“Captain America: Civil War” kicked off Marvel‘s Phase 3 with a bang. The run of films that make up this third chunk of storytelling in the Marvel Cinematic Universe will continue for three more years, through the release of the second of two new Avengers movies in 2019. Phase 3 will be comprised of ten films, including Marvel’s partnership with Sony for “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” the solo “Black Panther” movie, and the big-screen debut of Marvel‘s first lead heroine, “Captain Marvel.”
Marvel lays plans early, and so the ground is already being mapped out for Phase 4, presumably to begin in 2020. We can safely expect a couple of sequels to current films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and at least one current major character is likely to get their own solo movie. Marvel faces the expiration of some actor contracts and the simple fact that actors like Robert Downey Jr. will have spent more than a decade in the MCU by the time “Avengers: Infinity War” is said and done, so recasting and reworking some of Marvel’s known heroes is on the table.
Predicting Phase 4 is futile to some degree because we still have little info about what Marvel is doing for the rest of Phase 3. “Doctor Strange” arrives on November 4th, to be followed by “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” on May 5, 2017 and new films for Spider-Man, Thor, and Black Panther in rapid succession through February 2018. We know that directors Joe and Anthony Russo will be renaming “Avengers: Infinity War,” are already saying the two films will be very different from one another.
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige recently said the MCU “is still a big chess board for 2020 and beyond,” and suggested that things could switch up quite a bit in Phase 4. “I think there will be a finality to moments of Phase Three,” Feige told EW, “as well as new beginnings that will mark a different, a very different, a distinctively different chapter in what will someday be a complete first saga made up of three phases.”
So what will Marvel do for Phase 4, and what should the company do with its next slate of films? The company already has flags planted on three dates in 2020 (May 1, July 10, and November 6) to kick off the phase. Let’s explore the options.
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.”
Writer/director James Gunn, currently at work on the second ‘Guardians’ film, may not return to direct the third movie, but it is definitely among Marvel’s plans. Kevin Feige recently said “certainly I would say ‘Guardians 3’ is (one film that’s) up there” on the chess board for Phase 4, but “I don’t know what exactly the order will be.” So that’s that. The end of Phase 3 will feature not only the cosmic-leaning ‘Infinity War’ story, in which the long-simmering tale of Thanos will presumably be detailed, but also the debut of cosmic hero Captain Marvel, which in turn likely allows for a more detailed story of the Kree, one of Marvel’s major alien races. And the Kree lead-in will allow their enemies, the shape-shifting Skrulls, Marvel’s other big alien race, to enter the picture. Trust us, this is all going to be important in a minute.
“Black Widow”
Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter ran Marvel for years as the company’s CEO, but stepped away from the feature film side of Marvel Studios in 2015. Reports have pegged Perlmutter as the primary roadblock to female-led films. Whether or not Perlmutter was the reason we have yet to see one of Marvel’s women take center stage, the first Marvel Studios film slated to feature a female lead is “Captain Marvel.” That’ll be the studio’s 21st film.
And yet Black Widow has had an ever-more significant role in Marvel’s storytelling since Scarlett Johansson first played the role in “Iron Man 2,” to the point where she was nearly the co-lead of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” and plays a major role in ‘Civil War.’ A solo “Black Widow” movie is embarrassingly long in coming, but Kevin Feige recently said the company is “committed” to making it happen. The question is whether or not Scarlett Johansson want to spend 2020 running around in leather after playing the role for a decade.
“Iron Man 4”
Marvel has structured in trilogies so far, and so the notion of a fourth Iron Man movie seems strange, unless it is a platform to launch a new version of the character. Robert Downey Jr.’s relationship to Iron Man — or, more specifically, to the character’s armor — is an evolving saga that goes all the way back to the first Iron Man film. When the character created AI- and remote-piloted armor in “Iron Man 3,” it seemed like a way to hand the character name off to a new concept that didn’t require Downey to be in the suit. This year, the actor said he’s open to a fourth solo movie, which was previously thought to be off the books. But a fourth Iron Man film needn’t be built around Downey in the costume; instead it could feature the actor as Tony Stark, mentoring a new soldier in the suit. James “Rhodey” Rhodes, played by Don Cheadle in the MCU, is traditionally the other Iron Man, but Marvel could easily veer off into totally new space for its cornerstone character.
“Hulk”
The two-hander seems to be the way of Phase 3, as ‘Civil War’ features Cap and Bucky working with (and against) a plethora of characters. Ant-Man and the Wasp are teamed up right in the title of their next film, Doctor Strange may be working with Chiwetel Ejiofor‘s revamped version of Baron Mordo; Iron Man will show up in “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” and the Hulk will feature prominently in “Thor: Ragnarok.”
All of which is to say that solo movies for existing characters won’t exactly be “solo” movies going forward. Marvel’s big problem with a standalone Hulk movie is the character works better in conjunction with other heroes, and the “two-hander” approach would solve that problem neatly. (There’s also the question of Universal‘s right of first refusal to distribute a new Hulk movie, the details of which seem to be more speed bump than roadblock for a new film.) Such a film would also be an opportunity to revamp the cinematic Hulk into something along the lines of the smarter, more aware Hulk variants from Marvel Comics — a character who is still a brute, but with the personality to stand apart from a team.
The potential of the paired stories “Planet Hulk,” in which the green guy rules a distant planet after being exiled from Earth, and “World War Hulk,” in which the gamma-based brute returns to Earth seeking vengeance for said exile, are also particularly rich options for the character, with the bonus of leaning into the Hulk’s potential as a villain.