For a couple of months we've been making our way through rewatching the Marvel movies, starting with 2008's Iron Man and intending to go through the end of the Infinity War saga. We recently just finished the second Avengers movie, the Ultron one.
I'm picking up on a lot more ongoing, connected plot threads by viewing them one per week or so, than I did viewing them across years at the time of release, where by the time a movie came out I forgot a lot of details, or maybe it was passing references in a movie so I never noticed them in the first place, in some cases forgot minor characters that's useful to know to fully follow and appreciate the story.
Some of the movies were better on a rewatch than I remember them being. I remember thinking Edward Norton's Hulk movie was just meh, same for the second Iron Man movie. I actually enjoyed those pretty well on a rewatch. One thing the original Hulk movie did well was keep Hulk's scaling consistent. Every subsequent movie with the Hulk in it struggled with that. Sometimes he's massive, other times he's just a little taller than everyone else.....not a lot of consistency in that aspect, and that hurts the verisimilitude of the viewing experience.
Next up is the first Ant-man movie, and I'm curious if I'll like that one better than I recall as well. When I first saw it, I remember thinking it was the weakest, most blah cookie-cutter offering the franchise had yet made and I worried they were starting to mail it in.
Overall, those were a fun group of movies which had a lot more going for them than just CGI and blockbuster tropes. They are clever in many ways, and at this pace I can see a lot of background plots that were connected and always leading somewhere which I previously missed. That level of story-telling seems more rare now.
