Don’t worry True Believers, this is an Avengers Endgame Spoiler free zone!
I didn’t grow up reading comic books. I was a late in life nerd. I got into Avatar: the Last Airbender in a big way, when it released in 2005, but I didn’t touch my first comic book until 2009, the same year I graduated from high school. I caught the 90s X-Men cartoon at 2:00 am during fall break on JetX, back when JetX was still a thing, (that’s what they used to call Disney XD). I guess I told my best friend Audrey about it, because she got me an X-Men comic for Christmas, and I was hooked.
2009? But Chelsea, the Marvel Cinematic Universe started in 2008! Yeah, I know. I didn’t see Iron Man in theaters. I saw it when my parents rented it back when Netflix still mailed you DVDs.
I did see the first Hulk movie in theaters with my summer day camp I went to, and I remember being really excited because I wanted to see it, but was too embarrassed to tell anyone. Superheroes weren’t for girls, or at least that’s what kids at school told me.
I liked Iron Man. It wasn’t life changing, but I thought it was a fun movie. Fast forward a couple of years. I was getting more and more into comic books, but I primarily read X-Men, because comics weren’t the cheapest, and it was easier to stick with one team of superheroes. What I couldn’t read, I read up about on ComicVine and Wikipedia. So, I knew a fair bit about the Avengers and the crossovers they did with the X-Men. I saw Iron Man 2 and Captain America on dates with two different guys, and both dates got awkward because I knew more about the comics than the guys did. They weren’t even particularly nerdy guys, so I don’t know why they got so upset.
In 2011, Captain America is where things started changing. Not only was Captain America a hero I could truly get behind, he had the exceptional Peggy Carter at his side. This was a woman I could relate to! Plus, Cap basically uses a giant frisbee as a weapon and I just love that.
I remember having a conversation on the frisbee field that I thought Captain America was the best Marvel movie that had ever been made.
To this day, I can’t tell you where I got this idea, but in 2012 my final project for my college Advanced Effects class was supposed to be a movie trailer. Somehow, I turned that into shooting my own version of the Avengers trailer, as a parody.
I wrote two songs that weren’t quite right, before I landed on the perfect fit, “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha. I spent the better part of two months working on that script, rounding up costumes with some help from some friends, recruiting “actors”, and scouting locations. I say “actors” because most of these people were just friends that I talked into helping.
We wound up shooting on St. Patrick’s Day in downtown Knoxville, because it was the only weekend between two different college’s spring breaks that would work. We had some last-minute casting switches, and had our costumer fill in for Iron Man, but it all worked out. We wound up having to do two days of reshoots to get it all done, and I think in the end, we had three different people in the Iron Man suit and two different Thors. I played Black Widow, not because I can act, but because I was the only girl I trusted to show up.
Apparently while I was finding us a table for lunch, a wedding party approached the guys and asked if they could take pictures with them. Hulk even picked up the bride!
I spent the entire month of April editing, and I barely got it done in time to turn in, two days before the release of the Avengers.
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I got an A, by the way.
Well, we already had the costumes, so of course we turned up for the midnight showing in full gear.
That night was when I fell in love with the MCU. I’d never felt such energy in a theater. I was in line by 8:00 pm, and the rest of the guys showed up one by one. We had our picture taken so many times, including by theater management. Every time I went out to go to concessions, or use the restroom before the movie started, I got stopped for photos. This is something I’m very used to now, but I wasn’t at the time. This was my first time cosplaying pretty much ever.
Regal Theaters used to have a roller coaster intro. Every single person in that theater had their hands up, and was screaming like they were on a ride. The cheering was so loud I didn’t know that Hulk said, “Puny god.” until days later. When the post credits scene played, my friends and I looked at each other. None of us had a clue who the reveal was. Thor thought it might be Kang the Conqueror, but a trip to IMDb gave us the correct answer: Thanos.
They were handing out special posters as we left because we’d seen it in IMAX. Mine hasn’t survived my numerous moves very well, but I still have it.
I wound up seeing the Avengers five times over its run in theaters.
That summer I started watching Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes with one of my friends. It’s a cartoon based off the comics, and just about the most accurate thing I’ve ever seen. My favorite line in all of Marvel comics comes from this show, and it’s said by Hawkeye: “Tony, there’s a raccoon and a tree staring at us, are we firing or what?”
This, of course, was the episode that introduced the Guardians of the Galaxy.
“Oh, these are the guys for the new movie they just announced!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Are you sure you know more about this stuff than me?”
A few months later, I found myself on a quest to join the Disney College Program and move to Orlando, and to live my dream of being a Jungle Cruise Skipper. Well, I did end up doing just that. What I didn’t know was that I was coming to the land of Marvel fans. This was less than a year after the Avengers had released, and not all of the Skippers, but a lot of the Skippers, had Marvel nicknames. Skipper Fury was one of our coordinators, and my trainer was Skipper Stark. Skipper America had already left the jungle, but we had everyone from Skipper Bucky (who later became the Winter Skipper) to Skipper Widow. I asked if Kitty Pryde was taken, and thus became Skipper Shadowcat. Even though I don’t work at the World Famous Jungle Cruise anymore, it’s still a name I use as most my social media handles. One day we had three different Chelseas working at the same time, and I suddenly hear, “Skipper Kitty Pryde to the dock box.” Skipper Fury said it seemed easier than trying to get the right Chelsea.
I’ve seen almost every Marvel Cinematic Universe movie at Disney Springs on opening night, the exception being Iron Man 3, which I didn’t see until Saturday, and was the first movie I watched in theaters after moving to Florida. For the two years I lived in the middle of nowhere, I saw Thor Ragnarök, Black Panther, Ant-man and the Wasp at Epic Theaters in Clermont on opening day. I actually saw the original Guardians of the Galaxy before it opened in theaters at a Disney Parks Blog sneak preview, and had my picture on the Disney Parks Blog. We’d showed up in costume because I was working on my second parody: “I am Groot”, which was a Guardians of the Galaxy parody.
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The only Marvel Cinematic Universe movie I didn’t see on opening weekend was Winter Soldier. I had a really bad stomach bug on opening night, and I had a flight to Tennessee the next day, so I had to wait until I got back a week later, because I wasn’t going to watch it in Tennessee by myself.
I think everyone knows about the server crash the day Endgame tickets went on sale. I was on the website, ready to go at 8:00 am, but I still wasn’t fast enough. It took me six and a half hours, but I finally got us tickets for opening night, even though I had to pay for one of them because I went through Fandango. (Fun Fact: Fandango will take your A-List credit off one ticket if you’re buying two!)
April 25th finally rolled around, and there was no where on earth I would have rather been but Disney Springs. We went for a rewatch of Captain Marvel at 3:00 pm, swung over to Blaze Pizza for dinner, and went back to AMC for the 6:45 showing of Endgame. No spoilers, but it was amazing. The entire theater was screaming and cheering for the entire showing.
We have tickets to go see it in again in the Dolby Theater on Friday, and it’s still not soon enough. We’ve got a really busy week, and no other time to go, but it’s still not soon enough. I am so grateful to have gotten into the MCU when I did, and to have experienced the Golden Age of Superhero movies while living in Orlando. You’d be hard pressed to find a city with more dedicated fans anywhere!
The MCU is far from over, but I have a feeling Phase 4 is going to be a very different realm of movies. That doesn’t make me any less excited for what’s coming down the pipeline, and I’ll still be there opening night for all of them.
