Robert Downey Jr.

Tom Holland, Selena Gomez, Octavia Spencer, John Cena and many more will lend their voices to the animals who talk to Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Dolittle.

In The History of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, ScreenCrush editor-in-chief Matt Singer looks back at every film in the MCU to date, leading up to the premiere of Avengers: Infinity War on April 27. Previous chapters can be found here...

(But it’s still not great.)

ScreenCrush’s journey through the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe begins with the movie that started it all.

This year, Marvel Studios is celebrating 10 years of the MCU — an impressive length of time, to be sure, but even more impressive given the number of films they’ve released since 2008. (Black Panther is the 18th movie, FYI.) The game-changing studio is celebrating this milestone all year long, starting with a massive class photo (Academy Awards-style) in which they’ve assembled all 79 stars of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s so many familiar faces, in fact, that we had to crop some of them out in the above photo.

Want to understand Marvel’s evolution as a film company? Just watch Tony Stark’s evolution as a character. They mirror each other perfectly.

The surprise resurgence of HBO’s True Detective raised questions of creator Nic Pizzolatto’s involvement, given earlier commitment to Robert Downey Jr.’s proposed Perry Mason update. That project has since added new writers, indicating Pizzolatto is largely off the series, and back on True Detective Season 3 full-time.

Man, Infinity War sure could use a few more characters, right? There really aren’t enough superheroes in this movie yet. What a tiny, tiny cast list. Okay, yes, this is sarcasm — Infinity War will feature more superheroes battling to save the world than can fit in a single shot… aaand we just got the news that it’ll feature two more.

Kids these days, always plugged in to their smartphones and laptops and Instagrams, constantly suffering from the compulsion to record every aspect of their lives. For a superhero, this is probably a bad idea, given the whole secret identity thing and all — but our new Peter Parker is very much a millennial, and he’s going to vlog this whole thing if it kills him.

Here’s a quick question for you, who is the most important actor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? We all know who the highest-paid actor is  —  that would be Robert Downey Jr.  —  but is he still the most important actor in the franchise as well? Has Chris Evans or Chris Hemsworth surpassed him? How about one of the characters from Guardians of the Galaxy or a newcomer like Tom Holland? Is anyone in the MCU so irreplaceable that Marvel couldn’t introduce another version of their character? It’s a very interesting question, and one that the studio and actors are no-doubt struggling with internally.