My Thoughts on the Revealed Marvel Phase 4 Dates

For those that don't know, Marvel has revealed 5 new dates for their upcoming Phase 4. Here, I've added all the releases so far:
Phase 1:

  May 2, 2008: Iron Man
   June 13, 2008: The Incredible Hulk
   May 7, 2010: Iron Man 2
   May 6, 2011: Thor

   July 22, 2011: Captain America: The First Avenger
   May 4, 2012: The Avengers
    Phase 2:
   May 3, 2013: Iron Man 3
   November 8, 2013: Thor: The Dark World
   April 4, 2014: Captain America: Winter Soldier
   August 1, 2014: Guardians of the Galaxy
   May 1, 2015: Avengers: Age of Ultron

   Phase 3-4:
  July 17, 2015: Ant-Man
   May 6, 2016: Captain America 3
   July 8, 2016: Doctor Strange?
   May 5, 2017: TBD
   July 28, 2017: TBD
   November 3, 2017: TBD
   July 6, 2018: TBD (Possibly Avengers 4)
   November 2, 2018: TBD
   May 3, 2019: TBD

           With Marvel releasing 3 movies in 2017 (f*** yeah!), I feel like they might play it safe with Thor 3, Guardians 2, and a mysterious one...I personally am hoping for Black Panther or Miss Marvel as final 2017 movie. Marvel’s had success with Thor and they are banking on Guardians being another success. Also, we’re probably not going to get another Iron Man movie since Robert Downey Jr. has 2 more movies left on his super expensive, lucrative contract. They might just save him for 2 Avengers movies before finally recasting the character.

Regarding Miss Marvel, she could be Marvel’s answer to DC’s Wonder Woman since that’s supposed to be the same year Justice League comes out. Also, it’s incredibly evident that there needs to be a female superhero soon which makes it all the more likely that it's Miss Marvel. They might even forego a stand-alone Miss Marvel for a Captain Marvel/Mar-Vell and Miss Marvel movie. That would then expand the extent of the MCU even more. All we’ve really had is Black Widow, but not even she’s been used that well. Regarding Black Panther, he’s always been the popular choice. Since the start of the Marvel cinematic universe, fans have been demanding a Black Panther movie. Some even believed he would come before a Doctor Strange movie since in many incarnations, he’s the next avenger to join when a new threat arrives. I’ve always thought Idris Elba would have been a perfect Black Panther, but now it appears less likely as time passes.

For the final 2 dates, I think Avengers 3 has to be July 16, 2018. Avengers is a straight-out summer blockbuster that will have basically everyone flock to go out and see it. I doubt they’d ever put it out in November, but not even we thought they’d release a Marvel movie in April, yet that worked really well. Also, if they were to go the Planet Hulk route, which seems really likely at this point from all that we’ve seen and heard, that would be a great way to end Avengers 3, especially in a teaser, and transition to Planet Hulk in Phase 4. We know that a hulkbuster armor is bound to come since the release of the concept art a few months ago which means the Hulk will eventually get out of control. This is what leads to the decision of sending the Hulk into space beginning the Planet Hulk storyline. And if they go Planet Hulk, I would think that would be the final film in Phase 4 before Avengers 4 which could ultimately be World War Hulk where the Hulk returns and craves revenge. 

Another interesting idea is that we might not even get a Black Panther movie until Phase 5! Think about it for a second: You need a Black Panther movie to introduce the character and see his back-story along with his struggle to become the future king of Wakanda (almost Lion King-ish). I've always like his story because he's a hero who isn't really a hero. The king is always considered the "Black Panther". He (T'Challa) takes up the mantle of the Black Panther in order to protect and defend his country due to many reasons, and he is the first of his people to go outside their customs and work with those outside his nation. Because of this, he is seen as the superhero Black Panther to the rest of the world when he joins the Avengers. Because of a threat too big for even a king to handle, he seeks the help of the Avengers which is where I believe it could set up Avengers 5 after establishing his movie first as well as our true introduction into vibranium.

But then it brings up the question, when will we get Thanos? He's too big of a villain to introduce this soon but they can’t wait too long since they've been setting him up since first Avengers and now with the new Guardians movie coming out. You don’t just introduce someone this huge and then decide you just don’t want to use him anymore. I think Marvel sort of botched it teasing Thanos if they never planned on using him. However, for all we know, they could make him the big baddie of Phase 3 and use Hulk, who is now a huge fan favorite at this point, for phase 4. However, wouldn’t you think you’d want to use the fan favorite and give him his own movie?

And now my final thought, if they wait too long on Thanos, we might not even have the cast we have now. RDJ’ll likely be gone, Chris Evans wants to get into directing, Chris Hemsworth is growing as an actor which means more opportunities which goes double for Scarlet Johansson, Jeremy Renner is starting to gain ground as an action star, and Mark Ruffalo isn’t going to wait forever for a Hulk movie. Basically, we might have an X-Men issue in which the cast will be too old to play their superhero roles such that, they are actors and I highly doubt that they'd want to play a single character their whole career. They have such a great cast right now. It would suck to see them go.

Thankfully, Marvel's a heck of a lot smarter than me so I'm pretty sure they have this down to the tiniest detail.