GregHowley.com

I saw Guardians of the Galaxy recently, and it got me thinking about the Marvel Movies overall. I think it's lousy how licensing has separated Spiderman from The Fantastic Four from The X-Men and The Avengers. I read up on the Age of Ultron storyline, and it's got tons of Marvel characters: Captain America, The Invisible Woman, The X-Men, Spiderman, Iron Man, and even Star-Lord. Stupid corporate copyright law.

There are lots of upcoming Marvel movies to get excited about too. Next year is going to bring us The Avengers: Age of Ultron in which the robot Ultron, voiced by James Spader, destroys the world a la X-Men Days of Future Past, and time travel is required to set things right. At least that's the comic synopsis I read on Wikipedia. I suppose they'll be forced to change the storyline for the movie, especially since they can't use The Fantastic Four, Spiderman, or the X-Men. There'll be a few new characters though. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, apparently siblings, will both be in the movie. Also, JARVIS is turning into The Vision somehow.

Another 2015 movie I'm excited about: Ant Man. I've heard about a "sizzle reel" for Ant Man which was shown at a con and blew people away. Ant Man runs into a fight and shrinks just before a punch hits, then runs up the guy's arm, jumps, grows, and returns the punch. Apparently, it worked well and looked amazing.

They're also rebooting The Fantastic Four in 2015, which I have trouble getting excited about. If they merged it with the other Marvel properties, that would be something. Until then, meh.

2016 is going to be an amazing year for Marvel movies. We'll get a Dr. Strange movie, The third Captain America movie, X-Men: Apocalypse, and The Sinister Six. The X-Men sequel sounds interesting (and occurs in the 1980s!) but it's the Sinister Six movie that's got me excited. A superhero movie focused on the villains? And who will they be? Doctor Octopus? Sandman? Hobgoblin? Electro? Mysterio? No idea. I'm wondering if it will be an Amazing Spiderman movie. I almost feel like the bad guys need to win in order for the movie to be good. We'll see.

The Marvel movies up until now have been excellent, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, although I really don't think we need another Wolverine sequel. My favorites to this point have been The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Iron Man 1, in that order. I'm hoping that Ant Man enters that list.

Guardians of the Galaxy

There was a lot to love about Guardians of the Galaxy, but here are a few standouts for me:

• Drax - An alien who doesn't understand metaphor? I love it. It's like Sheldon Cooper not understanding sarcasm.
• The Music - I've been listening to the Awesome Mix since having seen the movie. Good stuff.
• John Crichton - I can hear you saying "wha??". Let me explain. It wasn't until Star-Lord made his Kevin Bacon reference that I realized that they'd made Peter Quill into John Crichton: A human from Earth among aliens who constantly makes pop culture references that none of them understand. It's one of the things I loved about Farscape, and it works well here too.
• Rocket - One of my big fears before seeing the movie was that the Raccoon would be a ridiculous character that would completely kill any suspension of disbelief. But he worked. And when he shouted to the entire prison full of hardened criminals and acted like an alpha male, I bought it. They sold it in part with the explanation that he was a genetic engineering experiment and also a cyborg. I also liked his mechanical and engineering skill - it was a great character trait.

The Infinity Gauntlet

So what are the Marvel movies working towards? Obviously something about Thanos and The Infinity Gauntlet. I'm guessing we'll see that culminate in Avengers 3, when the Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers merge.

I've been trying to keep things straight - it seems like we've seen three of the six infinity stones at this point. The big one is The Tesseract, which was used by Hydra, claimed by Loki, and is now being held in Asgard. But there's also The Aether, which only appeared in Thor 2. That was the worst Marvel movie, and I don't remember much about it. Finally, The Orb, which appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy.

I'm wondering if they're also making the Casket of Ancient Winters from the first Thor movie into an infinity stone. Didn't a Marvel character once comment about not wanting to have two infinity stones in the same place? I wish I could remember.