What a remarkable body of work the MCU is. Not simply in the delivery of film after film that have been successful but as much in confidence of longer term planning and delivery. Through the different films they have woven both storylines and characters and have, for years now, seemingly marched relentlessly towards the guiding light of the Avengers Infinity war films.

Of course their base materials help greatly with their well of storylines from the inventory of Marvel storylines put out over the last 50 some years. They’ve succeeding in casting charismatic leads and the early series is especially built on the performances of Robert Downey Jnr. It’s funny to consider just how unexpected the casting of RDJ was in such a blockbuster before that film.

The films shift genre style throughout – as I discussed in a earlier entry and this too offers them strength in their successes.

Highlights for me in the films were the first Iron Man, the first Avengers film, Guardians of the Galaxy and the recent Civil War. Were you to consider the Captain America films as a trilogy of films, they would take some beating.

At the other end, I was really disappointed with the 2nd author film, and Iron Man 2 seemed as much an exercise in setting up the Avengers than an actual film. Avengers Age of Ultron was too much CGI for me, it may have been me ‘hitting a wall’ having watched them all over a short period, but that film more than most seemed to have nothing really to offer.

There’s clearly a desire to emulate the success of Marvel film series by the DC equivalents,  however (and I say this as a fan of DC), I fear that the characters will struggle to garner the same level of cinematic audience investment.  The darker style of the Batman vs Superman film shows that they will be going for a very different tone, but this may hamper audience sizes in comparison to the huge family friendly output now of Marvel.

So that was April. Now to May…