One reason why the Marvel movies have really taken out a lot of the depth that is potentially there in superhero cinema-- they all, by and large, abandon the idea of the secret identity, one of the most interesting aspects of the genre.
Secret identities are a cornerstone of superhero narratives across the board, and help tie the characters to noir, spy and thriller genres. They put their heroes into the shadows, offer greater dramatic weight and counterbalance their literal superpowers.
It also gives more narrative purpose to characters in their orbit-- reporters and detectives tasked with finding out who the superhero is. It offers a lot of options for storytelling-- romcom meet cute (Superman), police procedural (Batman), political (X Men).
Even Spider-Man has to contend with J. Jonas Jameson loudly attacking him in the same paper he sells pictures to. It's a concept you can spin in so many ways. And some reporter characters, like Daredevil's Ben Urich, were born to live in film noir.
Tony Stark saying "I am Iron Man" is a 180 from that tradition. All of the major Avengers live without secret identities. They have no secrets, or they're downplayed the more they're put into a procedural mode with official government jobs.
Even Black Panther, agreed upon as probably the best of the Marvel movies, is about a guy whose superhero identity is not a secret, but a proud public tradition. The MCU is by and large about heroes living in public. Which is a concept even comics has never really figured out.
What it boils down to is they become not superheroes as metaphor for the hidden, the private, the ostracized outsider, but superheroes as celebrities, as stars, as royalty. It's no longer noir, but white telephone movies of conspicuous consumption and wish fulfilment.
Stories that thrive on imagination tend to work beat when you put it in the shadows, which encourage imagination. It's the space of urban legends, where anything can be possible. The same way Joseph Campbell observed Star Wars thrived in uncharted space. It's a frontier.
When I was little one reason I loved Ninja Turtles was because there was no reason I couldn't imagine it was all true. I grew up with stories of alligators living in the sewers. Why not Turtles, and ninjas? It flew past my suspension of disbelief and did barrel rolls.
All the superhero stories that have heroes as urban legends, supposed hoaxes, or followed as weird local news items tap into this. And it's easier to sell "maybe they're real!" if you don't have them strut with their faces out all the time. It shatters the illusion.
And this at a time when the Internet has made anonymity, the cornerstone of so much social media and activism, more or less universal as an experience. That's why even Winter Soldier rings hollow-- it parades 70s paranoia as a decoration, but lacks a Deep Throat.
And by the by, it's funny to me that we've gotten to this point with all these Marvel heroes downplaying the idea of secret identities, but we've never had a proper version of the one group that was sort of all about this celebrity hero effect-- the Fantastic Four.
The Fantastic Four got their powers on a NASA style rocket test, and they're very much modeled after the early Gemini/Mercury era astronauts. Clean cut, All American exemplars of national character, their pictures in Time and Life magazine. Then, they come back strange. Changed.
There's a richness you could play with at the heart of the split between public and private life in the Kennedy era there. The same thing Manchurian Candidate gets at. The paranoia that sets in before you're even brainwashed by enemy agents just from suffocating attention.
The question is, especially after all the failed attempts before, how will the MCU handle this when the time comes? Can they, even?
