First Look at Benicio Del Toro as The Collector from 'Thor: The Dark World'

Benicio Del Toro as an immortal space Elvis

You know the drill by this point.  New Marvel movie, new teaser post-credits scene.  

This one features Benicio Del Toro as The Collector.  Teasing his role in next summer's 'Guardians of the Galaxy' and perhaps foreshadowing a storyline for Avengers 3 (Infinity Gauntlet anyone?).  

The Collector is an Elder of the Universe in Marvel comics lore.  He is about as old as the universe itself and virtually immortal.  He has set up a collection of beings and artifacts as a failsafe against a vision of the future in which all life is destroyed.  One of these items is the aether from 'Thor: The Dark World', revealed here to be an infinity gem.

So, that's one infinity gem.  Another is revealed to be in Asgard's treasure room (either the tesseract or the gem placed into Loki's scepter in 'The Avengers').  That's two.  There are 6 gems total, which when put together create the infinity gauntlet.  This item has the power to unmake all life in the universe  and has long been the ultimate goal sought by Thanos.  

Who is Thanos, you may ask?  

Universal terror, Thanos

Thanos is the purple gentleman from the post-credits scene in 'The Avengers'.  Thanos is an Eternal in the comics (not as old as The Collector) who is constantly trying to court and impress Mistress Death.  And what better way is there to impress Death?  Destroy all life in the universe.  Thanos is powerful, but not powerful enough to accomplish this feat on his own.

So it would seem Marvel has set the table for an ultimate showdown with the Earth heroes and Thanos over the infinity gauntlet and the fate of the universe.  This is probably a few years down the line, maybe a potential storyline for 'Avengers 3', but it's awesome Marvel is thinking so far ahead to tie in all of their movies.  And I'm sure 'Guardians of the Galaxy' and phase 2 will expand this even further.

So these post-credits scenes might not make a whole lot of sense yet, but one day they will.  And on that day you'll have to tip your hat to the planning ability of Kevin Feige and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

LEGO Captain America Movie

You know, sometimes it really seems like a movie can fail because it gets stretched in too many different directions... Especially with superhero movies.  Studios want them to be at the same time gritty and family-friendly; realistic, yet true to the comics.  You can't always have it both ways.

 Captain America sort of felt this way to me.  I saw it in theaters this past summer with my 9-year-old cousin.  He liked it just fine, but his taste in movies isn't all that discerning.  In fact, he stopped mentioning the movie the next day and was back to his previous obsession (not a good sign).  It left a similar impact on me.  The movie was entertaining in parts, but felt very bland and generic.  A fine summer movie, but nothing I'd recommend to anyone or feel the need to watch a second time.  In all honesty, the beginning of the movie wasn't bad, but the second half just didn't have the same flow.  It's an origin story set in WWII.  Did we really need the alien cube thing?  Were they really that desperate to tie this movie into the Avengers setup?  Seemed a bit forced to me.  

In general, I'm a little worried with the direction Marvel in particular is taking with their movies.  Captain America was ok, Thor was ok.  Iron Man I was good, II was admittedly bad.  They all just seemed like setups for 'The Avengers', which for Marvel's sake, better be good.  They have a lot riding on it, since almost all of their other movies are tied into it.

The one departure seems to be the next Ghost Rider movie, which actually looks pretty decent in the sense it isn't trying to capture the young kid audience.  That's a good thing since Ghost Rider really isn't a character for kids, and never was.  It should be noted that the first Ghost Rider movie was very tongue-in-cheek and seemed to want to capture the kid audience, again an example of being stretched too many different ways.  Didn't work.  It should also be noted that the first Ghost Rider movie was not a Marvel Studios film.  Check out the trailer here

Who knows... I'll likely keep watching them.  It's just one of those things where since I have a familiarity with the characters, I'll always have a sense that some things could have been done better.  That some parts of those movies should have better met my personal expectations for how that character would be portrayed.  It's a double-edged sword: a built-in fan base, but one that is overly critical.

Anyway, the reason for my ramble was a cool little Captain America LEGO short that got me thinking about super hero movies.  It's one of the more over-the-top LEGO films I've seen, and I've seen quite a few.  It almost makes me wish the actual Captain America movie wasn't so kid-friendly so we could have had some scenes approaching this.

Super over the top, right down to the Wilhelm scream and the screaming eagle sound effect.
 Kudos to ForrestFireFIlms, this was really well done.