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In what order should I watch the MCU?

Muffin

Muffin

Member
Oct 26, 2017
10,377
Hey ERA, I wanted to finally catch up on all the Marvel movies I missed. And of course have no clue in what order I watch it.

I watched Iron Man 1-3, the first Thor and the first Avengers in the last years. I watched the first Captain America yesterday.

Also, should I rewatch the movies that I watched a long while ago?

I'm talking strictly about movies, not really interested in the shows besides the ones I've already watched (JJ, Daredevil, Iron Fist, Defenders).
 
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bananas

bananas

Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,955
Release order.

Phase 1 (2008-2012)

Iron Man (May 2008)
The Incredible Hulk (June 2008)
Iron Man 2 (May 2010)
Thor (May 2011)
Captain America: The First Avenger (July 2011)
The Avengers (May 2012)

Phase 2 (2013-2015)

Iron Man 3 (May 2013)
Thor 2: The Dark World (November 2013)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (April 2014)
Guardians of the Galaxy (August 2014)
Avengers: Age of Ultron (May 2015)
Ant-Man (July 2015)

Phase 3 (2016-2019)

Captain America: Civil War (May 2016)
Doctor Strange (November 2016)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (May 2017)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (July 2017)
Thor: Ragnarok: The Dark World 2 (November 2017)
Black Panther (February 2018)
Avengers: Infinity War (May 2018)
Ant-Man & the Wasp (July 2018)
Captain Marvel (March 2019)
Untitled Avengers Sequel (May 2019)

Post-Phase 3 (2019+)

Untitled Spider-Man: Homecoming Sequel (July 2019)
Untitled Marvel Movie (May 2020)
Untitled Marvel Movie (July 2020)
Untitled Marvel Movie (November 2020)
 
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Cronen

Cronen

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,958
Phase One
Iron Man
The Incredible Hulk
Iron Man 2
Thor
Captain America: The First Avenger
The Avengers

Phase Two
Iron Man 3
Thor: The Dark World
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Guardians of the Galaxy
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Ant-Man

Phase Three (so far)
Captain America: Civil War
Doctor Strange
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Thor: Ragnarok
 
Halbrand

Halbrand

Member
Oct 27, 2017
19,637
Going to go a little bit different.

Iron Man
Iron Man 2
Thor
Captain America: The First Avenger
The Avengers
Iron Man 3
Thor: The Dark World
Captain America: Winter Soldier
Guardians of the Galaxy
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Ant-Man
Captain America: Civil War
Spider-Man Homecoming
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Doctor Strange
Thor: Ragnorak

Skip The Hulk, Civil War leads well into Homecoming, Doctor Strange leads well into Ragnorak.
 
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Muffin

Muffin

Member
Oct 26, 2017
10,377
Welp, seems like my question was easier to answer than I thought

Opinions on rewatching the movies I've already seen? Will I going to be confused with them only being vague memories?
 
ClickyCal'

ClickyCal'

Member
Oct 25, 2017
60,637
CaviarMeths said:
some weirdo came up with the idea that the best way to watch Star Wars was to skip the only decent prequel movie .
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source.gif
 
Dirtyshubb

Dirtyshubb

Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,555
UK
I'm very pleased to see everyone saying release order.

Nothing annoys me more (not true of course lol) then people coming out with shitty lists that go against this or miss out films completely.

The whole reason movie series work is because they are released in a certain order. How you expect to have the same impact by fucking up the viewing order I don't know but sadly some people out there think you can.
 

Deleted member 2254

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The storyline connecting the movies is rather loose and very minimal, keep in mind they've been slowly teasing the next movie for almost a decade by briefly introducing the infinity stones. There are very few movies that have key informations towards the understanding of the overarching plot: there's the first Iron Man and the first Captain America that are fairly important for characters and the Avengers movies (+ Civil War that is practically Avengers 2.5) that have events that will be mentioned for years to come (especially the first Avengers: even the Netflix shows, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., etc. use that movie's events as a starting point). The rest (except maybe Winter Soldier) aren't particularly important to understanding the plot or the characters. If you still want to watch them all, release order is the way to go. There are many movies that don't do much towards the overall storyline, but there's always hints and bits of info (if not else after the credits) that make something happen.
 

Deleted member 2254

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Dirtyshubb said:
I'm very pleased to see everyone saying release order.

Nothing annoys me more (not true of course lol) then people coming out with shitty lists that go against this or miss out films completely.

The whole reason movie series work is because they are released in a certain order. How you expect to have the same impact by fucking up the viewing order I don't know but sadly some people out there think you can.
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Marvel movies are at least mostly in chronological order too, which helps. Star Wars movies, for example, have been released in a mixed order, so there it makes sense to watch them in a different order. I'm also not a fan of "supercuts" or different orders when watching movies or TV shows, it kinda misses the point and loses a lot in character development and such imho, but there are situations where changing order might make chronological sense in the movie's canon. Marvel movies are not those movies, however, given that practically every movie's events happen after the previous one - bar some stuff in the past like the first Captain America of course.

EDIT: Sorry for double post, I legit thought that by the time I type this someone else was going to comment.
 
Titik

Titik

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,490
Muffin said:
Welp, seems like my question was easier to answer than I thought

Opinions on rewatching the movies I've already seen? Will I going to be confused with them only being vague memories?
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If you've seen the other movies then you will be fine. You will get flashbacks, etc.
 

Deleted member 9330

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CaviarMeths said:
Years ago, some weirdo came up with the idea that the best way to watch Star Wars was to skip the only decent prequel movie and shove the other two between Empire and Jedi. Presumably called Machete Order because it's a total hack job.
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Oh now you've done it

Muffin said:
Welp, seems like my question was easier to answer than I thought

Opinions on rewatching the movies I've already seen? Will I going to be confused with them only being vague memories?
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You won't be confused because you'll have watched all the prior movies. But yes you should rewatch them
 

Deleted member 8593

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Look man, you don't have to overthink this shit. You can watch them in release order like they were made to - or not. You won't die from watching them out of order.
 
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Muffin

Muffin

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Oct 26, 2017
10,377
I'm used to media franchises like Kingdom Hearts guys. No wonder that I rather ask beforehand.
 
Jedeye Sniv

Jedeye Sniv

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Oct 28, 2017
1,327
You should go Phase order but it doesn't matter so much within that. But the Phase 1 movies lead up to Avengers 1, then phase 2 is reacting to Avengers and setting up Civil War (man, Avengers 2 dropped the ball in terms of being relevant) and then Phase 3 is post CW up to now. But mostly just go in order. You can probably skip Hulk and Thor 2.
 
Cronen

Cronen

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,958
Muffin said:
Welp, seems like my question was easier to answer than I thought

Opinions on rewatching the movies I've already seen? Will I going to be confused with them only being vague memories?
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I would say you can get away without watching them again unless you really want to. The Avengers has the Tesseract in it, which you'll recognise from the first Captain America film. You could probably skip The Incredible Hulk if you wanted to as Hulk gets a pretty good introduction in The Avengers. If you decide not to rewatch them, I would say jump in at Phase Two and start with Thor: The Dark World (as you've already seen Iron Man 3) and watch the rest from the lists above. But be warned, Thor 2 is...meh. But then you get to watch The Winter Soldier which is fucking great.
 
CaviarMeths

CaviarMeths

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
10,655
Western Canada
yuoke said:
https://media.giphy.com/media/10dFztf8l3aDUk/source.gif
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Zeyphersan said:
Oh now you've done it
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I speak only truths.

Jedeye Sniv said:
You should go Phase order but it doesn't matter so much within that. But the Phase 1 movies lead up to Avengers 1, then phase 2 is reacting to Avengers and setting up Civil War (man, Avengers 2 dropped the ball in terms of being relevant) and then Phase 3 is post CW up to now. But mostly just go in order. You can probably skip Hulk and Thor 2.
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- Age of Ultron sets up the wedge between Tony and Steve that eventually drives them apart in Civil War. Also explains why Hulk and Thor are off-world during Civil War and Thor 3.
- One of the Infinity Stones is introduced in Thor 2.

Hulk can probably be skipped though if you're really under time constraints. 2 hours summed up: Bruce Banner is a pretty smart guy. Turns into a big green monster when upset.
 
hitme

hitme

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Oct 26, 2017
3,921
Release order.

You can probably skip Iron Man 3 since it doesn't really relate to the main MCU arch.
 
saiko

saiko

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Nov 4, 2017
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I can't think of a single instance where chronological order might be preferred. Release order is usually the intended order that they expect you to follow.
 
Einchy

Einchy

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Oct 25, 2017
42,659
Ecko said:
I can't think of a single instance where chronological order might be preferred. Release order is usually the intended order that they expect you to follow.
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The only thing that comes to mind is Monogatari because, as I understand it, the light novel series came out in chronological order but the anime were adapted out of order...I think? The anime don't make any fucking sense in the release order, though.
 
Fliesen

Fliesen

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,336
Just like with any longer series (Star Wars, the MCU) it's less about what order (release order, always) than which movies you could / should skip.

Like, when you're saying "I wanna rewatch TNG" nobody would tell you to watch season 3 first, then season 2. They'd tell you which episodes are filler and which are required watching to understand the characters and the arcs that stretch across the entire series.

Arguably, there's a few perfectly skippable entries.
Like (imho) Iron Man 2 (and 3, even) The Incredible Hulk (the whole Betty Ross thing is rather irrelevant for the MCU) , Thor 2 (Thor 1 -> Thor (3) Ragnarok: Thor becomes an avenger, Natalie Portman breaks up with him off-screen).

But if you wanna watch all of them: R E L E A S E O R D E R
 
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CaviarMeths

CaviarMeths

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
10,655
Western Canada
Einchy said:
The only thing that comes to mind is Monogatari because, as I understand it, the light novel series came out in chronological order but the anime were adapted out of order...I think? The anime don't make any fucking sense in the release order, though.
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Oh I didn't even think of Monogatari. Yeah, the adaptation order is way off. They just got around to adapting one of the stories of the first book. The series makes more sense if you watch it in the novel release order, not anime release order.

Should be noted though that even the novel release order isn't chronological either and the story doesn't make a lot of sense anyway...
 
Wilson

Wilson

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,216
Start with Thor 2, then go backwards until you reach Iron Man 2. Then jump ahead of GotG vol 2, then do every alternate title until you are back where you started. Then wait for Infinity War.
 
Fliesen

Fliesen

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Oct 25, 2017
10,336
Wilson said:
Start with Thor 2, then go backwards until you reach Iron Man 2. Then jump ahead of GotG vol 2, then do every alternate title until you are back where you started. Then wait for Infinity War.
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Also, after the scene where Tony Stark confronts the Mandarin in Iron Man 3, hit pause, find another TV and watch Ang Lee's Hulk and The Amazing Spiderman 2 in it's entirety. ... You know, for ... reasons.
 

Deleted member 9330

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Alice said:
Why wouldn't you do release order with Discworld? I read them as they came and never felt "Oh I should have read this before that!"
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I'm not advocating for that btw. I've just seen a lot of discworld reading orders out there that try and separate by subseries that hits each of them as their own thing, instead of bouncing around to each one
 
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