Let me just open up this article by saying I am a fan of Marvel films and the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general. Ever since I saw the thrill of Robert Downey Jr. flying around in the Iron Man suit for the first time, I could tell they had something special on their hands. And that definitely continued with 2012’s The Avengers, which was a great culmination of the previous solo films. Even if Edward Norton had mysteriously disappeared out of nowhere.
However, there’s one problem I’ve started to notice with the popular series of superhero films. You see, I was watching Ant-Man with my family a few weeks ago and, being the only person to have seen most of the Marvel films that came before it, I was the only person who knew about the universe. And, therefore, I was the one to answer all the questions. Such as “who’s that?”, “what’s that?”, and of course “what’s going on?”
This brought me to an interesting realization: unless you’ve seen every single MCU film, your enjoyment of new releases will be greatly diminished. Let’s just take a look at where we currently stand in the MCU, which started with 2008’s Iron Man. With the recent release of Doctor Strange, there are now fourteen films you’ll have to watch to stay up on the the world of Marvel. And, with Avengers: Infinity War on schedule for a 2018 release (not to mention a sequel/part 2 to that coming soon after), you’ll have to watch a total of eighteen movies to know the whole backstory of the evil Thanos, the search for the Infinity Stones, and the huge piles of money that Disney and Marvel are currently swimming around in Scrooge McDuck-style.
So if you’ve never seen a single Marvel movie and want to go in with all the backstory, you’ll need to spend some time to watch the many films from the past eight years. And that doesn’t even count the Marvel television series such as Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Agents Of Shield.
So how long would it take to watch every single Marvel property? According to my near-expert approximate calculations, it would take 157.2 hours to watch every single Marvel film, TV show, and One-Shot short film. Better call in sick for work the next six and a half days. You’ve got some binge-watching to do.
Interestingly enough, comic book movies have become much like the comics they are based on. I was just having a conversation the other day about how it would be impossible to try and delve into some series of comics simply because you’d have to start at the beginning and read tons of issues to get the full backstory. And who has the time for that? Well, I do. But most people don’t.
Featured image from Flickr user BagoGames
