When I originally thought about this year's marathon, the plan was to watch the entire Hobbit through Lord of the Rings series (preferably in the extended form). Unfortunately, we watched all of the extended Hobbit movies this summer, and they just weren't good enough to justify such a binge (that, and the third extended Hobbit breaks the R-rated rule for my birthday movie marathons).
Another possibility was the Hunger Games trilogy-plus-one. This would be a shorter marathon, but while I love watching Jennifer Lawrence and I really enjoy the second movie, I don't think it hits the right chord. I also thought about a Harry Potter run again, but we started watching the movies as Connor started finishing the books this year. Another possibility was to go with 80s and 90s Disney animated musicals (The Little Mermaid to Mulan), but even with the Hunchback of Notre Dame, that's a little too much sugar for my birthday.
My thought, then, was to go with Marvel Phase II (Iron Man 3 to Ant-Man). Because Ant-Man isn't a real climatic end to this phase, I thought I would bring Phase III's Captain America: Civil War to end the run. However, considering Civil War directly references events from the first Avengers movie, I thought I might bookend both sides of the marathon with movies out of Phase.
There are two problems. The first has an easy solution. I don't have all of the movies. This hopefully can be rectified by nearby friends who have copies of the movies that I lack (I also have ordered them, but it looks like not all of them will be here on time).
The second is more problematic: As I was putting together a schedule, I discovered that the run times are longer than I thought. With the bookend movies, I would have to start at 1am and end at midnight to get through the entire planned marathon. Even dropping the bookmark movies starts us at 6AM and ends at 11:30PM.
I can't frontload a couple of movies on the 22nd this time as I am picking up Katrina at the airport that night. For that matter, considering we won't be home until about 1AM on my birthday, an early morning start might be even more painful. Going into the 24th is also not a viable option as that is Christmas Eve. I could choose to not watch the bookend movies even with the aforementioned Ant-Man lack of climax, but that is still a long run. Alternatively, I could drop movies that do not have much bearing on Civil War, such as Thor 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy, but that also has a long run time (and I love Guardians).
I could shelve the Phase II idea until summer of 2018 when I thought of running a multi-day Phase I, Phase II, and some Phase III in anticipation of the Infinity Wars release. However, that leaves me back at the drawing board when it comes to what to watch this year. Janelle has always felt that the entire thing was a little crazy. Alex is going to be working and sleeping through a large part of it anyway. Trevor and the little boys say they're excited, but have always drifted during the actual events (although they were pretty good with last year's Star Wars run). Currently, I'm leaning towards just a Phase II run, while watching the Avengers a couple of days before and Civil War after Christmas. What do those of you on the Interwebs think?
I know; I know ... First World Problems (and nerd problems, at that).