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Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase Three and BEYOOOOONND


Bazza

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But Iron Man and Iron Man II started the pattern of tying elements of the individual films into a bigger continuity, as all the Marvel Studios films have to a lesser or greater extent. IMHO that doesn't detract from them being good self-contained stories. And this is just a continuation of the Marvel Comics experience. Since the 1960s the Marvel characters have crossed over, interacted with each other, and developments from one series have spilled over into others.

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Iron Man did fine without needing to be part of a bigger story arc.  So did Iron Man 2.  Would they make any less money without intentionally tying every film together like a big comic book Summertime "special event" with collectors item alternate foil covers?  I guess we'll never know.

 

It's a vicious cycle.  If you look at the list of top-20 box office grosses to date, exactly three of them are not franchise movies, and one of those is only because Avatar 2 isn't out yet.  You're a studio exec, do you take the 10% chance that you have the next Titanic or Frozen?  Or do you greenlight Spider-Man 7 instead? 

 

Note that Iron Man and Iron Man 2 are not on that list, but Iron Man 3 is.

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Wow, I wonder sometimes how on earth I can type something and be so misunderstood.

 

Let me see if I can say this more clearly.

 

Marvel at present is making movies that all tie together into a larger, continuous story: all the films after Iron Man all led into Avengers, which led into SHIELD, which led into Cap 2, which led into SHIELD, all of which is leading into the Infinity Gauntlet.  Get it?  Its one large storyline, related and connected.  Each one segues into and part of the story connects to the others.  All one continuous connected story.

 

But Iron Man 1 and 2 were not.  Those were set alone stories.  They weren't connected to a larger story.  They were sequels, I and II.  But not connected to The Infinity Gauntlet or how Hydra is taking over shield, etc.  Because of a fun bit at the end of Iron Man I they decided to do the Avengers, but it wasn't a deliberately related story.

 

See the difference?  Not a sequel.  One long storyline.

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All Marvel Studio films are self contained stories first and foremost. Secondarily they are part of a interrelated setting. e.g.: Avengers 2 was written with only "requirement" to have seen Avengers 1. I would it would be similar with other title's sequels. The in-universe easter eggs are done afterwards, and not overly done to distract from the film, but are meant to enhance it. 

 

The end credits teaser in The Avengers with Thanos was something Joss (IIRC) put in with no intention to start the Infinity Gauntlet storyline. That was decided afterwards, presumably due to the positive reaction it received. 

 

Marvel has been able to do something fairly unique with Marvel Studios' main characters in developing them over a long period of time; spanning that development over many films and having them appear--i.e. crossover--into each others films. 

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The end credits teaser in The Avengers with Thanos was something Joss (IIRC) put in with no intention to start the Infinity Gauntlet storyline. That was decided afterwards, presumably due to the positive reaction it received. 

 

 

No, by that point they'd already started up the storyine; two of the gems had already been introduced (cosmic cube and the gem used for the portal).

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No, by that point they'd already started up the storyine; two of the gems had already been introduced (cosmic cube and the gem used for the portal).

They had the intention starting in Iron man 1, with the introduction of Nick Jackson at the end credits. The second Marvel film they made was The Hulk, which used elements which would eventually tie in with Captain America (the super soldier serum which gave us a preview of Caps abilities) then Tony Stark shows up at the end of Hulk to tie it in with Iron Man.

 

With Iron Man 2, Coulson mentions he has something to take care of, then they show Mjolnir at the end, tying it in to Thor.

 

All this time they are establishing that all these characters exist in the same universe and what happens in one movie can affect the situation in another.

 

Once wengot them all together in Avengers, they introduced a continuing storyline. I think this was the plan from day 1. I just think they had no idea exactly how well this idea would resonate with moviegoers.

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- Cap 1 was released in 2011

- Kevin Feige publicly confirms Tesseract is Space Stone in 2013. http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/111206-kevin-feige-lays-down-details-on-marvels-cinematic-infinity-gems

 

Some time between those two date Marvel decided the Tesseract was the Space Infinity Stone.

 

And Avengers 1 was released in 2012.

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- Cap 1 was released in 2011

- Kevin Feige publicly confirms Tesseract is Space Stone in 2013. http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/111206-kevin-feige-lays-down-details-on-marvels-cinematic-infinity-gems

 

Some time between those two date Marvel decided the Tesseract was the Space Infinity Stone.

 

And Avengers 1 was released in 2012.

That sounds reasonable. They were probably still trying to figure out how they were going to introduce all the elements, then decided to turn the Tesseract into an Infinity Gem for convenience sake.

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Well, even if Marvel didn't have a definitive plan for all of Phase One during the production of Iron Man, they sure made it look like they did by putting in the post-credits bit. Sam Jackson isn't given a line that includes "Avengers initiative," if there isn't some sort of plan for the movies to converge in an Avengers movie/franchise. The cross-film tie-ins were minimal at first, sure, but it was all still part of a master plan, vague as it may have been in the beginning.

 

Just the same, I don't think you need to have seen the films from one franchse to make sense of or enjoy the others. They are certainly standalone within their own franchises, regardless of how intimately they may also happen to tie in with the broader cinematic multiverse. The only area where tying in to the bigger story got them in trouble, I think, was with the Agents of SHIELD tv show and how it was basically just treading water until Winter Soldier came out, after which the show began in earnest. Hopefully they'll be more careful about that sort of thing in the future.

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I the MCU will continue indefinitely, unless/until there's a trilogy of flops, which seems somewhat unlikely. The Wong FEI Hong series is the longest film series ever, at around 90 total films over a period of decades. I could see the MCU approaching a total like that, particularly if more marvel IP reverts to their control.

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Well, even if Marvel didn't have a definitive plan for all of Phase One during the production of Iron Man, they sure made it look like they did by putting in the post-credits bit. Sam Jackson isn't given a line that includes "Avengers initiative," if there isn't some sort of plan for the movies to converge in an Avengers movie/franchise. The cross-film tie-ins were minimal at first, sure, but it was all still part of a master plan, vague as it may have been in the beginning.

 

Less a plan, more a gamble. Remember that Marvel Studios was still new and had taken on debt to finance their first film. They were an unknown quantity, Sure they had a plan that an Avengers film could be possible, but they had no idea if it was probable. Hence the inclusion of Nick Fury as an end credits scene was "wouldn't it be nice". IIRC Sam Jackson was asked to come in and read for the scene as he has been the model for the Ultimates character and had some kind of agreement with Marvel in exchange for permission that if the character made it to film he would play him or something. 

 

('ve read a lot and not sure i can find the article)

 

In 2005 it put up as collateral the film rights to characters it still controlled, such as Captain America and Nick Fury, and got $525 million in financing from Merrill Lynch. Arad, who had doubts about the strategy, resigned the following year. Feige was named studio chief in 2007. He was 33 years old, and he was in charge of Hollywood’s first major independent movie studio since DreamWorks.  ( From:  The Pow! Bang! Bam! Plan to Save Marvel,Starring B-List Heroes )

 

 

 

 

1. You don't start a new film studio and take that kind of debt with that kind of collateral without a plan. 

2. It is a entirely different thing to execute that plan. Remember the first Iron Man film barely had a script with the actor's ad-libbing most scenes as they went. They got RDJ because he was cheap. 

3. Iron Man's end credits scene was a gambit, and from the present seems to be a harbinger of what was to come. At the time of course, it was an epilogue to a film the studio hoped would be a success to help pay of the debt. 

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Feige had conceived of the linked MCU around the time of the formation of Marvel Studios, if not earlier. The only question was whether it would even be possible--things like signing SLJ to a nine-picture deal were unprecedented, and of course everything hinged on how well the first few movies were received.

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