I’ve noticed now that we’re well into the MCU, many people like to recommend to first time viewers that they watch the films in timeline order – meaning start with Captain America, then Captain Marvel, and so on and so forth. Normally I’m not one to gatekeep or tell others how to consume media, but in the following essay I will tell you why this opinion is WRONG and ruins the experience. (Everything that follows is my opinion, so calm down. Also, there be lots of spoilers ahead. Consider yourself warned.)
First, let’s focus on the after credits scenes. Each one gives a hint at either the next movie or the next big team-up event. If you watch the movies out of order, the after credits scenes become confusing and irrelevant to new viewers. Let’s focus on the first phase. Each after credits scene showed Nick Fury basically assembling the Avengers. Throwing Captain Marvel in the middle of this disrupts the flow of things. It also brings me to my next point, which is specifically regarding Captain Marvel.
If you recall, CM was released in between Infinity War and Endgame. Yes, it takes place well before either, but watching in release order it plays out thusly: End of Infinity War, as everything is falling apart (in some ways literally) you see Nick Fury with the beeper that is supposed to signal to our girl Carol that there’s big trouble – her kind of trouble. We then flashback to see her whole backstory and how she and Fury met, then move onto Engame, where you anticipate when she will show up to save the day. Now, if you instead watch it after Captain America, you get no context or connection to her story, and then have to wait a very long time before you see her again, at which point you’ve probably forgotten she even existed. You’re completely underwhelmed by her movie, whereas some of us anxiously awaited her arrival because of a dang beeper. (As a side note, I’d love to do a poll broken down by gender and enjoyment of that film, because I suspect another big part of it is that I, as a woman, was very excited for myself and a bunch of young girls who had someone to look up to who looked like them.)
My final point regards the general flow of things. Everything in the MCU was constantly building and getting bigger until we hit the big culmination of 10 years of work: Endgame. Changing the order of things changes the flow. We started with a handful of smaller solo movies and built to the formation of the Avengers. The next phase builds a little more, and a little more, until we get a giant teamup event where the fate of everything is at stake. I can’t imagine what changing the order of movies does to that.
In conclusion, I’m all for doing a chronological rewatch after you’ve experienced the MCU for the first time as intended, but please stop recommending to all your friends that that be their starting point. I’m usually very chill about these things, but I will die on this hill.
Thus concludes another Monday Musings. Next week we’ll go back to gushing about Dragon Age, and looking ahead to Dragon Age Day 2021.