Marvel Movie Chronology

[crabby_lioness]

 As we all know there's an Avengers movie coming out soon.  My family got out of the habit of watching superhero movies, and now its time for us to catch up.  What are the must-see Marvel movies (and the must-avoid Marvel movies) and what order should they be seen in?

Comments

[sandoz_iscariot]

Do you mean all Marvel movies, or just the movies that are part if the shared Avengers universe?

[crabby_lioness]

Which of all the Marvel movies are the ones worth watching?

[katieupsidedown]

Technically I think the chronology to the Avengers films is

Hulk
Iron Man
Iron Man 2
Thor
Captain America

But really the only parts of most of them that lead directly into each other are the bits at the end of the credits.

[sianmink]

you're gonna wanna watch Incredible Hulk (with Ed Norton) not the other, older Hulk movie.

[thatnickguy]

Since Tony shows up at the end of Hulk, I would say Iron Man first, then Hulk.

[shadwing]

Yeah at least the first Iron Man happens before Hulk...and with the re-worked 'Hulk Stinger' on the Thor DVD (A Funny Thing Happened on the way to Thor's Hammer) mostly likely after Iron Man 2 as well.

[shadwing]

If you want Chronological (rather than Order of Release) its this:

Captain America (till the last 10-15 minutes)
Iron Man
Iron Man 2
Hulk
Thor

[littlepunkryo]

This is how I'm planning to watch them. Most of Iron Man 2/Hulk/Thor is all really happening at the same time in-universe so the order there tends to get a bit confusing but nothing too bad. You should be good watching them in this order, imo.

eta: gah, sorry for the edits!

[shadwing]

Yeah the 'stingers' the bits after the credits help ALOT in putting them in order.

Though they had to re-tweek the Stinger of Hulk with Tony since when it originally released everybody assumed Tony was refering to Cap...later it was tweeked to refering to the Abomination (See 'A Funny Thing Happened...' DVD Bonus on Thor)

Hulk?

[dagonst]

I've watched the 'canon' movies that lead up to Avengers, but am curious: is the earlier Hulk worth watching? I've heard pretty bad things about Fantastic Four.

[skjam]

It's...different. I liked it, but it's very much a superhero film by a director who'd never done a superhero film before. The earlier movie spends a lot of characterization time on Bruce Banner's relationship with his father, rahter than hurrying to get to the part most of the audience came for, Hulk smashing things.

[deleonjh]

That was when Ang Lee was coming off the international acclaim for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Credit to the studio for taking a complete artistic risk but they really should have realized beforehand what kind of movie he was probably going to make based on his track record. It's not like he was just cynically doing it for a paycheque, either, from the dvd extras he was clearly trying to make it according to a specific artistic vision. That's the problem with art, though - sometimes an idea works, sometimes it doesn't.

Re: Hulk?

[sir_razorback]

Alot of the gripe from me is that he chose to edit the movie to actually *look* like a comic book. There's PANELS everywhere!

[silverzeo]

There is also a bad Dr Strange movie (my digital cable browser confuses the animated one with that one) that is on par with the Reb Brown Captain America "movies", being a pilot episode for series that didn't take off. Not sure if anyone has seen it or not, so it's hard to say if it bad as the 2000 Fantastic Four, or just funny bad like the Coreman Fantastic Four.

[crabby_lioness]

I've seen the bad Dr. Strange TV movie, the bad Captain America TV movie, and the bad Thor TV movie. Why do you think I stopped watching Marvel movies?

Granted, the scene where the guy took Thor to a biker bar to chill made me melt into a puddle of goo.