Many are eagerly awaiting April 25 to be able to go to the cinema to watch Avengers: Infity War. Most of those who occupy the theaters will not have missed a single film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, since it was launched in 2008 with the first Iron Man. We still did not know, but it was obvious that that film was starting something new, starting with the post credit scene that let the imagination of us viewers travel in view of the sequels. The House of Ideas had much larger floors.
I will now try to give you some general guidelines (without spoilers of course!) On how to approach this great cinematic work "in installments". First of all, those who were to watch Infinity War without having seen any of the previous films must bear in mind that we are at the peak of the so-called Phase 3. To them, if they want to catch up, I recommend preparing to watch a large number of super heroic themed films. . In order we should then look at: Iron Man (2008), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), Thor (2011) and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). At this point we met the main characters who will give shape to the final feature film of the Phase 1, aka The Avengers. The various super heroes come together for the first time, to join forces against a common threat. So far everything simple, right? Well, if so far we had watched the films mentioned until the end, with the mouth drooling for the post credit scenes that suggested what would happen next, now the same scenes begin to raise the suspicion that as good viewers we have descended into a story that still has a lot to tell.
Let us now turn to Phase 2, with Iron Man 3 (2013), Thor: The Dark World (2013), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). This latter film represents a crucial point, as it is shown here for the first time Thanos, who will be the villain of Avengers: Infinity War; the same will try to take possession of the gems of infinity, artifacts endowed with powers beyond all imagination always present, sometimes a little muted, others more explicitly, in all these films. To close this second narrative phase we find Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), with our united again to stop the evil mind on duty. In reality, there would still be Ant Man from 2015 to be watched, a character to be taken into account for future events.
If you have resisted this far, we can proceed with the Phase 3. The facts are increasingly complex and the plot thickens, as the unity of the Avengers group is questioned in Captain America: Civil War (2016), which will also be a great starting point for the TV series Agent of Shield. It continues in 2016 with Doctor Strange, where we discover the location of the last gem of infinity; to follow it would also be appropriate to watch Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 and Spiderman: Homecoming, both released in 2017. Phase 3 also includes the very recent Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panter.
As I have already written, to complete the third story arc we will soon find in cinemas Avengers: Infiniy War. Probably, those who have seen this large amount of films already knew most of the characters and their stories. This is the reason why he will have more than once turned his nose upside down to see the events of the protagonists changed, if not completely upset. That's right: if you watch these movies, always remember that you are seeing a different narrative than what you may have read in the comics.
The Marvel operation was not done simply to convince us to re-read the old books. What you are trying (successfully?) To do is to propose a new way of telling those stories. Comics don't sell, or rather, they do sell a little, but those who buy them don't always read them. A company of the caliber of the House of Ideas did not miss this detail. How then to propose their products to today's public and sell their franchise? Through a new medium: cinema. So even on the pages of comics the characters begin to look more and more like the actors who play them in films (believe it or not, Nick Fury was not black until a few years ago). And if creating complex plots that unfold between the stories of feature films earns money at the box office, it is not so automatic that the same happens for newsstands; try to enter a comic store and buy any Marvel serial: you won't understand anything when you read it. What happened first? Who are those characters? Much easier and more immediate to recognize the faces of the actors, the images of the films remain etched in the mind in a more direct way.
It matters little if in ten years of cinema we have increasingly had the feeling that special effects and the forcing of spectacularity were an attempt to mask sometimes weak plots and scripts. All the titles mentioned must be viewed with the awareness that the world has changed and with it the Marvel clientele. The Avengers of the big screen belong to other story lines, to other narrative universes and follow their own rules regarding their story telling. As long as the public needs stories, as long as we all need to see the themes we care about represented in some way, then the superheroes (as well as the heroes of the epic) will be there ready to tell us in the manner most congenial to us. .
To conclude: the MCU represents a unique case, successful and all in all compelling but we will be able to give a complete judgment only when the last film is screened. But if looking at the adventures of Cap. And Tony Stark you feel like reading their comics, get advice on where to start, but do it: drawings and balloons could really have a lot to tell you.
