Call it projecting, but coming off of this year’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” I felt a definite sense of fatigue in the internet zeitgeist in regards to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Up until that point, it seemed like the MCU had done no wrong, and while “Age of Ultron” was still a solid movie, it definitely disappointed its fair share of fans. Marvel had gotten to the point where “solid” would no longer do. It had to be a better film than its predecessors.

“Ant-Man” seemed to take a bit of collateral damage for that disappointment. Yes, “Ant-Man” did well enough to warrant a sequel, but had “Age of Ultron” proven to be a superior film to the original “Avengers,” things may have turned out even better for it. Overall, 2015 seemed like something of a lull for the MCU, but following the trailer for “Captain America: Civil War,” there seems to be a renewed sense of vigor for the fan-favorite shared universe. With the dropping of the trailer, and a new enthusiasm for the MCU going into 2016, what better time is it to stumble upon a featurette that chronicles the forming of the MCU?

The featurette, which was posted on Tumblr, comes from the recently-released Marvel Phase 2 box set, which contains films “Iron Man 3,” “Thor: The Dark World,” “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” and “Ant-Man.” More than anything, the featurette talks about the origin of the now-trademark Marvel post-credits tag, and goes through each film, and how the scene was created.

Check out the video below!

UPDATE: APOLOGIES, BUT THE VIDEO HAS BEEN REMOVED BY THE UPLOADER.

Perhaps one of the greatest lines in the featurette comes from Marvel Studios overlord Kevin Feige, who talks about the origins of the Marvel tag.

“I remember being a kid, and going to movies when you were rewarded for sitting through the credits. We got to the point where we were making our own films; we always thought it would be fun to do that.”

It’s a small fun quirk that’s evolved into something else altogether, and serves as one of the defining traits of a Marvel film. But the featurette doesn’t stop there, near the end, executive producer Jeremy Latcham talks about the birth of the Infinity Stones, and the studio’s tracking of the artifacts through the past several films.

“Hopefully now we’re getting to a point where all that work can kind of culminate and pay off. It becomes this kind of legendary saga that audiences have been paying attention to and following along with. We hit upon the idea years ago at one of our creative retreats that the Tesseract  should be an Infinity Stone, and that there was an opportunity to have this gigantic story that can take place over the course of, you know, nine, ten movies. We’ve been keeping track of all of it in the course of all these different films, and Thanos has been keeping track of all of it in this time as well.”

What’s your favorite part of the MCU up to this point? Let us know your thoughts down below!

The next MCU film is “Captain America: Civil War.” You can check the trailer out below.

SOURCES: IWantCupcakes (via CBM)