It’s Marvel Cinematic Universe Week at SB Nation and across our team brands! We’re using the superior superhero franchise to guide our coverage for this week, as we pass the two-month mark without sports.
Here at Fear the Fin, I’m going to take on a very stupid mission: to watch every film in the MCU and document every reference made to sports throughout. I’m playing a little fast and loose with my definition of “sports reference,” but I’m going to try to avoid making the same jokes more than once in this series. You’ll see what I mean.
That’s 23 films, totaling 50 hours, by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, May 10.
(I’m aware the week starts on Sunday, but the next theme week doesn’t start until Monday and I got a late start on this, okay? I’m cutting myself some slack to make this ridiculous thing a complete project.)
I’ll be watching in a chronological order (some films take place around the same time, so it doesn’t matter too much) that is dubbed the “spoiler” version, as post-credit scenes will contain spoilers for movies further along in the timeline, as opposed to release order.
I’ve set up a storystream to help you keep track of each post as they go up — which won’t be on any kind of set schedule, since I’m gonna be putting some weird hours into this thing in order to pull it off. No worries, though — that’s the whole point of having a centralized location. I’d suggest reading them in order, but hey, I’m not your mom.
Reminder that time stamps are approximate, not exact, and may vary based on streaming services.
Part two in the series kicks off with my other favorite Captain.
Captain Marvel (2019)
Director: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, Written by Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck & Geneva Robertson-Dworet
00:02:35: Vers asks Jude Law if he wants to fight. Cut to: fight. It’s some kind of hand-to-hand combat, likely based on mixed martial arts, with some extra face-punching.
00:10:17: This is about to be a laser-gun fight OR a very cool game of laser tag. Either way, the fact that Vers’ hair isn’t in a ponytail in this scenario is a crime. Long-haired athletes would never.
00:14:59: In Carol Danvers’ childhood memories, she’s racing go-karts. A boy tells her to slow down. She speeds up and crashes.
Next, we flash to Air Force training. Much like with Steve Rogers, I’m having flashbacks to rope-climbing in gym class. And the pacer test. Oh god, the pacer test. No more training montages, please, gym class was traumatic.
00:28:17: Damn, the laser tag joke works way better when Samuel L. Jackson does it.
00:29:52: Vers also does parkour, which I’m gonna assume is just a baseline skill set required to be an Avenger.
Oh, and interesting to note that Vers seemingly cannot out-run a train.
00:33:41: Vers bumps into a guy wearing a Dodgers baseball cap on the train platform.
00:34:47: The doors behind Vers are plastered with local flyers and advertisements. One is for a “5v5 Adult City Basketball League.” It’s posted three different times.
01:22:15: Skrull dude (Talos) picks up a baseball on the floor in Mar-Vell’s space station laboratory.
01:29:25: Carol’s memories in order: wrestling on the beach, crashing a bicycle, crashing a go-kart, nearly getting hit with a pitch in little league and falling during air force high ropes training.
And then she gets back up every! goddamn! time! That’s my girl!
01:32:33: Now that Carol is at full-strength, I bet she could out-run that train from earlier.
01:33:36: Carol offers her old crew the chance to arm wrestle for the tesseract. Generous to let them feel like they have a fighting chance, Cap.
Previous: Captain America: The First Avenger | Up Next: Iron Man
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