Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige has declared that the 22 movies comprising their Phases 1, 2, and 3, are collectively known as ‘The Infinity Saga’. The Marvel Studios franchise makes up one of the most sprawling film epics of all time. Technically, there have been more James Bond movies– 26– but the Marvel movies are all interconnected into one over-reaching storyline, with some factoring in more heavily than others. It’s also worth pointing out that the 22 Marvel movies have all come out in just 11 years.
Feige addressed the upcoming ‘Avengers: Endgame’ and compared it to other beloved cinematic sagas:
“We wanted to bring to a conclusion a series of movies in a way that had never been done before. Harry Potter had an ending because there were only so many books. Lord of the Rings too. But we thought, 22 movies in, wouldn’t it be fun to bring some finality to the storyline?”
Not all of the movies directly fed into ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’. The first Infinity Stone, the Tesseract, which turned out to be the Space Stone, first appeared in ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’. Thanos didn’t show up until the next movie, ‘The Avengers’, and only in a post-credits scene. ‘Iron Man’, ‘Iron Man 2’, ‘The Incredible Hulk’, and ‘Thor’ all stood on their own, without a direct connection to Thanos and his quest. However, they did lay the foundation upon which this massive story could be built.
In case you want to have a weeklong movie marathon before ‘Endgame’, here are all of the ‘Infinity Saga’ flicks:
Phase One:
- Iron Man (2008)
- The Incredible Hulk (2008)
- Iron Man 2 (2010)
- Thor (2011)
- Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
- Marvel’s The Avengers (2012)
Phase Two:
Iron Man 3 (2013)- Thor: The Dark World (2013)
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
- Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
- Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
- Ant-Man (2015)
Phase Three:
- Captain America: Civil War (2016)
- Doctor Strange (2016)
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)- Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
- Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
- Black Panther (2018)
- Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
- Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
- Captain Marvel (2019)
- Avengers: Endgame (2019)
This year’s ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ will be the first picture in Phase Four. One thing to look forward to is the integration of 20th Century Fox’s ‘Fantastic Four’ and ‘X-Men’ properties. With Robert Downey, Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man) and Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America) likely to be absent post-‘Endgame’, these Marvelized characters have big armored boots to fill.
You can say goodbye to the ‘Infinity Saga’ when ‘Avengers: Endgame’ opens on April 26, 2019.
Source: ComicBookMovie.com
