A further point about prices: Because of the expense, people are not willing to take a chance on the unknown. Superheroes are a known quantity: you know they’ll face a dangerous threat to create mass destruction leading to a massive battle scene (usually with a direct fight between heroes and the Big Bad). As a known quantity, people will go to see it.
The same applies to remakes and sequels. People know what they’re getting, so if the movie is even slightly entertaining, they’ll be happy to see it in a theater.
Surely, Spider-Man is at least as iconic as Captain America?
But to say that the Marvel movies are successful because of A-list actors is to put the cart before the horse. Sure, Robert Downey Jr. and the three Chrises and Scarlett Johansson are A-list actors now. But at the time their first Marvel movies were made, very few people knew the Chrises, and Downey was regarded as a has-been, and Johansson was just showing up on people’s radars. They’re A-list because the Marvel movies were good, not the other way around. Or to look at the other side, while the DC movies aren’t doing as well overall, everyone agrees that the best performance in them is Gal Gadot, and nobody at all had ever heard of her before she started playing Wonder Woman.
Neither of them earned back their production budget with their domestic gross: The first earned $60 million domestic on a $66 million budget, and the second earned $75 million domestic on an $85 million budget. That’s flop city.
The new one with the sheriff from Stranger Things was a MASSIVE flop, earning $22 million domestic on a $50 million budget.
I’ll grant you the first two were not MASSIVE flops, but they were not successful. The most compelling evidence to that effect was that both Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman were interested in making the third movie, but the backers went another way because the first two films weren’t successful.
Scarlett Johansson was solidly A-list before she joined the MCU, but otherwise, agreed. I guess maybe Samuel L. Jackson was also A-list? Even then, he was more of a secondary character tying everything together than a star of any particular MCU movie.
Through the years, comic book companies managed to acquire a couple of tricks to increase sales: the cross-over, for starters, when two characters teamed up (or more probably, fought each other) and the big multi-issue events that affected almost every series and helped sell the idea of a shared continuity.
Marvel, or better said, Kevin Feige, managed to apply said tricks to the big screen. And did so with an iron hand. He even fired directors who weren’t willing to toe the line. Then Warner made a half-hearted directionless attempt at it, and it wasn’t a complete disaster, but it was a more half-baked attempt at building the brand, and failed.
Add to that the concpet of the Death of the Big Movie Star. In the 20th century people went to see movies based on who the actors were, with occasionally the big draw being the director. You weren’t going to pick an unknown Aussie actor and have him lead your big budget blockbuster, so “Marvel-style” contracts with actors signing for 10 movies, not being allowed to take other big projects or meaningfully alter their appearance for more than a decade weren’t possible until recently.
Marvel somehow managed to take 2 dimensional characters from the comics and turn them into real people…and I mean that literally and figuratively. Add in some quality acting, witty dialog, excellent CGI, and a plot most folks can get behind and you have a recipe for success.
It’s not CGI that’s the big change. Sure, you could never have done Endgame without it, but you can do a good Captain America story just using practical effects. There’s not much in First Avenger or Winter Soldier that couldn’t have been done without CGI.
The reason the comic book movies got good now, is that comics got good in the 80s. The kids who were reading comics in the 60s grew up to make campy movie versions of the campy comics they remembered from childhood. The kids who read comics in the 80s and 90s grew up to make the MCU. This was the era where comics really started to get into long-form storytelling, with stories that lasted across multiple issues. They were being written towards an older audience and including more adult themes. These were stories that could adapted almost as-is, instead of having to cobble together a two-hour plot from an endless collection of six page stories.
The MCU is the filmic equivalent of McDonald’s, people know more or less what they’re getting and they like that. Even “outliers” like Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor Ragnarok feel like part of the house “style.”
And no way is Captain America more well-known than Spider-Man (or even Venom), Wolverine and the Fantastic Four. There’s a reason all of them were snatched up by competing studios well before MCU hit mainstream.
Spider-Man is almost certainly better known but I feel like, growing up, I saw a fair amount of Captain America in free promotional comics and posters about bus safety, oral hygiene and what to do in case of fire. He had the wholesome nature to explain to us kids how to properly wear rollerskates that you didn’t get from a claw-wielding maniac or “evil Spider-Man”.
Actually, some of us comic book fans are in our 50’s now.
I think there are a number of factors at work, and you can’t attribute just one to the success/failure of movies
CGI - there’s no question effects have gotten better. While you can still have a superhero flop with great effects - this iconic clip that ends with Superman being shot in the eyeball is awesome, fantastic, spectacular… and not enough to carry an entire movie. But effects of this caliber really do add to the movie experience and are required to really do most “comic book” style stories. Practical effects are still required (in fact, most CGI scenes also incorporate practical effects) but CGI allows things that are simply impossible in live action films otherwise.
Good writing. Marvel has decades of storylines to work with, and decades of fan commentary on what did and did not work. They clearly have hired some really good writers/editors to distill these down into movie scripts, including knowing when to stay true to the source material and when to deviate because of the nature of the live-action motion picture medium.
Accessible writing. There are a truly awesome number of “Easter eggs”, in-jokes, and references in every Marvel movie (I’ve been a fan since the early 70’s and I don’t get them all, there are that many) BUT - and this is hugely important - you don’t have to know any of that stuff to follow the storyline and enjoy the movie. You don’t actually have to see the movies (aside from Endgame) in any particular order to follow the story. I know this because I have taken people who are NOT fans and who have seen only one or two or even none of these movies to see just one and they’ve had a good time. Just want to see Thor movies? Go ahead - you don’t have to watch any of the others to enjoy them. Rinse and repeat for the rest of them (other than Endgame, and even that seems to be accessible to a crapload of casual watchers). You can jump in almost anywhere and get your bearings, enjoying the story happening on the screen at that moment in time.
Good actors. Not necessarily big stars at the time they were hired (though some were), although some of them are riding the Marvel movies to a bigger and better career, but people who can actually act the part and make us believe in unbelievable situations.
Focus on the story. By this I mean they’re interested in telling the story and thus will change certain details to do that better, or not worry about details that aren’t as important. This means, at times, unusual casting choices - it turns out Heimdall’s skin color isn’t as important as Idris Elba’s ability to make us believe in Heimdall as a character. You see this even more in the Netflix Marvel series where secondary characters undergo race/ethnicity changes. Costumes don’t look the same on the big screen as in the comic books because what looks OK on paper looks ridiculous in real life, so costumes are altered, or maybe just aren’t as important or as emphasized. Are Spiderman’s web-shooters a mechanical device he straps on or a biological alteration? I’m not sure that matters as much as the fact he has web-shooters and how he uses them.
A good balance between drama and comedy. One of the problems the DC franchise has had is how dark, dark, grimdark it all became. That’s partly because of the focus on Batman, who tends that way to begin with, but it even crept into the Superman movies. To some extent, this is a literal truth - dark scenery, dark scenes, dark costumes, dark tones… Wonder Woman has some flaws, but I think one of the reasons it did well was because some of the pervading darkness was relieved: you had many scenes brilliantly lit, people wore colors other than just black, there was a bit of humor here and there… The Marvel movies certainly have their darkness, but every movie also has a decent dose of comedy to relieve some of the tension.
Now, all of the above is a dance between too much and too little. Clearly, you had some very good, insightful people at the helm of the overall MCU. While Stan Lee probably had less direct effect than some think, he was in the comic book/superhero business for something like 70 years AND was quite successful at it, I can’t help but think some of what led to the Marvel comic book empire success also helped with the MCU success. That’s a LOT of institutional knowledge in one head. The fact that Lee was not entirely in control was also a very good thing - people like Kevin Feige were allowed to make some changes that improved the overall MCU from what it might otherwise have been.
There have been plenty of past flops in Marvel history, and a bunch of movies that while successful were not the massive blockbusters of the MCU (Fantastic Four iterations, X-men, etc.) I think Marvel learned a lot from those prior efforts and were able to put those lessons to good use in the MCU so characters like Iron Man and Thor and Doctor Strange were brought into the mainstream without the baggage of prior failed attempts (or even somewhat successful attempts) haunting them.
I don’t think its impossible for DC to replicate some of this - their TV offerings, in many ways, have done so. I think Arrow got too dark for its own good, and the earlier Smallville concentrated a bit too much on melodrama, but the* Flash, Supergirl,* and Legends of Tomorrow also balance light/dark, drama/humor, and incorporate decent effects, decent writing, and decent acting for a better result than some prior DC movie attempts.
It’s not limited to just DC and Marvel - last night I saw Hobbs and Shaw, which is part of the Fast and Furious universe. I have never seen even one of the other FFU movies, but I was able to follow the story/plot, enjoy the humor, get involved with the drama, and I certainly enjoyed the special effects/fight scenes despite the many many MANY violations of the laws of physics. I didn’t *need *to see the other movies (although it was clear there were many references to them and perhaps seeing them would have added to the enjoyment). It’s clear why there have been so many installments in that franchise. You could say the same about the Terminator franchise, although I think deteriorating writing/plotting quality and a bit too much grimdark made it less financially successful long term.
So, while currently the MCU seems at the top of the game there are other people doing equally good work, for much the same reasons.
I think there’s been a groundswell in acceptance of “geek” culture in the past 10 years or so, in that stuff that was considered seriously geeky and worthy of derision back in the 80s/90s is now mainstream, including comics, science fiction, animation, etc…
So while we’ve had successful big-budget superhero movies with well-known actors and directors for a long time now- the various *Batman *franchises (Keaton/Kilmer/Clooney, Bale) come to mind, as do the earlier *Superman *films and the early 2000s *Spiderman *films, what we haven’t had was a public that was willing to branch out beyond the “big 3” (Batman, Superman, Spiderman) and be willing to embrace second-tier superheroes like Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk and Captain America. Those films paved the way for even more exploration of the MCU and some really obscure superheroes like the Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, and some of the other Avengers like Hawkeye.
I’m pretty convinced that this isn’t due to some sort of cinematic legerdemain on the part of the MCU directors and producers, but rather that circumstances among the movie-going public have changed such that a Thor movie would actually be successful.
Actually, I think it is because the movies are written intelligently. Aside from the (far too many) inaccuracies and logic gaps, all in all they are well written movies, that stand up to repeated viewing. The characters behave like real people would.
Captain America: Civil War outperformed every Thor movie, and Iron Man film except the 3rd one. Winter Soldier outperformed ever Thor movie except Ragnarok.
Marvel took 2D comic characters from the 50’s and 60’s and in the 70’s and 80’s evolved them into much more interesting and 3D characters in the comics themselves. They started exploring “serious” topics - as an example the Iron Man storyline “Demon in the Bottle” dealt with Tony Stark going full alcoholic, hitting rock bottom, and having to dry out. That’s not such a big deal plot today, but at the time it was quite controversial, the “comics code” approval stamp was pulled from those issues, and so forth. DC, meanwhile, still largely ignored more human relationships/issues its heros had and had them fighting ridiculous, clown-costumed villains. Marvel heroes got to be more interesting, they had flaws, they struggled with mundane stuff like the rest of us even as they flew or punched through walls or whatever.
One reason I think both Lois and Clark and Smallville succeeded (yes, I know, TV rather than movies, but bear with me) was because they fleshed out Clark Kent and made him more than a physical god in long underwear and a cape. They were very different treatments of the same character (and let’s face it, one of them definitely veered into “camp” territory) but there was some interesting dimension to the character
One reason I think the most recent Fantastic Four movie crashed and burned was because the characters weren’t well written, had ridiculous or absent interactions, and in the end weren’t 3D people you cared about.
I never got any of that stuff growing up. I didn’t even know that Major Glory was even a parody (same for Valhallen) until I was nearly an adult. Heck, most of Hanna-Barbera’s bespoke superheroes were better known to me than Captain America.
I don’t even recall a Captain America cameo in the various Spider-Man, FF and X-Men cartoons.
“Demon in a Bottle” was published with a CCA stamp. You’re confusing it with the run in Spider-Man that depicted a friend of Peter’s dealing with heroin addiction, which was published eight years earlier. By the time the Iron Man story had come out, the CCA had already been amended to allow depictions of drug abuse if it was presented negatively.
I’ve also noticed that of the people who say they’re not interested in all the superhero movies right now, a lot of them say that it’s because in the end, they all just get resolved by one big punch-fest. But part of what’s made Marvel successful is that they don’t just do that. The first Guardians of the Galaxy ended with the main character challenging the villain to a dance-off, and then channeling The Power of Love. Captain America: Civil War was resolved when Black Panther chose to not punch anyone, even though he had good reason to. Both Doctor Strange and Thor: Ragnarok had the main characters figuring out how to win by losing very thoroughly. Sure, there are still punch-fests, but that’s not all there is.
A big part of their staying power is that they have moved away from being just “superhero movies” they are world war movies, heist movies, space adventures, spy thrillers, buddy cop movies, highschool drama, 90’s retro etc. Next phase they are even moving into horror. The movies star super heroes, but they are as varied as can be.
