MCU refresher course

Whenever I think about rewatching entire series of movies than run longer than just a trilogy, I think of things like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter ... and yes, the MCU, though that would now be more of an undertaking than rewatching all of the James Bond movies.

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. 

My civic duty

So what was I doing at the Hoyts Highpoint cinema last night, with the well-received trio of Godzilla, X-Men: Days of Future Past and Neighbors (here called Bad Neighbours) staring me in the face, and purchasing a ticket for a movie that had already been out for two months?

My civic duty, that's what.

Since I am an American expatriate living Australia -- you may have heard me mention this before -- I am always conscious of my own Americanness. I'm acutely aware that every time I open my mouth to a stranger, that person is going to be confronted by the momentary thought "Oh, I'm talking to an American," and whatever he or she associates with that will flicker through his/her mind. Sometimes this is a positive, as when I was at an Aussie rules football game on Sunday night and one of the vendors told me that she loved my accent and had visited Boston (I was wearing a Celtics jersey). When they don't say anything, though, I make the paranoid assumption that they are judging me.

Given this, you can understand why I am hesitant to wear a) my Obama t-shirt, and b) my Captain America t-shirt. The Obama shirt is no great shakes, style-wise, but I love the Cap shirt. I do wear it, but then I am even more conscious of how I am confronting strangers with my Americanness. "Not only is this guy American," they will think, "but he wears his Americanness literally on his sleeve."

I don't feel ashamed of being American -- far from it. But I do feel that my very lack of shame is what I might be judged for. A lack of shame is the most identifiably American trait we have, if you take us at our most stereotypical level. So I feel the need to apologize for whatever foreign policy decision or bit of cultural imperialism for which they may blame me. Hey, at least feeling guilty about it could earn me recognition as one of the "good Americans."

However, I do still feel a kinship to anything American, which includes most of the culture Australians consume. Movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier are those I want especially to give my blessing, and that translates to seeing them in the theater, even if they have been out here in Australian since April 3rd.

In fact, so much did I want to endorse this movie that I had intended to see it on the fifth day of its theatrical release, until I was forced into a last-minute change of plans in order to successfully execute a double feature (you can read about that here). Having heard so many good things about Captain America, and having really dug the first one, I didn't want the rash decision I had to make back when I caught Noah and The Lego Movie to consign The Winter Soldier to the small screen. I also knew that it might be gone from Highpoint as soon as this Thursday, so now was the time to act.

I ended up really liking the movie -- I would almost say I loved it -- but that's not what I want to spend the rest of this post telling you about. Rather, I want to tell you about something that happened to me at the end of the movie.

I'd reached the Highpoint Shopping Center via the 57 tram, using my wife's Myki card. These green cards, about the size of and twice the thickness of a credit card, are what you swipe when you board. I was using her card, rather than my own, because mine is carrying a balance that decreases whenever I use it, while hers has had unlimited use paid up front for a certain period of time. Whenever she's not using hers, it makes sense for me to use it, as I had also done earlier that day to get to and from work.

It was this card -- which was paid up through the morning of June 19th -- that I couldn't find at the end of the movie.

I slapped every pocket. I rummaged through every compartment of my backpack. I slapped every pocket again. And then I started to swear up a storm.

You see, a Myki card is a precious object. Even if it doesn't have any money on it, it costs six dollars to replace. When it does have money on it, it's basically just like cash. Anyone who's holding it can use it to ride several varieties of Melbourne transportation, from trams to buses to trains.

And riding these is not cheap. It's $3.58 per ride, so paying up for a whole week costs about $30.

The thing is, my wife hadn't paid up for just a week. That's what she had been doing, but this time, she had paid up for a whole month. And there were still more than three weeks until June 19th, the expiration date I'd been seeing flash on the card readers.

That means that my wife's Myki card -- now evidently, irretrievably lost -- was worth close to $100.

Fuck.

After I'd pushed back every seat in the two rows on either side of the one where I'd been sitting, I reluctantly decided that I had to declare the card gone. I grimly noted that my frantic search for the card at least allowed me to see both of the two bonus sequences inserted into, and then after, the movie's credits.

On my way out of the theater, I decided to throw a hail mary and ask the woman cleaning up behind the concessions counter if there was any chance that someone would turn in a lost Myki card. I wasn't even asking her if someone did turn it in -- I was asking her if she thought there was any chance they would. To her credit, she did not take the easy route of giving me the answer I laid out for her on a platter. She called up to her manager to see if someone had turned one in, and indeed, they had not.

I mean, who would? If you found a hundred dollars lying on the ground, would you try to figure out who had lost it? Finders keepers, losers weepers.

I thought what most likely happened was that it fell out of my jacket pocket in the ticket line. Having hoofed it over from the tram stop, I found myself quite toasty when I finally slowed down to queue up, so I shed both my jacket and the long-sleeve shirt underneath it. So as a last-ditch effort to avoid the chewing out I imagined my wife would give me, I made my way over to the velvet ropes and metal posts of the ticket line.

And: there it was.

I couldn't believe it. Resting on the circular metal base of one of the posts was my wife's Myki card. I so couldn't believe it that even though it was obviously the same card, I checked the reverse side for the letter C my wife had scrawled on it with a Sharpie. And there was that glorious letter C.

Grinning wildly, I brought the card back and showed the woman at the concession stand, who mirrored my wide grin.

Now, what may well have happened was that the card landed exactly where I found it. But that's not what I'm choosing to believe. Because it seems imminently more likely -- according to the physics of falling objects, if not the behavioral tendencies of human beings -- I have to believe that a good Samaritan saw my lost card on the ground and specifically placed it on the little incline of the metal post base.

And if I'm believing that, I'm also believing that they consciously chose that spot for the following reason: It was where someone who was looking for it would find it, as opposed to just leaving it on the carpet, where it would attract the attention of any passerby seeking to profit from it. This would also be preferable to turning it in to the lost and found, where it would also be subject to the morality of whoever next possessed it. The spot they chose was specifically designed so that the person who lost it, and no other, would be the most likely person to find it.

They couldn't have known how much money was on it, but doing the right thing cost them close to $100. Of course, to this wonderful person, doing the right thing may have been its own reward.

By the time I exited the mall complex and walked the 15 minutes to the tram stop, the last tram on my line had run for the night. Another tram that could take me part of the way came lurching by, so part of the way I rode. When it diverged from my route, I disembarked, and walked the remaining 50 minutes back to my house, arriving at just after 1 a.m. I was so keyed up that the walk flew by. I was so keyed up that I'm writing this post now, instead of in the morning, even though the clock has just now struck 2 a.m.

It would have been a heck of a sad walk home if I'd lost a hundred dollars. Instead, I bounced along, riding the kind of spring in your step that only comes from having your faith in humanity restored.

And on a night that was designed to appreciate Americans, I ended up appreciating the heck out of some nameless and faceless Australian.

Who are these people directing these movies?

Have you ever heard of a person named Alan Taylor?

Neither had I. Except I was noodling around on the interwebs and learned that this person is directing the Terminator reboot (or whatever it is).

Trying to figure out how they would just hand this movie to this guy I had never heard of, I discovered that Mr. Taylor also directed Thor: Dark World. (Shows you how much attention I paid to the sequel to one of my least favorite Marvel movies.)

Trying to figure out how they would just hand the sequel to one of my least favorite Marvel movies to a guy I had never heard of, I discovered that Mr. Taylor also directed movies called Palookaville, The Emperor's New Clothes and Kill the Poor, the most recent of which came out in ... 2003.

Huh?

What crack is Marvel smoking these days?

If it were just this, that would be one thing. But do you know who's directing April's Captain America: The Winter Soldier?

Joe and Anthony Russo, known for their cinematic classics Welcome to Collinwood and You, Me and Dupree.

Wha?

The answer, of course, lies in what these directors have been doing when they have not been directing features. And that means the answer lies in TV.

Taylor is a veteran of a half-dozen episodes of Game of Thrones, making him a pretty darn logical candidate to direct a Thor movie in that sense. And the Russo brothers directed some of those episodes of Community that featured paintball wars (there were at least two of them, and possibly as many as 17), which I guess makes them a slightly more logical choice to direct an action movie.

Then again, they still kind of don't make sense. Game of Thrones has surprisingly few scenes of actual fighting, and I don't know how slow-mo action-comedy sequences on Community qualify someone for big-budget, serious action.

What's clear is that Marvel has a downright kooky idea of who should direct its movies. After all, Jon Favreau had to seem like an unusual choice for the original Iron Man, having made only Made, Elf and Zathura. Now we think of him as a hot director of big-budget films, Cowboys & Aliens notwithstanding.

Ditto Kenneth Branagh for the original Thor (he's the "Shakespeare guy") and Joss Whedon for The Avengers (he's "the Buffy the Vampire Slayer" guy).

There's something delightfully risk embracing about their stance. (What's a good opposite of "risk averse," anyway? Risk comfortable? Risk welcoming?) Any of these decisions could easily blow up in their faces, but so far, none really have.

They appear to have made another smart unconventional choice with the director of next year's Ant-Man: Edgar Wright. Though this would be one of their least unconventional choices, given that each of Wright's movies has had a somewhat serious dose of action.

When they tap Woody Allen to direct Iron Man 4, that's when I will really start scratching my head. But it's much more likely that they will get someone like Ramin Bahrani, director of the indie darlings Man Push Cart, Chop Shop and Goodbye Solo. After making At Any Price, which featured Zac Efron as a race car driver, he's all set to helm a superhero movie, isn't he?

I'm pretty sure Marvel thinks so ... and heck, given their track record, I'm pretty sure they're right.