Marvel Cinematic Universe

Marvel Cinematic Universe

   “There was an idea… called the Avengers initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people. See if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed to, to fight the battles that we never could.”(Nick Fury) These were the words echoed by Nick Fury in The Avengers, the film which would launch the MCU as a cultural phenomenon. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU for short, is the first (long-term) successful attempt to create and stick to a unified continuity between multiple films and genres under the banner of a single franchise. Marvel has created an ever-expanding bank of films, television shows, streaming series, etc. that not only tell their own stories but fit together as part of a singular ongoing story. This experiment has proven to be a massive success in terms of getting audiences from all ages interested in the MCU storyline itself but all these connections can be hard and most times confusing for even the most the diehard Marvel fans. It’s easy to just go watch the movies when they come out but understanding them and how they fit in the timeline is rather confusing and complicated to explain.    

       

     The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been divided in three main stages or as they like to call it, Phases, each with multiple films with massive build up across each one of them. Phase one of the MCU consists of 6 films, beginning with The Incredible Hulk in 2008 and concluding with The Avengers in 2012. At this point Marvel was beginning to experiment on how they wanted to build their universe and to the benefit of the audience and them, they were succeeding and that was seen on The Avengers, a film that to this date is one of the most successful and profitable films of all-time. Then came Phase two of the MCU which to this date is the most successful one yet with multiple films crossing the 1 Billion Dollar mark, a feat that a very small amount of films have managed to achieve. This Phase consists of 6 films, beginning with Iron Man 3 on 2013 and finishing with Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man, both films from 2015. This phase produced critically acclaimed movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, two insanely talented directors.

    The Third and currently ongoing phase of 
the MCU is without a doubt the most ambitious one 
with a staggering 10 films being produced from 2016 until 2019. “Captain, while a great many people see you as a hero, there are some who would prefer the word vigilante. You’ve operated with unlimited power and no supervision. That’s something the world can no longer tolerate.”(Thaddeus Ross) This is a thing that the Secretary of State Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross points out in 2016’s highly successful and anticipated Captain America: Civil War, a film which would introduce many long lost characters in the MCU like Black Panther and the ever popular Spider-Man. This was a special kind of film because it divided The Avengers, made them crumble from inside in what was a spectacular and entertaining thing to see, brought to us by directors Joe and Anthony Russo. These two directors will be in fact directing the next two Avengers films, which are stated to be the culmination of everything Marvel has done until that point, starting with Avengers: Infinity War in 2018 where our heroes will finally be facing the mad tyrant known as Thanos, a villain teased in the ending credits of almost every Marvel film. As Tony Stark once acknowledged in a teaser trailer released by Marvel Studios about Avengers: Infinity War, “Whatever happens on Earth… that up there, that’s… that’s the endgame.”(Tony Stark).

 Works Cited:

• Chipman, Bob. ”A Chronological History of the Marvel Cinematic Universe”/Screenrant

            screenrant.com/marvel-cinematic-universe-timeline/ 12 Oct. 2016

• Jackson, Samuel, performer. The Avengers

Marvel Studios, 2012

• Hurt, William, performer. Captain America: Civil War

            Marvel Studios, 2016

• Downey Jr., Robert, performer. Avengers: Infinity War

            Marvel Studios, 2018