…it’s not a very organized watch-through, we’re not really going in order, except to the degree of “if Movie X contains spoilers for Movie Y, watch Movie Y first.”
As in, we started with Doctor Strange, since (a) it works just fine as a standalone and (b) it was one of the Top MCU Favorites among family members who actually have favorites. But my other top pick was Captain Marvel, so we’ve had to save that for after IW, and we had to save IW for after “everyone in the family has seen every preceding movie at least once.”
Had the same criteria for Age of Ultron, and then for Civil War (which, okay, that wasn’t hard, just had to watch Ant-Man in between).
Around that point, I had enough general MCU feelings to put together a whole “well, if I was in charge of the Phases” movie lineup. Like so:
Phase 2: same as IRL, but end it with Avengers: AoU
Phase 3:
- Black Widow solo movie fits here
- Wanda & Vision badly deserve a “how they first fell in love” adventure
- Ant-Man (same as IRL)
- Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 (same as IRL)
- optional: pop Doctor Strange back here, purely for phase-length balance
- ends with Avengers: Civil War (same as IRL, except we admit it’s an Avengers movie)
Phase 4:
- GOTG vol 3, w/the Adam plot they cut from v2, plus “Gamora & Nebula get a whole movie of Awkward Sister Bonding”
- everything left in IRL Phase 3
- except that Avengers: Endgame is, uh, the End
Now Phases 1-4 = the Infinity Saga, and post-EG content (so far, WandaVision & Spider-Man: FFH) = the start of Phase 5.
And, well. Having rewatched through most of IRL Phase 3, I stand by all of this.
Especially the Wanda-and-Vision part. I remember the first time I watched IW, being so unmoved by their romance. (I was sad when Vision died, because it’s always sad when a likeable character dies — but not, you know, extra-sad on Wanda’s behalf.) They only got, what, 2 scenes together? maybe 3? across all the preceding movies, and presumably a bunch of development happened since then, but it was all offscreen. IW just opens with “hey, update, they are In Love now” and, welp, you gotta roll with it.
Fast-forward to present day, I’m 8 episodes deep into WandaVision, these two have gotten so much screentime being visibly, palpably In Love, go back to rewatch IW and — that death scene had me in tears.
(These actors are so good. They absolutely sell the dynamic and the weight of feeling between these characters, in a way that resonates with later on-screen developments which at this point they don’t even know about, the scripts aren’t even a twinkle in Disney’s eye yet.)
Anyway, in conclusion, we were absolutely cheated out of a Wanda-and-Vision “adorable falling-in-love rom-com where the gimmick is that they’re superheroes” movie. And if Marvel ever considers doing a flashback to make one, the way they’re (finally) doing with Black Widow, I would be there with bells on.
