I feel like I’m missing out completely, but I just normally don’t like comic book movies. I saw one of the Avengers, (I would have to see it again because I don’t remember anything about it,) and I saw Guardians of the Galaxy which was better. What else should I see In order to understand most of the roots of what End Game requires you to understand?
Or is it even worth it?
I’d say:
Thor Ragnarok
Black panther
Age of Ultron
and more than any other:
Infinity War
These set the stage. In these movies the events of End Game are set up.
Avengers is a good one on it’s own, so that’s worth adding.
I got by watching Infinity War without seeing any Guardian movies, only one Ant Man, no Spiderman, no Dr Strange, but I did see all those listed above. I didn’t have trouble following along except on some details. As long as you know who the characters are, their basic abilities, the rest is detail,
I would say Civil War over Black Panther, since it introduces Black Panther and sets up what all the Avengers are doing.
For the most part, the main Avengers all kinda toe the line between “We know most people who are watching these have seen the other Marvel movies” and “We know some people haven’t seen the other movies and were going to explain what’s going on”
So I would say if you watched the following:
Avengers
Age of Ultron
Civil War
Thor Ragnarok
Infinity War
You’ll be pretty caught up. The only question marks are Ant-man 2 and Captain Marvel, which both came out after Infinity War and will directly lead into Endgame. I’m guessing there will be enough explanation given in Endgame that you won’t be completely lost.
As I understand it, Endgame is going to pick up where Infinity War left off, but with the addition of Captain Marvel and Ant-Man. So the bare minimum would be those three (specifically the second Ant-Man, which summarizes most of what you need to know from the first one, but which adds new elements which will probably be relevant).
But then you have the question of what you’d need to understand Infinity War. For that, I’d say the bare minimum would be Guardians of the Galaxy 1 and Thor Ragnarok.
Plus whatever you need to introduce the characters, but that can mostly be summed up in a sentence or two for each, and which you might already know. Like, you probably already know what Spider-Man is and what he does: You don’t need his movies to know that (though it helps to know that he’s sort of being mentored by Iron Man).
Here you go: Someone sums up all 18 MCU movies going into Infinity War.
Call me… not old-fashioned, but maybe simplistic… but I think a really well-written movie will work for someone that comes in cold. Now, I’ve done this before, and I understand I won’t get the richness of a backstory. But I’m content with “Oh, so cosmic-power badass woman comes to rescue” (okay, I will see Cap’n Marvel beforehand, but I’d resent it if I HAD to… and I wouldn’t hesitate to see End Game if I hadn’t).
Now, if you really want to become a Marvel geek, hey it sounds like fun, so go for it! Infinity War is worth it, Ant-Man+Wasp and Ragnarok are both hilarious.
The wife and my other anti-comic book friends have NOT wanted to do any homework before I took them to Black Panther, Wonder Woman, and the Ant-Man movies (seriously, Ant-Man & The Wasp is on Netflix and it is SO much fun, SEE IT). And Spider-Verse, another must-see just for the entertainment value.
No one needed any coaching beforehand, and though I told them they could elbow me and whisper “Who dat dude?” or “Wha’ de fu’?” I was unmolested.
I haven’t seen Captain Marvel yet, so I’m curious to see why they’re seeming to bring her in at the last minute in Endgame. All the other situations in the series haven’t been serious enough to bring her in?
More likely than not primarily to set up the next generation of movies as some of these heroes move off the stage.
WAG: Whatever she was doing between Captain Marvel and Endgame put her out of pager reach. It could be that Fury has tried before to reach her, it just didn’t get to her. And, once those problems were handled, Fury turned off the device.
Capt Marvel minor spoiler
In the end of CM, the remnants of the Avengers have the device running on alternate power so it won’t shut off and it’s been sending its signal for at least days if not weeks before Captain Marvel arrives
It’s perhaps worth noting that there wasn’t any sort of centralized response in Infinity War. Everyone who knew of the situation did what they could to address it, and a few of them notified a few others, but nobody sat everyone down and said “OK, Avengers, here’s the plan, and here’s what we’re all going to do”. Fury may well have been the only one who even knew of Marvel’s existence, and as soon as he finds out what’s going down, he sends out the signal.
Thanks all!
The whole point is that the Avengers are supposed to be the response team. And so far, they’ve been successful. Captain Marvel gets brought in only when the Avengers fail.
Nick Fury, circa Avengers 1: Yeah, Captain Marvel would really be useful now, and if the Avengers fail the millions of people are murdered by aliens. However, lets just let this play out. She could probably rescue the rubble of our planet later.
Right?
Nick Fury, circa Avengers 1: Goddamnit, of all the days to forget to bring my mother fuckin’ pager with me to work…
More likely, though, is that all of the world-ending disasters the Avengers have averted up until now have taken a relatively short time to resolve once the full range of the threat is revealed. Just going by released footage, it looks like Captain Marvel doesn’t get to Earth until several days after Fury triggered the pager. So, aliens invade New York, Fury triggers the pager, but two hours later the Avengers have taken care of the threat, so he cancels the alert when Carol’s still a couple hundred lightyears away from Earth. Repeat for every major villainous plot up until Thanos snaps his fingers.
She did specify to only use it for a real emergency - Fury doesn’t want to call her in and get a “motherflerkin who cries wolf” reputation.
And as Miller notes, it’s not like she can instantly teleport in. By the time the Chituari were looking like a real problem, she wasn’t going to be able to help. Same, I think, with Ultron.
I don’t recall any of the other issues rising to a world-threatening level. Even Civil War wasn’t an end-of-the-world situation - you might not like being under Hydra’s jackboots, but it wasn’t an apocalypse scenario.
I agree with this. I’d lean towards including Antman 2, since it includes some information you’ll need.
FWIW, I hadn’t seen Black Panther before Infinity War and it made no difference to me. The Civil War introduction to the character and Wakanda was more than enough to keep up.
Yeah, just saw Captain Marvel, this makes sense.