What Makes the MCU Work?

[Winter]

The MCU is, at the time of this writing, the single most successful superhero franchise of all time, with pretty much all its movies being critical and financial hits and several overall successful TV shows. It took characters that were seen as B or even C-lister and turned them into house hold names and even made characters who weren't that popular and not only made them main stream hits but also made them integral to the major arcs of the series.

And it did this while telling a story that took 10 years to built up to and was itself a huge success and is still being talked about. And it managed to do all this with little arc or franchise fatigue. Marvel is now just a part of our lives and it's as popular as Star Wars or Star Trek.

It's so popular that other studios have tried to copy its winning formula including Star Wars and Star Trek and yet none have managed to duplicate that success. So what makes the MCU work?

I think it's mostly down to two things the first of which being most of the stories stand on their own. If you were to, say, watch Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor Ragnarok and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 you would be able to enjoy each film on it's own because while all three of these films tie into the story in a big way they are, for the most part, self contained films that do what they can to catch you up to speed on its own story. You do not need to see Thor The Dark World to understand what's happening in Ragnarok and you don't need to see The First Avenger to understand what's going on in Captain America: Civil War.

The other major reason I think the MCU is such a success is how it ties into the other films. To look at The First Avenger, you have Tony's dad as a secondary character, a reference to Asgard all while building up to the first Avengers movie. You don't need to watch Iron Man or Thor to get these reference but they do add to world building. Seeing Tony's dad working with Steve helps to set up Steve's relationship with Tony and learning about Cosmic Cube has some connection to Asgard helps to explain more about why it's so powerful with as little exposition as possible.

Again, you don't need to see either series but it does add to the world when you see how all these bits connect together.

Contrast this with, say, the DC Expanded Universe aka the DC Cinematic Universe which has been, rather mixed with a few good hits but most of the other films are 50/50 at best. Or to take a look at a failed attempt at a Cinematic Universe the Universals Dark Universe which had one film, The Mummy in 2017, and that was it. And finally the Amazing Spider-Man Universe which got two films before basically dying after movie 2. The reason these attempts fail, I think, is because they don't work as standalone stories and work more as commercials for films that don't even exist yet.

You can talk about how a major story that will be coming around the bend that will be a huge success and will change Cinema forever but if your first attempt fails it will kill interest in the series before a series can really get started.

And then we have Star Wars which tried to have it's own Cinematic Universe starting with The Force Awakens and while it certainly was more successful then the other attempts I mentioned interest in the series basically died rather early. After only five years half the audience completely lost interest in the series despite having an overall solid start but because of The Last Jedi's mixed reception and Rise of Skywalker's being overall negatively received to teh point that there are rumors (emphases on Rumors) that Star Wars is not only making a Thrawn Trilogy but is either A) Working to reboot the series or has already rebooted the series via the World Between Worlds aka Time Travel.

Star Wars is coming out with yet another attempt to recapture the success of the MCU but this time is aiming at the small screen with the Mandalorian, the Book of Baba Fett, Rangers of the New Republic and Ahsoka all being shows that intending to lead into some Major Story Event (with many thinking that will be an Adaptation of The Thrawn Trilogy). However, at this time it's uncertain if this will be a success or if it will go the way of all other MCU copies. As of right now Seasons 1 and 2 of The Mandalorian have been a huge hit with critics and viewers alike with many looking forward to the upcoming shows. While there are some detractors who feel that the series is breakaway from what they enjoyed about TDST, and TLJ in particular, the fact of the matter is for the most part, people are exited for what comes next.

And that's part of what makes the MCU so successful, it always leaves you wanting more and it does what it can to shake up the formula whenever possible while still sticking to what has made the series a success.

I have yet to watch WandaVision but that is purely do to how I watch TV series as a whole, I usually like waiting until at least 1 season is complete to go in and watch a whole season in one sitting instead of waiting around a few months to see how the story plays out. However, I've heard good things about it and I am looking forward to watching it. Which is always a sign of a good story, I want to see what happens next.

[J!!]

Low standards, mostly.

[bull705]

Low standards, mostly.

Thanks for explaining the DC Snyderverse audience. We'll call you when we actually care.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Well people keep showing up, and it's not hard to see why, even without undermining the success by comparing qualitative standards with The Dark Knight.

The tentpole model depends on one teamup movie worth $1 billion and enough $5-700 million movies to somehow get to the next phase.

The old ambitious plan in the industry was aiming for a saga with minimum 3+ movies. It's like Tony Hawk 1 or 2 where you basically have to do balance tricks on rails and maybe you'll get a Dark Knight in the form of a quarter-pipe ramp to do one final big trick with the multiplier you built up. Sucks though that the second movie tends to do the best and you need a Return of the King in order to get another go around.

The only way that Marvel was going to enter the game was to reverse engineer it so that they could literally plan the quarter-pipe jump at the end of their trick run with the Avengers. After they did that, people were no longer showing up for each character's movie, they were showing up for the universe.

Iron Man as an action movie made $585 million with Hulk making less than half of that. Thor and Captain America did a bit better than Hulk, but Iron Man 2 still rocked them. After the Avengers, each of the current ensemble simply made more money than the last movie that came out unless you were the newcomer that was also following the old model of titular single hero, but even then they would get absorbed into the mold and juiced just the same. Guardians of the Galaxy on the other hand in itself proved to be an effective keynote property that just took the ensemble aesthetic from the Avengers just without the buildup.

If you didn't catch the significance of that last bit, look at how much money BvS made when WB put the cart in front the horse and tried to commence their plan with a mega event. It did just as well as Guardians of the Galaxy, but no. They compared it to the Avengers and immediately started going back to the drawing table like Sony did with Spiderman. Expecting BvS to do better than GotG would be just as irrational as expecting Batman Begins to do as well as The Dark Knight. At least in ticket sales.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

And then we have Star Wars which tried to have it's own Cinematic Universe starting with The Force Awakens and while it certainly was more successful then the other attempts I mentioned interest in the series basically died rather early. After only five years half the audience completely lost interest in the series despite having an overall solid start but because of The Last Jedi's mixed reception and Rise of Skywalker's being overall negatively received to teh point that there are rumors (emphases on Rumors) that Star Wars is not only making a Thrawn Trilogy but is either A) Working to reboot the series or has already rebooted the series via the World Between Worlds aka Time Travel.

Star Wars is coming out with yet another attempt to recapture the success of the MCU but this time is aiming at the small screen with the Mandalorian, the Book of Baba Fett, Rangers of the New Republic and Ahsoka all being shows that intending to lead into some Major Story Event (with many thinking that will be an Adaptation of The Thrawn Trilogy). However, at this time it's uncertain if this will be a success or if it will go the way of all other MCU copies. As of right now Seasons 1 and 2 of The Mandalorian have been a huge hit with critics and viewers alike with many looking forward to the upcoming shows. While there are some detractors who feel that the series is breakaway from what they enjoyed about TDST, and TLJ in particular, the fact of the matter is for the most part, people are exited for what comes next.

Star Wars didn't try to make a universe, they tried to make a saga again. There's no apparent consistency between Rogue 1 and Solo as far as building a running narrative; they are augmented attachments meant to simply do better than Hulk 1, Thor 1, and Captain America 1. I think they were rather good ideas. Solo like BvS had unrealistic expectations upon it, and nobody can argue against Rogue1's performance.

Star Wars as a saga template exists more on Themyscira than it does Rome. It is holy coveted and guaranteed a third movie just by design and directive commitment. Star Wars fans are so enamored by the legacy of Star Wars Trilogy that they compare everything that comes out today as if they were there watching the first movies come out one by one... As if those movies were made by just doing what Peter Jackson did with Lord of the Rings. And it's not even in credit to George Lucas, it's just reverence for the films themselves in spite of George Lucas trying to ruin it with the prequels.

Disney was well aware of the approach that Lucas pedaled through with the original trilogy. Each film was handcrafted and with the possibility of irony made in the same corporate manner of influence that the original trilogy did. One quirky grand slam of a movie, one complex and dark movie with indifference in reception, and a final piece subject to manufactured creative direction -- though RotJ did better than RosW I'm betting.

[Thebestoftherest]

Plus as long as Star wars makes money their not going to start again.

[GreyICE]

I think there's a few subtle reasons, and I'll discuss them.

First, they absolutely capture the magic of the best comic book fight scenes. It sounds weird to say "good storyboarding" in a comic book movie, but watch the good MCU films (Iron Man 1, Avengers, Thor 3, etc.) and look at the very clear visual storytelling of the fights. It shares that in common with the first two Xmen movies. Then go watch the Superman movie and try to figure out where the characters are or what they're doing.

There's all sorts of subtle camera rules for fights scenes mostly developed in Hong Kong cinema - things like not rotating cameras around characters without steadying shots, using establishing shots to set scale and then moving the camera, reusing establishing shots to reset as the action moves, etc. And the MCU is very good at sticking to them. And for some insanely stupid reason DC movies are just awful at them.

Now MCU does have some losers. Thor 2 was awful, First Avenger was a visual mess, Captain Marvel was a screaming heap of garbage. But DC just by and large has nothing but awful pieces. About the only good piece I can remember from DC is the WW1 setpiece in Wonder Woman. And wow, that was an amazing movie.

Just... MCU's action scenes are a fundamental amazing thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noP9HY8nXvY

This is a great example of using action for character development as well as plot development (and just one of the greatest sequences in all of film). It might literally be one of the best action sequences ever. Like 3 minutes and 30 seconds, how much character development happened here?

Now this is 5 minutes long: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWTbLZCR84k

What does it tell you about our characters?

[Thebestoftherest]

I also hear someone say, nothing in the MCU needs to be remembered until they bring jt up again.

[McAvoy]

I think also MCU worked because they started off small. Iron Man started it all and did introduce small things but at the time I doubt there was a serious consideration of a ultimate plan. Basically they started it small with movies but kept it all tied together. They certainly have plot holes and continuity errors due to how it was all worked out but that just shows they were working smaller. It wasn't until I guess Avengers 1 where they realized they got something. Guardians of the Galaxy was the big movie where they went far left and that was successful too. Maybe even more so than Avengers 1.

From there, they had a grand plan and made sure all movies tied in to the previous and the future movies.

And thing is, out of the 20+ movies only a few were bad or at least substandard. Thor 2. Iron Man 2 and 3. Captain Marvel is a pretty boring movie with alot of issues on its own.

[CrypticMirror]

Marvel works because they remembered to have fun and put colour in their movies.