Putting down the shield

HAVING been part of Marvel’s comicbook movie franchise since 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, Chris Evans now expects an untitled May 2019 Avengers movie to mark his last on-screen appearance as Captain America ( above).

April’s Avengers: Infinity War will be his eighth time playing the character on film, including roles in solo projects, crossovers large and small, and postcredits cameos.

Avengers: Infinity War and its sequel were filmed concurrently in 2017, and bring Evans to the end of his Marvel Studios contract.

“He has no plans to return to the franchise ... and expects that planned reshoots [for Avengers 2019] in the fall will mark the end of his tenure,” the New York Times wrote as part of a wideranging profile piece.

“You want to get off the train before they push you off,” Evans had told the publication.

Marvel has been introducing a new generation of heroes and heroines since 2015’s Ant-Man – or, arguably, Guardians of the Galaxy the year before.

Ant-Man marked the end of the second phase of a broad, three-phase plan for converting Marvel’s comicbook back catalogue into a multi-character, multi-billion-dollar franchise of interconnected films.

Phase three began with Captain America: Civil War in 2016, with Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, and Black Panther among the debutants receiving their own solo movies before Avengers: Infinity War.

The Wasp joins Ant-Man as a title character in July 2018, with a Captain Marvel film due two months before the Infinity War sequel, bringing us to the end of Phase Three but not the end of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe.

Marvel Studios has staked out release dates for another nine untitled films from 2020 through to 2022, and planned storylines to see it through to 2028. – AFP-Relaxnews Ready Player One above, right). Darkest Hour Ready Player One’s left): Ready Player One Star Wars Star Wars

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