I have a decent education, nothing beyond a bachelors degree but still, solid. I consider myself capable of critical thought. I communicate well, I think, clearly and cogently. I read books. In other words, I think I’m an intelligent person. Intelligent enough, surely, to follow the plot of several comic book hero movies.

I was mistaken.

When Avengers: Infinity War came out, I experienced a familiar phenomenon of the social media age: I read all the reactions before knowing the original story. I knew it was an Avengers movie but beyond that, I had no idea what it was or what it was about. All I knew was that it was the biggest crossover in the blah blah blah. I thought, “Cool. Maybe I’ll see it, maybe I won’t. But I probably won’t.”

My girlfriend – not a comic book person, generally – saw it and loved it and was inspired to go back and watch all of the movies that led up to it. I gladly signed up for the project. I like geeking out on stuff. I like superhero movies. I liked the X-Men movies, I liked Logan, I liked Deadpool (the first one – the second one… eh). I liked Iron Man and both Guardians of the Galaxy movies.

What I didn’t realize was that The Avengers are essentially Marvel’s Wu Tang Clan where everyone comes together for Avengers movies, then they go off and do solo movies with crossovers and guests.

Apparently X-Men and Logan and Deadpool aren’t in the current Infinity War universe. They’re all in the Marvel universe but different studios own different properties so, X-Men stuff, including Deadpool, is out.

If you’re familiar with any of this, I can’t explain anything to you that you don’t already know. If you aren’t familiar with this, I suggest you take a look at this wikipedia page about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (I am too ill equipped to suggest more authoritative sources but I think this should be a good starting point).

Here’s the part that has me questioning my own sanity: I watched a bunch of these movies that are part of this universe without knowing it. Iron Man, Iron Man 2 (which I guess I don’t really remember), Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Black Panther, they’re all part of it. And I had no idea that they were connected. I apparently just glossed over the whole infinity stone thing scattered throughout the plots of these movies.

Do I just, like, not understand stuff good?

I’ve also recently watched all three Thor movies, starting with the third one, Thor: Ragnorak. I watched the first two Captain America movies. I watched the two Ant-Man movies (including Ant-Man and the Wasp, which takes place after Infinity War? Or concurrently?). I watched them all generally in order but not in exact sequence so it’s like sorting through an unordered deck of forty-eight cards or trying to piece the events of a bender together on Monday morning. “Wait, so, there’s an infinity stone in Guardians of the Galaxy and in The Avengers?”

“Yes, honey, you watched them, right?”

“Jesus, I thought so… and what the hell am I doing in Dallas?”

Yesterday on an Amtrak train home, I watched The Avengers: Age of Ultron, which I downloaded specifically for the trip. My girlfriend had already seen it and I knew I needed to watch it to fill in all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe gaps in my brain. To be honest, it felt a little like homework (much like all the Game of Thrones I’m supposed to watch by 2019 but that’s another story) but I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. At one point, though, Jarvis (Tony Stark’s operating system? assistant?) comes into physical being as a character called Vision and I had seen him before in another movie… and I didn’t know which one. I couldn’t recall what the name of the movie would have been nor when I may have seen it.

I once re-read Light In August by William Faulkner. It was a challenging book in high school. When I read it again as an adult some fifteen years later, it was still challenging and I was shocked by how little I remembered from it. Even so, I think I retained more of that than I did of Guardians of the Galaxy, which I really enjoyed.

There is something wrong with my brain.

So, onwards and upwards. We need to watch Captain America: Civil War and Spiderman: Homecoming. I need to watch the second half of Doctor Strange and re-watch Iron Man 2.

I’m going to need all of it explained to me. Then on the Infinity War.

And apparently all of the damn Netflix shows are in this universe. I loved Jessica Jones and Luke Cage but… I’m sliding on in to middle age here, people, it’s time to make some decisions about how I spend my time.

Also, I could watch Stan Lee cameos for days. Excelsior!