well beyond The Winter Soldier and probably on into the next three or four installments?)

What I thought I would object to in this movie is the fact that everybody needs to be in it. As the paragraph above indicates, it's about the same amount of everyone as in the overstuffed Age of Ultron, but what seemed like it would make it worse is that they kept on adding new people. The introductions of Ant-Man and Spider-Man particularly had me worried. There wouldn't seem to be enough for everyone to do.

Yet Civil War somehow figures that out, too. Ant-Man and Spider-Man are both basically comic relief, and boy are they fun. They are used just the right amount, sprinkled in for flavor, rather than relied on heavily to bear out complete narrative arcs. (And there's one awesome Ant-Man thing that I don't think any of the trailers have spoiled yet.)

I'm wondering if we just find the Captain America brand name a surefire indicator of quality -- if, in fact, that's why this story contains the Captain America banner rather than the Avengers one. I mean, it's never too late for a series to curdle, but something about Captain America just continues to hum along at a creative peak. What's strangest about this is that the original, The First Avenger, was something I wasn't looking forward to in the slightest. I was worried this character would be terminally square, jingoistic in a completely unironic and probably painful way. The First Avenger figured to make me embarrassed about my country of citizenship. Instead, the three Captain America movies may well be my favorite three movies from the MCU.

I don't know that I should question it. Maybe I just need to accept it and move on.

Some other thoughts on Civil War ...

America first

If you're wondering how I've already seen this movie, well, I'm kind of wondering that too.

As I came out of the theater yesterday, I asked myself, "Wait, wasn't it the first weekend in May that Captain America and Batman v. Superman were fighting about back in 2014 or something? As far as I can tell, it's not May yet -- even here in Australia."

And indeed, when I got home, I checked IMDB, and the movie doesn't open for another eight days in the U.S.

No such delay here. A week and a day before its U.S. release -- which is really one more additional day because of the time difference -- Captain America has hit Australian theaters. Except they don't call them theaters here, or even theatres. They call them cinemas.

When it comes to movies and their release dates, Australia often taketh away. But sometimes, Australia giveth.

Imperfect teeth

There's a moment in Civil War when Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man tells Chris Evans' Captain America that sometimes he wishes he could punch him in his perfect teeth.

This was only a few minutes after I realized he couldn't say the same thing to Black Widow.

No, not just because heroes don't usually threaten to punch women in the mouth. Rather, because Scarlett Johansson's teeth are not perfect.

When she's on the phone with Steve Rogers following [a particular incident that I won't spoil here], the camera goes close on Johansson's mouth, and that bottom row of pearly whites is anything but straight. In fact, the teeth in ScarJo's front middle are actually trying to crowd each other out, one in particular protruding crookedly in front of the others.

Before you think I'm teeth-shaming Scarlett Johansson, I'll let you know why I'm bringing this up. It reminds us again why Johansson is awesome -- she's not perfect, but the combination of her appearance and her charisma often convinces us that she is.

In fact, in reality, she's just the girl next door with crooked teeth.

Okay, so that's being a bit disingenuous. She's a person of otherworldly beauty. But her beauty is not inaccessible, as you might think it were. There's a natural component to it, a regular component to it, nearly undetectable imperfections that ground her in our world. This despite the fact that someone actually made a "realistic" robot version of her. One with perfect teeth, I might add.

And sure, it could just be because she could never afford to take enough time off from acting to get braces. But I like to think that she just doesn't care. And that's cool.

A well-trained audience

People have figured out this Marvel thing by now.

Most of the time when you go to the movies, and the credits start to roll, you lose three-quarters of your audience right there. A hardy few will stay to look at the names of all the key grips and dolly grips, but most of them are gone -- to the bathroom, to the car, what have you.

Well, not in Marvel movies, at least not anymore. For a time, these people were leaving early and missing the now two extra sequences that appear -- one about a minute into the credits, and one after all the credits have rolled. But now everyone is hip to this. In my audience, we lost no more than ten percent, and even those who did leave, didn't do so until after the first installment of additional footage. The rest of us waited to the bitter end. It was really a rather unusual experience, a bunch of people looking at their phones with the lights up, still plastered to their seats.

And I'm proud to say I was able to figure out essentially what the final bit of footage would be. I won't tell you what it is, but I will say that I correctly guessed both characters that would appear in it and what the essential nature of their interaction would be.

Marvel may not contain all that many surprises these days, but Captain America continues to be the exception to that rule. He was the first avenger, and I'm increasingly convinced he's also the best.

Superhero circle jerk

And so officially begins the summer movie season.

And it seems like everybody is excited about the ceremonial first movie of summer but me.

It feels like two years now that all I've heard about is Avengers this, and Avengers that. And from the first moment I heard anything about it, I thought it sounded like a bad idea.

Here's my problem with it, in an admittedly broad nutshell. It gets together two groups of people who tend to be insufferable in their own ways:

1) People who go on and on about comic books.

2) People who go on and on about Joss Whedon.

Some of you reading this undoubtedly fall into one of those two categories, and no, I probably don't actually find you insufferable, per se. It's the prototypical "you" that I find insufferable.

I have lately felt the urge to post about there being a difference between being a movie fan and being a fan of superhero movies. There are certain forums in which I discuss film where people call themselves film enthusiasts, but their "love of movies" seems to begin and end with movies adapted from comic books. They'll throw in movies that might as well have been adapted from comic books for good measure. But they don't seem to be interested in talking about anything beyond that. Fortunately, Hollywood has given them plenty to talk about within that sphere in the past decade.

Then there are those people who are still trying to tell you how awesome Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, even though it has been off the air for nearly a decade. I'm sure it was awesome, but I didn't find it so. I watched one episode, and thought I was hooked; I watched the next episode, and immediately lost interest. What's worse, they will also proclaim their undying love for Firefly, which I did not watch at all. But I did see the awful film version of the show called Serenity, which was, simply, awful. There's a certain cutesiness that suffuses Whedon's work, that I can't quite get over.

But I certainly like, even love, some comic book movies (Batman Begins and Watchmen are two examples) and I certainly like, even love, some stuff by Joss Whedon (The Cabin in the Woods and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog are two examples).

So maybe the better way to encapsulate my disinterest in The Avengers is this:

Do I really want to watch a movie about a bunch of superheroes, sitting around jerking each other off?

Of course I'm not being literal, though one of these superheroes is Scarlett Johansson, so that would be pretty titillating. But I can imagine them all sitting around in a room, looking kind of funny because superheroes shouldn't sit around in a room, having fake arguments that are really just designed to demonstrate how awesome they all are in their own different ways with their own different powers. It's ego stroking disguised as the kind of bickering men and women do in romantic comedies before they realize they're in love.

See? Cutesy.

But really -- and I expect to keep defining this and modifying it as I write the piece -- the main reason I'm not so sure about The Avengers is that I think over-stuffing a movie with superheroes is very "Joel Schumacher Batman." I think superhero movies tend to work better if they focus on only a single hero or a finite number of heroes, not the 12 or 13 in this movie. Movies like the X-Men movies are the exception, because that was always part of the concept of that series -- a multiplicity of heroes. I'd rather see for a second time the movie subtitled The First Avenger -- which would be last year's surprisingly awesome Captain America -- than see Captain America the character have to elbow out of the way a bunch of other dudes (or dudettes) trying to hog the spotlight.

But maybe the REAL reason I'm not looking forward to The Avengers (you sick of this yet?) is that it seems to rely all too heavily on the mythology -- and I do mean "mythology" quite literally -- that originated in last year's disappointing Thor. The main villain in The Avengers is Tom Hiddleston's Loki, who is the fallen brother of Chris Hemsworth's Thor. The problem with both of these guys is that they are gods who live on another planet. I don't like that idea at all, but I definitely don't like it mixing with a bunch of other heroes whose back stories are grounded in reality (even if one of them, the aforementioned Captain America, effectively time traveled to be in present day). Throwing all these different realities together into one melting pot just seems fraught with peril. You are effectively telling me that Iron Man could get on that "space bridge" (even though I think it was destroyed at the end of Thor) and travel to Asgard -- another planet, in outer space, inhabited by gods.

But I hear The Avengers is good. Right? That's what "they say."

Then again, I wonder if I should really trust "they," if "they" is increasingly comprised of people who love Firefly and Thor.

The self-created hype over Epix

I don't know about where you are, but here in Los Angeles, we're being inundated with billboards that look something like this. (Imagine it elongated into the rectangular shape of a billboard.)

This was pretty much my first awareness of a premium television channel called Epix. So if awareness is what they wanted to create, I guess they accomplished their mission.

If a sense of exclusivity is what they wanted to create, well, mission failed.

The supposedly momentous "Marvel Heroes Weekend," which begins in JUST TWO DAYS!! (but has been advertised for well over a month), includes the three movies you see here:  Thor, Captain America and Iron Man 2.

So, I'm supposed to congratulate some genius in the Epix advertising department who figured out that they might have the rights to three of Marvel's recent movies?

Otherwise I don't get why this is supposed to excite me so much.

I sort of get why they think it's cool that they can show Thor and Captain America. Both movies came out in 2011. But Thor has been available on DVD since September, and Captain America since October.

As for Iron Man 2? Yeah, that movie hit theaters in 2010. In fact, when my wife and I finally saw it last year, it was streaming on Netflix. Making it kind of the opposite of exclusive.

It would be one thing if Epix were a free basic cable station, which was proudly trumpeting its coup of winning the rights to these three successful movies. But you have to pay for Epix. It's offered on the Dish Network, among others, but it ain't part of your basic subscription. You have to pay extra.

We live in an age where its possible to get so many movies in so many ways, so quickly after they hit theaters (and even while they're in theaters if you want to buy an illegal bootleg), that it seems very antiquated to be hyping up what amounts to a clever pairing of long available properties, nakedly designed to whet your appetite for next week's opening of Joss Whedon's The Avengers. But which geeks are they really trying to appeal to here? Which geeks counting the hours until The Avengers opens have not already seen these three movies? Probably multiple times?

Thanks but no thanks, Epix. We're even considering a move to the Dish Network, but I don't think we'll be adding you any time soon. Even if you can show us The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises in August of 2013.

Never underestimate the patriotism of Republicans

Remember on Friday when I talked about Marvel's "possible miscalculation" in releasing Captain America on Comic-Con weekend? Like the opening weekend of the movie could depend on the money the geeks would not be spending on the movie, because they'd be otherwise occupied?

Yeah, so much for that.

I was mostly just making a humorous observation, but my basic thesis was something I believed in: that the movie would need all the help it could get.

But there were plenty of others out there who were more than willing to provide that help.

While I assumed that many people shared my "eh, so what" attitude toward the movie, I wasn't considering the number of other people who love any opportunity to celebrate the role of America as a force for international justice. I'm speaking of Republicans here.

Captain America made $65 million on its opening weekend, making it seem awfully likely to end up as a hit. That's got to be the biggest non-sequel opening in, like, forever. That $65 million knocked record-setting Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 out of the #1 spot at the U.S. box office in only its second weekend. In fact, it beat Potter by a whole $17 million. (Wow, I'm really out of it. I just looked and saw that Green Lantern made $70 million in its opening weekend before tailing off. But I think my point still stands.)

While on the one hand I am happy for Captain America, on the other hand I am a bit scared by that "silent majority" out there that turned out to see a metaphor for America kicking ass. These are the people who usually turn their noses up at the movies I'm looking forward to. These are the people who are giving the Republican party confidence as it tries to derail our economy.

I'm not saying you had to be a conservative flag-waver to buy a ticket to Captain America this weekend. But I do think there wasn't much buzz about this movie among my friends, who I consider to be a representative sample of moderately liberal movie lovers out there. Captain America seemed like the umpteenth movie in an absolute binge of superhero movies, a trend I have hoped is kind of petering out, lest it makes a total mockery of itself.

But not for this "silent majority," whose display of support for Captain America scares me the way many people were scared when they watched the awesome display of machine-like synchronicity demonstrated by the Chinese during the opening ceremony for the 2008 summer Olympics. Republicans don't get together to support a movie very often, but when they do, the results can be staggering. Remember The Passion of the Christ?

Well, here's hoping I just misinterpreted the level of excitement that existed about this movie. Because if this many Americans want a human personification of America's most arrogant philosophies about its role on the world stage, then Barack Obama's going to have to watch his back the end of next year.

I'm sure that's not what Captain America is really about -- it would have to be more sly, subtle and liberal-minded than that, wouldn't it? If only because Hollywood is liberal, and most products that come out of it represent that mindset to some degree.

But the people who paid the money didn't care what it was about, probably -- they just liked the idea of a bio-engineered super-soldier running through the battlefield with an American flag emblazoned on his chest.

And I guess there will always be people like that. I'm just glad I don't know too many of them.

A possible miscalculation

Remember last Friday, when I tried to discuss the effect of a geographically limited real-world phenomenon -- LA's closure of the 405 freeway -- on possible box office for the movies opening that weekend?

Well, I'm back for Week 2 of that kind of flawed cause-and-effect thinking. Ready?

I'm sure that Marvel would have loved nothing more than to open Captain America on 4th of July weekend. The thematic tie-ins are obvious. But in terms of cinematic scope, Captain America is less like America than, say, Italy -- a solid mid-level producer, but not a giant on the world stage. There was already an American-sized movie, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, opening on 4th of July weekend, and who wants to go up against a movie like that?

If they didn't get their first choice of a themed release date, perhaps they got their second: the Friday of Comic-Con. What better time to release a movie based on a comic book?

Except, it isn't a great time, really. Because all the geeks are busy in San Diego.

As much as Captain America will be getting a push at Comic-Con because it's opening right now, it'll be getting held back by the fact that its intended audience will be otherwise occupied.

Only geeks from Southern California, Vance. Which is only a small percentage of the geek population.

Not true. Comic-Con has risen in stature to the level that people travel from all over the country -- probably all over the world -- to soak in the sights of that convention center over the course of a long weekend, to wend their way through the Spock ears and the stormtrooper helmets, to rub elbows for a few days with their brethren.

That will still leave plenty of other geeks and non-geeks available to see the movie. Many geeks lack the necessary resources to travel to Comic-Con -- they have enough money to spring for an opening night movie ticket every week, but not enough to fly to San Diego. And besides, if there's any comic book movie that is attempting to push itself outside the normal geek demographic, it would be this one, with its inherent patriotism bordering on jingoism -- not a characteristic you normally associated with your average disenfranchised nerd.

But a movie like this is borderline enough, in terms of summer blockbusters, that it needs every dollar that opening weekend to create the buzz necessary to carry over to weekend #2 and weekend #3. Captain America was a bit of a fringe superhero in terms of my superhero world view when I was growing up -- there was something too earnest about his persona. Even then, when I was unacquainted with politics, there seemed something too unironic and conservative about a superhero wearing a spandex American flag. So this movie is no guaranteed success -- far from it. In fact, it could face the same type of struggles to reach an audience that Green Lantern faced.

So if tens of thousands of those available box office dollars are being spent on X-Men t-shirts and replica lightsabers in San Diego, they won't be going into Captain America's coffers when it needs them most.

As for Comic-Con itself ... I'll get there, some year. I'm only two hours away by car, so travel is not a consideration. I've got some friends who go every year, and the tales they bring back are always entertaining.