2023 feels like a distant memory in some ways. It was the year of the Barbenheimer phenomenon, the final season of Succession , and critically acclaimed music from Lana Del Rey and Olivia Rodrigo. Despite only two years passing, it feels like a long time ago, especially regarding superhero movies.
I think Multiverse of Madness had more required reading. Wanda wants to save her kids and without WandaVision you’re forced to ask, “What kids?”
For this film I think Kamala being “a big fan” is enough. We don’t need to know how she got her powers for her to fit into this film.
For Monica it’s a little more required, but they basically just speedrun and say “A magical witch gave me powers” and while that’s an understatement you can just sort of accept that she has powers now.
It’s similar to Kamala where we just accept that these two new main characters have powers, and that’s ok since this is their big screen debut.
Every film in the MCU since phase 2 builds on characters from previous films. You can’t just jump into the middle and expect to know what’s going on.
Sure, but there is a difference between “required reading” and backstory.
For example at the end of Iron Man 3 Tony destroys all of his various armor and Pepper Potts gets Extremis powers.
At no point after that is Tony missing/lacking for armor nor does Pepper have superpowers. The events of Iron Man 3 are not required to watch any future film.
However Iron Man 3 does deal with Tony trying to recover and handle the stress from the Battle of New York. You can’t watch Iron Man 3 without having watched The Avengers.
But also, sometimes the film can just fill you in. Endgame makes a number of major references to Thor 2. Thor 2, at the time, was the lowest rated and likely least watched film. However Endgame just fills us in on the important parts of that film and we move forward.
Yes, watching the previous films is going to improve future tie-in plot points, but it isn’t always necessary.
You wouldn’t understand some of Shang Chi without having seen Iron Man 3, though. Trevor has his own entire subplot which makes almost no sense without context.
They also do reference the clean slate protocol in Age of Ultron. By then, Tony has built the Iron Legion, and has started working on Ultron with Banner. Granted, it’s not necessary to understand the pathos behind the decision, but it makes more sense with the backstory. It’s like the central conflict of the whole movie, kind of the way Wanda searching for her multiversal children is for Multiverse of Madness. If you didn’t watch WandaVision, the movie drops a few lines of exposition to give you the bullet points, but it makes much more sense if you watch the show.
I was bummed they just kinda dropped the Extremis plotline entirely, but I’ve never thought the MCU needed more Gwenyth Paltrow.
And yes, the Endgame scene with Frigga would be extremely confusing without having watched The Dark World. I still think that was one of the worst films, but it is required viewing to understand the trio of Ragnarok, Infinity War, and Endgame.