Back when I was an obsessive reader of Marvel Comics, I had about 30 years of X-Men comics compulsively organized, not by publishing date, but by continuity. It required an encyclopedic knowledge of every event in every single issue, and I would read through all of them repeatedly to make sure I had it right. So I'm a stickler for continuity, always have been. And yet, here I am surprised that there is apparently some debate about the timeline for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so much so that Marvel Studios is going to clear it up. Officially.
Kevin Feige has revealed that an official MCU timeline is being published, spurred on by the debate following Spider-Man: Homecoming. Now this I have heard about, because it deals with 'Homecoming' taking place eight years after the events of The Avengers, which would be 2020. That screws up the fragile continuity structure, I guess, although I don't recall anywhere in The Avengers stating that it was the year 2012. Fans just assumed it, and that all MCU movies take place in the year they are released, which to me is insane. It's a fictional universe, they could say all of this takes place in 1955 if they want to. Feige gets it. He tells Screenrant...
“All of that [‘Spider-Man’] debate has encouraged us. We are going to be publishing an official, and I’m not sure when, or in what format, an official timeline. It’ll probably be apart of ah, I don’t know, a part of an in-print that you can fold out and look at. But suffice to say, only in limited cases do we ever actually say what the actual years are, because we never want to be tied down to a particular year, and I think people assume that whenever the movie is released is when is when the movie is taking place, and that is not the case."
I've always just assumed the MCU follows the very "loose" timelines of the comics. Scrutinize it too much and it all falls apart. I don't think there's a need for this, but I'm sure all Feige and Disney see is $$$.
