The Marvel Cinematic Universe officially began in 2008 with the release of Iron Man. In the fifteen years since then, the MCU has unfolded through more movies than I thought possible.
What started with a few lone superhero movies turned into an almost nebulous entity of team films and solo stories that all connect. We’ve gone from watching origin stories of famous comic book characters to seeing the Avengers team come together. The movies have also taken audiences from Earth to adventures in outer space. The MCU started small and grew into a behemoth. However, the huge money maker has stumbled with its last few theatrical releases. Many blame their superhero fatigue on the sheer amount of MCU projects out there.
So, how many Marvel Cinematic Universe movies are there?
The MCU has 33 films in total as of 2023. It sounds like way more than could be out there, right? Somehow, I always think of the MCU as a thing that can be binged over a weekend. I was pretty shocked when I realized just how many were in the series. Here is a full list of all the films:
- Iron Man (2008)
- The Incredible Hulk (2008)
- Iron Man 2 (2010)
- Thor (2011)
- Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
- The Avengers (2012)
- Iron Man 3 (2013)
- Thor: The Dark World (2013)
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
- Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
- Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
- Ant-Man (2015)
- Captain America: Civil War (2016)
- Doctor Strange (2016)
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
- Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
- Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
- Black Panther (2018)
- Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
- Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
- Captain Marvel (2019)
- Avengers: Endgame (2019)
- Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
- Black Widow (2021)
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
- Eternals (2021)
- Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
- Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
- Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
- The Marvels (2023)
This list doesn’t include the short films or multiple television shows that are also officially canon in the MCU. So many films coming out in the same year might explain why so many people have experienced superhero fatigue recently. At first, Marvel waited one or two years before releasing another MCU film. From 2015 onward, Marvel released two to three movies per year. As much as I love comic book superheroes, there is only so much of it that audiences can take in a single year. Not to mention the creative strain on the teams working on these films. In 2021 alone, four MCU movies came out.
Recently, however, the team at Marvel Studios decided to dial down the release schedule and only have Deadpool 3 on the calendar for 2024. Hopefully, producing fewer superhero movies at once will allow the the studio to catch its breath and once again focus on quality over quantity.
(featured image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
