While the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame succeeded in culminating the Infinity Saga, Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron had one crucial advantage over the Phase 3 team-up films. It is no secret that the final two Avengers films were above their predecessors concerning pure fan-service hype, yet the world-ending stakes of both missed out on one critical aspect. Due to the bigger budgets, larger casts, and longer runtimes, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame focused entirely on the battle against Thanos.
With Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron on the other hand, the comparatively smaller scale of each film allowed for a key element of the core heroes to shine through. Despite Infinity War and Endgame including this aspect in a much broader context, the first two films in the Avengers franchise focused on it more intimately. Hopefully, this aspect can be carried over into Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, while Avengers: Secret Wars emulates the bigger scale of Infinity War and Endgame.
Avengers & Age Of Ultron Showed The Team Saving Civilians
The aspect in question is the Avengers going out of their way to save civilian lives. While again, Infinity War and Endgame focused on defeating Thanos and were centered on saving the lives of half of the universe, the fight against the Mad Titan was the core focus due to the immense scale of the story. This meant that endangered civilians were largely absent from both films’ stories, focusing more on the combat with Thanos’ forces. With Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron though, the smaller stakes allowed for more intimate, visceral scenes of the Avengers saving lives as they battled against Loki and Ultron.
The first Avengers included many scenes of the titular team saving civilians caught in the crossfire of Loki’s invasion. From Black Widow and Hawkeye freeing people from cars and school buses to Captain America coordinating the NYPD to lead people away from the city and rescuing a building full of trapped New York residents, 2012’s The Avengers had many sequences detailing the saving of innocent bystanders. Similarly, Age of Ultron had scenes of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver helping the Sokovian people to evacuate, with much of the final fight surrounding the heroes saving the people of Sokovia while fighting Ultron.
Avengers 5 Should Include More Civilian-Centric Scenes
One benefit of these scenes is that they truly highlight the good-natured, heroic side of the Avengers, something that should carry over into Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. With the title of Avengers 5 hinting towards a multiverse that has already been conquered by Kang, it would be an interesting twist on the Avengers formula to have the heroes liberating universe after universe from Kang’s control, being on the offensive for once. If this was the case, Avengers 5 could allow for plenty of similar civilian-centric scenes in which the Avengers are wrestling control of different universes away from Kang and back into the hands of the people.
This would then allow Avengers: Secret Wars to delve into the more action-heavy, fan-service-based style of an Avengers story. Not only would this bring back the more intimate scenes of Avengers saving the universe, but it would allow the MCU’s Phase 6 to have both sides of an Avengers conflict. The huge, action spectacle of heroes facing off against a giant army would be prevalent, made even more impactful by an entire film of the Avengers crippling Kang’s empire by saving innocent lives, as the Marvel Cinematic Universe first portrayed the titular team.
