Perhaps you remember the box set collection known Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One—Avengers Assembled. It’s a suitcase containing all of the Phase One films, some cool artwork, and your very own light-up Tesseract. It’s the kind of thing you can proudly display in your living room, and when people notice it, you can inform them, “Oh, yeah, that’s just my Marvel Phase One cosmic cube box set, no biggie,” even though they specifically didn’t want to bring it up, because you need to relax about that. And now, with Phase Two complete following the release of Ant-Man, Marvel is doing something similar for this latest slate of films. Collider reports that the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Two Collection is ready to go, and along with a host of new goodies, it also offers a sneak preview of the Phase Three movies.
The box set comes with the orb from Guardians Of The Galaxy—and the Infinity Stone, it looks like—tucked inside it. It features the Blu-ray and 3D Blu-Ray version of every Phase Two film, from Iron Man 3 to Ant-Man, as well as a digital copy of each. Also, the 13-disc set includes memorabilia such as “a gold foil page from the book of Dark Elves, an ancient drawing from the Morag vault, Avengers and S.T.R.I.K.E. uniform patches, and a replica of the Tony Stark Tattoo from Iron Man 3.” And for the impatient Marvel fan, there’s a sneak peek at Phase Three, specifically Captain America: Civil War, Doctor Strange, and Guardians Of The Galaxy 2. The set costs $219.99, and will be released December 8.
Unfortunately, the collection also looks like it suffers from the same problem as the Phase One box set, namely, that it doesn’t include all the special features you’d get if you purchased the individual films. For example, the Captain America: The Winter Soldier 3D Blu-Ray contains bonus features like behind-the-scenes footage with Anthony Mackie, the contents of Cap’s notebook, and a gag reel, among others. This version includes deleted scenes from the movie (with commentary), a preproduction feature, and…that’s it. And while there’s clearly some bonus goodies that make this a fun purchase, it seems a little ridiculous for Marvel to cheapskate the extras here. That kind of corner-cutting would be as silly as allowing Thor to wander off and splash around half-dressed in a cave in the middle of a crisis. Oh, right.