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Marvel coasts between big movies

It is surprising to know that “Deadpool” was made by 20th Century Fox rather than Marvel Studios.

Marvel Studios rose to fame because of its cinematic universe idea. They make a bunch of movies that are part of the same universe, which expands the world and allows for crossover movies like “The Avengers” and the yet-to-be-released “Captain America: Civil War.”

Through this gimmick, Marvel has figured out that it does not have to try as hard anymore. The first wave of Marvel movies was all leading up to “The Avengers,” which people wanted to see. Therefore, it did not matter how “Iron Man 2,” “Captain America: The First Avenger,” or “Thor” ended up, because people had to go see them in order to understand the characters and the universe for “The Avengers.”

Because all of the movies are connected, important details that are present in one movie will affect the next movie, so one would have to watch the previous movies to fully understand what is happening.

Now, that is what should happen in a continuing story like, for example, Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” franchise, but here is where they differ. The way it should work is that the people who liked “Batman Begins” would want to see a sequel when it was released. When “The Dark Knight” gets released, those same people go to see it. With Marvel, the people who liked “Iron Man” want to see a sequel, but along with the sequel they have to watch “Thor” and “Captain America: The First Avenger” because all of these movies are going to be connected.

Now that Marvel has ensured an audience to their movies, the lack of trying comes in. They do not have to worry about making the movies good since they have a guaranteed audience and can make them as dull and uninspired as they want. No creativity needs to be included and no risks need to be taken to keep people coming around for more. They just need to superficially please movie-going audiences so that they do not realize Marvel’s trick. This results in a bunch of middle-of-the-road, uninspired, interchangeable movies.

In all fairness, Marvel has released genuinely good movies like “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “Iron Man” and “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and took creative risks with “Iron Man 3,” but those are just four movies in a list that at the moment is made up of 12. When the good to bad ratio is at that level due to a lack of effort, or when an audience member has to watch 12 movies to understand the two movies they actually wanted to see, there is a problem.

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