8 Ways Captain America: Civil War Shows Marvel Have Learnt From Their Mistakes

7. The Foreshadowing Is Organic

There's a right way and a wrong way to do foreshadowing in the cinematic universe model. Now to show this I'm going to resist the obvious and easy Batman V Superman comparison as hard as I can (although I will still leave a link here) and instead keep the focus squarely on Marvel.

Obviously this is the company that really perfected the trick of seeding future films - post-credit scenes and leading easter eggs were nothing new, but no studio had used them in such a pointed way - and a lot of what they've done has been exemplary. However, after every run of successes they always seem to hit a wall and make a film that completely fumbles it; Iron Man 2 and Avengers: Age Of Ultron both forced it a bit too much, trying to tie into every upcoming movie at the expense of the plot.

However, Civil War does it better than any film previously - it does have plenty of clues towards the future, but, from the tiny winks to whole character introductions, they all feel incredibly organic to the story at hand, helping build the sense of a functioning world as much as force new concepts down your throat.

What's most important is that it only explicitly lays the groundwork for Spider-Man: Homecoming, Black Panther, Ant-Man And The Wasp and Avengers: Infinity War, with no shoe-horned in allusions to the other-worldly likes of Doctor Strange, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 or Captain Marvel. The MCU is now at a point where it isn't necessary for every film to be linked with everything else, and now the studio is finally understanding that - there is a wink-wink nudge-nudge to Thor: Ragnarok by acknowledging the absence of Hulk and Thor, but even that's successfully tied into the central autonomy argument.