Marvel’s Avengers broke cinema

Ten years ago, the Avengers not only saved the world together for the first time, but also made film history. What as Post-credits experiment of Iron Man started, reached its peak in May 2012 in cinemas worldwide. With box office earnings of more than 1.5 billion US dollars, Marvel’s The Avengers was not only the highest grossing film of 2012, but also the third highest grossing film of all time.

Marvel and Disney impressively proved that their ambitious plan to build a film universe across different films and bring them together in a joint film worked. The first phase in the Marvel Cinematic Universe ended triumphantly and already indicated that it was only about the Beginning of global cinema dominance should act. The MCU changed the world of movies forever. Unfortunately.

Even Tom Cruise fails trying to copy Marvel

Because since then we have seen the excesses of this paradigm shift several times a year in the cinema. All small and large Film studios are desperately looking for their own film universe and thus also after the large turnover. Disney has been trying to expand the Star Wars universe for ten years, most recently making a double crash landing with Solo: A Star Wars Story and Star Wars 9: The Rise of Skywalker, and is now focusing on series at Disney+. Warner would like to expand the world of Harry Potter into the “Wizarding World”, but the Fantastic Beasts series has not thrilled critics or the box office recently.

The mummy was supposed to start the Dark Universe – Universal’s MCU clone

In retrospect, this is probably the most spectacular flop in terms of failed film universes Dark Universe by Universal Studios. A reboot of The Mummy starring Tom Cruise should kick off 2017 and the legendary movie monsters of the 30s and 40s bring it back to the present and onto the big screen once again. In preparation for the start of the film, the traditional film studio announced nothing less than the birth of a new film universe on Twitter.

In the film itself, Russell Crowe turns out to be Dr. Henry Jeckyll, who, like Nick Fury, spoke for a larger organization. In this case for “Prodigium”, whose stated goal should be to find and wipe out evil monsters. But it never came to that. Instead, Die Mummy became a non-starter, which the film studio finally around 100 million US dollars minus brought in. Just two years later, Universal announced the end of the much-announced plans.

Sony and DC want their own MCU – and they’re embarrassing themselves

It’s not just Universal that has burned its fingers over the concept of a cinematic universe, Sony is also stumbling from one disappointment to the next with its Spider-Verse. At least as far as live-action movies are concerned. It all started with the dark and gloomy Amazing Spider-Man reboot in 2012. With that Start of the new Spider-Man trilogy and the success of the Avengers in the same year, the direction for the 2014 sequel was clear: more villains for Spider-Man + more movies for the audience = more profit for Sony.

However, The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise of Electro fell through with critics and audiences alike. Sony pulled the emergency brake and brought Marvel Studios on board for future Spider-Man live-action adaptations – which thus became part of the MCU. Solely responsible, the company continues to fail with its antiheroes and villains. The Morbius post-credit scenes were supposed to be the clearest hint of an upcoming Sinister Six movie yet, and were instead captured as Worst Marvel Credits Scenes Ever to the meme.

Probably the most confusing movie universe is DC’s Extended Universe. What with Man of Steel in the year Created in 2013 as a simple Superman reboot, has now become a movie universe in speed run. That’s why Superman first tussled with Batman in his sequel, then sacrificed himself in a fight with Doomsday in the same film, only to have to rise from the dead again in the subsequent Justice League film. Oh, and then of course there’s the Connection to the TV series from the Arrow verse, which were included in the multiverse concept to be on the safe side, even before we were presented with a stable main universe. Who would want that?

Instead of panting after Marvel’s Avengers successes, franchises should rely on their own strengths

Not every subject is suitable for the big film universe. Even superheroes and their opponents now benefit from independent narratives. Joker and The Batman have impressively shown that both films can tell very atmospheric stories that focus on their characters without a larger film universe behind them. Instead of unnecessary cameos and references to 12,000 other films this is about the character studies of their gloomy protagonists, who don’t tell new characters, but can stand on their own as films.

The Batman with Robert Pattinson works because it doesn’t want to be Marvel

Instead of pumping huge sums of money into trying to establish a universe of its own that forces viewers to visit the cinema at regular intervals, why not approach the subject of blockbusters in a different way? Experimental filmmakers like George Miller and Lana Wachowski have been allowed to try out completely wacky film attempts with fat budgets with their fourth parts of Mad Max and Matrix. Visionaries like Christopher Nolan even manage to fill the cinema halls without a huge franchise behind them.

Ten years ago, the first Avengers film was the beginning of a unique success story whose impact we are seeing across Hollywood today. That’s unfortunate and dangerous. Because if you’re constantly chasing a trend, it’s difficult to find the next one. And perhaps overlooks the first warning signs of Marvel fatigue.

The 20 best series starts in June: The Boys and 7 Marvel series

It’s time again for our monthly series preview. You can find out which 20 starts you shouldn’t miss in the streaming area this June in our Overview of the exciting new releases on Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, Sky, Apple TV+ and MagentaTV.

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Which film universe are you really interested in?