The best MCU recaps and tributes you should watch before Avengers: Infinity War

Avengers: Infinity War isn’t just Marvel Studios’ “most ambitious crossover.” It also represents the Marvel Cinematic Universe being around for an entire decade.

That means there are plenty of details to remember from some of Marvel’s lesser loved films (looking at you, Thor: The Dark World), and fans who have been around since the very beginning are looking for ways to pay tribute to some of their favorite moments (looking at you, shawarma scene at the end of The Avengers). Fortunately, there’s already an abundance of tributes and recaps floating around YouTube; in fact, there may be too many for any one person to sift through.

Trying to find a good tribute video that isn’t too long and captures the most important moments from all 18 movies is tough. Everyone has their own subjective notion of what moments are crucial to the MCU. Baby Groot might make someone’s tribute video (and they’d be correct), but be left out in the next one. A particular recap video may choose to exclude jokes made by Korg in Thor: Ragnarok, while other, better recap videos go out of their way to highlight every word spoken.

Here are a selection of very good recaps and tribute videos that will either remind you of everything that’s happened thus far or bring tears to your eyes.

This MCU tribute, created by a YouTube user named The Captain, is one of the better tributes I’ve stumbled upon. It gets to the heart of what makes the MCU so great, but condenses it all into a respectable 16-minute video.

YouTube user MCU News Desk’s recap-meets-tribute hybrid is another impressive video that caught my attention. It’s a little longer than the video above, coming in at just over 20 minutes, but the editing makes it feel like a short film instead of a plain ol’ love letter to the MCU. It also does a decent job of recapping the most crucial elements of the MCU — a great watch for those who just want to remember the basics before Avengers: Infinity War.

This is a little cheat, but taking time to power through Movies in Minutes series about the MCU’s different films is the best recap out there. This will take a while: Roughly 72 minutes should be set aside, but it’s so worth it. This team does a phenomenal job of recapping each film, and providing just enough analysis in the process.

These are just the videos that I love — that I’ve found useful in my own preparation for Avengers: Infinity War. There are thousands of other videos on YouTube, too.

Avengers: Infinity War will be released on April 27.