Marvel – or to be more accurate Disney+ – have recently released a list of fifteen films and shows that they would recommend watching as a refresher ahead of the impending release of the fifth Avengers movie, Avengers: Doomsday. Even though this is in all honesty more of a marketing strategy for a streaming platform than it is in any way a panic-stricken realisation that nobody upon nobody is going to understand their upcoming big-budget blockbuster even despite their long track record of working recaps and explanations effectively into the script, it is still nonetheless both a nice and a good idea. After all, even judging just from the trailer, it will be picking up on some plot strands that are almost a decade old, reintroducing some much-loved characters from a rival franchise from even longer ago, and dependent on some minor setup from more recent movies that perhaps not as many people have seen as did Thor: The Dark World on account either of lockdown or of them being drowned out by tedious bores who would not choose to watch any of them anyway shouting about how there are altogether too many of these things now and they did not remember issuing express written permission for there to be another one and they went to see The Fantastic Four: First Steps and didn’t have a clue who any of these people were or what was going on despite it being THE FANTASTIC BASTARDING FOUR. It’s a useful list with a lot of really good films on it, and Captain America: Brave New World, and despite the cries that it’s setting ‘homework’ for viewers there is no suggestion that you are required to watch all of them or even any of them, and considering that the overwhelming majority of cinemagoers intending to see Avengers: Doomsday will have seen most of the above at least anyway, and nobody is coming round to your door with the local franchise ombudsman to check that you have watched them all – although please note they will not be taking questions about The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift at this time – it does seem rather a misjudged target for indignant ire. This has done nothing to deter such a response, of course, with some benevolent individuals even taking time out from their obsessive expounding of highly personal theories about how the entire history of rock is entirely interconnected and you cannot possibly have an opinion on it unless you understand x and y classic album as deeply as they do to generously explain how having a series of vaguely interconnected films is dishonouring the legacy of some A24 thing they saw the other week. We can only really thank them for their efforts and enquire what life is like on their planet, and whether it sucks as much as Knowhere.

In fairness, if you needed to make sure you go in to Avengers: Doomsday with full extant pre-knowledge of who Namor, The Sentry and Yelena Belova are, why the different universes are all bleeding into each other, what happened to Captain America and Loki after Avengers: Endgame, how The Fantastic Four are suddenly involved and what a Shang-Chi is and why his having ten rings is in any way relevant and you’d never seen any of the earlier X-Men movies, it probably would take you a good weekend or two to get through everything on the list. If you’re looking for a quicker and only moderately more sarcastic way to get fully caught up, however, then you may or may not be aware that I host a Marvel Cinematic Universe podcast called It’s Good, Except It Sucks, and I’ve posted all of the episodes relevant to the Avengers: Doomsday revision list – most of which clock in at around the twenty minute mark if that helps – here. They’re lively and irreverent and absolutely not uncritical, and often feature guests who have never seen any of the films before and possibly think The Hulk might be green but have no real idea beyond that, so in all honesty it’s probably a less daunting way of making your way through that list. So pausing only to acknowledge a couple of regular guests who by chance aren’t represented here – in particular Miriam Kent, Mic Wright, Paul Abbott, Vikki Gregorich, Al Kennedy, Una McCormack and especially Phil Catterall – let’s get ourselves right up to what happened in this post-credit scene and indeed that post-credit scene, neither of which I can really reveal here… but you’ll find out if you give these a listen.

You can find even more instalments of It’s Good, Except It Sucks here.

Buy A Book!

You can find much more about my love of the less critically lauded corners of cinema, from Michael Caine and Elvis Presley movies to creaky old sci-fi and ‘Video Nasties’, in my book Can’t Help Thinking About Me, a collection of columns and features with a personal twist. Can’t Help Thinking About Me is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Alternately, if you’re just feeling generous, you can buy me a coffee here. Actually I think it’s probably you who is going to need one if you’re planning to listen to all of the above in one sitting, but even so.

Further Listening

You can find It’s Good, Except It Sucks‘ thoughts on everything that they haven’t included on the list, all the way from Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain Marvel to Helstrom and Inhumans, here.

Further Reading

You can find some thoughts on why audiences seem to have taken to Loki so much even despite his nominally being a ‘villain’ in I Feel Like Everything’s Going To Work Out Fine here.

© Tim Worthington.
Please don’t copy this only with more italics and exclamation marks.