MCU Rewatch

As a companion series to An Idea of All Time my husband and I decided to rewatch all of the MCU movies in chronological order. This serves several purposes; 1) there is going to be a bit of an MCU drought for the next year as far as new releases go. 2) We want to properly place Shang-Chi in the MCU not just ranking it by quality but contextualizing it based on the existing universe. 3) We want to analyze how many of Shang-Chi’s problems are project specific and how many are MCU bred. So in addition to watching Shang-Chi every week we will be watching another MCU movie every week. We are of course starting with Iron Man.

I think both my husband and I forgot how great of a movie this is. From dialogue to pacing it really is truly fantastic. Besides the obvious sexist moment the movie really does hold up even after almost 2 decades. We will be talking about the films in the framework of very specific criteria; 1) Whether or not each film works as a stand alone film, how it functions in the greater frame of the MCU, and does it rely on previous projects in order to be understood. 2) How many times does tension breaking humor occur and is it justified based on character traits and character interactions? 3) How many times is there obvious product placement? 4) The oversexualization of women and how it works in the context of the scene and the story. Has it really gotten that much better over the course of the MCU? 5) How many characters only exist to be plot devices and what is the gender breakdown of those characters? Obviously I know the answer to that one but I will gather as much data as possible to prove my point. 6) We are talking about the villains, we consider a good villain one that has a personal connection with the main character and is able to reinforce the themes present in the film. Also are they compelling enough that they should be recurring or does their singular appearance make sense? And last but not least 7) Is it a plot or character driven story? I say all the time that plot is secondary. People will watch plenty of movies or seasons upon seasons of a bad or cheesy tv show if they love the characters. Characters are always more important. So how does that idea hold up in the MCU?

Now the first thing that rewatching Iron Man did was show that Shang-Chi could have been so much better had they actually given a shit that they were a part of a greater cinematic universe. As the terrorist organization that captures Tony is labeled the 10 rings. With the same symbolism that we see in the movie Shang-Chi: The Legend of the Ten Rings. But we will get to that upon our next watch. For now I will say that sometimes I forget how brilliantly the MCU started. And it was entirely built around Iron Man and Tony Stark. Now we will get to why that isn’t necessarily a good thing as we continue this rewatch series but in this first talk and in this first movie that is a good thing. We will also be rating each film on a scale of 1-10 and using those numbers to give our official MCU rankings which I am sure is going to result in some butthurt fans. I have a lot of rants in me so I am glad to be doing this with my husband who has already heard them all.