The Marvel films have come a long way from X-men & Spiderman. In hindsight, the only real appeal of those was novelty. They kicked off two rather appalling franchises, both of which have subsequently been recast and rebooted, and a whole ton of wretched films, including two Hulk movies, two Fantastic Four movies, Punisher, Daredevil and Ghost Rider. But with Iron Man not being too awful and Thor and Captain America actually being kind of good, they've really pulled out of the dive. I'm sort of looking forward to this Avengers thing due out next year, though I presume the casting of Chris Something (I get the Chrises who play Captains Kirk & America mixed up, and there's another Chris who usually guest stars on TV shows I watch and is often Australian) precludes the Fantastic Four joining the team. The funny thing is, I understood the Avengers to be a kind of Marvel All-Star team, like the Super Friends. I can understand leaving out lame-asses like the Fantastic 4, but I am pretty sure Spiderman is the biggest hero of Marvel Comics. So where is he? He didn't appear in the teaser that I could see, though I presumed the latest reboot of the franchise was part of this ongoing Avengers build up. It can't be a power issue, because Captain America doesn't seem to do have the stuff Spider Man can do, and as I discussed in my review of Thor, they have a lame-ass powerless guy with a BOW AND ARROWS on the Avengers. They could at least give Spider-man his slot.

- One of the telling criteria in selecting Captain America seems to be an attraction to British chicks. They chuck a grenade at the various candidates, and while the others who resent a foreign chick in a position of authority over elite American soldiers scatter and leave her to reach stupidly for it, Steve dives on the grenade to shield everyone else. Col. Tommy Lee Jones and Dr. Stanley Tucci exchange glances that seem to say "This total lack of self-preservation instincts is EXACTLY the guy we want to invest our multi-million dollar upgrades on!" But meaning it sincerely, not in the ironic manner some might perceive in my phrasing.

- Speaking of the British chick, we seem to have a case of what I have begun think of as the "girlpower rationale": the idea that a woman wielding power is to be approved of, regardless of the situation or what she is doing, merely because she's attractive and young and female. This phenomenon explains the appeal of Egwene al'Vere, Daenerys Targaryen and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, despite their all being spoiled See You Next Tuesdays whose important decisions are all based on emotional attachments. This chick struts around on an American military facility where a number of elite soldiers have been selected for an experimental program. She is, simply by virtue of her sex, not remotely worthy of the respect due a fellow warrior, holds no significant rank (Captain America later claims that he out-ranks her, being a relatively low-ranking captain; they only out-rank lieutenants, whom no veteran elite soldier respects), and being young, wearing a skirt and heavily made-up is manifestly not someone to be taken seriously by these men without their being given a very good reason. When one of the soldiers quite properly raises an issue of chain of command and national sovereignty, she responds with a demonstration of her moral superiority. She orders him to step forward, stand perfectly still and hits him very hard. Had a real soldier and lawful superior officer done the same thing, he might have been up on charges. For a foreign official to physically assault an American soldier on no basis other than responding to verbal remarks is tantamount to an act of war. And hitting a guy who you have ordered to step forward and stand in a particular position and spot in no way proves your worth as a warrior or even particularly tough person, any more than hitting a baseball off a tee qualifies you for the major leagues. But she's a chick and she punched a dude, and there is Empowered and Badass. Further undermining her character is the actual context of a scene showed in the previews, where Captain America examines one of the shields they made for him and she demonstrates its strength by shooting several rounds at him, which impact on the shield doing absolutely no damage. In the preview it looks like his teacher is demonstrating the efficacy of his equipment and silencing his doubts by surprising him with her badassery. In the actual movie, it was not a secure weapons-testing or training facility, she was already established as not being his superior in any way, and she was mad at him because she caught him kissing Anne Boleyn. Rather than a bad-ass chick schooling the experimental rookie who hasn't proved himself yet by showing him how her department makes awesome weapons, she is reduced to a petulant girly girl lashing out in disproportionate fashion for purely emotional reasons, in a weapons MANUFACTURING LAB! The kind of place that is full of things that should NEVER have pistols discharge in the same room! And all because she's mad that he did not interpret their lack of a relationship and her never correcting his assumption that she is dating someone else to understand that she is interested in her! Yeah, he deserves to get shot at for that.

- You'd think that someone involved with all the Marvel movie properties in general would have pointed out that two films (XM1C) in the same year featuring a Nazi scientist named Schmidt is pushing things a bit. Or do they switch to ordinary names when they join the evil Nazi science guild?

- Oh, and a guy whose best film role involved characters defying the laws of nature in made-up dreams, commanding a secret organization with gas-masked cannon fodder, a foreign scientist and a reptilian name/battle-cry? Why didn't Captain America just call his squad "GI Joe" and be done with it?

- Forget a crossover of all the Marvel superheroes, I want a crossover of all the evil Nazi scientists uniting to form a Nazi uber-research division, and Captain America, Magneto, Indiana Jones and all the rest of their adversaries team up to stop them, in a kind of League of Extraordinary Nazi Sci-Fi Adversaries. A funny thing to happen in such a film would be the Nazis sitting around their Nazi lunchroom making jokes about how stupid Heisenberg, Diebner and Von Bruan are. "No for real! He has no idea about our routine anti-gravity technology! Werner wants to launch stuff into space by burning tons and tons of fuel!" *raucous Nazi laughter* "Oh, oh, and tell them what Heisenberg's doing!" "Ja, right! He's trying to build an atomic bomb!" "Why? My vaporizing gun and those relics of the actual God Himself you dug up, and Herr Doktor Schmidt's Invisible Drill Submarine/Plane/Coptor render such primitive bombs obsolete!" "Ja, that's the joke!" *more raucous Nazi laughter*

- Also regarding the Nazi scientists, this collection of movies is running the risk, IMO, of falling into the Inglorius Basterds problem of "Germans are the only competent people in the world." In that movie, the deadliest member of the Basterds was a released German murderer and their female German guide. Once they were all killed and wounded (after a random German officer casually met saw through their disguises in a manner Sherlock Holmes would have applauded), the team only succeeded at their objective because the German officer looking for them had the situation so well in hand that he was able to catch them, neutralize them and then enable their plan to go through flawlessly. Captain America is made possible only by a German scientist switching teams, and apparently an entire US clandestine operation is made possible because of German break-throughs in exploiting the technology of gods. Also, they got the ball rolling for Stark Inc, and Iron Man. If Jeremy Renner's bow turns out to have been made by Mauser or Heckler & Koch, we'll know for sure.