MCU Phase 4: 8 Reasons Why It Must Look To The Past
5. Nostalgia Is SO HOT Right Now
Marvel Studios
You don't have to look far to see that the eighties and nineties are dominating pop-culture right now. James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy borrows heavily from classic eighties sci-fi space operas, and even Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok sported a similar vibe. It's not just Marvel who are using our collective fondness for those two decades though - pretty much everyone's getting in on the act now.
Stranger Things, IT, and even Fox's X-Men films are all rooting themselves heavily in classic eighties tropes, with the former two especially taking heavy influence from classic Spielberg and turning in a pop-culture phenomenon in the process. It's pretty spectacular, and while the trend is sure to die-off sooner or later, Marvel would be daft not to attempt at least one film set during that decade.
Captain Marvel will be on nineties duties come 2019, but apart from the odd flashback in Ant-Man, we've yet to see a Marvel film set itself squarely in the decade prior. Whether it be Ant-Man, Nick Fury or otherwise, it's a period Marvel have to get in on, more-so than they have already.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
