The MCU is currently planned out with no Avengers movies until Phase 6 when we get Avengers: Kang Dynasty. In Phase 4 there weren’t any Avengers movies, and so far there won’t be any in Phase 5. Does that make sense? Will that turn out to be a good thing?
The lack of Avengers movies lately sort of makes sense, because a lot of the original Avengers are gone so everyone else is just kind of doing their own thing. Many of the stories in Phase 4 sort of make sense without the Avengers team up like Thor 4 taking place in space, but it would also make sense that now these heroes have these connections, they would utilize them more. I do like how they incorporated this line of thinking with Falcon and the Winter Soldier teaming up, Spiderman turning to Dr. Strange in Spiderman: No Way Home, the Guardians and Thor teaming up even if it was just for a small joke of a time. It might be good to see some more Avengers movies rather than individual ones, especially once we get into Phase 7. Of course, that is a ways down the road.
Marvel Team Ups
So, some of the individual movies could essentially be Avengers movies, but with a big focus on the title character. That’s kind of what happened with Spiderman: No Way Home and an Avengers team up has been rumored about with Captain America: New World Order. This movie set to premiere in May 2024, and is rumored to have the new Captain America recruit a new team made up of new and old Avengers. Now, he might not gather them all together until the third act, but if it happens, it will still have somewhat of an Avengers movie feel. Even in the actual Avengers movie, it’s not like the whole team is together the entire time.
And this sort of Avengers hijacking type of movie has already been done with the last Captain America movie. Captain America Civil War was basically an Avengers movie that had Captain America as the main actor who had the biggest journey. Thor Ragnarok had the Hulk in it which are only two of the Avengers, but they are the two strongest and possibly most durable Avengers. The Dr. Strange team up in Spiderman No Way Home was sort of like that too. And in Dr. Strange in the Multiverse, Dr. Strange even jokingly mentioned to Wanda that he was avoiding the other heroes who didn’t have magical powers, but he did come to her for help. And then of course he found out that Wanda was creating the problem.
Avengers: Iron Man Story
Let’s assume for a moment that the MCU has some sort of Multiverse reboot at the end of Phase 6, and we get for example a Tony Stark Iron Man in a rebooted universe. There could be an Avengers movie that centers around him, but includes most if not all of the other Avengers. In a sense, that is already the case in Avengers: Age of Ultron where Tony creates the villain by trying to protect the world, so they may want to shift the focus to another Avenger, but you get the idea. Basically, the Avengers would team up to face a massive threat, but the story line will mainly focus on one or two Avengers. The others will have story arcs, but they would be smaller.
This might also be helpful for when the X-men and the Fantastic Four make their way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A large part of the focus will be on these new franchises, but it will be important to continue to have the other heroes involved. Phase 7 might look better with a mix of Avengers, Fantastic Four, X-men movies, and a few solo movies that introduce new characters. There might still be room for a few individual movies, especially if they are sequels like Shang Chi 3 or something like that.
Avengers MIA in Phases 4 and 5
As I mentioned before, there are no Avengers movies in Phases 4 and 5. Maybe they will add one to Phase 5 but it looks doubtful. Again, Captain America: New World Order may essentially turn into an Avengers movie, but I think that shows us that there should be more Avengers movies. There are still signs that these heroes keep in touch whether or not they go by the name of Avengers. At the end of Shang Chi, we saw Bruce Banner, Captain Marvel, and Wong all having a meeting where they invited Shang Chi and talked about his rings. If the rings do come from the Quantum Realm as suspected, it could have made sense to essentially turn Antman 3 into an Avengers type movie like they did with Captain America: Civil War, and actually mention the rings. They could have traced the source of the beacon to the Quantum Realm. My guess is now that the rings will come up in the Marvels, but that’s a whole other topic.
No matter what happens, big changes will be coming to the MCU when the the X-men and the Fantastic Four join the Avengers and the other heroes. Hopefully, the quality of the MCU will be as great as it was during Phase 3, and focusing on team movies may help that. Of course, there are a lot of things that need to be done to make sure the quality of these movies is the best that it can be. Now that Kevin Feige has come out and said they’re making changes to the upcoming movies in Phases 5 and 6, hopefully they will get things on the right course, and stay on that course continuously.
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