Infinity War Trailer

Disappointingly, this is only the second post to live up to my blog's claim that most of these posts will be about superheroes.

So, yesterday, the Avengers: Infinity War trailer was released. The movie marks the third Avengers movie (I know, it probably feels like there have been fifty). It's a pretty significant milestone because, unlike the other movies, which have been planned maybe two to three years in advance at most, we've known about Infinity War for five. (Six by the time it's released). Thanos (the main villain) showed up during the first (they started having two per movie after the Avengers) end credits scene and the 11 movies since have been building up to his ultimate reveal. If you look up the definition of "slow burn" in the dictionary, Marvel Studios Creative Director Kevin Feige is there, smiling at you.

I don't think we often appreciate enough just what an outstanding cultural phenomenon the Marvel Cinematic Universe is. It has, thus far, spawned 17 movies (with 7 confirmed to be on the way) and 11 TV series. It's utterly unmatched in its scope by every possible metric.  It's the first franchise of its kind, where multiple series are strung together by a central overarching thread. The fact that the universe is made of incredibly distinct heroes, each with their own specific genre, makes it so that viewers won't feel it's become stale (and despite several complaints to the contrary, it hasn't, or else the Infinity War trailer wouldn't have become the most viewed trailer of all time just after 24 hours.) It enables the studio to release upwards of three movies a year, raking in billions upon billions for Disney. And it hasn't stopped. Every year, they release a movie that trumps records set in the previous year.

This is made all the more impressive by the fact that all attempts to replicate its success have been complete failures. In 2012, the same year Avengers was released, Sony released a reboot of their Spider-Man franchise which had previously ended in the disastrous and bloated Spider-Man 3. Two years later, in 2014, they released Amazing Spider-Man 2, which killed the franchise once again. ASM2 attempted to cram in two major villains while also including a romantic subplot and trying to set up for their anticipated villain team-up: Sinister Six, which features a collaboration between the fiercest of the web-crawler's rogue gallery. This was almost the exact same issue that killed the original Spider-Man trilogy, which tried to cram Sandman, Venom, and the Green Goblin into a single film. As a consequence of this mess, two years after ASM2, it was announced that they would share the rights to Spider-Man with Disney, allowing him to be in Captain America: Civil War. Disney inhaled an attempt to replicate their success, turning Sony's disaster into their new project. Kevin Feige is the Genghis Khan of big Hollywood.

Also in 2014, Fox, staggering along with their X-Men franchise (which had gained minimal steam after the success of X-Men: First Class in 2011) released X-Men: Days of Future Past, the events of which literally reset their timeline, enabling them to start their universe from scratch - a blatant attempt to, like Sony, replicate the success of the MCU. While Fox hasn't collapsed to the extent Sony did, its Avengers counterpart (the main X-Men storyline) took a big hit with the box office mediocrity and critical failure that was X-Men: Apocalypse. Apocalypse suffered from almost the exact same issues as the two fatal Spider-Man movies: Bloat. It introduced an enormous cast of fantastic, but far too weighty characters, including Storm, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, and Angel, while also attempting to balance the issues of their original cast as well as the enormous task that is the Apocalypse storyline. Oh, and they tried to set up the Dark Phoenix saga, an infamous and enormous storyline that they attempted to tack on to the end of their already overstuffed plot. And while Deadpool and Logan were both large successes, they're undermined by the failure of Apocalypse as well as Fox's struggle to get any of their other projects off of the ground, like Channing Tatum's Gambit, which was supposed to have been released in October of 2017. (Not to mention the fact that Fox had originally been extremely resistant to producing Deadpool.)

Then there's DC. It started off alright with Man of Steel, which while not receiving mass acclaim, didn't do poorly enough to kill the universe before it even got off the ground. But it was quickly followed by Batman V. Superman and Suicide Squad, which suffered from, you guessed it: Bloat. Suicide Squad tried introducing this massive cast of villains and didn't even attempt at any sort of characterization. Batman V. Superman revolved around a Superman we had yet to care about fighting a Batman we had just met. Oh, and Wonder Woman was there? For some reason? It was all a poorly concealed attempt to set up for a Justice League which ended up being BLOATED.

(Wonder Woman was good, though).

It's not just superheroes either. Men In Black is reportedly creating a universe with 21 Jump Street. I've heard rumblings of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers extended universe. Yeah. Both of them. Together. There's also the Dark Universe, which is supposed to be the overarching universe between Tom Cruise's new mummy movie, Luke Evans' Dracula, and upcoming Frankenstein movies. Finally, there's also the giant monster universe, (composed of kaiju like Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Rodan, Mothra, as well as King Kong) which I'm personally really excited for. Not because I think the story is going to be good (Kong: Skull Island had such a shallow plot it barely reached my ankles) but because I'm a sucker for giant CGI animals.

The only attempt at another cinematic universe that has gotten off to a decent start besides Marvel is the Star Wars Universe, which is also the only other universe run by Disney.

(Sidenote, but I really hope we end up having a Disney Princess team-up, because that would be awesome. Maybe that could be the endgame for all these pointless live-action reboots of classic Disney movies.)

Star Wars was originally a strict series, following the story of the Skywalker family. While it had always been a much more expansive universe than the six movies we knew and loved, with hundreds of books and the critically acclaimed Clone Wars tv series, in terms of movies, it was strictly Skywalker. That changed with the release of Rogue One in 2016, which saw them follow the adventures of Jyn Erso. Rogue One was a critical and box office success and bodes well for the upcoming Han Solo and Obi-Wan standalone films, as well as director Rian Johnson's upcoming non-Skywalker trilogy. To be fair, Star Wars does have several factors working in its favor. It relied heavily on the world-renowned reputation of the Star Wars saga. But Rogue One was a sizable ensemble we had never seen before and they made it work because they took the time to work out each character and integrate them into the plot. It also helped that the movie was constantly trying to set up for another movie.

So why does it look like they'll succeed? And why is Marvel succeeding, where all others have failed so miserably? Well, to start let's look at what appears to be a pretty common thread: Bloat. Marvel doesn't suffer from that at all because their entire process has been an extremely slow-burn. They released five movies and waited four years before releasing their team-up film. This allowed each of their major team members: Thor, Captain America, Hulk, and Iron Man, to become established characters among the public before being thrown together. Justice League, although it was also released four years after Man of Steel, came before any movies for Aquaman, Cyborg, and Flash. Not to mention Batman and Wonder Woman were introduced in a team-up movie.

Marvel also makes sure their brand never goes stale. One minute they're releasing a standard classic superhero film like Iron Man then they flip it around on you with a political espionage like Captain America: Winter Soldier, THEN they'll hit you with a space western like Guardians of the Galaxy. And X-Men is at their best when they're doing the same, releasing weird comedies like Deadpool alongside old westerns like Logan. I've said this before and I won't stop saying it, superhero movies are at their best when they're not superhero movies at all, but genre films about superheroes.

In any case, check out Avengers: Infinity War, because it is the result of some remarkable entrepreneurship.