Thread:Marvelus/@comment-26838855-20190116120806/@comment-26838855-20190407024443

Edward Zachary Sunrose wrote: Huh. I've never seen TIH put right before The Avengers before, but aside from that, this is the order I see everywhere, it's the one I use and it's probably the one the Russos are doing. But you're right, the Ragnarok/AM&tW confusion is common and weird.

And I respectfully disagree on The First Avenger, it should definitely be the first one in chronlogical order. The framing device is in modern day, yes. But for the 1940's bits to be flashbacks, there'd need to be someone who's remembering all of this. Like in Titanic. Steve is comatose during the entire movie, and Peggy and Bucky's survival hasn't been revealed yet. There's no narrator, and no person alive to remember these memories. I would personally consider the framing device to be flash forwards, not the other way around.

What about TIH puts it after Thor? I don't think a flashback has to be a memory. There's a lot of instances where it's just the film or show showing us events that happened in the past, but the thing is still set in the future. It's exactly the same with Wonder Woman, which is chronologically fourth in the DC universe - it is set after Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (and Suicide Squad), just essentially has very extended flashbacks.

If the film only ended with the 2011 stuff, I would agree it's a flashforward (like how Captain Marvel has the one scene set 23 years later but is still set in 1995), but The First Avenger is set in 2011. It starts without any sort of date announcement, then goes to 1942 and says "March 1942" in essentially a "69 years ago" move, before back to present day. It's just about the direction of flow basically. If it were 30 minutes of 2011, then 45 minutes of 1940s, then 30 minutes of 2011, it would be more unanimously 2011 - and it's no different in terms of what it means for when the film is "set", just the durations are slightly different.

I consider the The First Avenger Adaptation to be set in the 1940s, since it begins in the 1940s and only goes to 2011 at the end. It's basically about establishing the baseline of the episode/film, the point it bounces back to or has its foundations in.

Episodes like AKA I Want Your Cray Cray and Karen work similarly. AKA I Want Your Cray Cray begins with narration from Alisa in 2017 and ends in 2017, 2017 is the baseline of the episode, not 2005. Karen begins with "before", establishing this as not the baseline but 2017 as the baseline, with "now" then being 2017 later in the episode. It's the equivalent of a scene that is 0 seconds long set in 2017 at the beginning of the episode, before flashing back.

As for The Incredible Hulk, I take the midpoint of every film/episode (not including logos and credits) and note down whatever scene is that midpoint, then order by the time and date settings of those midpoints. The middle of Iron Man 2 is Tony's party in the early hours of May 30, 2010, the middle of Thor is Thor breaking into the S.H.I.E.L.D. camp the night of June 1, 2010, and the middle of The Incredible Hulk is the Battle of Culver University the morning of June 2, 2010, placing them in that order.

It makes sense though as well, Iron Man 2 flows quite naturally into Thor, with A Funny Thing... also slipping nicely between, and the climax, for example, of The Incredible Hulk is the last one in Fury's Big Week, and it goes on into July. It feels right - and it wasn't placed because of that, but its placement makes sense once you have done it.