By now, people are getting pretty tired of the “Are Marvel movies cinema?” debate sparked by Martin Scorsese. Arguing over whether the entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are films or amusement park rides seems pretty redundant. However moviegoers feel about the quality of the films, it’s impossible to deny the huge impact that Marvel’s movies have had on Hollywood’s output over the past decade.
Blockbusters aren’t a hugely respected art, but they do dictate a lot of modern culture and Marvel has played a huge hand in this since 2008. The first major milestone for the MCU was its first outing on the big screen, Iron Man, while the second was 2012’s The Avengers, a game-changing cinematic crossover event that introduced us to the bigger picture. Here are five ways that Iron Man changed blockbuster cinema, and five ways The Avengers did.
Iron Man Kickstarted A Game-Changing Juggernaut
2008’s Iron Man didn’t seem like it was setting up a riveting 23-part saga that millions of people would eagerly follow through two and later three movies a year. Jon Favreau has said that when he made Iron Man, he wasn’t thinking too much about setting up a wider universe (a mistake made by a lot of the less successful universe-builders that followed); he just focused on making a good movie, and he succeeded.
This focus on making a solid movie instead of an Easter egg-ridden prologue is why it turned out to be strong enough to support a weight that later couldn’t be held by Man of Steel or, to a much more severe extent, 2017’s The Mummy.
The Avengers Changed The Way Franchises Work
The Avengers was not the first movie to pull characters from a handful of other movies into a crossover – that had already been done in movies ranging from Freddy vs. Jason to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein – but it had never been done so deliberately and strategically before Marvel came along.
Joss Whedon’s movie brought together all of Phase 1’s movies to establish a larger franchise filled with sub-franchises. It changed the way money could be drained from people’s wallets and, consequently, it changed the way movie franchises work. Now, every franchise from Fast & Furious to The Conjuring is building an interconnected universe.
Iron Man Made Post-Credits Scenes The Norm
Iron Man wasn’t the first movie with a scene after the credits, but its use of the post-credits scene has been so effective that it’s made mid-credits and post-credits scenes the norm in big Hollywood movies.
These scenes have been used to tease or blatantly set up sequels, prequels, and spin-offs in every Marvel movie since, and also in such imitators as Justice League, Kong: Skull Island, and Venom.
The Avengers Cemented The Superhero Genre’s Stranglehold On Hollywood
The superhero movie craze has been compared to the western movie craze in that there are tons of superhero movies getting made, only a handful of them will stand the test of time, and the genre will eventually go out of fashion.
Superhero movies weren’t always popular. They were considered risky until the triple whammy of Blade, X-Men, and Spider-Man awakened the beast and superhero films started to catch on. But superheroes didn’t really set the moviegoing world on fire until the Avengers assembled on-screen.
Iron Man Brought Humor To The Action Genre
As film comedy has declined in quality in the past decade, moviegoers have been increasingly turning to action blockbusters like Deadpool, Shazam!, and the recent Jumanji movies for laughs as well as thrills.
Iron Man started this trend with Robert Downey, Jr. improvising jokes on the set and Jon Favreau bringing his comic sensibility honed on Swingers and Elf to the table.
The Avengers Was Helmed By A Director With No Blockbuster Experience
Joss Whedon didn’t have any experience directing big-budget blockbusters when he helmed The Avengers. Although he was a television veteran with years of experience juggling lots of characters, and it certainly shows, his filmmaking experience was lacking. He’d only directed one movie, the mid-budgeted Serenity, and it wasn’t a box office success. However, Whedon more than made up for what he lacked in blockbuster experience with the know-how and creativity to make The Avengers great.
Marvel has continued hiring directors based on this criteria (James Gunn, Taika Waititi, Cate Shortland) and other Hollywood studios have followed suit with mixed results: the good (Travis Knight’s Bumblebee), the bad (Christian Rivers’ Mortal Engines), and the ugly (Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi).
Iron Man Made Robert Downey, Jr. One Of The World’s Biggest Stars
Robert Downey, Jr. was the perfect actor to bring Tony Stark to life, but at the time, he was considered to be a risky choice for a potential franchise lead – especially a franchise with this much forward planning relying on it. Marvel was reportedly considering Tom Cruise over Downey as they felt that casting Downey would be too risky.
A few years later, he could demand $50 million just to show up in a movie. He’s since anchored a couple more franchises and a few standalone movies, and he has plenty more projects on the horizon as his Marvel commitments have come to an end.
The Avengers Began The Road To Toppling Avatar
With its IMAX and 3D projections, Avatar was an expensive movie to see. Tickets to see it cost a lot more than the average movie ticket, but it was a mesmerizing movie (if a little derivative) that demanded to be seen on the big screen, so people went anyway.
This is how it became, by far, the highest grossing movie of all time. A special kind of movie was needed to topple Avatar as the box office champ, and The Avengers began the road to that movie (Endgame).
Iron Man Made A Hit Out Of A Little-Known Property
Since Iron Man is now and forever will be one of the most popular superheroes ever created, it’s hard to remember a time when the character was considered to be obscure. But when Tony Stark first arrived on the big screen, he was a relatively obscure character.
An Iron Man movie wasn’t a sure-fire hit like a Batman movie or a Spider-Man movie, and yet, it was a huge success. Any producer with the film rights to an obscure intellectual property came out of the woodwork with a snappy pitch.
The Avengers Assembled Earth’s Mightiest Heroes And Made It Work
It can be easy to forget just how big a risk The Avengers was when it was first released, since it went on to become a record-smashing behemoth, but bringing together characters from wildly different worlds (from World War II hero Steve Rogers to Norse god Thor; billionaire playboy Tony Stark to international super-spy Natasha Romanoff) was a huge gamble.
And Joss Whedon’s tight script miraculously made it work. Earth’s mightiest heroes united on the big screen and it felt like they all belonged in Marvel’s elevated reality. This is the key to building a huge universe; a universe now plausibly occupied by disparate characters ranging from Doctor Strange to Captain Marvel to Korg.