My friend Brad and I often review movies together, and Avengers was the one that got away. We actually did the correspondence, but I never found the time to put the post together. If I ever get it done, it will address why I ranked it where I did.

I'm sure I seem like a contrarian here in a few critical cases, but it's more likely that because I am not a comic book guy, my approach to movies largely based on comic book characters will value certain things differently. Put another way, films are more literal and what you see is what you get. In a comic book, you let your imagination fill in more detail. I have a ton of nits to pick with The Dark Knight as well, but it had plenty of unique good to outweigh the nonsensical bad.

For the defense of Watchmen...

http://fightingtheyouth.blogspot.com/2009/04/atob-back-and-forth-review-watchmen.html

I guess I would put “The Wolverine” at #18, after The Avengers and before The Dark Knight Rises - in case you'd like to update the data.

I'm not quite sure how I liked “Origins: Wolverine” better, but I think it must've been the connection of the Danny Huston/Brian Cox as Stryker and the ending. Clever way to wipe Logan's memory and make the comeuppance in X2 even more impactful than it seemed at the moment, and that made some of the boom/explosions stuff more worth it.