So this year, sort of by accident, I'm just rewatching some of them.
You'd say it was in preparation for Avengers: Doomsday later this year, and perhaps it is -- but not because I feel I need to rewatch the MCU to prepare for it. No, this is all about my 12-year-old son.
He's long been a fan of Spider-Man, having watched the last of those movies at the time it came out (and getting excited about the new one in a couple months). But he was previously prevented by his parents from seeing most of the MCU, since much of it was considered just a tad too intense for younger viewers. I believe we watched Captain Marvel and Ant-Man & the Wasp with him, but we stayed away from the slightly more bruising entries. You may recall from this post and this post that I consider Avengers: Infinity War to be one of those. (It's all about the strangulation of that one character, no need to spoil it in case you haven't seen it.)
But my son is 12 now. He's in high school, which starts in year 7 here in Australia. Even if he doesn't personally have one yet, most of his friends have phones. (He's making do with a watch he can text from.) Any previous restrictions on MCU content have now been lifted.
And so, sort of informally, we agreed earlier this year to run through a number of these movies he hadn't seen -- as many as he wanted, really.
And he's wanted to run through a lot of them.
Since the start of the year we've watched Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and just this past weekend, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. And just for good measure, one movie that features Spider-Man but is not part of the MCU, Sam Raimi's original 2002 Spider-Man for Sony.
Clearly our syllabus has been informed mostly by trying to get to the Spider-Man movies he hasn't seen, though Tom Holland's character has only been in one of those movies. I encouraged him he should watch the first two Captain Americas before getting to Spider-Man in Civil War, and he seems to have been happy enough with that decision.
So to clarify, these aren't the first MCU movies he's seen other than the two I mentioned earlier. On his own he had seen the original Iron Man and the original Avengers, plus all the Spider-Man movies. As the instructor of this course, so to speak, I told him he could skip the last two Iron Man movies, the first two Thor movies, The Incredible Hulk, and anything else I might be forgetting about now. (I think he did see the original Ant-Man also, and oh yeah, he definitely saw the third Ant-Man and last year's most recent Captain America movie.)
Anyway, I've encouraged him to go more or less in chronological order, especially after we realized we didn't have the full context for some of the things discussed in Civil War because we hadn't watched Age of Ultron yet. (Well I did, back in 2016.) This means we're about to get to the really good ones: Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. These were the films that turned me from an occasional appreciator of the MCU, and a fan of all the Captain America movies, to fully on board with the entire MCU. (Though of course the returns have diminished since then.)
I'm not here to present you some grand unifying theory of the middle MCU, though I did think it was worth giving you one short impression I gleaned from each of my viewings. I'll stick to the MCU, though, and leave the original Spider-Man out of it.
Captain America: The First Avenger
Watched: January 23, 2026
New thoughts: This is actually my third viewing of this film, the only of these five films that I'd already rewatched. And it has probably dropped just a little in my estimation with each watch, though I clearly retain the memory of how surprised I was by this back in 2011. It occurred to me, as I was watching, how it might be tough to make this film like this today, given how it's set in the distant past -- distant, at least, by the standards of today's young people. I think it's the only MCU film in which the vast majority of the film cannot be thought of as taking place in "present day." (Most of Captain Marvel takes place in the 1990s, but that movie at least has aliens.) It's a bit like the MCU's Wonder Woman, though of course this came first. I could tell my son was liking it well enough and was being polite in his appreciation, but he also made little comments clarifying that the next Captain America movies were set in modern times. While I think older viewers can appreciate the design details that went into recreating the 1940s -- and I think that was one of the main reasons I liked it so much initially -- a younger viewer is more eager to get to the modern-day team-ups with other superheroes.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Watched: February 6, 2026
New thoughts: This one I also saw through my son's eyes, and though it gets Cap to "present day," I was really noticing how much talking there is in this movie. It's the Marvel movie that is most like a spy thriller, so that shouldn't be a surprise, but I sensed some impatience on his part to get through this one as well. I can't remember if it was this movie or the next, because both of them feature Scarlett Johannson's Black Widow, but I thought it was funny how my son failed to identify the character from one scene to the next. He frequently confused her with Emily Van Camp's character, which I guess just goes to show you that not everyone is as mesmerized by ScarJo as everyone else. (I was especially mesmerized by her in this movie.) When the action does come, I was reminded that it's pretty top notch.
Captain America: Civil War
Watched: February 7, 2026
New thoughts: Before these rewatches, if you'd asked me to rate the Captain America movies, I would have told you they were all 4/5 star movies, but I would have put The Winter Soldier at the top. Well I guess I'm more of a new school MCU fan than I thought, because this is easily the most entertaining in the series, whether or not it's the best. You just can't beat the team-up of all these superheroes, which was maybe the biggest MCU team-up to date since we hadn't had Avengers: Infinity War yet. And while it feels sort of shallow to prize that entertainment value over a movie that is sort of constructed as a 70s paranoia film, the fact of the matter remains: I had a much better time watching Civil War than I did The Winter Soldier (or The First Avenger, for that matter, which is an implausibly low third out of the three movies). Maybe part of it was knowing that, on the other side of the couch, my son was enjoying this much more, finally getting his Tom Holland fix, and enjoying the presence of the others as well. He also enjoyed seeing some of the Scarlet Witch and Vision, knowing them from having watched Wandavision a few years back. (He also watched the Loki series, I should say, since I'm trying to cover all the bases here.)
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Watched: February 21, 2026
New thoughts: So I said earlier that I was not fully on board with the MCU during its early stages, even after the Captain America movies had brought me further on board. Avengers: Age of Ultron was Exhibit A of that phenomenon. Not only did I not like this movie when I saw it in January of 2016, having missed it in the theater, but I felt superior to it, and scoffed at it. Watching it now, I really have no idea what offended me so much about it. It is probably the least good of the Avengers movies, but it's still a good movie. The only real problem I have with it is the motivations of the villain, Ultron, who goes from coming into existence, to deciding the world needs to be cleansed of human beings, in basically no time flat, for no reason that I can find sensibly articulated in the dialogue. But if the worst problem a superhero movie has is that the villain doesn't make sense, then that's certainly not something unique to that particular superhero movie. I think what Ragnarok and the most recent two Avengers movies did for me is that they made me realize that yes, there's a reason why watching a bunch of superheroes teaming up is fun: you get a little sampling of all the personality types, instead of being stuck for a whole movie with one you might not like that much. Age of Ultron is a pretty good version of this, and I appreciated it a lot more once I realized that's something I wanted from these movies.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Watched: March 15, 2026
New thoughts: I knew at the time I watched this, also on video rather than in the theater, that I liked it more than the original Guardians of the Galaxy, which I was famously not a fan of. What I didn't remember, until this viewing, was just how goddamn funny it is. I tend to think of all the stuff that makes me laugh about Dave Bautista's Drax the Destroyer is in Infinity War or possibly Endgame, but he's frikking hilarious in this movie. Both my son and I were laughing quite a bit, and there's no guarantee we would both find the same things funny. We're still quoting Drax lines to each other a few days later. Although this is not the best movie featuring Guardians of the Galaxy characters, it's the best Guardians movie and I don't think it's particularly close. Only in the climax do I think it loses a little steam, but before that it's great, it's colorful, it's staged well, and it makes me LOL like a dozen times. And again, complaining about the overblown climax of a superhero movie is just about as fruitless as complaining about the confused motivations of a superhero movie villain.
I may have more to say about the movies we're getting next, which will probably also include Black Panther, since I think it makes sense to watch everything forward now until the end of Phase 3. (That's Endgame, if you don't have your Marvel phases memorized.) I guess that would also mean a viewing of Doctor Strange, although did we already watch that? (I keep remembering other MCU movies my son has seen, which include Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.) In terms of their essential role in the Infinity Saga, as well as my personal opinions of them, I could let both Black Panther and Doctor Strange pass, and I've already seen both of them twice so I don't really need a third viewing of either.
But given the way I am overall enjoying this reacquaintance with these movies, I'm happy to let my son take it in whatever direction he wants. I just might have to think twice about continuing this for the movies that have come since 2020.
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