Marvel-ous

Only one thing on my mind tonight - Infinity War.  Daughter One and I watched it this evening, and holy cow was it worth watching.  Don't worry, no spoilers here....there's way too much to talk about and I'm not clever enough to remember everything anyway.

As much as tonight's movie is on my mind, so too are some of the original superhero movies I watched as a kid.  I still vividly remember seeing Superman as a 6-year-old in 1978.  As a 16-year-old I became obsessed with Batman in the summer of 1989, going twice to watch Michael Keaton's Caped Crusader battle Jack Nicholson's Joker.  And that's about where the list ends.  Yes, kids, there was a time when a blockbuster superhero movie was released once a decade instead of once a month. Not everything was good about the old days.

After watching the spectacle that was/is Infinity War I now look back at the superhero movies of my youth and realize - they were terrible.  Superman was lauded for its special effects and clever script - yawn.  Batman, too, seemed like an incredible achievement at the time but was blown away by the Christopher Nolan Batman trio twenty years later.  Much like a life form, movie making has evolved. Not only with special effects, but writing, acting, use of humor.....movies are just a whole lot more fun now than they were when I was my daughter's age.  In my humble opinion, of course.

I've tried watching some of the "classics" from the 60's, 70's, and 80's.  It's hard.  Really hard.  The pacing is slow, the plots simple, the dialogue dull, the humor weak.  The James Bond franchise is my prime example - after suffering through viewing the first twenty years of films in that series I felt they finally started to get interesting in the 90's, and then turned terrific when Daniel Craig took on the role in 2006.  The action was better, the acting was better, the story lines better.....all around better films.

So where does the evolution of movies go next?  I'm not sure how much better special effects can get, but I suppose a day will come when we go to a movie and feel like we are actually in the movie, surrounded by the action instead of just the sound.  Which would be fine with me - I've been waiting unleash my inner Batman for nearly thirty years now.

Go see Infinity War, even if you don't like superhero movies.  You'll laugh a lot, you'll be awestruck at times, and you'll probably be confused if you haven't seen any of the other Avenger movies.  But whether you like the movie or don't, if you're a middle-ager like me I have to believe you'll walk away agreeing it was far more impressive than watching Superman do.......heck, I don't even remember what Superman did, other than fly.  Awkwardly.  In ugly tights.  Some superhero he was.