Oh shit, right, I finished every Marvel movie currently rentable a while ago.
Captain America: Civil War sucks and holds up to no scrutiny whatsoever! It's honestly two different movies that are smashed together, and one is awful while the other is just kinda 'meh'. You've got the civil war, but that has the problem that when drafting up the movie, they had Cap and Iron Man take up the same sides as the comic event, but then fucked it up completely by making the inciting event something aimed squarely at the Avengers. So Cap isn't fighting for individual liberties, he's fighting to not be personally inconvenienced, while at the same time the most authoritarian person in the MCU is the one fighting for himself be regulated. There's a bunch of other alignments that don't make much sense either, like Black Panther being on the side that'd outlaw the exact revenge path he's on, and Ant-Man teaming up with an outlaw despite wanting to go straight. Then you've got the Bucky plot, which is a different and potentially better movie that just doesn't get time to breathe.
Doctor Strange I skipped in this watchthrough, because I'd already seen it! I love that it becomes more and more of a Doctor Who story as the movie goes along, and of course the action scenes are absolutely fantastic. Being that I didn't watch it this time though, I don't have much to remember.
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is a movie that's doing everything it wants to do right. The setting of Ego is amazing, the slow reveal of who the villain of the movie actually is is awesome (helped out a lot by the fact that this isn't one of the big recognizable Marvel stories and characters, so you don't immediately know not to trust someone purely from name unless you're a nerd), the interplay between characters is fantastic, the soundtrack actually works well with the action instead of being an almost total miss like the first one was. I remember the action scenes being good, too, but they all get overshadowed by the actual fight against Ego. And that's fine, because that fight scene is utterly fantastic.
Spider-Man Homecoming was... good, really good, but despite thinking Spider-Man was probably the highlight of Civil War I didn't really get into it. I think it's just because the themes of Spider-Man never really resonated with me, so while he's an undeniably
fun character and I can appreciate a really good Spider-Man, I just don't really enjoy it on as direct a level, it feels like a really good story that's just not for me. He does have the best supporting cast of any MCU hero, though.
Thor Ragnarok is great to compare with Civil War, or even the original Thor. Because while those felt like two movies that weren't mashed together well, this feels like two movies that WERE mashed together well, probably because it is. Using Planet Hulk as a setting for Thor to get tossed off to randomly is a fantastic contrast, and a perfect justification to actually make a Hulk movie that they otherwise can't because of legal weirdness. It's probably the most fun film of this whole batch for me; the fight scenes are brilliant, Jeff Goldblum steals the show as he should, both settings are really fun to just be in, and the new depiction of Thor's powers is far more interesting and dynamic than when they had Mjolnir. Unrelated singular points that I can't figure out how else to segue into: Doctor Strange's one scene is fantastic, and while I appreciate The Immigrant Song it's overused, given how
its second appearance suits a different song so much more.
Black Panther is very weird to watch as an extremely white Australian, because it's speaking very directly to a lot of things that don't really exist for me culturally. It feels really weird for me to say that I absolutely love every single other part of the movie that isn't that, because that sounds like it's dragging it down, but it's really not; this straight-up isn't a film that's meant to be for me on any level, that's okay, and I loved it anyway. The highlight for me was probably all of the really unique visual design and special effects, but I'm also aware that a lot of what makes that stand out is because it's inspired by stuff that I never knew, and in fact that probably makes it even better!