Summer 2012 Movie Wrap-up

A couple months ago I noted my top 5 movies I was looking forward to this summer.  They were:

1. Prometheus
2. The Dark Knight Rises
3. The Amazing Spiderman
4. The Avengers
5. Expendables 2

I saw each of those movies, finishing the Expendables sequel about an hour ago.  I was thinking I would do an indepth review of all of them, but really there is nothing more to say.  They were all awesome.

Of the 5, I would have to say I rank them like this:

Dark Knight Rises
Prometheus
Spiderman
Expendables 2
Avengers

Why?  Batman was sooooo good.  The villain was better than expected.  The pacing was great, and Nolan took some chances with the story and characters that surprised me.  2 hours and 45 minutes flew by for me.  The action was tight.  Anne Hatheway was a surprise hit, I couldn't believe what a great Catwoman she was.

Promtheus was the one I was most looking forward to, mostly because the ground it had tread had been left alone for decades since Aliens came out in the 1980's.  It was a beautiful movie.  Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender were the clear favorites of the film.  I thought the plot was great and it left me wanting the painfully obvious sequel.

Spiderman was surprisingly good, despite the "ok" Spiderman 3 coming out six years ago.  I thought Tobey Maguire was outshone by Andrew Garfield, and I thought Emma Stone was perfect as Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone's natural color is blond, I just learned, she is something else).  The villain, of course, couldn't top Willem Dafoe, but the fight scenes were awesome (the best scene featured a cameo of creator Stan Lee with the hero and protagonist fighting in the background).

Expendables 2 was exactly what I expected.  The first one was more of a "could they redo the classic 80's action movies with 80's action stars in 2010," and after Sylvester Stallone and co. proved that they could of course they made a sequel to it.  With so many toned down PG-13 movies coming out (Live Free or Die Hard, for example) when they should be "Hard" R movies, it is refreshing to see a no-holds-barred action movie pull everything off.

Finally, the Avengers.  I enjoyed it, it was fun and action-packed.  I thought it was amazing that Joss Whedon could pull it off, by having four larger-than-life heroes, all played by top Hollywood talent, share the spotlight.  Perhaps what took the enjoyment a tad down compared to the other films (especially Promtheus) was because there has been so many recent movies featuring the Avengers (Iron Man, Capn' America, Thor, and the Hulk).  I ununderstand that Marvel wanted to set up the fanfare film, but still.