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.
