Marvel Teases "Phase 2"

The Marvel Studios "Phase One DVD Set" that had been delayed is now finding it's way to consumers, and pretty-much every news site is running some variation of reports on the Phase TWO preview materials that came packaged therein. HitFix, in particular, has some good scans up plus a vid (for now anyway) of the video-featurette portion. Take a look:

WARNING: At least one slice of concept-art may or may not show either a certain previously-established character fighting alongside The Guardians of The Galaxy OR one of the Guardians dropping in on someone else's movie. Whichever it is, some might consider it a possible spoiler.


marvelphasetwo by pepsiguy2

The video is heavy on "Iron Man 3," which is to be expected, but for me the big "cool!" of this is that it offers the first non-bootleg look at the "test-footage" for Edgar Wright's "Ant-Man" movie that ran at SDCC last year. I've only seen the footage once before at low-quality, so anyone who knows better feel free to correct me, but it looks like there've been some CGI improvements to the size-changing effects and the overall design of Ant-Man's costume/helmet since the initial version. If so, that supports what many (myself included) have been saying all along: That cheapskate Marvel wouldn't pay for finished-CG "test footage" if they weren't planning to repurpose it as a post-credits tease in some near-future movie.

Also included (in the video and in the various image galleries are first-looks (primarily in the form of concept-art, but those proved pretty reliable in the past) at The Winter Soldier and Falcon from "Captain America 2." and some BTS footage from "Thor: The Dark World." Not loving that Falcon looks to have been outfitted with dull black duds a'la Hawkeye (c'mon Marvel, not only is that era done with - you stuck the fork in it) but he does have his wings, which is the important part. Winter Soldier has his robot-arm, but it also looks like they've given him a bottom-face mask to conceal his identity from mainstream audiences who don't know who/what he is yet (I wonder how that reveal will "play" in the absence of 40+ years of buildup.)

Rounding things out are an expanded look at "Guardians of The Galaxy," aka "Yeah, we're really gonna do this;" confirming once more that Disney/Marvel really seriously is going to drop a talking, gun-toting Space Raccoon into their billion dollar Movie Universe just because they can.