Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One
Steel Man – Genius, billionaire, playboy, and philanthropist Eddy Hugo, who inherited the multinational defense contractor Hugo Industries from his late father at a young age, is in war-torn Mexico with his friend and military liaison Lieutenant Colonel Jason Rhodes to demonstrate the new "Jericho" missile. After the demonstration, the convoy is ambushed, and Hugo is critically wounded by one of his own company's rocket-propelled grenades, used by the attackers. He is captured and imprisoned in a cave by a terrorist group, the Ten Rings. There, he meets a fellow captive, Hong Yinsen, a doctor from China. Finding shards of shrapnel embedded dangerously close to Hugo’s heart, Hong implants an electromagnet into Hugo’s chest to keep the shards away. The Ten Rings leader, Tochtli, offers Hugo his freedom in exchange for building a Jericho missile for the group, but Hugo and Hong know the terrorists will not keep their word.
The two scientists secretly build a small generator called an arc reactor, which they use to power a suit of powered armor to fight their way out of the cave. The terrorists discover their intentions and attack while Hugo is putting the finishing touches on the suit. Hong sacrifices himself to give Hugo enough time to finish the suit. Putting on the armor, Hugo effortlessly battles his way out of the cave and flies away, destroying his suit when he crashes into the desert, where Rhodes and the Roman military find him.
Returning home to Alexandria, Hugo announces his company will no longer make weapons. Oskar Stein, his father’s old partner and the company’s manager, warns Hugo this may ruin the company and his father’s legacy. Meanwhile, Hugo replaces his arc reactor with an upgraded model and builds a more powerful version of the armor suit. He keeps his work to himself because he is suspicious of Stein.
At a corporate event, Hugo learns Jericho missiles were recently delivered to the Ten Rings and are being used in an attack on a Mexican village where Hong’s Red Cross team is currently treating the sick and wounded. Hugo realizes Stein has been selling weapons to criminals and is plotting to remove him as CEO. He puts on his armor and flies to Mexico, where he saves the doctors and villagers and defeats the terrorists. When Roman fighter jets he had Rhodes call in for an airstrike attack him, he reveals his identity to Rhodes to get them to stop.
Meanwhile, the Ten Rings gather the pieces of Hugo’s prototype suit and give them to Stein, who builds a massive new suit from the wreckage. Seeking to track his company's illegal shipments, Hugo sends his assistant, Penelope Potts, to hack into its database. She discovers Stein hired the Ten Rings to kill Hugo. Potts meets with Agent Phillip Claussen of SHIELD, a Roman intelligence agency, to inform him of Stein’s activities. Claussen deploys a team to arrest Stein.
Stein’s scientists cannot duplicate Hugo’s miniaturized arc reactor, so Stein ambushes Hugo at his home and takes the one from his chest. Before he dies, Hugo manages to get to his original reactor to replace it. Potts and Claussen’s SHIELD team attempt to arrest Stein, but he dons his suit and attacks them. Hugo fights Stein, but is outmatched without his new reactor to run his suit at full capacity. The fight carries Stark and Stane to the top of the Hugo Industries building, and Potts overloads the large arc reactor powering the building. This unleashes a massive electrical surge that disables Stein's armor suit, allowing him to be apprehended. The next day, at a press conference, Hugo defies suggestions from Claussen and publicly admits to being the superhero the press has dubbed Steel Man.
In a post-credits scene, SHIELD Director Nick Fury visits Hugo at home, telling him Steel Man is not "the only superhero in the world", and explaining that he wants to discuss the "Vindicator Initiative".
The Invincible Goliath – Boris Brenner, a scientist trying to recreate a World War II super-soldier experiment, accidentally turns himself into Goliath, a nigh-unstoppable rage monster. Sought after by General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross and the Roman military, Brenner flees the country while he tries to find a cure for Goliath.
Steel Man: Armor Wars – Six months after revealing to the world that he is the superhero Steel Man, Eddy Hugo faces down calls from the Roman government to hand over his robot suits while combating the debilitating effects of his arc reactor. Meanwhile, ex-KGB agent turned terrorist Ivan Vanko, who has a grudge against Hugo’s father, acquires Hugo tech on the black market, for which SHIELD sends Agent Natasha Romanova, another former KGB agent trained in the Black Widow program, to infiltrate Hugo Industries. Romanova finds board-member Justin Hammer is selling the technology for profit. Rhodes clashes with an increasingly careless Hugo, culminating in Rhodes stealing a Steel Man suit and fighting Hugo before flying to a nearby Roman military base, where General Ross upgrades the suit and dubs him “War Machine.” Vanko and Hammer attack a Hugo Industries convention using hacked Steel Man drones. While Romanova and Agent Claussen try to protect the fleeing civilians (among them a young Peter Parker) and shut down the drones, Hugo and Rhodes reconcile and fight Vanko, who has built his own armored suit. Hammer is later arrested for his part in the conspiracy. When he arrives in jail, he is accosted by members of the Ten Rings, who says the Mandarin, their mysterious leader, wants to meet him.
Thor – The Norse gods are actually a technologically advanced alien civilization which have been protecting Earth for centuries. After centuries of war with the Jotun frost giants, Odin is poised to sign the final peace treaty. However, his brash son Thor derails the negotiations when he drunkenly attacks Jotunheim. Enraged at his son’s arrogance, Odin strips Thor of his powers and exiles him to Earth. He lands in a small town in Arabia, where he meets Jane Fischer, an ambitious astrophysicist. His hammer, Mjolnir, falls to Earth several miles away and is quickly found by SHIELD, which builds a facility around it as they cannot move it. Thor tries to reclaim the hammer, fighting master archer Kurt “Hawkeye” Barton in the process, but he is not worthy of lifting Mjolnir. He is captured by SHIELD agents led by Phillip Claussen. Meanwhile, Thor’s brother Loki schemes his way to power in Asgard after Odin is incapacitated. Wanting to rule as king, he lets the frost giants into Asgard to kill Odin, uses the Bifrost to destroy Jotunheim, and sends the Destroyer, a powerful robot, to kill Thor. Thor sacrifices himself to protect the town, which proves his worthiness and restores his powers. Fully restored, Thor defeats the Destroyer and returns to Asgard in time to save Odin. However, he is too late to stop the Bifrost from destroying Jotunheim. His plan foiled, Loki attacks Thor, who throws him off the side of Asgard and into space.
Captain Reich: The First Vindicator – In 1942, Steve Rudolf is a sickly young man from Constantinople rejected by military recruiters due to his health, though this doesn’t deter him from showing up at recruiting stations every week. Professor Abraham Erskine Reinstein notices how devoted he is to wanting to serve and asks him to participate in a special experiment to create a super soldier. Steve eagerly agrees, and the experiment, conducted by Reinstein and Heinrich Hugo (Eddy Hugo’s father), transforms him into the patriotic and muscular Captain Reich. Soon after the successful experiment, Angeloi assassins kill Reinstein and destroy his work. As he is shipped off to war, Steve vows revenge. He organizes the Howling Commandos, a team of Resistance fighters and Loyalist soldiers operating behind enemy lines in Angeloi territory, led by Agent Rita Wagner of the Strategic Scientific Reserve and his childhood friend Joseph “Bucky” Burkard. Together, they rescue hundreds of prisoners of war, including Bucky, from Hydra, a sinister organization using the Angeloi as a front for their world domination plans led by the equally sinister Black Skull, who uses the Tesseract, an Asgardian relic, to power his advanced weapons. As Steve leads the Loyalists to victory and liberates towns across Europe, he grows close to Rita, and Rita reciprocates, as he was the only one who truly recognized her talents and treated her as an equal member of the team. In the final battle, Rita and Bucky lead the Howling Commandos in an assault on Hydra’s main headquarters in the Alps. Bucky sacrifices himself to blow up the headquarters, while Steve pursues Black Skull, who has departed on a bomber headed for Constantinople. Steve defeats Black Skull and apparently vaporizes him with the Tesseract, but the bomber crashes in the mountains, and he is presumed dead. As the war ends, Rita and the surviving Howling Commandos mourn his death. Meanwhile, Steve wakes up in what appears to be an SSR facility, and a young SSR agent introduces herself as “Diana Sharon Wagner.” He soon realizes something is wrong and escapes the facility, finding himself in modern day Vienna. Nick Fury approaches him about a “Vindicators Initiative.”
The Vindicators – Loki, after being thrown off Asgard, assembles an army to conquer Earth. He first attacks a SHIELD facility and steals the Tesseract, brainwashing Hawkeye and several agents into doing his bidding. Director Nick Fury activates the Vindicators Initiative. Natasha Romanova recruits Boris Brunner. Phillip Claussen visits Eddy Hugo, and Fury tasks Steve Rudolf with retrieving the Cosmic Cube. Rudolf, Hugo, and Romanova confront and capture Loki in Stuttgart, with Thor arriving to take him home but agreeing to imprison him on the SHIELD helicarrier. They argue over how to approach Loki, but then Hawkeye and Loki’s possessed minions attack. Loki kills Claussen and escapes. Claussen’s death motivates the Vindicators into working as a team. Just then, Loki uses the Cosmic Cube to open a portal above Constantinople through which an alien fleet invades. The Vindicators arrive and defeat Loki’s alien minions, while Goliath pummels Loki into submission before turning him over to Thor to face justice in Asgard. The city is saved. The Vindicators go their separate ways, with Fury remarking they make a good team.
