14 Things That Happen in Every MCU Movie

At this point, watching an MCU movie is less like watching a film and more like running a well-tested software program. Every installment in the sprawling, interconnected cinematic universe operates within a pre-defined formula—an algorithmic sequence of quips, exposition dumps, Easter eggs, and third-act CGI battles that have become as predictable as the post-credits scene promising the next franchise extension. The consistency is, of course, intentional. The MCU isn’t just a collection of superhero movies; it’s an industrial model, a machine designed to manufacture the highest level of crowd-pleasing entertainment while ensuring that each film serves as both a standalone feature and an advertisement for the next.

But with predictability comes both comfort and diminishing returns. Fans know exactly what to expect—expository scenes disguised as jokes, a training montage that lasts just long enough to suggest character growth, a climactic battle where the stakes are high but the consequences are fleeting. These movies have mastered the art of making audiences feel like something huge is happening while ensuring that nothing actually changes. Even death itself is a revolving door. The formula works, but as the MCU continues to expand, the question lingers: how long can a story stay engaging when it’s always following the same script?

14

Opening with a Flashback or Prologue

From Iron Man’s Afghanistan captivity scene to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 opening with a de-aged Kurt Russell in the ’80s, every MCU movie begins by rewinding the clock. Sometimes it’s an origin story told in miniature, like Doctor Strange’s opening car crash, or an emotional setup that will pay off later, like the heartbreak of Captain America: Civil War’s Bucky reveal. Other times, it’s a history lesson, an attempt to reframe what we thought we knew (Eternals’ cosmic backstory, Black Panther’s Oakland prologue). The first few minutes of any Marvel movie rarely start in the present day, because the MCU thrives on laying track before it lets the audience get comfortable.

The Past is Prologue (and Also an Easter Egg)

This isn’t just about storytelling—it’s about world-building. The MCU’s ever-expanding narrative means that each movie isn’t just setting up its own plot; it’s retrofitting its own continuity into an already massive framework. Flashbacks give the illusion of depth, making new characters feel entrenched in a history that the franchise is constructing in real-time. It’s a strategy that works, because nothing feels more satisfying than realizing a seemingly throwaway prologue was actually setting up a major third-act twist. But it also means that the MCU is constantly writing over itself, revising its own canon as it goes. Every new movie doesn’t just add to the story—it rewrites the past.

13

A Quippy Introduction to the Hero

Tony Stark is testing a missile in Iron Man while cracking jokes with the military, just before his life falls apart. Star-Lord tries—and fails—to make his name stick in Guardians of the Galaxy while dancing through an alien landscape. Even in Thor, where you might expect an Asgardian grand entrance, the God of Thunder’s first real scene is him smirking through a brutal battle, all ego and bravado. No matter the setting, no matter the stakes, every MCU protagonist enters their own movie with a one-liner locked and loaded.

Charm First, Character Later

This isn’t just about making the hero likable—it’s about making them immediately distinct. The MCU formula hinges on every character having their own “thing”: Tony is snarky, Thor is self-important, Peter Parker is awkwardly endearing. That first scene is designed to communicate everything you need to know about them in under a minute, and humor is the quickest way to make an impression. But the downside of this approach is that it often flattens characters into easily digestible archetypes. A quippy entrance is fun, but when every hero starts the same way, it risks making them interchangeable. The formula works, but only because audiences have been conditioned to expect it.

12

Exposition Dump Disguised as Banter

“Okay, so let me get this straight…” is the unofficial catchphrase of the MCU. Whether it’s Tony Stark rattling off a technobabble explanation for time travel in Avengers: Endgame, Rocket Raccoon exasperatedly breaking down the rules of an intergalactic prison in Guardians of the Galaxy, or Doctor Strange narrating his own crash course in sorcery, Marvel movies love delivering essential plot details under the guise of rapid-fire dialogue. These scenes are usually dressed up with humor, delivered at a pace just fast enough that the audience doesn’t have time to question the logic—or realize they’re being spoon-fed everything they need to know.

Infodumps, But Make It Fun

The MCU has perfected the art of making exposition feel like entertainment. It’s a delicate balance: explaining the stakes without grinding the momentum to a halt. Instead of dramatic monologues or tedious voiceovers, Marvel movies make their characters argue, joke, or get interrupted mid-sentence. It’s a clever tactic, but it also reveals how much these films rely on efficiency over exploration. When everything is delivered in neatly packaged quips, there’s little room for ambiguity or quiet contemplation. The formula works, but it also means that the MCU’s version of complexity is more about speed than depth.

11

A Villain with a Vague Grievance

For all its strengths, the MCU has a villain problem. Some exceptions—Killmonger, Thanos, Loki—have clear, compelling motivations, but for every great antagonist, there’s at least one who feels like they were given a motivation by a committee. Think Malekith in Thor: The Dark World, whose entire deal is… darkness? Or Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy, who’s mad about a peace treaty we never really learn about. Even the more personal villains, like Darren Cross in Ant-Man, often boil down to “angry former colleague with daddy issues.” MCU antagonists tend to want destruction for reasons that sound compelling in trailers but don’t hold up under scrutiny.

Sympathetic, But Not Too Complicated

The MCU knows that audiences like villains with a point, but it’s never willing to let that point overshadow the hero’s arc. That’s why so many of these antagonists have grievances that are just understandable enough to create a solid conflict, but vague enough that the audience never seriously considers rooting for them. It’s a careful dance between making villains memorable and ensuring they don’t upstage the protagonist. And while the formula can feel repetitive, it works—because a great villain isn’t necessary when the real star of the movie is the franchise itself.

10

A Surprise Celebrity Cameo

Maybe it’s Matt Damon playing Fake Loki in Thor: Ragnarok. Maybe it’s Harry Styles appearing out of nowhere in Eternals, or Charlize Theron showing up at the end of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness like we were supposed to know who Clea was. Whether it’s an A-lister stopping by for a quick joke or a megastar setting up the next phase of the MCU, these movies have turned cameos into an art form. The best ones work because they catch audiences off guard (Michael Keaton in Morbius—just kidding, that one didn’t work at all), offering a jolt of surprise in a franchise that otherwise follows a rigid structure.

The Thrill of the Meta-Wink

These cameos aren’t just for fun—they’re strategic. They generate instant buzz, ensuring that even casual fans who skipped the movie will hear about it on social media. They also reinforce the MCU’s interconnectivity, making every film feel like a piece of a larger puzzle. But there’s a downside: when audiences start expecting these moments, they lose their impact. When every film ends with a new celebrity walking in like they own the place, it stops being exciting and starts feeling like a contractual obligation. The formula works, but only as long as the surprises still feel surprising.

9

A Sidekick Who Steals the Show

For a franchise supposedly centered on superheroes, the MCU has a tendency to make its supporting characters way more interesting than its leads. Korg in Thor: Ragnarok is funnier than Thor. Wong in Doctor Strange is cooler than Strange. Yelena in Black Widow is effortlessly charismatic in a way that makes Natasha look like a straight man in her own film. And then there’s Luis in Ant-Man, who delivers an entire expository subplot through rapid-fire storytelling that instantly became the highlight of the movie.

The Scene-Stealer Strategy

Marvel sidekicks serve two main functions: they keep the exposition entertaining, and they make sure the protagonist doesn’t take themselves too seriously. The MCU thrives on humor, and often, the main hero has too much of a character arc to carry the comedic load alone. Side characters are free from the burden of development—they don’t have to grow, they just have to be entertaining. And because these movies are built on crowd-pleasing moments, it’s no surprise that some of the most enduring MCU characters aren’t the heroes, but the people making fun of them from the sidelines.

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8

A Major City Gets Destroyed

The MCU has an unspoken rule: no metropolis is safe. Whether it’s New York getting invaded by alien hordes in The Avengers, Washington D.C. under siege in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, or Sokovia literally being lifted into the sky before crashing back down in Avengers: Age of Ultron, city-wide destruction is practically a contractual obligation. Even smaller-scale films, like Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, eventually escalate to massive, CGI-heavy devastation (Shang-Chi starts as a martial arts epic and ends with an entire hidden village getting torn apart by soul-sucking dragons). Marvel movies may claim to be about superheroes saving people, but they sure do love leveling urban centers.

The Bigger the Boom, the Less It Matters

City-wide destruction is a cheap way to generate stakes without having to kill off major characters. But the MCU’s real trick is making this destruction feel thrilling rather than traumatic. Unlike Man of Steel, which was criticized for making its massive carnage feel too real, the MCU treats its devastation as a backdrop for heroics—something for its protagonists to pose in front of rather than truly reckon with. Sure, Civil War tries to introduce consequences by making the Sokovia disaster a plot point, but by Infinity War and Endgame, mass destruction has been so normalized that half the universe getting wiped out barely registers as a tragedy. The formula works because audiences have learned not to ask too many questions about what happens to all those civilians after the credits roll.

7

The “We’re Not So Different” Scene

At some point, the hero and the villain will have their moment of forced intimacy—the scene where the antagonist leans in and delivers the classic “you and I aren’t so different” monologue. Loki does it with Thor. Vulture does it with Peter Parker in the car scene from Spider-Man: Homecoming. Killmonger, who actually has a point, spends most of Black Panther explaining how T’Challa’s privileged position blinds him to the world’s suffering. Even Thanos gets in on it, trying to convince the Avengers that his universe-wide genocide is just a pragmatic solution to overpopulation. The hero, of course, always rejects the premise—but the conversation is inevitable.

The Illusion of Moral Complexity

This scene serves a crucial function: it gives the villain the illusion of depth. The best antagonists are reflections of the hero, and the MCU tries (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) to make its villains more than just mustache-twirling bad guys. The problem is that these moments are often the only real attempt at nuance before the third act devolves into a CGI brawl. The formula works because it tricks the audience into thinking they’re watching something morally complex, when in reality, the villain will always be cartoonishly wrong and the hero will always be righteously victorious. And because the MCU doesn’t do ambiguity, these scenes rarely linger—just long enough to suggest depth before returning to the action.

6

The MacGuffin That Will Change Everything

It’s a glowing cube (The Tesseract). No, wait—it’s an all-powerful gauntlet (The Infinity Gauntlet). Or maybe it’s a super-serum (Captain America), an all-powerful book (Doctor Strange), or a vaguely defined AI (Age of Ultron). The MCU runs on MacGuffins, objects of immense power that must be protected, retrieved, or destroyed before they fall into the wrong hands. Sometimes these MacGuffins matter (Infinity Stones), and sometimes they’re just there to move the plot along (The Orb from Guardians of the Galaxy, which is just another Infinity Stone, but in a different shape). Either way, they’re always treated as the most important thing in the universe—until they’re not.

The Illusion of High Stakes

MacGuffins give the audience something to focus on while the characters go through the motions of the formula. They’re a narrative shortcut, allowing screenwriters to build stakes without actually having to develop them. And because the MCU is structured as an interconnected universe, these objects don’t just matter for one movie—they’re part of a larger mythology, ensuring that even the most minor trinket could turn out to be world-altering (looking at you, Pym Particles). The formula works because it creates the illusion of weight, even when these objects are mostly just plot devices. After all, the only thing better than a MacGuffin is the next MacGuffin waiting in the post-credits scene.

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5

The Obligatory “We Need a Plan” Scene

There’s a moment in nearly every MCU film where the main characters gather in a dimly lit room, around a hologram or whiteboard, to talk strategy. Maybe Tony Stark is pacing and gesturing wildly (Avengers), maybe Star-Lord is riffing about how 12% of a plan still counts (Guardians of the Galaxy), or maybe Scott Lang is struggling to keep up while the real geniuses figure things out (Endgame). The scene usually starts with tension—someone is skeptical, someone else is cracking jokes, and no one is entirely sure the plan will work. But after a rousing speech or an emotionally charged moment of unity, the team is ready to go.

The Illusion of Chaos Before the Precision of Action

These scenes exist for two reasons: they make the heroes feel fallible, and they inject humor into the high-stakes finale. The MCU thrives on characters who seem like they’re making things up as they go, even when the plan miraculously unfolds with perfect choreography in the third act. The formula works because it creates the illusion that the outcome is uncertain—except it never really is. The good guys always figure it out, the audience never doubts them for too long, and by the time the plan is put into motion, it barely resembles the conversation that preceded it. The planning scene isn’t really about the plan—it’s about making sure the audience feels involved before the CGI takes over.

4

A Last-Minute Suit Upgrade

Just when it seems like the hero is outmatched, outgunned, or one punch away from total defeat, the MCU pulls out its favorite deus ex machina: the unexpected, perfectly timed, last-minute upgrade. Iron Man gets a new nanotech suit just in time for Infinity War. Spider-Man unlocks instant kill mode. Captain America picks up Mjolnir in Endgame, his power-up being sheer worthiness. Even Black Panther has a fresh vibranium suit with kinetic energy storage just before his final battle with Killmonger. Whether it’s a tech advancement, a magical enhancement, or just a sudden realization of inner strength, no MCU climax is complete without a hero leveling up just in time.

The MCU’s Cheat Code for Climaxes

This trope is the MCU’s way of keeping fights visually fresh while also sidestepping real vulnerability. Rather than watching a hero truly struggle against a superior opponent, audiences get to see them adapt and overcome with an exciting new feature. The formula works because it plays into the thrill of escalation—each battle needs to feel bigger than the last, and what better way to do that than by constantly introducing new upgrades? But it also means that the stakes often feel artificial. If a hero always has a better suit, a hidden ability, or a new weapon waiting in the wings, how much danger were they really in?

3

A Sky Beam or Portal Opening in the Sky

At this point, an MCU climax isn’t complete unless there’s something massive happening in the sky. Sometimes it’s a glowing blue beam (The Avengers). Sometimes it’s a massive hole in reality (Doctor Strange). Sometimes it’s an entire alien armada spilling through (Endgame). Even Shang-Chi, which starts as a grounded martial arts film, ends with a giant portal unleashing soul-sucking demons. The details change, but the visual remains the same: when things get serious, look up.

The Spectacle of the Apocalyptic Vortex

These sky beams and portals aren’t just about spectacle—they serve as shorthand for “the stakes are bigger than ever.” When the threat is cosmic, intangible, and world-ending, there’s no need to overcomplicate it. This formula works because it instantly communicates urgency without requiring emotional depth. A villain delivering a monologue about power doesn’t hit as hard as a giant tear in the sky. The MCU loves these moments because they make every battle feel grandiose, even if the audience has seen it before. The problem is, they have seen it before. At a certain point, one has to wonder if the real villain of the MCU is the concept of gravity itself.

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2

A Fight Scene That’s Funny Until It’s Not

MCU fight scenes rarely begin with immediate danger. Instead, they start with banter, absurd visuals, or a moment of comedic underestimation. Think of Thor gleefully hammer-spinning his way through Surtur’s minions in Thor: Ragnarok while cracking one-liners, or Peter Parker quipping mid-swing as he struggles to stop a Staten Island Ferry from splitting in half in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Even Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 opens with a battle that barely registers as a fight—Baby Groot is dancing in the foreground while chaos unfolds behind him. These fights lull the audience into a sense of playfulness, making the inevitable shift into seriousness feel even heavier.

The Emotional Whiplash of the MCU Battle Formula

This tonal shift is a signature MCU move. Just when the audience is comfortable laughing, the stakes suddenly spike. The best example? Infinity War’s battle on Titan, where Star-Lord’s impulsive outburst leads to Thanos regaining control, snapping half the universe out of existence. The humor sets up the gut punch. It makes the dark moments feel darker, because the audience has been tricked into thinking they’re safe. The formula works because it lets the MCU have it both ways—lighthearted entertainment and emotional depth—without ever fully committing to one tone for too long.

1

A Fake-Out Death

It’s a dramatic moment. The music swells. The hero (or hero-adjacent character) collapses, seemingly lifeless. The audience gasps. But by now, MCU fans know better. Loki has “died” more times than some characters have had solo movies. Nick Fury fakes his death in The Winter Soldier only to pop up with an eye patch and a smug grin. Even Bucky, whose tragic fall in The First Avenger is meant to haunt Steve Rogers forever, returns as the Winter Soldier with a new metal arm. And then there’s Infinity War, which briefly convinced audiences that characters like Spider-Man and Black Panther were truly gone—until Endgame rolled around and undid it all.

The Illusion of Consequence Without the Cost

The fake-out death is the MCU’s way of having emotional weight without committing to real consequences. It lets characters have grand moments of sacrifice without the franchise losing valuable intellectual property. The formula works because it manipulates audience expectations—Marvel movies do kill characters, just not the ones that matter long-term. But with each fake-out, the impact of death in the MCU weakens. If nobody ever truly dies, why should audiences believe it the next time a character makes the ultimate sacrifice?