The Marvel Cinematic Universe has come a long way in the last decade, expanding into one of the most successful franchises of all time. While superhero movies have become a massive part of the cinematic landscape, Iron Man was a risk back in 2008 and building a massic connected universe was a massive gamble. Luckily for Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, that gamble paid off and became the MCU that we know and love today.
During the junket for next week’s Ant-Man And The Wasp, io9 asked Feige which films out of the twenty (!!!) he considers the most gratifying. While he acknowledged how far that the universe has come, he was quick to cite that Phase One (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, and The Avengers) is still the high point for him.
“Gosh, I mean almost all of them. Iron Man being an independent movie, that was our first one [which] people weren’t expecting. Thor and [Captain America: The First Avenger], both two big swings of characters that, in hindsight, many people didn’t know. At first blush, ‘Oh he’s a Norse god with a hammer,’ and the other one is a full World War II movie.’ Then even [the first] Avengers—the notion of putting all these people together before their movies had come out.”
While the latest run of Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, and Avengers: Infinity War has shown how far they can take the genre creatively, it’s true that there would be no MCU without that initial run. It all started with just a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist and a dream.
(Via io9)