I know utterly nothing about Shang-Chi, and I'm hyped as all get-out for it after that trailer. The first one was cool enough, but this looks like what we kind of thought Mortal Kombat was supposed to give us. Plus, holy shit it's the Abomination!

 

The first one was so generic that I was unexcited about it, but this one is much better. Makes me actually want to see it.

 

I'm not really a huge fan of ensemble superhero movies, I haven't seen most of the MCU. Though some of the new tv shows look cool, like Loki, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Should I watch the Avengers movies before checking out related tv shows?

 

I feel like if you haven't seen most of the preceding movies, the Disney+ shows will border on incomprehensible, to be honest.

 

MCU isn't a 'jump in wherever' franchise. You can get away with skipping Iron Man 2, the Ant Man movies, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and the Spidermans, but that's about it.

 

Is the 2012 Avengers a decent starting point? I've seen some of the movies, but mostly the one offs like the ones you mentioned.

 

I would say the most "essential" films to watch for the TV shows would be all the main Avengers flicks, Captain America 2 and 3, Guardians 1, and Thor Ragnarok?

I struggle to imagine why anyone would care about anyone in the TV shows without a solid grounding of the quote, unquote mainline films.

 

Lasted until ep3. Was absolutely not feeling it. I'm probably done with the show.

Hiddlestone is mostly great. As is Owen Wilson, but I just couldn't bring myself to care about any of the relationships/ drama, and

Spoiler

Floki

does nothing for me.

 

I'd say you'd need to watch the first cap, thor and iron man as well first. Otherwise, this will not be you:

 

Wandavision - Age of Ultron, Civil War, Infinity War and Endgame, Captain Marvel
Falcon... - First Avenger, Winter Soldier, Civil War, Infinity War and Endgame (probably Avengers 1 as well, but less essential)
Loki (so far) - Thor trilogy, Avengers 1, Infinity War and Endgame.

Of course, the problem then is, what do you need to watch to get everything in those films? Endgame, for example, hinges on something from Antman and the Wasp, and Tony Stark is prominent enough throughout the franchise that skipping the Iron Man films entirely is a bad idea.

Don't get me wrong, none of the Marvel films or tv shows are exactly impenetrable texts, but they do rely on a certain amount of knowledge, for better or worse. Saying they'd be incomprehensible in my earlier post is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration - you'll likely be able to follow the plot - but they'll build on and refer back to plenty of things that you won't have any basis for understanding without watching them first. And by the time you've watched the essential stuff to the shows so far, you're about halfway through the entire film franchise, so might as well watch the rest of them.

 

For what it's worth, there are only a few duds in the movies. I'd say if you think tv shows look cool, it's worth setting up some time each week to go through and watch all the movies and MCU. It's a pretty epic saga and fully enjoyable pretty much all the way through. And even Duds like Thor 2 end up having a lot of emotional payoff in later media.

 

One question is at which point the interconnectedness of MCU starts to seriously act against itself? The MCU is 13 years old at the moment; at some point you'll start to have new young audiences that will simply skip the whole thing because they feel watching over 50 hours of dacades old movies to get going is an investment of time they aren't willing to pay.

I certainly feel that way for many long-running tv-shows; even if my friends recommend them, I don't want to start watching from season 1 when the show is at season 5 or something. I will certainly go watch the new phase four Marvel movies just like I have seen all the others, but I don't know if I could ever recommend someone to start watching them from the beginning...

 

I mean my wife and I have already discussed how when we eventually have kids, taking a year (prolly 2 years by that point) to have a marvel movie with the kids once a week.

 

Yeah, it's definitely going to hit that point sooner or later - when they first announced the Disney+ shows, I thought I was there already; I couldn't muster enough enthusiasm for them to want to sign up, and I probably wouldn't have watched them now if it weren't for some friends letting me use their subscriptions. I do think the TV shows will be the make or break point though - there's a big difference between having to watch a couple of films to catch up, and having to watch a 6 to 10 hour show.

 

You what? No, really, are you a human or a robot? Do you even know?

 

The official introduction of the Multiverse will be the solution to this.

Marvel will have the freedom to make movies that are not tied to the main canon, so instead of an MCU universe that is interconnected, we will have movies based in the MCU.

So we will start having movies akin to Graphic novels. Great standalone stories that have nothing to do with the mainline, canon wise

 

Looks like I have a lot of movies to watch if I do like the bigger ones. I've enjoyed some of the individual ones. I liked Dr Strange, Antman, and Captain Marvel. I'm less convinced about the ones with multiple main superheroes. I though the stupidest part of Spider-Man: Homecoming was Iron Man. I thought it was lame that Peter got a pre-made suit with training wheels from Tony.

 

Eh, watch what you like, go to youtube for the ones you don't/

All I will say is that the joy of the MCU was watching grow and expand over the years. From Iron man to Endgame.

It was a cool journey, that I think you had to be there to truly appreciate.

 

MCU has 6 movies that are done filming, 2 that are filming at the moment and 2 that will be filming within few months. That's 10 films to add to previous 23. And they will probably announce few more soon enough because by the January 2022 they will be done with most that they told fans about and even they can't totally hide what they're making. Probably.

Add 6 finished TV shows, 2 filmed, 4 in development and few more rumoured and MCU is basically Marvel Comics. Casual fans will soon not check everything because the next premieres won't be as special as when it was just two movies a year. I fully expect that one of the future series like Armor Wars or Secret Invasion to have a sort of 'meh' reactions for most people even if they will be good. When that happens Disney will probably start giving less money for the future projects which in turn will make them less good and that will be it for the golden age of MCU.

 

If you're not a fan of superhero movies, why would you watch a superhero/comic book show?

And if you're gonna, you need to watch the MCU or be hopelessly lost. You wouldn't start watching a tv show at season 5.