How to watch every Marvel movie scene in chronological order

There are plenty of places online that will tell you how to watch all the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, chronologically or otherwise. But what if you wanted more? What if you wanted to watch every scene in the MCU in chronological order?

Escape From Vault Disney podcast host Tony Goldmark has the answer for you.

Last week, Goldmark tweeted the results of his ambitious quarantine project, a list of every discrete scene in every movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, rearranged in chronological order. A little later, after incorporating canny observations from those who saw the tweet, he published a final, even more accurate, version on Comic Book Herald

Chronologically speaking, the first scene in the MCU is the prologue of Thor: The Dark World, which begins “millennia ago” with Asgard and the Dark Elves at war. Then time jumps to the flashback sequence of Thor: Ragnarok in which the Valkyries make their last charge against Hela. And then to 965 A.D., when Asgard battled Frost Giants across Earth.

Then, Goldmark’s list continues for over 100 swaps from movie to movie and back, until, finally, in a cute choice, the final credits scene of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, in which Astronaut Stan Lee assures the Watchers that he has many, many more stories to tell.

Image: Marvel Studios

Timelines of the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe can be found on any fan wiki, but Goldmark has assembled the recipe for a video version. Polygon reached out to the theme park Youtuber and Disney podcaster to find out exactly what had motivated the creation of this exhaustively researched list, and he said he never intended for it to catch so much attention.

“I was doing it mostly for my own amusement and nerdy curiosity more than anything else,” Goldmark said over email, “just as a personal project to keep me occupied during the quarantine. Next thing you know, it’s got over nine thousand retweets and 31 thousand likes, and I’ve gained nearly two thousand new Twitter followers in the last three days alone.”

He was also surprised at the number of people clamoring for the list to be in a different format.

“I think the biggest thing I learned from this process is that, as intriguing as this sort of thing is, people online VASTLY prefer watching videos to reading lists,” he said. “I’ve gotten thousands of responses and quote-tweets on that thing, and at least half of them are some variation of ‘You should edit this into one video!’”

But even as the creator of the list in the first place, he doesn’t recommend using it.

“Incidentally, I don’t think watching the MCU chopped up into this chronological order is objectively the best way to do it — if you’re seeing any of these movies for the first time, you should absolutely watch them as the filmmakers intended. This is strictly a nerdy bonus for superfans who are obsessed with the chronology of it in particular, and I’ve always been a sucker for that kind of thing.”

Nerdy superfans who are obsessed with chronology? I, uh ... can’t relate.

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