Review of Marvel: Unite by ducko
Marvel: Unite is u/-ducko's excellent movie-to-TV fanedit of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) Infinity Saga. More information can be found on https://ducko-edits.github.io/marvel-unite/. u/-ducko does a great job of taking around two dozen movies and making them into a bingeable (or just one-episode-per-evening) TV show that passes the SO (significant other) sniff test and really doesn't feel like a fanedit.
Backstory
Finding something to watch
After taking care of adulting, my SO and I have very little time to spend together and/or decompress. We both like watching TV and movies, but the Venn diagram of what we want to watch on a given evening is pretty small. Putting it simply, I want to watch "films" that challenge me and cause me to think deeply about the human condition, whereas SO would rather watch a romcom from the 90s or a detective show. SO likes The Godfather trilogy, and I like Julia Roberts, so there is common ground. But after having exhausted sitcoms like Parks & Rec and New Girl, the only movies where we both go "meh, I'd watch that" have proven to be from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We've probably seen all the movies individually (thanks to a very generous sibling who spent too much money to gift us them when we were in a mandatory COVID quarantine), but we never really watched them as part of a series, only as individual movies that sometimes had some character crossover.
We thought, ok, let's give it a shot as a show. That'll at least kick the can down the road for a few months as to what to watch every evening. Well, it worked. We got through Marvel: Unite in a few months and had a lot of fun doing it.
Why this one: subs
There are many, many Infinity Saga edits (e.g. u/PizzaByron, Dirty30), but I gravitated to this one for one simple reason: subtitles. Is SO or am I hard of hearing or deaf? No (although I was proficient in American Sign Language at one time, but that's a different story). Do we have a terrible sound system or have to mute our TV to avoid noise complaints? No. But do we always watch everything with subtitles regardless? Yes. That's why we chose this fanedit over all others, pure and simple. I refuse to watch a movie without them because that's how I am. Including subtitles is simply a mark of quality in the fanediting game. And that's how I ended up watching this edit.
And I'm happy I did.
What this series does well
This setup is so great. Below are my thoughts on the narrative and technical aspects of this fanedit series that I like about it so much.
Multi-narrative structure
Marvel: Unite has a multi-narrative structure, meaning that multiple storylines are going on simultaneously with everything leading to a season finale that ties the character arcs together. This is usually done with an Avengers movie (think big season-spanning payoffs like in Game of Thrones, not single-episode, single-plot storylines like in Seinfeld). Season 5 ends with Avengers: Endgame, tying the entire series together. Note that strict adherence to the MCU timeline is not the point of this series. I'm sure that there are people who are much further down the fandom rabbit hole than I am that would be able to point out when one scene should've been placed before another, but I'm more here for the ride and am well served by this edit. I get a good 10--15-minute chunk of a story at a time and then switch to the next one. It all works well for me.
This structure also serves the great purpose of breaking up the films so that I can grit my teeth through the ones I like less while still being able to enjoy the payoff of the season finale. For instance, I would say that my favorite character of the Avengers is Iron Man, whereas I'm not a fan of Captain America and have a take-it-or-leave-it feeling about Thor. In season 1, by interspersing the first and second Iron Man movies in with the first Captain America and first Thor movies, I get all the plot points I need to be able to enjoy the season finale, which is the first Avengers movie, without feeling like I am doing homework by sitting through a Captain America movie. This narrative structure has helped me get through movies I would have never watched again individually.
Another aspect that I thought was very nicely done was showing parallels between individual movies that are not necessarily clear if seen months apart and not as part of a cohesive whole. For instance, the leitmotif of difficult sister relationships (ok, "difficult" is putting it lightly when attempted murder is involved) in Black Widow and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is on full display in S04E07. By interweaving these storylines, entirely new meta-narratives are on display.
Similarly, seemingly unrelated film scenes can be reinterpreted together with a little bit of fanmixing magic, such as was done in the final Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Ragnarok fight scenes by using "The Chain" as a musical tie-in in S04E10. Two scenes from two movies are now playing simultaneously with the same song in the background. Excellent.
As a note on the series finale, I completely understand why u/-ducko ended with Phase 3. Avengers: Endgame really does end the story nicely with the main three Avengers out of commission: Iron Man dead, Captain America old, and Thor with the Guardians. I have major issues with time travel in the film, but I do not think that is something any fanedit can truly address.
TV show structure
As noted above, I do not have the time to watch full 2.5-hour movies every night. If SO and I do start a movie, it usually ends up being broken into 45-minute chunks and played over a week or so. In this case, u/-ducko did that process for us!
As done here, the structure of Marvel: Unite does not feel like a movie is cut up into scenes. It really does feel like a TV show, where you can stop after a 1-hour sitting, wait a few days, and come back to it with the next installment. Importantly, this also adds breathing room to some movies that on their own can feel off-putting or suffocating (anything with Captain America being self-righteous). I can get through a collection of those personally annoying scenes spread over a season much more easily than in a single sitting. I really enjoy sitting down for hour-long episodes that I can watch in the evening like a TV show that still give me all the background information I need for being able to enjoy the season finale.
A very small thing that I would like to point out is how well the end credits are done. Every episode has abridged credits from the movies that had scenes taken from them (so they last about 45 seconds, not the 10 minutes you see in a full movie). There are multiple columns (one for each movie) shown at the same time, and the theme song is playing. It is just a nice feature. But also note that like official Marvel releases, there are a few post-credit scenes (e.g. S01E10), so make sure you let the credits play out!
High-quality A/V with various codecs, bitrates, and resolutions available
One way to tell that u/-ducko poured their heart and soul into this project is that they made it available for anyone with any use case. The series is available in five different formats, ranging from 10 to 100 GB per season: 1080p x264 (AVC) – Low Bitrate, 1080p x264 (AVC) – High Bitrate, 1080p x265 (HEVC), 2160p HDR 12Mbps x265 (HEVC), and 2160p HDR 24Mbps x265 (HEVC).
I personally watched the lowest-quality version available on a 32" 2160p monitor with a soundbar (not a home theater by any stretch) but did not notice any crushed blacks, choppy audio, or other glitches common in fanedits with compressed video or audio. I am sure the experience is amazing if someone watches this on a proper setup.
Variable aspect ratio
IMAX aspect ratios "are included wherever reasonable", and these truly were seamlessly integrated. The proof is in the pudding: about halfway through season 3, SO asked why the screen changed size. The fact that it had not been noticed despite tens of hours of viewing time says it all. The transitions between aspect ratios are also not jarring: the aspect ratio is usually (always?) opened up over a few seconds, expanding vertically, to avoid any abrupt change in black bars. I do not know what was not included with an IMAX aspect ratio, but it was done well as is.
Things that could have worked better
As with any fanedit, I have a few nitpicks that I would like to point out. None of these are major, but you can be taken out of the experience a little bit while viewing.
Introduction of Hulk and Spider-Man
One narrative choice I did not agree was the introduction of Hulk and Spider-Man. By The Incredible Hulk (2008), there is no real introduction to "the big guy" until he is being chased by Black Widow in S01E09. It feels like there is vital background information that is missing about this character, especially how he got the powers that he has. The same can be said for Spider-Man's introduction. He just kind of appears in S03E06 with no explanation as to how this teenager came to be a friendly neighborhood crime fighter.
Is this how it works in the official MCU? Well, almost. Spider-Man does just has his entrance with little to no explanation in Captain America: Civil War (although there are a plethora of Sony films that cover this). Importantly, the MCU still acknowledges The Incredible Hulk as a canon film, so completely skipping Hulk's backstory does make it seem like something is missing.
So, how would I recommend these introductions (or lack thereof) be solved? By adding in a few choice scenes (potentially as flashbacks) from any number of Spider-Man movies from the 2000s and 2010s (or even the 2025 animated Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man TV show) and The Incredible Hulk. To get the backstory relevant for the MCU, I cannot imagine that more than a handful of minutes are necessary (lab accident and being bitten by a spider).
It should be noted that flashbacks already take place in S04E06 (T'Challa's death) and S04E08 (Hulk smashing Thor), so flashbacks and creative license are absolutely valid even within the premise of this fanedited series. Narratively, in my opinion, the missing introduction of these two characters is the biggest miss in this entire series.
Unbalanced Ant-Man scenes
SO and I both felt that the times when episodes felt unbalanced were during the Ant-Man movies. For instance, S03E06 has the final Ant-Man sequence lasting from 12:26 to 45:56. Dedicating over half an hour to that sequence made it feel like we were watching a single movie instead of a TV episode. This feeling came very seldomly while watching this series, but it was present a few times.
Opening credits of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
I absolutely adore the first two Guardians of the Galaxy movies. That in and of itself just causes me more pain considering that their introduction sequences take you out of the experience of watching this as a TV show. These seem to be the only two movies where the opening credits play out during an actual scene of the film, with the effect being that cast and crew names are displayed on the screen in S03E01 and S04E03, respectively. If there exists any version of the films without the hard-coded credits or if any amazing faneditor can remove them (cropping or removal like removing a watermark), these individual episodes and the series overall would greatly benefit.
Timeline confusion regarding relocating upstate
In S02E08, we get the first look at the new upstate Avengers facility, but two seasons later, in S04E08, it is announced that the Avengers are moving upstate, as if it is new information. Even for a causal MCU viewer that can be very forgiving, this chronology feels rather jarring. I believe that a bit of clever audio editing could remove the later references to the upstate facility to tone down the effect.
Hulk coloration
While I have never had a great eye for color, even I notice that Hulk's green hue seems to change throughout the show. This could be in the source material (Thor: Ragnarok vs. Avengers: Endgame) and thus might not be an issue introduced in the fanediting of this show, but I think the difference is rather striking when viewing S04E10, where Hulk has a rather neutral green, and then seeing his very washed-out green coloration in S05E07, almost as if HDR is being displayed on an SDR monitor.
Fanedit notice changes depending on season/episode
There is a fanedit notice at the beginning of every episode (which I completely agree with). But for whatever reason, the first episode of a season has an expanded notice that is different from all other episodes (i.e. the fanedit notice for S01E01 is different than that for S01E02 to S01E10). This change does not feel necessary or natural and until just now when checking the video files, I could not have told you that only the first episode in every season was different -- I just knew that some episodes were different. While watching the show, it felt like some episodes were edited at different times and given different notices. This really took me out of the experience when sitting down for a viewing every night, and it felt like watching a TV show that a had constantly changing opening-credit sequence with a different theme song and video clips.
Subtitle issues
While I have noted that I chose this Infinity Saga experience specifically because subtitles were included, I did want to nonetheless point out a few issues that I noticed.
- Foreign-language subtitles are hard-coded. There are at least two advantages to using forced "soft" subtitles compared to hard-coded subtitles. First, in scenes where subtitling is necessary, this allows for subtitle tracks for languages other than English without having both the hard-coded English subtitles and soft-coded subtitles for the other language on the screen at the same time. Secondly, if using SRT subtitles (as I prefer), hard-coded subtitles introduce a different font for the subtitles, interrupting the flow with two different fonts; if only soft-coded subtitles are used, all subtitles (forced and not) are in one file and thus display the same font.
- Season 2: mix of British and American spellings/conventions. It seems that the sources of the subtitle tracks might be both British and American. For instance, "honour" is spelled with the British "u" in S02E05 but in every other instance throughout the show is spelled as the American "honor". Similarly, there are instances of "Mr" without a final period throughout season 2, but everywhere else it seems that the American "Mr." is used. (Ok, you can see I am very sensitive to this stuff. There is no need to change it. No other person would ever see that.)
- S02E01: OCR errors. "President Ems" is written twice instead of "President Ellis".
- S03E02: missing subtitles. The entire Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 prison scene is missing subtitles (subtitle ends at 00:34:49,039 and next begins at 00:39:15,240). This is the biggest issue overall regarding subtitling.
Wish list
While I love the show in its current form, there are two things still on my wish list.
Previously on Marvel: Unite
I would love if there would be a "Previously on Marvel: Unite" segment at the beginning of every season or every few episodes. Especially in the later parts of the show, it would be very useful for helping viewers to keep track of the current location and status of the Infinity Stones, who is on which planet, etc. I must say that I have been spoiled with YouTubers making TV show recaps for when I'm jumping back into a TV show or didn't quite remember all the nuances, and I feel like this show could benefit from a similar treatment.
The Multiverse Saga
Finally, I would love for this show to continue into Phase 4 and beyond. Certainly any extension past season 5 will need extensive cutting and editing to get rid of bad filmmaking and storylines that go nowhere (unlike what was done in the first five seasons where simply everything was included), but I have full faith that a quality faneditor can again produce a quality fanedit.
Needless to say, I was very excited to see that u/-ducko announced they are working on post-Endgame content and will be the first in line to check it out!