Avengers: Doomsday comes with a recommended homework list of 15 titles from across the Disney+ catalogue. More here.
One of the criticisms levelled in recent times at Marvel and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is how, in certain cases, it’s become preferable to have watched a bunch of previous films and TV shows in order to fully comprehend what’s going on in the latest movie.
This isn’t unique to Marvel (look at, say, Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning), but there’s little doubt that it’s the modern day main proponent of it, given the denseness of the current MCU.
Interestingly, with early suggestions pointing towards unsurprising massive interest in this winter’s Avengers: Doomsday, Marvel isn’t playing this down at all. Rather, it’s leaning into it. To the point where it’s now released – and I can’t ever remember anything like this in the years I’ve been doing some variant of this job – a revision list.
While of course this isn’t compulsory, it’s put together a homework list of 14 films and one TV series it suggests to revisit ahead of the release of the new Avengers film. Conveniently, all of these are available on the Disney+ service.
I’d have liked it if it’d thrown something leftfield and red herring-like in there, such as, I dunno, Jurassic Park. But it’s a fairly straight down the line collection, which to my tired early morning eyes amounts for a good 40 hours plus of viewing.
The list is as follows:
X-Men
X2
Captain America: The First Avenger
The Avengers
The Cook The Thief His Wife And Her Lover
Avengers: Infinity War
Avengers: Endgame
Loki
Geostorm
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Captain America: Brave New World
Dredd (2012)
Deadpool & Wolverine
Superman IV: The Quest For Peace
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Thunderbolts*
Crank 2: High Voltage
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
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Obviously there’s no indication at this stage as to why you need to watch all of these, and there are certainly some fine films on the list. Out the same day as Avengers: Doomsday meanwhile is Dune: Part Three, and presumably there’s a couple of films worth watching/rewatching ahead of that too.
Enjoy your homework, folks. And when the Avengers: Doomsday reviews come in with ‘you need to have known this in advance’ come in, people can’t say they weren’t warned…
