The Road to Civil War - The Avengers (Avengers Assemble)

With Captain America: Civil War less than a week away (for the UK; two, if you’re Stateside), I’ve gone back to rewatch some of the MCU movies leading up to it. The most directly-related, I figure, are Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble), Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Age of Ultron, so those are the ones I’m going to be looking at. It’s been a while since I’ve seen most of these, so it’s interesting to revisit them with a new perspective: both the passage of time, and the knowledge of just how successful Marvel’s grand cinematic experiment actually turned out to be.

It’s hard to imagine, after four years and over a billion dollars, a time when The Avengers seemed like a risky proposition - but even with the successes of Iron Man, Thor, and The First Avenger, a team-up movie on this scale was a big gamble. Getting Nerd God Joss Whedon to take the helm helped build up a lot of good will, though - after if anyone could handle an ensemble this outlandish, it was going to be Whedon.

So out it came, and the rest is incredibly profitable history. Marvel cemented themselves as a box-office force to be reckoned with, letting them run wild with their weirder properties and led us to the five-year slate of releases ahead, including Doctor Strange, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel - all of which would have been completely unimaginable a few years ago.

So, the gamble paid off - in just about every way. The Avengers Assembled, and to a great reception.

So, four years and six more movies later, how does it stand up?

The Road to Civil War - Captain America: The First Avenger

With Captain America: Civil War a week away (for the UK; two, if you’re Stateside), I’ve gone back to rewatch some of the MCU movies leading up to it. The most directly-related, I figure, are Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble), Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s been a while since I’ve seen most of these, so it’s interesting to revisit them with a new perspective: both the passage of time, and the knowledge of just how successful Marvel’s grand cinematic experiment actually turned out to be.

When Captain America: The First Avenger was initially released, I liked it, but less than I wanted to. It had most of the ingredients - the performances are pretty universally great, especially Chris Evans’ earnest, noble Steve Rogers, and the script has all the wit and character that are Marvel’s hallmarks - but I remember leaving the cinema with a sense of airlessness, a lack of gravity to the whole thing, like there was never any real feeling of threat.

Part of that I put down to director Joe Johnson, whose 1991 movie The Rocketeer - which also revolves around an average-guy-turned-hero fighting nazis in the 1940s - left me with a similar lack of more visceral excitement. Maybe before, I just wasn’t paying attention, though - The First Avenger is better than I remembered.

A lot better.

Doctor Strange (teaser trailer)

The first teaser for Doctor Strange is out:

I can't remember the last time I was awestruck by a trailer. I mean, yeah, Cumberbatch sounds a little more... Gregory House than I expected, but but... holy hell, this looks incredible.

Platinum Demo - Final Fantasy XV

Confession: I've never finished a Final Fantasy game. Not even VII (I once got to Gold Saucer). In fact, I've never finished any JRPG; something about the systems, the style, or some other aspect of the things just never clicked with me. A few have come close; Final Fantasy XIII, once I worked out what the hell was going on, but that was cut short a mere 28 hours in when my PS3's hard drive failed, and I've never worked up the energy to start again.

But, despite my own lack of synchronicity with JRPGs, they're one of the juggernauts of the "hardcore" gaming community, so I keep coming back, thinking that maybe this one will finally let me in, allow me to glimpse what it is that everyone else seems to love so much.

Based on this demo, Final Fantasy XV will not be the one to let me in.

Boot Sheep says GOODBYE

After a long, hard, 5-minute think, Boot Sheep is no more.

Fracturing my online presence into multiple "personalities" doesn't seem like the greatest idea, so here goes: everything now coalesced (where possible) to Ninchilla.

Any references to Boot Sheep in the handful of reviews I've ever posted remain, to confuse any future readers who dare to head off into the archives (did I really think that well of Transformers?).

Anyway, I'm going to try and post more thoughts/reviews, though I'll also keep things brief. I'm not one for thinkpieces, and if you are, well, there are plenty of places to look for those. I'm not going to bother with scores, or even the old yes/no system (at least, for now) - hopefully I don't write so badly as to make getting to the end that much of a chore.

So here we go.

Hitman (2016)

Hitman is not an action game. Despite its title, it’s not really a “murder simulator” either, though I don’t doubt there are some who’d call it that, pearls firmly clutched; no, after a lot of hours spent exploring the cavernous mock-settings of the ICA training facility, and the opulent, baroque Parisian palace, I’m pretty sure it’s a puzzle game. A huge, sprawling, complex puzzle with dozens of solutions - and, yes, okay, quite a lot of murder.

Mad Max: Fury Road

I am not what you'd call a Mad Max fan. I never saw the original three growing up, at the early- or pre-teen age that seems to be when most of my generation developed a fondness for them; my awareness of Mad Max as a character or a movie phenomenon was largely through the zeitgeist - all I really knew was that it was a weird, car-obsessed post-apocalyptic action franchise.  Then, when the Fury Road hype started to build (and, let's face it, those visuals), I decided it was probably time I had a look.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a good movie. It's a hell of a lot of fun, with some great set-pieces, and zippy dialogue; but it has a few problems, too, which mean it fails to elevate itself to Avengers Assemble heights.

Some spoilers follow, but I'll try to keep things as safe as possible.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Full disclosure: I've not played much of Dragon Age Inqisition yet. I think my current play time is still under 20 hours, I've got at least two other party members to recruit, and the Inquisition's fortress of Skyhold hasn't even been mentioned once in my time with it.

Still, I think it's enough time to know two things: one, I'm going to get a hell of a lot more hours under my belt; and two, it has some problems.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I enjoyed the spectacle of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, though I don't think The Two Towers or Return of the King impressed me quite to the degree that The Fellowship of the Ring managed.  My main memory of leaving the cinema after Fellowship was thinking how great the Balrog had been, but Towers and King really just felt like More Of The Same; having read the books, the story was no surprise, and so all there really was left was the grand visuals (and Andy Serkis' phenomenal Gollum).

Enter the Hobbit.