Thread by @tenoq

I just thought I'd take a moment to pour out my feelings when it comes to the MCU. I mean, it's no secret that I'm a huge fan. Though I've never been as huge of a fan when it comes to the original comics, I've been avidly following film adaptations of Marvel heroes since Blade.

For my fellow nerds, I guess I'm more accurately described as a fan of "Marvel movies", as opposed to the blanket term "Marvel fan". Don't @ me with any comic-based canon. I'm gonna be talking exclusively within the contexts of the films from this point onward.

I've been observing the ups and downs of those adaptations, some good, some hilariously awful. The X-Men franchise has often been the butt of many jokes when it comes to Marvel movies.

That franchise began to redeem itself with First Class and gracefully handed its reins to a new set of actors and writers at the end of Logan.

(Apocalypse was kinda awful, tho)

I grew up with Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, and yes, S2 remains the best of those three. The Webb reboot was a joyride, but by that time, the MCU has established itself as a powerful, influential presence in 2012 with the first Avengers film. Its fate was set in stone.

Ah, The Avengers.

It was the first superhero movie I was genuinely giddy about. I watched that goddamn movie at least 3 times in theaters. It's the giant franchise of the generation. The youth before us had their own series, some even thriving today, but this?

This was ours.

The MCU is our Star Wars. It's our Indiana Jones. It's our 007. We didn't inherit this love from our parents the way we did for older franchises. That's one of the major reasons why it's so special.

Of course, we have our LOTR and HP franchises (both of which I love as well) but I can't bring those on the same level as the MCU. The key difference is that those franchises were built upon IPs that had found prior success in another media format.

There's hardly any room for surprises when the story had already been laid out, quite literally, in open books. The MCU merely took inspiration for its characters and the stories from the comics but the studio went and wrote a new original story. It was essentially a gamble.

Let's step back for a moment. There has been many superteams in the Marvel comics, so naturally some would be more popular than the others. Before the first Iron Man premiered, non-comic fans had never heard of the Avengers before. Seriously, only the comic fans would know this.

Prior to the MCU, the most popular Marvel superteam was the X-Men, thanks to the immensely succesful animated TV series. A real shame when it fell into production hell in later seasons, but goddamn did it peak during the Phoenix Saga.

Look beyond the American shores. As far as mainstream popularity is concerned, following closely behind the X-Men were the Fantastic Four (thanks to the movies) and only then comes some awareness of the Avengers, and only because Iron Man and The Hulk are popular on TV.

Yes, not even Cap was nearly as popular as those two. Also, let's be real - who the fuck ever heard of Guardians of the Galaxy before the movies? Only the comic book fans, and unless you're dedicated, you're not likely to have come across it.

Therein lies the real value in what Feige and Friends built.

Movie rights to X-Men had gone to Fox.
Spider-Man, Marvel's most valuable icon, was under Sony.
Ditto Fantastic Four (RIP).

The most successful things on Marvel's roster was not available to him, so the next best thing Fiege had left was Iron Man. Sure, Hulk enjoyed some popularity in the past thanks to Lou Ferrigno, so that could've worked but he took a shot with RDJ, Favreau and Mr. Stark himself.

I still remember seeing the first teaser (on a big projector screen in a classroom we hijacked for a club activity) and immediately two thoughts crossed my mind:

1. Whoa, that Iron Man CG looks GREAT
2. Goddamn, RDJ nailed Stark perfectly.

I also thought, eh, maybe this will be a good one-shot like Ang Lee's Hulk. That is, until people started yapping abt staying for the post-credits and we saw Sam Jackson with an eyepatch as the dope-ass version of Nick Fury.

That's when the fire started.
The Avengers are coming.

One movie after another, little clues and recurring bits started showing up - hinting to us that these are all connected. There's Fury, Coulson, Mjollnir, and The Tesseract. We started going through every frame of every movie to look for easter eggs, references and clues.

4 years later, we got the first event where all the little things they'd been dropping around had finally coalesced into the epic event that was The Avengers in 2012. It did everything right, and especially nailed that million-dollar shot.

You know which one I'm talking about.

From there, fans began to develop this hyper-awareness of how the film industry works. There's undying curiousity and speculation on the plot, of course, but fans were also paying close attention to the business side of the films. The metagame just got real.

Which hero are they gonna bring in next?
Who are they casting for that new hero?
Who is directing the origin story?
What's coming in 2-3 years?

Then these new generation of fans learned about one particular hero that was an Avenger in the comics.

Which brought us to the question: Will Spider-Man join the MCU?

It was through this burning question that many millenials learn about IP ownership, licensing, adaptation rights, the dynamics between owners and the people who invest huge sums of money to make films, yadayadayada

It wasn't until 2015 when news broke that Sony agreed to share Spidey with Marvel Studios. Fans worldwide rejoiced, but continued to thirst for news, updates, and crumb of information that would lead into the next MCU film.

You see, the MCU isn't special because the movies are great. A lot of them aren't, let's be honest about this. Iron Man 2 and Thor 2 were terribly dull. The Incredible Hulk was a complete mess, and Ultron was lackluster at best.

So it really wasn't that the movies themselves were THAT great, but its built itself into this long-running series that fans were able to invest in the way they would a TV series. This has never been the case for a film franchise.

The MCU is special because it successfully built emotional bonds with its fans by being inclusive (you don't have to read the comics to enjoy it), and with recurring elements and characters with the same actors. Ok, fine, Banner and Rhodes changed actors but everyone else stayed!

Across 10 years and 20 films, the MCU grew with its fans. Its latest crossover event grossed more than $2B worldwide. The actors actively engage with their fans in ways never seen before, even taking the time to be in character and show genuine appreciation for them.

It was also inclusive in its writing. Black Panther is the height of this venture. Fatherhood was a core element in Ant-Man. An eccentric director was given full creative freedom to do Ragnarok in his own flavor and style. Gosh, I can go on and on about this but you get my point.

You see, no matter how one may criticize MCU films (objectively or not), you must realize that it's more than a bunch of movies connected to each other. It has transcended its medium, given itself meaning beyond being "good movies" and it did so without leaving its fans behind.

Without intending to do so, these films have elevated its fans into more than mere consumers. They become investigative, they speculate on the writing, they create art, they find inspiration and strength to take another step forward in life.

https://twitter.com/superspicy96/status/1024764810959847424

I don't know about you, but I have never regretted every single cent I have ever spent on a movie ticket for every single one of those films. I sat and waited for every post-credit scene.

My emotions went up and down in the theaters and reading news about the films' development. No other Hollywood franchise has ever accomplished that.

Now that's really, REALLY special.