2023 MCU Rewatch Diary - Introduction

This is the first in a series of posts documenting my first rewatch of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, Phases One to Three; starting at Iron Man (2008) and ending at Avengers: Endgame (2019).

I’ve been watching them since way back, but I only recognized Marvel Studios’ long-term aspirations around 2013. That’s when I started following the series in earnest. I’m usually not one to rewatch stuff, so I haven’t watched most of these titles more than once. For many of them, the initial theater experience is the only memory I have.

To make my rewatch feel more worthwhile, I decided to document interesting findings and patterns in these stories and compile them into a series blog posts.

This franchise has been peeled and prodded to death by a legion of dedicated fans online, which only seems to grow with each Phase. Hopefully my thoughts and observations are at least somewhat original, and somebody finds them interesting. If not, this series will serve more like diary entries for myself to stumble upon a decade from now.

In these posts, I’ll try to follow this template:

1. My general thoughts on the Phase.
2. Poking Holes: For some fun, I’m keeping my eyes peeled for retrospective holes in the MCU timeline. I’ll try to find plot holes, acknowledge retcons in context of the MCU now.
3. Civilian POV: I’ve seen discussion about how tough it would be to be a civilian in the MCU, but I have a hunch that that’s overblown. The comics universe is one thing, but MCU releases aren’t that frequent. So I decided to collect data points through my rewatch. I’ll reflect on major in-universe events in the Phase from a regular civilian point of view, thinking about what the media would cover and to what extent.
4. In Retrospect: Reflecting on plot threads in the Phase in context of MCU content that came later.

Diary Index

Find entries in this diary here:

1. Introduction (you are here!)
2. Phase One
3. Phase Two
4. Phase Three

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