MCU meme

[yalumesse]

From sholio 

Bold = Watched Entirety

Italic = Watched Part

* Watched more than once.

† Watched in the first few weeks of release (at least initially, for TV shows).

 

Phase One:

* Iron Man (2008)

* The Incredible Hulk (2008)

* Iron Man 2 (2010)

* Thor (2011)

* Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

* The Avengers (2012)

 

Phase Two:

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV 2013–2020)

* Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Ant-Man (2015)

Daredevil (TV 2015–2018)

* Agent Carter (TV 2015–2016)

Jessica Jones (TV 2015–2019)

 

Phase Three:

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Luke Cage (TV 2016–2018)

Doctor Strange (2016)

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

Iron Fist (TV 2017–2018)

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

The Defenders (TV 2017)

The Punisher (TV 2017–2019)

Inhumans (TV 2017)

Runaways (TV 2017–2019)

* Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Black Panther (2018)

Cloak & Dagger (TV 2018–2019)

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

* Captain Marvel (2019)

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

 

Phase Four:

Black Widow (2021)

WandaVision (TV 2021)

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV 2021)

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

Eternals (2021)

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Loki (TV 2021-2023) - saw season 1

Hawkeye (TV 2021)

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Moon Knight (TV 2022)

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Ms. Marvel (TV 2022)

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (TV 2022) - I think I watched the first episode? Or maybe it was clips.

 

Phase Five:

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

Secret Invasion (TV 2023)

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)

The Marvels (2023)

Echo (TV 2024)

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Agatha All Along (TV 2024)

Daredevil: Born Again (TV 2025-2026)

Captain America: Brave New World (2025)

Thunderbolts (2025)

Ironheart (TV 2025)

 

Phase Six:

The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

Wonder Man (TV 2025)

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)

Vision Quest (TV 2026)

Avengers: Doomsday (2026)

Avengers: Secret Wars (2027)

 

Wow, I fell out of Marvel way earlier than I thought I had.

At first it was just the TV shows that didn't interest me or turned out too 'dark and gritty' for my taste, or I just didn't have access to them.

Ultron was the first movie that I actively disliked (save for that one happy scene where they're all hanging around in the tower as friends), but it was Avengers:Endgame that was the metaphorical final straw - largely because of how it shrugged and went "Agent Carter Tv show? Where she had this beautiful growth arc of moving on and finding happiness? Nah, we're going to erase that so The Guy can have his happy ending". 

I was still watching Agents of SHIELD at that point but it was already going too far towards Everything Bad Always and I wasn't enjoying it. I stuck it out to the end, but put it this way: I had the first several seasons on DVD. I never bothered with the later ones, and I don't have any anymore.

(And yes, I'm 100% a DVD person. I never trust streaming services not to take something away and I dislike depending on internet to watch something. If I enjoy it, I get the disc, and if I stop enjoying it, I eventually sell or give away the disc.)

I watched a few more things after that - things that I still had hopes for (like Black Widow and the Loki series), or that seemed interesting (WandaVision), or that for some reason I had easy access to (Eternals, Hawkeye TV show since I had Disney+ at that point), but everything else...

There's some I still might watch if there's an easy opportunity, mostly things that fandom responded well to or I at least didn't hear things I hated: Moon Knight, Ms Marvel, The Marvels, Deadpool & Wolverine. I did always love the Thor movies, but when I heard Love&Thunder had a heavy cancer story thread I just couldn't. 

And now there's just way way way too much to catch up on. I don't know how interconnected everything is anymore, but even if a lot of it can be watched standalone... the magic is just gone. Shame.

But my mid-2010s fanfic bookmarks will always be there to enjoy, so I'm fine with that :)

Comments

[sheron]

I hopped on here from Sholio's journal since I saw you were going to do the meme

because of how it shrugged and went "Agent Carter Tv show? Where she had this beautiful growth arc of moving on and finding happiness? Nah, we're going to erase that

This is the thing that probably made me lose the most trust in MCU. If anything we watch can be undercut like this, there's no point in getting invested in these characters and relationships.

Also, for me, AC canon *is* canon, everything else is alternate universe.

[yalumesse]

Welcome, nice to see you!

And, yeah. So much. And I think you nailed it there - it's not a cohesive universe if they go the comics route and undo stuff all over the place. We can't trust it.

Personally I like the fixit idea I've seen around that Steve came back, saw Peggy had moved on, and respected that, and Daniel kindly gave them an evening to catch up, which included the dance they missed and it acts as closure for them both, and they move on.

But generally I just ignore it. Also 1000% ignore Agents of SHIELD's last season trying to excuse it by saying "oh Daniel? Yeah sorry, he died so Peggy could get back together with Steve". So angry.

[sheron]

I've also been headcanoning it as them realizing Peggy had moved on (and Steve had too, despite wanting to see her again and have that dance)!

I didn't even know that about AoU because I noped out way ahead of that -- it's totally NOT canon as far as I'm concerned. AC is the one true canon

[yalumesse]

Headcanon is wonderful that way. Canon can go throw itself off a cliff.

[sholio]

I continue to enjoy watching the overall pattern develop as people do this meme. I don't think there is a single person whose answers I've seen so far who *didn't* start out strong and then go off a cliff, usually in a similar part of the trajectory (although earlier or later for various people).

I do plan to watch a few things I've heard good things about, but I feel like I'm mostly done. (Though they keep dragging me back in, so who knows ...)

[yalumesse]

Yeah, I feel like it's almost impossible not to? Or at least very hard. For someone to keep up with literally everything they'd have to invest a lot more time and energy than most people have, especially as people move from "young and has free time" to "lol I have a mortgage and I'm TIRED" - which is almost everyone who was old enough to watch the Phase 1 movies when they came out.

I feel like the more recent stuff might be marketed at least partially towards younger people who haven't necessarily seen the oldest stuff? Maybe? *shrug*

[sholio]

I feel like the more recent stuff might be marketed at least partially towards younger people who haven't necessarily seen the oldest stuff? Maybe? *shrug*

I just find it interesting that nobody's turned up in the meme who has that pattern yet, though - someone who started with one of the recent or even recent-ish movies or shows. I realize there's a huuuuuge amount of confirmation bias because a) so far this is all people who know each other, and b) DW fandom is mostly older (in the sense of 30s/40s and up). But still .... the absolute lack of anyone who jumped on a later installment and went from there is really obvious! I mean, there must be new people coming in now and then, and it's a tiny sample size, but I think it's interesting that we don't even seem to have one person yet whose MCU origin story is something like "I started watching with Hawkeye and saw all the D+ shows." Apparently, it's even less of a thing than I thought!

[yalumesse]

Yeah, I think that has more to do with the average age of people on Dreamwidth that do these sorts of memes. But also, at some point MCU's going to stop making enough money to be worth continuing it. Maybe that's already happening? idk, I'm sure we could look up box office numbers / the streaming equivalents, but I'd be surprised if it was equal, and floored if it was more.

[sholio]

No, they're definitely going off a cliff. I mean, "cliff" still means they're making a kajillion dollars a movie, but as far as I know, most of the recent ones have underperformed compared to expectations. (Not that I'm feeing a certain amount of schadenfreude about this or anything.)

[yalumesse]

Not in the slightest. It's always easier to ignore the bad sequels when they're not making more.

...On another note, I just realised that if Agent Carter s1 came out in 2015, and that's about when we started talking, and it's now 2025, that means I've known you 10 years. And my brain just shorted out /laugh

[sholio]

..... TIME IS FAKE. (I realized earlier this year that Agent Carter season 1 was ten years ago, and had a moment about it. I can't believe it's been that much time.)

[yalumesse]

It's just bizarre.

On the up side, definitely high time for a rewatch. I can't actually remember when I last watched it, so... guess I'm gonna?

[sholio]

What an excellent plan. :D