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.
Once again, we’re working with a James Gunn film that takes place in space. No promises.
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)
Director: James Gunn, Written by James Gunn
00:16:30: All of the Sovereign’s ships are remotely piloted, which means they’ve made esports, but with consequences.
00:25:43: Rocky and Rocky II both exist in the MCU, and also there’s an alien who just happens to look exactly like Sylvester Stallone.
(He gives one hell of a performance, too.)
00:32:07: Star-Lord says, “I used to see all the other kids off playing catch with their dad, and I wanted that, more than anything in the world!”
Baseball is really tied into our identities, huh? That’s the standard, an image of playing catch with your dad. Quill is distinctly a product of 1980s America.
00:56:01: And here we have it: the game of catch Peter Quill has always wanted with his father. Well, sort of …
I feel like even though there aren’t any other sports references, I can’t end there? That’s a nice little feel good image and it shouldn’t be. His dad sucks. This movie lowkey sucks.
We go back to Earth for a good stretch of films next, so hopefully there’s more sports talk coming up soon.
Previous: Guardians of the Galaxy | Up Next: The Avengers: Age of Ultron
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