A Guide to Becoming a MCU fan
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The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a long 10-year stretch of movies. Despite being loved by such a large and ever-growing fan base, some newer fans are intimidated by the amount of movies that they need to watch to catch up. In the last 10 years, Marvel has released a total of 23 films, all of which are part of what is called The Infinity Saga.
The saga is broken up into 3 phases, with each movie leading into one another and dropping hints for what is to come. These usually include hints in post-credit scenes – so make sure that you stick around for those. For those people who think that 23 movies is way too many to catch up on, just keep reading and I’ll guide you through which order to watch so you can join this expanding and amazing universe.
There are two orders in which you could watch these movies. The first one is by release date:
Phase One
Iron Man (2008)
The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Thor (2011)
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Marvel’s The Avengers (2012)
Phase Two
Iron Man 3 (2013)
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Ant-Man (2015)
Phase Three
Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Doctor Strange (2016)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Black Panther (2018)
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
Captain Marvel (2019)
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
Following along with the phases, you will get to see how the films improve over the years as the franchise grows and more money is being put into the movies. You also see the Avengers slowly coming together, piece by piece, and how the newer heroes are added in as well. This is how I grew up watching the films and became a super fan.
The second option for you to get into the films is to watch in chronological order:
Captain America: The First Avenger (taking place during WWII)
Captain Marvel (set in 1995)
Iron Man (set in 2010)
Iron Man 2 (events after Iron Man)
The Incredible Hulk (no exact time but pre-Avengers)
Thor (pre-Avengers, no exact time)
The Avengers (set in 2012)
Iron Man 3 (six months after The Avengers)
Thor: The Dark World (post-Avengers, pre-Ultron)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (post-Avengers, pre-Ultron)
Guardians of the Galaxy (set in 2014)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (after Guardians)
Avengers: Age of Ultron (set in 2015)
Ant-Man (set in 2015)
Captain America: Civil War (post-Ultron, pre-Infinity War)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (post-Civil War, pre-Infinity War)
Doctor Strange (set in 2016)
Black Panther (set in 2017)
Thor: Ragnarok (post-Ultron, pre-Infinity War)
Avengers: Infinity War (set in 2017)
Ant-Man and The Wasp (kind of unknown but fits between IW and Endgame)
Avengers: Endgame (starts in 2017, finishes in 2022)
Spider-Man: Far From Home (post-Endgame)
Either list is perfectly fine to start off your movie marathon, but deciding to watch chronologically gives you the chance to see how all the events unfold into each other. You get to see Thor grow from pretty much nothing into the God of Thunder and watch how the Tesseract finds its way into the movies. Don't forget to watch for the attacks of Thanos and the effect he has behind the scenes.
If you plan on jumping on the MCU bandwagon, you’d better start now! It will take you around 40 hours to complete them all. Plus, with Disney+ being out, the service makes it a lot easier for you to stream. And in 2020, they’ve announced lots more in store for us Marvel fans.
Joey R.
Joey is a lover of books and all things related to superheroes. She is a hoarder of books and can’t keep up with her tbr pile.
