Pat's Movie Reviews: Captain America

Minor spoilers follow. You've been warned.

Marvel really has been on a tear lately when it comes to their movie franchises. Ever since they opened up their own studio, they've been pumping out one good Comic Book flick after another. Iron Man started it all off, but they've managed to stay consistently good through everything that has been released since then. The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2 and Thor have all been fun, entertaining films. As they are slowly but surely building their way towards next year's Avengers film, Marvel has been building a solid foundation for each and every member of that team with their own solo films.

I am happy to report that Captain America is no different.

Once again Marvel has pulled off turning one of its most iconic heroes into a silver screen success. Captain America is a fun action adventure film with a good blend of character and heart thrown in to make you actually care about what is going on onscreen. My worry going into this was that they would skip past the character building intro and jump ahead to Steve Rogers receiving the super soldier serum and running off to go beat up some Nazi's, but I was totally wrong. The film takes its time getting to that point and instead spends the first 20 to 30 minutes of the film focusing on the character of Steve Rogers, the skinny kid from Brooklyn who keeps getting beaten up and pushed around. We learn that both of his parents died in the war, serving their country. His best friend Bucky is heading off to join the war, and poor Steve is having every door shut in his face as he tries desperately to get accepted into the army.

He's a man with a deep sense of honor and a drive to succeed. He doesn't believe in giving up and continues to re-apply to the army over and over again, even going so far as to lie on his admission forms as he applies in different cities. It is incredibly important that the film builds the character of who Steve Rogers is before he becomes the hero we know he will be. The underlying point that makes Captain America such an enduring figure is that Steve Rogers would be a hero, regardless of whether he ever received the super soldier serum or not. He's a hero because no matter what anyone else says or how badly he is treated, Steve Rogers is a decent, compassionate man who will always do what he can to help those in need, especially those being picked on by bullies.

The special effects used in this first part of the film are seamless too. Seeing Chris Evans digitally shrunk down to a skinny 90 pound frame wasn't nearly as off-setting as I thought it might be. The special effects team really did a great job of making him look natural in his smaller form. They also need to be commended for recreating all of the amazing 1940's style sets we see throughout most of the film. I actually had a hard time focusing on what was actually going on during certain scenes because I was too busy marveling at the beauty of 1940's Manhattan as Steve was chasing down an evil Hydra Agent.

Even after Steve comes out of the Super Soldier process, people still don't believe in him and he is forced to help out in the only way he can, by participating in USO shows to generate interest in the selling of war bonds. These scenes are really fun, and showcase a number of nods to classic Captain America moments such as him punching out Hitler. In the end though, Captain America must make his own way and prove his worth to his country. Once his best friend Bucky is captured, he jumps into action. He disobeys orders, goes behind enemy lines and rescues 400 men on his very first solo mission. Finally, the US military sees him for what he is worth.

What follows is a great action montage as we see Captain America fighting his way through the war, determined to wipe Hydra (the Nazi deep science division, and the film's main villains) off of the map. In the end, he comes face to face with the Red Skull, who is played very well by Hugo Weaving. I do feel that this part of the story was a little rushed, and I would have liked to have seen some more time spent building Cap's ties with his unit, which included Dum Dum Dugan and Howard Stark (Tony Stark's dad), but I understand that the film was trying to avoid being three hours long. Thus is the price that must be paid when you take the time to build your hero's origin. The rest of the film had to move at a bit of a break-neck speed as a result.

My only other real complaint was that the origin and the history of the Cosmic Cube wasn't really explained in the film. Once again, I feel that this has more to do with trying to fit Captain America into the ongoing line of Marvel films as the build towards the Avengers movie, but it does kind of annoy me that it is sort of expected that you saw the Thor film, and therefore have seen the Cosmic Cube before, so it doesn't need to be explained here. What if someone hadn't seen Thor? They'd be pretty confused by something that is fairly important to this film's plot. I personally wouldn't mind a bit of duplicate storytelling across films if it meant that single films stood a little stronger on their own and weren't completely dependent on the other Marvel films to make total sense. Overall, it's a minor point though as I'm certainly in the target audience of people who have and who will see every Marvel movie, so it didn't annoy me too badly that the Cosmic Cube just sort of showed up and was never explained fully. It's just a minor gripe really.

Other than that, I was very happy with how this film turned out. I loved the cast, I loved the costumes and the set pieces (especially the background scenery). The film has a runtime of 2 hours and 12 minutes and it felt much shorter than that to me due to a really engaging story and characters.

If Marvel were to decide to make Captain America sequels that keep him in the midst of World War II, I would have no problem with that at all.

Final Grade: A

Oh Hai Batman and Bane

For a film that is being said to be super secretive, there certainly have been a ton of new set pics leaking from the in-production The Dark Knight Rises this week. While the leaked set pics aren't giving away any major plot spoilers, they are definitely revealing some big information and are giving us our first good glimpse at Batman squaring off with the film's main villain, the big bald druggie Bane.

Seen above is one of the pics from that fight scene. To see a ton more set pics, go HERE.

The other big reveal from this recent slew of pics is that we finally get to see what Bane's costume is going to be in the last of the Nolan led Bat films. Here's what the big bad's costume looks like:

Is it just me, or is that a bit underwhelming? I mean, I understand that there was no way that Christopher Nolan was going to make Bane look exactly like he does in the comic books, but couldn't we at least get something that looks even a little bit like this?

That's not such a bad outfit, is it? I'm sure there must have been a way to make that look decent on screen. I know I should have faith in Christopher Nolan. The last two Bat films have been nothing short of amazing and that does earn him a lot of credit as far as I'm concerned, but I can't help but feel that the outfit they've gone with has Bane looking like some sort of hobo with a major respiratory problem.

Maybe I'm just being too picky, but I prefer my comic book movie villains to not look like they have a giant asthma inhaler permanently attached to their face. Perhaps that's just me though.

Can Red Tails Renew My Faith In Lucasfilm?

A few days ago, a trailer was released for a film called Red Tails which is based on the real life story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American fighter pilot squadron back in WWII. Normally, such a film wouldn't really get covered by a geek blog such as this as WWII fighter films don't usually fall under the geek or nerd genres, but Red Tails is different. Why, you ask? It's quite simple. Red Tails is the first non Star Wars or Indiana Jones related film to be produced by George Lucas and Lucasfilm since the 1994 release of Radioland Murders.

In fact, George Lucas himself wrote the original story idea for this film, and he's been planning on making it since back in 1988. Now, I know that the words "written by George Lucas" are enough to leave most nerds cringing in disgust after the release of the Star Wars prequels, but I can't help but feel hopeful that this might be Lucasfilm's first good film since 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Let's be honest here, Radioland Murders was pretty crappy.

Why do I think it might be good? Well, first of all, George Lucas didn't write the script. He only wrote the story idea. The screenplay itself was written by a man named John Ridley, whose screen credits include films I've actually enjoyed such as Undercover Brother and Three Kings. However, he also wrote the screenplay for the film U Turn, which is one of the worst things that I've ever had to sit through. So, admittedly, the script could go either way. The fact that Lucas himself did not write the screenplay though gives me some hope for a decent story with a plot that makes some sort of actual sense.

Second, George Lucas didn't direct this film. He's only the producer on it. Red Tails is actually being directed by Anthony Hemingway, whose credits mainly center around television shows such as BSG, True Blood, Heroes and Community. That's not too shabby. True, he doesn't have a feature film under his belt yet, but the projects he has worked on are all of decent quality, so he must have some ability, right? At the very least, he has to be better than Lucas' style of only doing over-the-shoulder shots or walking shots to convey all of his dialog scenes.

With Lucas only sitting on as the producer, there exists the possibility that this could finally mark the return of good filmmaking to Lucasfilm Limited. I remember back far enough to know that Lucasfilm used to be capable of churning out good films, so long as George himself was only peripherally involved. Let us not forget that Lucasfilm is the company responsible for giving us gems like Willow, the original Land Before Time, Howard The Duck (which I consider to be a misunderstood masterpiece) and a little film starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly called Labyrinth.

Remember that one? Yeah, that was produced by George Lucas and Lucasfilm. See? They used to make good movies, and I'm still hopeful that they can do so again. The trailer for Red Tails genuinely looks exciting to me. They have a great ensemble cast, the story has real promise and the special effects and fighter combat scenes look phenomenal.

I'm crossing my fingers here and am eagerly awaiting this one. Let's hope it breaks the 22 year old Lucasfilm curse and is actually a fun, enjoyable film.

(Thanks go to Virginia Schwarz for sending me the tip about the trailer's release.)

Comic Con 2011

Well, another San Diego Comic Con has come and gone. Unfortunately, this year I was only able to attend the show for two days instead of my usual three. This was because of the giant debacle that was attempting to buy tickets for this year's show.

For those of you unaware, getting tickets to SDCC used to be fairly simple. Tickets would on on sale in the fall, and up until a few years ago never sold out. Even showing up the day of the con, one could easily buy a pass and go inside after going through the registration line. Then, a few years ago, something unheard of happened. 4 day passes for the con sold out a few weeks before the show opened. Everyone was surprised. That had never happened before. Sure, one day passes were still available, but for the first time ever one could not buy a 4 day pass for the convention by showing up on Thursday morning.

This was but the beginning of a trend.

The following year, 4 day passes sold out months before the con, and single day passes sold out for Friday and Saturday (typically the busiest days of the con) a few weeks before the show. The year after that, the entire convention sold out only a few weeks after going on sale. What used to take months to sell out now did so in less than two months. Demand was getting pretty insane, and I suddenly found myself wishing I had bought my tickets for the 2011 SDCC while still at the 2010 convention. I wasn't horribly worried though. It still took weeks to sell the show out. So long as I bought my tickets the day they went on sale, I'd be ok, right?

Wrong.

This year, buying a ticket to SDCC was harder than getting into a Pearl Jam concert circa 1994. Comic Con International themselves tried to sell tickets through their own site as they had traditionally done before, but after having their sight brought to its knees twice by the sheer volume of people trying to purchase tickets at once, they realized they would need help. They decided to go with a company called TicketLeap, who promised the Con organizers that they would be able to handle the load of tens of thousands of con fans all trying to buy tickets at once. For the third time now, a sale date and time was given, and fans (myself included) counted down until they could log on to buy passes for the 2011 show.

The day the tickets went on sale can best be described as a true exercise in patience. Unsurprisingly, TicketLeap couldn't handle the sheer volume of comic con fans either, and their site started to buckle. It didn't completely collapse, but for the vast majority of people trying to get in, all they saw was an error screen saying that traffic on the site was to high, and an instruction to hit the refresh button to try again. I don't know how everyone else's experience went, but I spent about 3 hours straight hitting refresh every minute or so, only to get the same error message again and again and again.

What was really annoying though was following Comic Con's official twitter account too, which kept updating people that tickets were indeed being sold, so keep trying. Then came the dreaded tweet I didn't want to see. 4 day passes were sold out. Before I could even log in, I had lost the opportunity to get my 4 day pass. I did eventually get in (thank god), but by the time I did, passes for Saturday were sold out as well. Taking what I could get, I bought passes for Thursday and Friday and fumed silently for a while.

As the following months went by though, my anger subsided. This would actually be a good thing, I told myself. It would change the way I went to con. With only two days to attend the show, I would be more focused on only wandering the floor and not spending time in lines for panels upstairs. The floor is mainly what I go for anyways. Plus, this way I could take Saturday and drive up to Disneyland instead. As far as backup plans go, Disneyland is always a good one.

So, yeah, I'm fine now with having only gotten the two passes. It worked out well in the end, and I may even try to do the same thing next year. That is, if I can manage to even get tickets to next year's show. I did try to pre-register for the 2012 show at this year's show, but once again I was schooled in just how big this convention has gotten. It turns out that the usual pre-registration ticket allotments that they sell at the convention (about 2,500) per day, were selling out minutes after they went on sale in the mornings. People were lining up at 5am just to buy their tickets for next year's show. I must not be a big enough nerd I decided, because I just don't have the desire to get up that early to buy tickets for a show that is a year away. Call me crazy, but I'm just too old for that shit. That's definitely on my Murtaugh List now.

Ok, enough about the ticket debacle. Let's discuss the 2011 San Diego Comic Con!!!

Surprisingly enough, what with all of the crazy demand for tickets, the show this year didn't seem as busy as it has over the last few years. I got onto the exhibit hall floor at around 9:30am on Thursday and it was pretty dead. I figured that since this would probably not last very long, I decided to head over to the bigger toy and movie studio booths to see what all they were showing off before the big crowds showed up. One of the first places I stopped at was the Mattel booth, which was giving out a bunch of cool free schwag including Stay Puft Marshmellow Man car air fresheners and this totally sweet miniature Rey Mysterio WWE action figure.

After leaving the Mattel booth, I wandered over to the movie booths but they weren't really giving anything away yet. I guess it was too early. Still though, I very much enjoyed walking through the big booths without having to navigate the crazy crowds. I spent an hour or two in the bigger booths looking at all of the cool large displays, and then moved back to the other end of the floor to begin my more traditional method of walking around the con floor. I call it the grid pattern (or The Grid for short if you're a Tron fan). I start at one end of the hall, and then walk up and down each aisle in a grid pattern, thus ensuring you see everything and that you don't miss any potentially cool booths.

This is actually a lot harder than it sounds. As you are walking through the exhibit hall, you are bound to come to a moment where at one of the big walkway intersections you see something really cool that you want to check out, but it's a few aisles away. The temptation to break the grid pattern is amazing. One must exercise both internal strength and patience to not step off of the assigned aisle by aisle pattern. If you do, you are pretty much guaranteed to miss something even cooler that your friends will tell you about after con, and then you'll be kicking yourself until next year and swearing that this time you won't get off of the grid. It's happened to me more times than I care to admit to. Take my advice, stay on The Grid!

Here are pics of some of the cool stuff I found on the Con floor.

It's the giant dog thing from Adventure Time!

This was set up for the new Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City game that Capcom is putting out this fall. I didn't get a chance to play the game, but I watched some other people play and it looks like it will be a lot of fun.

Voltron: Defender of the Universe. You can see to the left the WWE poster and the girl in the black shirt standing directly to the right of said poster. She's the one who was giving out the Rey Mysterio figures.

It's just your friendly neighborhood Spider-man, hanging from a street light. Nothing to see here.

It's the Tardis!!! For you non Dr. Who fans out there, that stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space.

I so envied these kids. I really had to hold myself back from jumping right into the center of the pile and burying myself in Legos.

It's a giant, life-size action figure of The Undertaker!

It's the G.I. Joe team, parachuting down from the ceiling!

As always, the cosplayers were out in force again this year. Of all of the people I saw though, I think the guy on the left was my favorite. Not only was his armor suit really well made, he actually looked a hell of a lot like Robert Downey Jr. too. I love it when cosplayers actually look like the characters they are dressing up as.

Giant, life-size, ultra realistic statue of Christopher Reeves as Superman. This thing creeps me the hell out. Don't look directly into its eyes. It will steal your soul. It's better to just run away. Run away as fast as you can!!!

Flying, radio controlled balloon sharks = super mega awesome and I want one RIGHT NOW!!!

This has to be the greatest Star Wars greeting card I have ever seen. Seriously. Ever!

As I said earlier, I don't really do the panel thing at all anymore. I just don't want to spend four hours in line to get a sneek peek at something that will be out in a few months anyways. I'd rather walk around and experience the sights and sounds of the con. Therefore, after Thursday came to a close I left the floor and went home to go get some much needed sleep. Ten hours of straight walking will do that to you.

I got up the next morning and hit up the floor again. It was a little busier on Friday than it had been the day before, so I avoided the big booths this time and wandered around checking out the comic booths and other smaller areas like Artist's Alley. After a while though, I decided to venture back into some of the bigger areas though in search of more free schwag. Man oh man am I glad that I did that. As I was walking by the BBC america booth, I saw some guy handing out things to passersby. I changed direction and headed towards him. As I got closer, I saw people putting things on their arms, but I could't see what they were. As I got up to the guy handing stuff out, he held out a small plastic square to me that had something inside of it and said, "If I give this to you, you have to put it on right now."

I looked around , but everyone who had been putting the thing on had already walked off. I was running blind here but I figured, what the hell. If it's something stupid, I'll wear it for about 100 feet then take it off. I wanted to know what was in the bag. I told the guy that I'd put it on and he gave me the plastic square. I opened it up and took it out, and it looked like a short, small piece of women's pantyhose. I put it over my arm, as instructed. As I did so, it finally became clear what this mysterious freebie was and I got really excited.

I had just received a fake set of full sleeve Dr. Who tattoos!!! Complete with the Tardis, Cybermen, Weeping Angels and gangsta style font that says "Bowties are cool" on it.

I'll admit it. I felt sort of bad ass wearing this thing on the floor. It actually looks pretty good if you keep the seam of it on the inside of your arm. I wore this for the rest of my time on the floor on Friday and didn't take it off until I got on the trolley to leave. Even then, I only took it off because it was really hot outside and my arm started to sweat. This was easily my favorite freebie of the entire convention. Well done BBC America booth. Well done indeed!

One thing that's cool about SDCC as it has gotten bigger and bigger is how the convention itself has expanded past the borders of just the convention center itself. It now encompasses almost all of downtown San Diego, with cool displays and events taking place blocks away from the exhibit hall floor. Every year there are usually one or two must see events taking place out in San Diego's Gaslamp district. This year it was South Park: The Experience.

Across the street from the convention center, Comedy Central had set up a huge area that was designed to look like part of South Park where attendees could take part in a number of events like tricycle races to creating their own South Park avatar. They were even giving away free t-shirts if you checked into the South Park Experience on Foursquare. It was a lot of fun and I have to give major props to Comedy Central and South Park itself for creating such a fun, interactive experience.

Oh, and I totally won the tricycle race that I took part in.

My time at the convention quickly coming to a close though. I'd spent the better part of two days walking around. I'd seen as much of what there was to be seen as I could and I was desperately in need of a good Carne Asada burrito, so I walked off of the floor of the San Diego Comic con for the the last time and said goodbye to the show. Even though getting tickets was a huge pain in the ass this year, and knowing that it will probably be even worse for next year's show, I'm still going to try to attend again.

This year marked my 20th year straight as a San Diego Comic Con attendee. I haven't missed a year since my first time back in 1992. It's a part of who I am. It's a yearly tradition that I know I will miss if I don't go at least for one or two days. After all, SDCC is the only place in the world where, as you're walking down regular city streets, you get to see stuff like this.

How could I NOT attend this show again next year?

See you later Comic Con. I had a blast this year. I hope I can do it again next year!

Chewbacca; Backstabbing Friend

It's a pretty well known fact that Harrison Ford doesn't really mention his Star Wars history all that often. Sure, he's all proud of his part as Indiana Jones, but he really never mentions his days of piloting the Millennium Falcon through asteroid fields or hanging out with Ewoks on Endor.

That's what makes this short clip from Jimmy Kimmel Live so amazing. For the first time in a very long while, Harrison Ford fesses up to being Han Solo and even makes a couple of great jokes Star Wars fans will love.

Also, we finally find out the reason why he never talks about Star Wars anymore. Surprisingly, it's all Chewbacca's fault. That no good walking carpet. I should have guessed he was the one to blame.

(via IO9)

The Force Of Logic

Behold, the new short film by Mike Noyes and yours truly. Shot on location around San Francisco, and on the floor of Wonder Con 2011, The Force of Logic is a love letter to all of our fellow geeks, nerds and dorks out there.

I hope you all enjoy it, and by all means be sure to tell your friends about it.

Also, you can become a fan on our facebook page by going HERE.

Pat's Movie Reviews: Thor

When Marvel first announced their plan to make a bunch of individual hero films that would ultimately lead to an Avengers film that would feature all of those same heroes . . . I'll be honest, at first I had a small nerdgasm moment (and by small I mean huge). About 30 seconds later though, the bitter and jaded nerd part of me kicked in and I started to worry about all of the problems that such a plan could encounter, and the high level of sucky-ness that these problems could lead these film to containing.

From the get-go, my biggest fears centered around the character of Thor. In my opinion, he was the member of this group that would be the hardest to translate to a movie screen in a believable way. Then, assuming that you accomplished that great task, he is also the most difficult member to fit seamlessly into a team with the other characters.

Think about it. You start with Tony Stark, who is basically just a normal guy with some awesome tech. Add to that Captain America, another normal guy who just happened to receive some great abilities after taking part in a crazy science experiment. You've also got people like Hawkeye, Black Widow and Nick Fury; all of whom are just normal people with vast amounts of military training.

Now, try to fit a Norse God into that mix and make it seem believable. Go ahead. Just try it.

Do you see the problem now?

Going into this film, Director Kenneth Branagh had to face those two issues head on. He needed to make Thor an interesting and believable character in his own right, and then he had to make it so that the fantastical world that Thor comes from can seamlessly fit in with the rest of the Marvel movie universe that had been established in Iron Man. These are really difficult tasks, and I worried greatly about Branagh's ability (or any other directors' really) to achieve them.

Having now seen Thor, I can happily say that Branagh has accomplished both of these tasks about as well as they could have been done.

Thor is by no means a perfect film. I definitely have my small quibbles with it here and there, but you have to remember that you can't really judge this film entirely as a stand-alone film. While this is definitely made to be a self-contained story, it was at the same time made as a building film to something else. As a result, there are parts of the film that don't entirely make sense unless you're aware of what has come before, and what is going to be coming later. Take SHIELD, for example. They feature prominently into this film's plot, but it's never really explained who they are or what they do. It's sort of expected that the audience is already familiar with SHIELD and Agent Coulson (who appeared in both Iron Man films).

One could easily pick apart some of these plot issues if they were judging Thor in a vacuum, but to do so would miss some of what Marvel is trying to do here. These are all small issues though. The key focus here is introducing the character of Thor and the world he comes from and making them relatable to the audience. Here is where I think Branagh excels. With the exception of the opening scene, the film spends the first 30 minutes or so entirely in Asgard, developing the character history of Thor, explaining what Asgard is and how all of the characters from that world are interrelated. We get to see Thor interact with Loki before they start to fight. We get to see Thor interact with his father in a very Father & son way.

All of this makes Thor an understandable character. Sure, he's a god from a fantasy world, but he also has a family and friends and relationships that he has to work on, just like the rest of us. He also has faults, and they're big ones too. At the beginning of the film Thor is a bit of a dick. He's brash, arrogant, headstrong and stubborn. He's overconfident in his own abilities and he doesn't stop to think about the consequences of his actions. These character flaws lead him to being stripped of his powers and banished to Earth. The story of the film from that point on is about him coming to terms with the fact that he doesn't know everything like he thinks he does and accepting that he must be a better man in order to be worthy of the powers and the responsibilities that he must eventually claim as King of Asgard.

The focus on this growth of character is pivotal in making Thor likable and relatable. Once he shows up on earth, he is instantly knocked off his self-imposed pedestal. Over the course of the middle acts of the film, he gets knocked down a lot, hit by some cars, shot up with drugs and even arrested and interrogated. Watching Thor have to suddenly accept that he no longer has the power to do as he pleases is a great thing to see. And to top it off, he totally does not understand how Earth works.

They really play up the "fish out of water" element as Thor tries to adjust to his new surroundings. It leads to some genuinely funny moments and some classic lines, especially when he goes into a pet store looking for something. I won't ruin the line here, but just trust me, it's really funny. There is a lot of comedy in the second act of Thor, as a result of these awkward moments he has. It's not done so much so that it gets obnoxious, thankfully. It was a nice touch though and was well handled to make the story funny without being too silly.

The relationship with Natalie Portman and her initial attraction to Thor seemed a bit strange to me. It's not as forced as Anakin and Padme's relationship in the Star Wars Prequels, but it does have a slight feel of that in one or two scenes. To be honest though, I was nerd-crushing on actress Kat Dennings' portrayal of college intern and Natalie's assistant Darcy Lewis to really care what was going on between Thor and Portman's character. Maybe it's just me here and my personal tastes in women speaking, but I was personally hoping that Thor would go with Darcy because she was by far the cuter, more entertaining character.

As for everything else, it was about what I expected from the film after seeing the Trailers. Anthony Hopkins as Odin is great. Loki is a giant douche bag like he should be. The Frost Giants are just sorta there as a plot device to get things moving. The Destroyer is pretty wicked when he finally does show up. The battles are pretty sweet. Stan Lee has a great cameo. There are a number of great nerd shout outs (Donald Blake, Hawkeye being called by his actual name, etc).

I would have liked to have seen a little less CG in some of the Asgard scenes, but I can understand that it is sort of necessary when shooting a film in a fantasy setting. I really loved how the Rainbow Bridge looked though, and the way the portals between the worlds worked is really cool too.

All in all, I was really happy with how Thor turned out. I wouldn't say it was as amazing as the first Iron Man was, but I'd put it on par with Iron Man 2 (which I still liked a lot). I really hope Thor does well because now that the back story has been explained, I'd love to see what a Thor sequel would look like.

Final Grade: B+

Many thanks go to James Sime, the owner of Isotope -The Comic Book Lounge in San Francisco (seriously, possibly the coolest comic book store ever) for posting ticket info about the early screening of Thor which enabled me to write this review before the film even came out.