Opinion

The Glow Up of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: How Ten Years Was Enough to Grow

Editor Ethan Miller

2008’s Iron Man sucked. Like, completely and utterly sucked. As the first entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, going back is like cleaning out your dead cat’s litter box. Honestly, for a good chunk of the MCU, none of the movies really hit home for me. Sure Captain America: The First Avenger had a mighty fine ending, The Avengers had really good fight scenes, and Iron Man 3 had good character growth for Tony Stark, but nothing truly ever stuck out about these movies. It wasn’t until 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy where I became hooked on the idea of an interconnected Marvel Universe.

Many people forget that up until Phase Three, the MCU was pretty forgettable. They all followed a similar formula and had quite disappointing villains. They had their moments, sure, but the bad far outshone the little good that was there. They all felt lacking up until Guardians of the Galaxy.

Guardians was when Marvel stopped worrying about the more out-there Infinity Stone shabang and went full in on the more wild aspects of the Marvel Comics. It was a fun, more light hearted movie that stands out as one of the MCU’s best. In one movie we are introduced to these characters and subsequently grow attached to each one of the Guardians. They bond so fast yet it feels so very real.

After that was Age of Ultron, which went straight back to the classic and boring MCU formula, being the first and only MCU film where I fell asleep and had no conviction to go back and watch it again. Ultron himself was boring, the humor was same-y, and there was way too much going on that it was quite hard to follow.

Age of Ultron was only a small blemish on Phase Three, as every movie that released afterwards were far more memorable and fun compared to anything that came before. Guardians Vol. 2 was a more heartfelt movie tackling Peter’s relationship with his dad exploring a more personal story compared to Guardians, Spider-Man: Homecoming was a return for the beloved character, being my favorite MCU movie (Spider-Man also being my favorite superhero, Thor: Ragnarok is the only good Thor movie and finally ditching Earth and giving us a chance to see Asgard in all its glory. Even Black Panther, which I felt wasn’t as good as other Phase Three movies, was miles more memorable than Phase One and Phase Two.

Then there was Captain America: Civil War. Civil War was honestly a disappointment. It was the first MCU film that introduced Spider-Man, which is one of the best bits of the movie, but everything that happens feels like it doesn’t have that much impact on the bigger picture. The big airport fight scene wasn’t even that good, being more of a skirmish than a full blown battle. Civil War didn’t really have that big of an impact on future movies, only being mentioned on rare occasions in Infinity War and only being mentioned once in Endgame.

Infinity War and Endgame then hit hard as THE best Avengers films. They were brilliant payoffs to ten years of buildup, finally seeing Thanos in full glory and paying homage to everything that made the comics great. For the first time, the Avengers had an actually memorable villain in the form of Thanos, who had sympathetic motives compared to his comic counterpart, was a generally interesting villain, especially compared to other MCU baddies (with the exception of Spider-Man Homecoming’s the Vulture, who is probably the best villain the MCU has). Infinity War is Thanos’ story, shining brightly against everyone that came before him.

While I won’t spoil anything here, Endgame finally delivers on the promise of the MCU, bringing everything full circle and giving some of the best comic scenes a time to shine on the big screen. It took a while, but the MCU finally reached a point where it is actually good, it only took ten years to get to that point.