Back in 2008 when Jon Favreau brought out Iron Man nobody could have predicted it would turn into something so massive. Well, Marvel President Kevin Feige certainly did. From the beginnings of mass fandom and rave reviews reacting to the Iron Man series, it spiralled quickly into Marvel's phase one plans and the innovation of a cinematic universe.
The start of something great
It started with the branching out of mainstream popular characters from the comic books, Thor, Captain America and the like. However, the movies played on something more than themselves alone, slowly but surely Marvel ensured the trickling of information and plot development hidden within the movies as cameos or the now norm of after credit sequences - all leading to exactly what fans wanted and exactly what Marvel pursued to deliver - The avengers (Dir.
Whedon. 2012). More than simply a movie with all the characters, Marvel had been developing characters/movies that all tied into (plot-wise) The Avengers. It was truly a stellar innovation and birthed in the Superhero dominant blockbuster movie scheduling.
I hope you don't have fatigue with Superhero films yet
Since The Avengers, Marvel has continued to create tie-ins to the cinematic universe and grow its catalogue of heroes, President Kevin Feige said: "We're 22 movies in and we've got another 20 coming that are completely different from what's come before". This change of style and type of characters is being felt already with the recent Thor Ragnarok (Dir. Waititi. 2017) setting itself apart visually from its predecessors and the upcoming Black Panther (Dir.
Coogler. 2018) movie for a change from the mainstream characters. Feige goes on to say that Avengers 4 (or Infinity War part 2) is a major turning point, "[it will] bring things you've never seen in superhero films before: a finale".
Avengers: Infinity War are the movies all the films before them have been slowly building to, it certainly will mount some importance as a film that has has a decade of content tieing into it.
Then after comes the change for Marvel as it already has outlined plans to develop its side characters and introduce some of the more eccentric or obscure characters (Captain Marvel and Inhumans) to the cinematic universe.
With the calendars filling up with Marvel superhero films well past 2020, I can only hope nobody is growing tired of the dominance of Superhero blockbusters as much like the Western genre in its hay-day. We are going to be seeing a lot more superheroes on our screens for the decade, or even decades to come.
