Alright, moving on to the second half of this list. I feel confident that we shall almost certainly hit movies that can be called "good!" or, at least, "watchable!" in this part of the list. I'm looking forward to it.
18. Daredevil
I rather like Michael Clarke Duncan in it and Jon Favreau is an A+ casting choice as Foggy Nelson. Affleck isn't terrible in it but the rating, the effects, and the soundtrack all rather bring this one down. The director's cut, which cuts down some of the romance and adds some more crime-solving business, is a step above the theatrical version but that doesn't improve the theatrical version and, frankly, the director's cut still isn't really enough of an improvement. Plenty wrong with this one all the way through.
17. Punisher: War Zone
Still not a good movie by any means, but like the sequel to the boring Ghost Rider, this one tries to shake things up. This one is genuinely, on occasion, hailed as a great Punisher movie and that may be true. It's ridiculous, it's big, it's brutal, it's what Punisher should be. It's not at all toned down. Regardless, a perfect Punisher movie doesn't necessarily equate to a good movie. War Zone sits at 17 because I'm not sure it ever could have cracked that anyway.
16. Iron Man 3
I know I'm not particularly popular with this opinion but this one rather drove me nuts. It's pretty well-documented on this site (it was the first movie I reviewed after the blog started and even that nostalgia doesn't make me feel it's any better). This one was baffling to me the first time I saw it. I had to see it a second time to be sure of what I saw and, well, it didn't improve that time. This one was real popular with fans and critics alike but it just didn't sit well with me. Tony Stark had gone from snarky but complicated to just snarky and petty. They added a PTSD sort of element but eliminated it with NO solution, though presented it as if it was a solution. The villains were uninteresting and obnoxious and the movie ended with, after a special effects parade, an unbelievable deus ex machina meant to, presumably, elevate Pepper but it just made her worse than ever. I have problems with this movie, friends.
15. X-Men
This movie, as a couple of others on this list, was REALLY ambitious. This was the first Marvel movie (aside from the Blade movies, which won't be on this list because I don't care, you guys) of the modern age, kicking off in 2000, two years before even Spider-Man. With that in mind, the movie succeeded. Now that we can go back and look at it through the lens of movies like Avengers or Iron Man or even X2, we can safely say it's pretty boring. It's impressive for what it did and what it meant but, you know, it's still pretty boring. And Sabretooth. God.
14. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
This one is probably up higher (lower) on my list than on a lot of other ones. It's not well-liked and I totally get why. Like Punisher: War Zone, it went for something. For me, though, it's entertaining and eminently watchable. I don't like every scene or every line of dialogue or every character, even, but I'll leave this one on if it pops up on TV, which is more than I can say about just about anything this list has mentioned so far.
13. The Incredible Hulk
After an acting change and a directional change, Hulk returned to the big screen in the form of the ever-likable Ed Norton. Whole new set of problems but a Banner who seems to know himself a bit more after some time out of the spotlight. Certainly not a great movie and calling it an improvement over Hulk is very faint praise but it's a pretty well-acted movie and one whose intentions are certainly met by movie's end. It maybe tried to throw itself into the quickly developing Marvel Cinematic Universe a little too hard and it still suffered from the normal Hulk question of "what makes Hulk interesting?" but it's definitely still a watchable movie as Norton's Banner and Liv Tyler's Betty Ross try to evade Thunderbolt Ross before being forced into a team-up against Abomination.
12. The Wolverine
Like its predecessor (both in film and on this list), The Wolverine may not have been a great movie but it's certainly one that I'll watch if it's on. It's fun, it knows what it wants to do, and it sets out to achieve it. I think that it does, in a lot of ways. The acting isn't bad, the action is solid, and the plot moves well enough to keep things going. I'm not sure Wolverine can sustain too many solo movies but this one was a good shot.
11. Thor: The Dark World
This one was one that kind of sunk the more I thought about it after I'd seen it. It ranks higher than Iron Man 3 because I genuinely enjoyed it while I was watching it (parts of it, anyway, not parts with Kat Dennings in it which were ALL TOO MANY) as opposed to being perplexed. Afterwards, though, I couldn't help getting into how much I disliked the Natalie Portman role (what scientist sits around after making an insane discovery for two years because a guy she liked left?), how little the villain meant (and how little he spoke; you have Christopher Eccleston in the role, let him act), and, okay, yes, Kat Dennings and her character. A lot of the action was great but a lot of the humor fell flat (Dennings' character and the once interesting Stellan Skarsgård character).
10. Iron Man 2
This one is often viewed as the worst in the Iron Man trilogy. I can definitely see a lot of the faults in it (that scene where Tony gets super drunk and then fights with Rhodey to some DJ'd music comes RIGHT TO MIND) but I think it stacks up higher than what it gets credited. Not perfect by any means but definitely watchable. It's the start, of course, of the "Tony is a caricature of that guy we saw in Iron Man" that the movies continued to go a little crazy on but there's almost more of an excuse for it here as he believes he's dying. Solid props for a pretty good introduction to Black Widow and some extra Favreau action (that would, of course, turn into a rather obnoxious role in Iron Man 3), plus the always entertaining Sam Rockwell being entertaining despite a somewhat weak role. Not great but certainly not as bad as it's often called.
EVEN MORE, LATER TODAY.
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