Last week, an early holiday surprise arrived at Comic Book Resources' North Hollywood offices of courtesy of Marvel Studios: an advance copy of the Amazon-exclusive Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase 2 Box Set. While we previously released our unboxing video, now that we've had more time to look through the set's contents we wanted to give you a more detailed look at what you can expect to find inside when yours arrives later this month.
The primary feature of the set is, of course, the inclusion of all six Phase 2 films: "Iron Man 3," "Thor: The Dark World," "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," "Guardians of the Galaxy," "Avengers: Age of Ultron" and "Ant-Man." Each film comes as a 3D Blu-ray, standard Blu-ray and a digital copy. Add in a bonus disc featuring more than 166 minutes of extra material, and you have thirteen discs total, with hours upon hours of quality super hero entertainment.
WATCH: CBR Unboxes the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase 2 Box Set
Each disc comes in a sleeve featuring stunning artwork by Cakes and Comics' Matt Ferguson, who also provided the artwork for the Phase 1 collection. The collected Blu-rays are held within a life-size replica of the orb from "Guardians of the Galaxy" that, like its movie counterpart, can be opened up to reveal the purple Infinity Gem, the Power Stone.
The set also includes some truly unique and obscure items held within a separate envelope covered in Russian lettering, perhaps intended for the Winter Soldier or Black Widow. Some will be immediately recognizable by the average MCU fan -- an Avengers logo rubber stopper, a photo of Bucky Barnes, a "Jarvis is my co-pilot bumper sticker," a Tony Stark temporary tattoo, a few Stark Industries R&D Department sticky notes and more. But it'll take a serious MCU super fan, or super sleuth to deduce the significance of some of the items contained within. These include a STRIKE team patch, a Baskin-Robbins' name tag, a specimen slide with the remains of "Ant-Thony," a Ten Rings temporary tattoo, Thor's Rainbow Bridge coasters, a "You Know Who I Am" ID badge, and a River Rafter postcard based on a t-shirt worn by Peter Quill.
Perhaps the most interesting and illuminating item is none other than a copy of the Sokovia Accords, the government document that will play a pivotal role in the the upcoming battle between heroes depicted in "Captain America: Civil War." The document details that all heroes will be required to work for the United Nations and only act when instructed to do so. Below the legalese are spaces for each hero to sign their name, signifying their allegiance to the law. What makes this particular detail interesting is that it does not include signatures from Black Panther, Ant-Man, Spider-Man, the Wasp or the Winter Soldier.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase 2 Collection is available to pre-order now from Amazon with a release date of Tuesday December 8.