This is not a spoiler story, but rather how Avengers: Endgame beat the odds.
Where we’ve arrived feels almost inevitable. Of course this is what superheroes should be! But this string of hits is completely ridiculous. It shouldn’t have been possible.
Who could have?
We’re talking about a series of 21 comic book movies released over just 11 years. It’s the most successful film series of all time, with DOUBLE the worldwide earnings of the Star Wars saga. It took James Bond 50 years to release 24 movies.
And those money stats don’t count Endgame.
What Marvel has perfected is making its series of movies so perfectly ‘comic book’ in how they’ve been put together. No, not every movie is perfect. It’s the way they’ve built connections, seeded plot points for future use, and tipped the hat to superfans while making most movies easy for any viewer to dive into whether they know the backstories or not.
Did they know right back at the beginning it would all become known to be a unified series of films that would culminate in a battle for the entire universe against Thanos? The beginnings of the ‘Infinity Saga’ as we now know it was seeded from Captain America onward, but it wasn’t overt. They could walk away from that angle if they’d wanted to. It was classic comic book setup work.
Ripped from the pages.
But as the films succeeded, they could start to foreground that idea more and more over time, until we all realised everything was connected to the Infinity Stones and that one day it would be an all-out war to control them.
Before all this, superhero movies were such a mixed bag of middling to average efforts. Some were great. But every time someone tried to create a series they steadily lost the plot. By the sequel or, maybe, a third film, they were garbage.
(Let’s not bring Christopher Nolan Batman into this. It lives in its own weird, wonderful world where Heath Ledger’s perfect Joker shook the world.)
The villain we deserved.
But look at it this way. Until 15 years ago, Marvel was all about selling licenses to movie studios and letting them ruin great comic books. Rinse. Repeat. Not very risky, collect free cash.
In 2005, Marvel changed course and decided to take control of its own cinematic destiny. It secured US$525 million to self-finance movies based on some key properties it still kept its own control over. Its biggest comics, Spider-Man and X-Men, were controlled by other studios so they went to their next tier of heroes, The Avengers.
So three years later, in 2008, we got Robert Downey Jr roll up for the role we only realised he was born to play once he’d played it.
He is Iron Man.
We saw the start of Marvel movies that didn’t deliver boring origin stories. Movies that had heart, gave heroes cool stories, gave smart directors and writers room to play with ideas, and stellar casting to bring these to life. And always deeply dedicated to bringing the source material to life.
It all worked. After the first Avengers movie, no movie in the series has made less than half a billion in worldwide bank. Marvel found its formula.
And just to prove Marvel found a truly secret sauce, DC Comics was kind enough to make a bunch of ham-fisted efforts along the way in search of its own cinematic universe. We can be charitable and say they’re starting to find their rhythm, slowly, but Justice League was quite the turd, so we’re a long way from saying DC has cracked the code too.
He said it.
Avengers: Endgame was inconceivable 10 years ago. It’s a miracle of smart movie making and faith in source material. And in using comic book smarts to build a cinematic comic book universe.
The final reviews and reactions don’t really matter in the end. The fact it exists is astounding.
And let’s just say someone does make another series of 20+ movies that all hang together loosely-but-closely to arrive at one blockbuster mega-movie that brings a sweeping serial to a grand conclusion. It will only exist because Marvel proved it could be done.
Show me the money!
But the odds that’ll ever be so successfully done again? That even Marvel itself would feel like its post-Thanos MCU could pursue another 10-year cycle of background menace that leads to something akin to Endgame? It’s a long shot. But not as long as it was ten years ago…
If there’s ever another Endgame, it will only be because Endgame happened. But, in all likelihood, there will never be anything like it ever again.
Thanks, Stan.