Next year will mark the tenth anniversary of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Hollywood has tried to hard to mimic the comic book studio’s interconnected franchise building, but none have succeeded in matching them. Universal is already bailing out of Dark Universe following the disastrous “The Mummy” this summer. The disappointing results of “Justice League” are seeing Warner Bros. and DC Films shake up their executive team. Meanwhile, Sony has simply enlisted Marvel’s help in revitalizing Spider-Man. So, why is everyone (Sony aside) getting this wrong?
Vanity Fair posed the question to Marvel’s Kevin Feige, and while he doesn’t trash any of his competitors (in fact, he’s gone out of his way to say in the past to say that the success of other franchises creates a better environment for Marvel to thrive) his common sense approach is something Hollywood would be well to heed.
“The only advice, and I’ve sort of said this already today, is don’t worry about the universe,” he said. “Worry about the movie. We never set out to build a universe. We set out to make a great Iron Man movie, a Hulk movie, a Thor movie, a movie, and then be able to do what, at the time, nobody else was doing: put them together. Bring that experience that hardcore comic readers have had for decades of Spider-Man swinging into the Fantastic Four headquarters, or for Hulk to suddenly come rampaging through the pages of an Iron Man comic. We thought it would be fun for filmgoers to get that same—on a much bigger canvas—rush, because there is something just inherently great about that: seeing characters’ worlds collide with one another.”
“That’s what is so amazing every day on the set of ‘Infinity War.’ These characters have no business being in the same room together. It’s ridiculous,” Feige continued. “Everyone within Marvel Studios just knows the individual movie trumps the overall picture. If there’s a better idea for a movie — if we were going to plant a seed in this movie that was going to be awesome and pay off three movies later, but that seed is not working and that seed is screwing up the movie, goodbye. We’ll do something else later. Make that movie work. The notion of sitting down going, ‘Let’s build a cinematic universe,’ might be a little off. ‘Let’s sit down and make a great movie and if people are interested in that, there are ways and ideas to tie them together going forward.’ “
It sounds so simple, yet it’s somewhat amazing how many studios are desperate to put the cart in front of the horse. One could argue DC themselves shot themselves by trying to race to “Justice League,” rather than organically building toward the movie and earning that payoff.
Thoughts about Feige’s advice? Hit up the comments section. Marvel’s next movie, “Black Panther,” opens on February 16, 2018.