A Guide to Becoming a MCU fan

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. 

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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.

Martin Scorsese, Please Reconsider Your Definition of “Cinema”

Movies are art. Why should we exclude one kind over another in that discussion?

Cinema: a place where people go to watch films for entertainment.

Or: The business and art of making films.

Those are the definitions easily found within modern dictionaries. But that’s not really what we mean when someone declares that a modern movie is “not cinema.”

What we really mean is, “What is art?”

Martin Scorsese is a director of Academy-nominated movies including The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), a crime film about the a stockbroker’s rampant corruption and decadence. He is known mainly for crime films and gangster movies like Goodfellas (1990), which follows gangsters attempting to climb their way up the ladder of a New York mob before unraveling and falling prey to drug addiction.

Martin Scorsese

In an interview with Empire magazine in October, Scorsese mentions that superhero movies are “not cinema,” likening them to “theme parks”. In an opinion piece published in The New York Times, he clarified his remarks, adding that while he means no animosity towards Marvel films, “many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.”

As the opinion piece goes on, he comments that superhero movies have taken over the big screen and that productions – such as his own works that are more cerebral and less high-octane in nature – are being increasingly edged out, lambasting the trend of big-budget movies taking fewer risks. As he puts it, “there’s worldwide audiovisual entertainment [AKA superhero movies], and there’s cinema [AKA Goodfellas, The Irishman, The Shining].” Bold comments are mine.

You will note the three movies I inserted as examples of movies Scorcese made or liked are ones that are generally liked as well. The Shining is not exactly an underground, irrelevant movie hit. The Wolf of Wall Street is a movie made in this decade with roughly an 80% per cent critic and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. While I have watched very little of Scorsese’s work, it’s hard to deny his skill in film-making

In other words, Scorsese is hardly just some stodgy codger living in Hollywood’s attic. He remains part of the here and now.

So why does what Scorsese directs qualify as “cinema” where Marvel or DC’s offerings don’t?

Yes, there tends to be thematic principles that have guided the latest trend of superhero movies for nearly the past decade since the original Iron Man: Good vs Evil, Justice, Cooperation, Responsibility, Family…

Those are themes worth exploring. Just as Scorsese directs and participates in movies focusing on the aspects of humanity that will bring about its own downfall, superhero movies focus on the aspects of humanity that will bring about its own rise to a utopia. Both are equally valid, even if the latter aspect is an easier pill to swallow than the former.

Does Wonder Woman running through No Man’s Land not count as “cinema”? What about when she experiences firsthand the horror of mustard gas, wandering through a village that had been brimming with life a few hours prior but now was an eerily silent graveyard? Is the deafening silence of a goddess processing the true extent of human cruelty for the first time not enough emotion to be “cinema”?

Thor experiences PTSD following defeat brought on by his fatal flaw – his sense of pride. Do his attempts to scrape and claw out of the deep, dark hole of depression, only to still be found worthy by the mythical weapon Mjolnir not count as “cinema”?

What counts as “cinema”, Scorsese? Because superhero movies, even if they are safe, even if they are produced seemingly en-masse to the exclusion of other films, still touch the hearts of millions of people worldwide.

What is cinema? It is art as a moving picture.

Marvel is art.

DC is art.

Scorsese is art.

Movies are art. Please don’t exclude one genre, theme, or director over another. Reconsider your definition of “cinema.”

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Jean-Michel Vaillancourt

Jean-Michel Vaillancourt is a D&D fanatic, a video game enthusiast, a book-lover, and an eternal seeker for the art of storycraft in modern TV pop culture.