Captain America: The Winter Soldier / The Amazing Spider-Man 2 / X-Men: Days of Future Past

I’m bunging these latest Marvel films (stop yawning at the back) together as its the perfect opportunity to make an overall comment on the films that make the big bucks these days and their, in the main, lack of quality. I read a great article recently comparing the box office hits of 1984 with what we have this year. The roll call for 1984 is barely believable: Gremlins, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, Beverley Hills Cop, The Karate Kid, Romancing The Stone, The Neverending Story, A Nightmare On Elm Street, The Terminator. Now granted not all those films are bona fide classics or appeal to everyone, but there's a wide mixture of genres in there and how many households worldwide don't have a least a couple of them resting on their DVD shelves? Now compare that list to three of the top five films (in terms of box-office returns) so far this year: X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. In effect, just further churning out of the same old same old, with only the law of averages meaning every now and then we get a great film. The usual defence is that if these films really were so bad people wouldn’t go and see them, but for a long time now (Hello, Michael Bay) the connection between quality and returns is a fractured and unquantifiable one. I won’t deny that part of my moan comes about as a generational thing, but even the staunchest comic book fan would be hard pressed in keeping a straight face in claiming that any of these films are ones for the annals. Lets start with the best of these three, that being the return of Chris Evans as Steve Rogers in the somewhat grammatically misleading (what the film and you’ll understand) Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Director’s Anthony and Joe Russo’s last film was, ahem, You, Me and Dupree so I can only assume they got the gig here as the production was running short on coin. However, this is a fine effort, especially when you consider that the plot itself is as old as they come (there’s a spy in the ranks, but people believe it to be Capt himself). There’s a sleekness to their direction and many of the set pieces are short and sharp, plus we get arguably the funniest Stan Lee cameo yet. Producer Kevin Feige’s talk that this is modelled on classic 1970’s political thrillers doesn’t hold true though (despite casting Robert Redford!) and the talk of practical effects over CGI has to be taken with a serious pinch of salt. However, the little touches just about see this one home, especially in the form of the “Catch-Up” list that Cap refers to at the start of the film. Depending on what territory and country you’re watching in, the list varies to reflect the culture of the area. Hmm, if it’s not included as one of the DVD extra’s, I can already see geeks worldwide trying to get their hands on all the different versions in order to complete their Marvel collections. Moving on to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, being the sequel to an unamazing film to start with. this didn’t have to do much to be an improvement on its predecessor. It’s a shame then that despite a step up in quality, they really haven’t done much to get there. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone put in the requisite effort so hats off to them, but the rest of the film is mainly a large blur of effects and the film suffers from what was eventually Sam Raimi’s undoing with its introduction of character after character. The narrative can’t cope and we move from different storyline to different storyline with no real structure underpinning the whole thing. Keeping in line with it’s lighter approach than other’s within the Marvel stable there are a few nice one-liners, but it’s unclear from the rest of the cast (Jamie Foxx, Paul Giamatti, Dane DeHann – who appears to be getting typecast as a nutter for hire early on in his career) whether they should be knowingly hamming it up or not. It’s all too one dimensional and sluggish, summed up by the Stan Lee cameo which appears to have been thought up in a thirty second brainstorm in a break between filming. It’s odd then that the film finishes with such an emotional and weighty gut-punch. Even with this surprising development, it doesn’t alter the impression that the film makers are just happy to settle on what’s tried and trusted box office wise, rather than putting effort into giving us something different. Such accusations of laziness also hold true against X-Men: Days of Future Past. Nice title aside, this brings little originality to the party and comes across as a quasi-“X-Men: The Greatest Hits”. The main problem the film has is that it’s time travel premise is old hat and all the stock scenes are here (i.e. the time-traveller waking up in a strange place; having to convince the person that sent him through time that it was them that sent them etc.) that you would expect to find in films that have a similar concept. Director Bryan Singer apparently spent ages revising time travel and related japery such as string theory, but has somewhat missed the point that it’s all (currently, for you facetious types out there) a load of balls anyway. X-Men: First Class was surprisingly enjoyable for such a late entry in a film series, with the “re-boot” in the form of the new actors involved being the main reason. Here though it appears the well of ideas has quickly run dry, highlighted by the fact the film can’t find a balance between the “old” and “new” X-Men. Throw in the fact there’s no real villain and bizarre scripting decisions (at one point we’re introduced to a mutant who has such super fast speed he seems to be the saviour of all problems, but he suddenly disappears from the film for no apparent reason) and you can see why original director Matthew Vaughn did a runner early on. So, going back to my original discussion, will any of these films have the longevity of 1984’s crop and will we be watching any of them in 2044? I’d say about as much chance as me sitting through the end credits of any of these films to catch any additional scenes. America Rating: 7/10. Spidey Rating: 5/10. X-Men Rating: 5/10.