My 31 Favourite Superhero Movies: Part Five 17-13

Captain America is a bit of an annoying superhero for me. He's supposed to be patriotic because of his memory of warfare back in WWII, but that makes little sense to me. World War II was utterly horrible. Veterans returning from war generally did not want to talk about their experiences. The idea that a veteran sent directly into the future would be frustrated is understandable, but that they would be instantly pining for a 'simpler time'  just beggars belief.

Having been involved in the devastating technologically advanced warfare of WWII with clear memories of the nighmarish experiences of soldiers returning from WWI, the relatively peaceful modern world must seem like an improvement mustn't it? To start then ranting against an array of attack aircraft carriers on the grounds that it undermines our freedom (what?) just comes off as painfully naive.

However, after the remarkably bloodless first movie with Nazis that are super-evil because they have laser guns (what?) which took itself way too seriously, the sequel really switches gears. This time around Captain America does some awesome martial arts moves and there are some great action set-pieces. We also get some quality time with Black Widow, which doesn't make up for the lack of a Black Widow solo movie but I guess you have to take what you can get. Also the organisation of Shield gets to pretend to be important and does a fairly decent job of it.

Still this is an awesome action film with great sequences and a super-cool intense scene with the amazing Toby Jones. And like so many of these films it has the important quality of being able to pull the audience along no matter how silly things become.

Nevertheless, the winter soldier isn't really all that central to the storyline. Imagine if the movie "Goldfinger" were instead titled "Oddjob"...

Often praised as the best superhero film of all. There's an excellent first act and an amazing performance from Heath Ledger.

Nolan's dark atmosphere is incredibly powerful. Still Nolan seems to have a problem handling female characters and while Maggie Gyllenhaal is awesome, her material seems somewhat unrewarding.

As much fun as this film is, it succumbs to a common problem of having a villain whose motivation is insanity. Strangely the Joker doesn't have this issue, but a secondary villain does.

Whether you can forgive the ridiculousness in the third act or not, this is a wonderful cinematic experience.

Wow, nearly missed this one out.

While a bit of a middle child in an increasingly jumbled franchise, it also unreboots the reboot, making this the longest consistently running superhero franchise.

The central glue tying the franchise together is surely Hugh Jackman (so his cameo role in Matthew Vaughn's almost-reboot was pretty important after all).

The film is set both in the future and the past. The past is the period that really matters, while the future is for cannon-fodder mutants with colourful powers and exposition.

Still the time travel element makes for an interesting extra dimension to the scenes in the past. Both new and old aspects of the franchise are forced to come to terms with one another and this has some neat results.

As before we have some excellent cast members. By now Hugh Jackman has more than shown his mettle and is a great addition to Nicholas Hoult, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence when his character of Wolverine jumps to the past. Meanwhile we have Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan being characteristically awesome in the future. The addition of Peter Dinklage as a villain is also cool.

It's not a mind-blowing work of art. But it's interesting, exciting and consistent enough to earn a solid place in this list.

Bryan Singer's second X-Men film was very well received, but by the time Matthew Vaughn made this sequel, X-Men 3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine had both left audiences pretty burnt out on the genre. Within both those films we'd seen a wider array of mutants than ever without feeling the same level of wonder at their powers.

This film started out as 'X-Men Origins: Magneto' and then became essentially a reboot. Still some attempts were made to keep things relatively in-line with the original continuity.

Not only are we introduced to a wide range of new mutants with new powers, but they are all given their own exciting moments. The handling of major mutant characters is great too. Charles Xavier gets a bit more moral ambiguity than he'd previously been allowed, regularly getting drunk and chatting up girls. Magneto is so awesome here, that I could have gladly watched a whole film about "Erik: Nazi Hunter". And in the middle of these two figures, an awesome performance from Jennifer Lawrence clarifies the conflict between the two through her very different relationships with each of them.

Matthew Vaughn's film manages to bring back the smart social commentary in X-Men which builds on what we already know about the franchise rather than simply rehashing old material. Plus the 60s setting is groovy.

While Iron Man started off Marvel Studio's cinematic universe with a bang, there were mixed reactions to subsequent sequels. The precursors to the 'Avengers Initiative' were often annoying and sometimes seemed to detract from the central story in each film. (The geek debate on which out of Captain America and Thor was the better b-list 'phase 1' movie still rages.)

Even though there was plenty of hype for Avengers Assemble  (the ridiculous UK title of what everyone else knows as "The Avengers") I was sceptical about the project.

What I ended up loving about the Avengers movie is the way the characters interact. Joss Whedon influence on the writing is clear. He orchestrates witty interactions between the larger than life characters. In one scene we even get to see the good guys fight one another with some interesting results.

The bombastic third act may look pretty cool, but the villains are disposable and the central glowy world-ending macguffin was already getting tired when this was released. But the gags continue in this final act too so the film is consistently fun.

For me the best parts of the movie are always the superhero interactions rather than the fighting sequences, hence why my favourite part of the sequel is where they all try to lift Thor's magical hammer. In the sequel they replace endless disposable aliens with endless disposable robots, but the thorough introduction of this specific group of characters in the first Avengers movie helps to ensure more consistent investment from the audience. Every main character has already been introduced and established beforehand in their own solo movie, so we're focussed enough on those characters not to worry so much about the generic baddies.

A+