First up, we have Captain America: Civil War. A fair amount of digital ink has already been spilled about this due to rumors about Iron Man having a significant supporting role. That's important because Civil War will be based in part on a rather infamous Marvel storyline that saw Cap and Iron Man on opposite sides of an ideological war. The gist of the story was that after a group of careless superheroes caused a massive death toll during a supervillain fight, including a large group of schoolchildren, the government decided to crack down on superheroes. A new law was passed that required anyone with superpowers to register their identity and work for SHIELD. This split the superhero community down the middle with some Pro-registration being lead by Iron Man, who felt the law was necessary to prevent another disaster, and some Anti-registration being lead by Captain America, who felt the law infringed too much on the personal liberties and autonomy of superheroes. Civil War was a pretty controversial story when it was published in 2006, even if it was just riding the wave of post-9/11 freedom vs security consciously political storytelling that was popular at the time. I'm unsure of how much of the original story will be carried over to the film, the movies only have a handful of heroes and none of them really have secret identities, but all you really need to know is Captain America vs Iron Man. Which isn't a bad pitch for a movie, really.
Next, we have the big risk. Dr. Strange was announced for November of 2016 and will be the first movie to officially introduce capital-M Magic into the Marvel Movie-verse. There have been hints of magic with the Thor movies, but that's been handwaved as advanced alien technology they just call magic. But there's no getting around it with this, Dr Strange's job title is SORCERER Supreme. This is read-deal Harry Potter magic, folks. I talked a little about Dr Strange back when he got a shout-out in Winter Soldier, but people may still be unaware of who he is. Well Dr Strange was originally just Dr Stephen Strange, master surgeon. He was an amazing doctor but something of an arrogant prick, he would only treat the richest patients and treated everybody else like shit. But one night Strange got into a car accident that crushed his hands and though they healed, they no longer had the fine motor skills to perform surgery. Now unable to return to his acclaimed career, Strange fell into a deep depression. He eventually became so desperate to restore his hands, he followed a rumor about a healing shaman into the heart of Tibet. Travelling there Strange encountered the Ancient One, Earth's most powerful wizard. It's Sorcerer Supreme. The Ancient One took Strange in as his student, teaching him to become a master wizard instead of a master surgeon. But tragedy struck when another of the Ancient One's students, jealous of how quickly Strange took to magic, killed the Ancient One by accident while trying to kill Strange. As the Ancient One lay dying he called Strange his greatest student and passed on to him the title of Sorcerer Supreme. Humbled by his experiences and training, Strange returned to New York and vowed to use his mastery of the mystic arts for the good of all mankind. He does this by fighting evil wizards and apocalyptic gods. Sounds like a pretty good movie, right? There were rumors earlier this week that Benedict Cumberbatch was cast as Strange, but nothing official.
After Dr Strange, we'll have Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Title gives no idea what will be going on in the sequel to that crazy thing, but it's probably a safe bet that Thanos will be involved in a big way. Especially given what's going to end Phase 3.
Next up there's the third Thor movie, subtitled Ragnarok. That's a pretty evocative title considering Thor's Norse origins. Ragnarok was basically the Norse apocalypse, a time when the gods of Asgard would do final battle with the frost giants and their many monster allies. It was a world-ending affair where the heavens would shake and all the gods, yes even Thor, would die fighting these monsters. Then the world would be flooded and repopulated by two human survivors who hid in the trunk of the world tree. Ragnarok has come up in Thor comics a few times, including a memorable instance where it was explained why Comic Thor looked so different from Mythological Thor. This involved Thor inviting a documentary crew to come film Asgard. Once they got there one of the cameramen discovered he was the reincarnation of the mythological Thor, who had red hair, a beard, a slightly different hammer, and got into a fight with the regular blond-haired Thor. Odin broke things up and revealed what was going on. See every Thousand years or so, I forget the exact number, Asgard goes through a cycle of Ragnarok where all the Asgardians die in a huge monster battle and are then reborn. There are slight differences every time they're reborn, like Thor's hair color, but everything is generally the same. This information rightly freaked Thor and all the other Asgardians out but Odin said there was nothing they could do. It was going to happen. The cycle eventually did come to Ragnarok in 2000 or so and Thor seized the throne of Asgard and fought against the force that kept the cycle going, succeeding but at the cost of Asgard never being reborn. This basically just meant that Thor and his buds were dead for a couple years, they eventually came back. Now I doubt that any of that will make it into this movie, but it does sound like a pretty definitive end for the God of Thunder.
This is the announcement that caught most of the attention and it's easy to see why. Black Panther has been kicked around for a movie since almost before the first Iron Man, mostly because as a character he wouldn't require too many special effects and the concept is pretty easy to grasp. He's not all that different from other vigilante heroes or spy heroes that Hollywood has been making for years. Except that the Panther is black, which is sadly the most likely reason it's taken this long for him to get a movie. At any rate, here's Black Panther's deal. T'Challa is the prince of the African nation of Wakanda, a wealthy and technologically advanced country thanks to being the world's only source of Vibranium. You know, the unbreakable metal Captain America's shield is made of. T'Challa doesn't really want to take over the throne, the tribal politics of Wakanda tire him and he feels unworthy of the responsibility. This causes his father, the current king, a lot of heartache and is an opportunity for nefarious industrialist Ulysses Klaw. Klaw wants to start mining out the country's vibranium, so when T'Challa leaves Wakanda to find himself he kills the king and installs a puppet leader that will give him free reign. When T'Challa learns of this; he knows he has to return, take back the throne, and save their vibranium. But now he's a wanted man in his own country, he'll be arrested by Klaw if he shows his face in Wakanda. So he takes on the mantle of the Black Panther, a powerful mythological figure in his homeland, and returns in secret to try and free Wakanda from Klaw's evil grip. So yeah, he's basically an African Batman. Marvel seems to be putting some serious weight behind this already, casting 42's Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa and showing off some nice concept art of the Panther suit.
Oh, and because I know someone will ask. No, he isn't named after the Black Panther militant group. T'Challa actually used that name first.
Then there's the other announcement that's got everybody excited, Captain Marvel. And that's because this will be Marvel's first movie with a female lead. Now there have been a few guys and gals with that name (Including one over at DC, it's complicated) but the movie will be about the current and most popular bearer of the name, Carol Danvers. Carol is a tall, blonde Air Force Captain who kicks ass and takes no shit. While dealing with a member of the Kree military, the blue bad guys from Guardians of the Galaxy, who had been stranded on Earth, Carol was caught in the explosion of a piece of weird alien machinery. The explosion somehow grafted Kree DNA onto her own, giving Carol the abilities of flight, super strength, and energy blasts. So she did what anybody that happens to does; she became a superhero, joined the Avengers, and went through some comic-book shenanigans so crazy I can't condense it here. Also she was originally just called Ms. Marvel. All you need to know is that she's a tough as nails Blonde that don't take no shit who flies and shoots lasers out of her hands. I'm guessing her origin, which involved the original dude called Captain Marvel, will be really streamlined but I wonder what piece of weird alien tech will ultimately giver her superpowers. As anyone watching Agents of SHIELD will attest, there's a lot of weird alien shit floating around the Marvel Movie-verse.
Now this is a weird one. Black Panther and Captain Marvel, those aren't that unexpected in terms of new characters. But Inhumans? Now that's obscure. For those of you who don't know, which I'm presuming is most of you, The Inhumans are a group of humans who millions of years ago were genetically altered by aliens. Ostracized by other early humans, they settled on a remote mountain and founded their capital city of Attilan. It turned out that Attilan was built over a source of bizarre gas called the Terrigen Mists, which when breathed causes people to mutate. It became a rite of passage in Inhuman society for adolescents to go down into the caves and breath these mists, mutating their already altered genes further. Most stories about the Inhumans follow the Royal Family of Attilan, who vie against each other and the other noble houses of Inhumans for control of Inhuman society. Think Game of Thrones but with superpowers. The Royal Family includes; Black Bolt the current Inhuman king and whose power is a voice so loud that even a whisper could level a city block, his Queen Medusa who has a massive head of prehensile hair, and her sister Crystal whose power is control of the four classical elements. Yes, Crystal is basically the Avatar. Anyway, people have been bringing up Inhumans as a possible solution for The Magneto Problem. See, the thing about Inhumans is that before they're exposed to the Mists they look pretty much like everyone else. So a lot of people could be Inhumans and not even know it. A lot of people are assuming that's what is going on with Skye over on Agents of SHIELD and how the Maximoff twins are going to be explained in Age of Ultron. Sounds plausible to me, but Marvel doesn't always go the obvious route. Remember Coulson is actually a robot? At any rate, this will be the one to keep an eye on.
And the finale of Phase Three, a two-part Avengers extravaganza called Infinity War. This is the big shebang, what we've been building up to since the reveal of Thanos at the end of the first Avengers movie. Presumably, these two films will crib more from the Infinity Gauntlet story than from the sequel to that which these films' title is taken from. Which means this will be the culmination of Thanos obtaining all six Infinity Stones, forming the Infinity Gauntlet and becoming God. And as someone who's read The Infinity Gauntlet, trust me when I say that isn't good. Like 50% of the entire universe murdered with a finger snap to impress his girlfriend the Grim Reaper not bad. Anyway, that means that along the way in the other films announced we'll encounter the other three Infinity Stones. Remember, we've already seen three Stones. The Tesseract from Avengers, The Aether from Thor: The Dark World, and The Orb from Guardians. If I had to guess, I'd say there will definitely be a Stone in Dr Strange and it's more than likely there'll be one in Guardians 2. Other than that, who knows? As for what to expect from these two films? Well it's way too early to say yet but it'll likely be set in space, some epic Dune/Star Wars cosmic shit will happen, and a lot of characters will die. That's what happened in Infinity Gauntlet anyway.
And now you're all caught up to speed on Marvel's future slate. If you have anymore questions, don't worry. I'm sure this won't be the last I do this. Check back the next time Marvel release details and I'll be more than happy to enlighten you.
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