The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the most successful film franchise there’s ever been. Starting in 2008, the series turned former B-list characters like Iron Man, the Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America into household names, as famous and iconic as the likes of Spider-Man and the X-Men. It was an unstoppable, money-making juggernaut that only became more and more popular over the years, leading up to the incredible double-whammy finale of Infinity War and Endgame.
But, following the completion of the Infinity Saga (as Phases 1-3 came to be known, culminating in Avengers: Endgame, or maybe the belated Spider-Man 2: Far From Home that followed Endgame), Marvel Studios has struggled to latch onto a new ongoing storyline while simultaneously ramping up its already fast-paced production of three movies a year to include multiple TV shows on Disney+, which has led to a quantity over quality issue, and increasing apathy and indifference from its previously massive and now ever-dwindling audience.
Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales and Gavin Edwards chart the story of Marvel Studios and the MCU from its inauspicious beginnings, the giddy rise and steady fall, to its current shaky present and uncertain future, giving a thorough and behind-the-scenes look at the myriad films of the series in MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios.
I’m speaking for myself of course but I think many, many people will echo the same sentiments: I loved the MCU. Every movie was a must-see event, nearly every movie was high quality, and, as crazy as it seems now that we have so much Marvel content being released, in the years 2008-2019, three movies a year didn’t seem enough - I could’ve easily watched a Marvel movie a month if that had been possible; they were that good.
It’s a different story now, but I still go back and rewatch those movies, and they still hold up - I’ve even come to have a new appreciation for films I didn’t love at the time like Thor: The Dark World. So it’s nice to have a book like this to go back and revisit the films, learn something about how they came about and some of the gossip surrounding them.
Before launching into the MCU proper, the authors take us back to the murky days of the ‘80s and ‘90s when Marvel movies were a joke and nobody thought they were viable characters for film. At one point Sony were offered a mere $25m for nearly every character in the Marvel catalogue - including Captain America, Doctor Strange and Black Panther - which, if they had accepted, would’ve meant no MCU later on. Thankfully Sony’s shortsightedness was as bad as Marvel’s, declining because, according to a Sony exec at the time “no one gives a shit about any Marvel character besides Spider-Man!”
Sony ended up paying $10m for the Spider-Man movie rights, a deal that looks like a bargain now. And if you’re wondering why we’ve had so many Spider-Man movies these past 20 years, it’s because, per the terms of the agreement, Sony have to get a Spider-Man movie into production within 3 years and 9 months and then into theatres within 5 years and 9 months, or the rights revert back to Marvel - so basically we’ll never stop getting regular Spider-Man movies, for better or worse, because he’s too valuable for Sony to give up!
I had no idea that James Cameron had at one point in the ‘90s been developing a Spider-Man movie, which would’ve starred Leo as Spidey and Ahnuld as Doc Ock - we live in the timeline that the movie never happened unfortunately and Cameron called it “the best movie he never made”.
There’s other tidbits like this scattered throughout the book - glimpses into what might’ve been: Tom Hiddleston being considered for Thor; Sebastian Stan for Cap; Jason Momoa for Drax; Amanda Seyfried for Gamora; Emily Blunt for Black Widow; and Joseph Gordon-Levitt for Ant-Man. Oh, and Michael Jackson wanted to be Professor X in the first X-Men movie!
It was Avi Arad’s terrible movie licensing deals - wherein Marvel received just 5% of the Spider-Man box office with Sony and a stunning 1% of the X-Men box office with Fox - that spurred others at Marvel on to reconsidering their business model. Instead of licensing characters, what if they made the movies themselves and then sold them to distributors, allowing them to pocket a much larger share of the box office?
This leads to a new name I hadn’t heard before but will remember going forward and should be better known. Kevin Feige is the figurehead of Marvel Studios, and he deserves his due, but he didn’t create the studio - that was the unsung David Maisel who had the vision of Marvel producing its own movies, especially as Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies showed just how profitable they could be.
Still, regarding the content of the movies themselves, what made Marvel Studios’ movies stand out from previous non-Marvel-produced Marvel movies was how much the characters looked like they did in the comics - this was in large part to Feige’s dedication. They weren’t all dressed in black leather like in Singer’s X-Men; Cap looked like Cap, Thor looked like Thor, Iron Man looked like Iron Man. It was one more indicator why Marvel Studios were finally doing Marvel movies properly.
What’s really surprising is learning how throw-together and slapdash the movies were, even right at the beginning with Iron Man - especially given how well the movies turned out, at the rate they were churned out. There was a bare-bones shooting script for Iron Man when they began principal photography - that was promptly thrown out. Jon Favreau, Robert Downey Jr and Jeff Bridges would meet in Bridges’ dressing room each morning, spend a few hours writing the script for the scenes they were shooting that day, then film them! That’s an insane way to do things - no wonder Bridges remarked that he was making “a $200m student film!”
Even the Infinity Saga just sorta happened. Joss Whedon wanted the Thanos cameo at the end of Avengers to be an easter egg for fans. Thanos was never intended to be the series villain, he just ended up that way from that one throwaway scene - it just shows how little planning there really was and how Marvel seemed to fail upwards and succeed accidentally.
The same thing happened with Kang recently. Marvel Studios apparently made him their new big bad solely on audience reaction to the character’s appearance at the end of the first season of the Loki TV show, so their lack of planning hasn’t improved over the years - and unlike Thanos, Kang isn’t working out quite as well for a number of reasons. Luck runs out eventually for even the luckiest - it is… inevitable.
(Also, why were the first two Marvel Studios films Iron Man and Hulk? Because they market-tested the highest as desirable toys for kids - Ike Perlmutter, the owner of Marvel, made all of his business decisions based on projected toy sales! He had no confidence the movies would be profitable.)
We find out what Ed Norton was like to work with on The Incredible Hulk, why Hulk hasn’t starred in a solo movie since 2008, and that Mark Ruffalo was director Louis Leterrier’s first choice for Bruce Banner.
Robert Downey Jr’s fees for playing Tony Stark are staggering. He received “just” $500k for Iron Man, but then the numbers start going crazy: $10m for Iron Man 2, $50m for Avengers, $70m for Iron Man 3, $64m for Civil War, and $75m apiece for Infinity War and Endgame. It’s because of RDJ, who wasn’t, that leading Marvel actors were now signed on for multi-picture deals in order for the studio to avoid having to pay out such hefty amounts later on down the line.
Some of the things the studio did early on are good indicators of its success. Like starting the Marvel writers’ programme where writers were encouraged to pick lesser-known characters from the Marvel catalogue and develop them into potential movies, which led to Nicole Perlman putting Guardians of the Galaxy onto the fast track for production.
(James Gunn is often credited with the Guardians’ success but it’s worth remembering Perlman was the one who got the series going and wrote many of the early drafts that became the movie. She and Gunn butted heads as Gunn tried undermining her contributions - she eventually got a co-writing credit on the first Guardians film, which is still the best one, and she threw a “Fuck James Gunn!” party when Guardians premiered.)
Utilising as much live action in the movies rather than relying too much on CGI are why movies like The Winter Soldier look so good. And having a strong narrative voice throughout a series of films, like Joss Whedon overseeing Phase 2, helps bring it all together. Scrapping the writers’ programme, making your films almost entirely CGI (like the goopy Quantumania) and losing strong narrative voices all point towards why Marvel today is so much weaker than it was 10 years ago.
There aren’t that many interesting production stories from the Thor movies, Cap 2, Iron Man 3, et al. while Doctor Strange is completely omitted for no reason. A lot of the gossip from this time is fairly well-known too, like Edgar Wright leaving Ant-Man because he didn’t want to shoe-horn in unnecessary scenes (despite Feige’s motto of focusing on making good movies first and thinking about the cinematic universe second) or that an estimated 50-75% of Marvel actors are on steroids.
Nor did I find a lot of the Ike Perlmutter stuff all that compelling - he was basically the New York Creative Committee that would often put a check on Feige’s plans (which might’ve been another reason why Phases 1-3 were good too; Feige no longer had these limitations in Phase 4 and look how that turned out). And the overlong and uninteresting section on how the CGI was done didn’t do much for me. There’s also stuff on the controversy around pandering to the emerging Chinese film market, an audience that is unabashedly racist with weird rules on supernatural content. It’s strange that Marvel Studios and Marvel TV didn’t get along but there was a split in the early days where the TV division was looked down upon and vehemently separated from the MCU.
The authors also simplify the backlash to Captain Marvel, characterising its detractors and critics as “cranks”, even though it’s more nuanced than that, especially as it marked the politicisation of Marvel, to its detrimental current position. They also gloss over the negative reactions to She-Hulk as “misogynistic”, even though the show was boring, pointless, overly political rubbish.
The section on Phase 4 was what I was most interested in reading about and found the most disappointing. It felt like the authors were being hamstrung from being the least bit critical even though I don’t think they had direct access to any of the main players in the MCU, so it’s weird that they pulled their punches from not pointing out the distinct lack of quality that permeated Phase 4.
The way Marvel poorly treated visual effects artists (which isn’t exclusive to Marvel either - all the studios unfairly treat these artists like shit) is covered, and the movies’ overreliance on CGI has led to Marvel burning through more visual effects companies and shoddier CGI. But that’s not the reason why Quantumania was panned - the movie was, yes, again, boring, pointless, overly political rubbish!
The chapters on the Phase 4 movies read like banal press releases, while the authors studiously avoid mentioning the falling profits of the Phase 4 movies, instead making the bizarre claim that Marvel was profitable in the COVID era, which isn’t the case (not least because Marvel underreport their budgets and always have reshoots for their movies). The occasional sentence is patently false too, like when they say that Wakanda Forever was Phase 4’s most successful entry when Spider-Man 3: No Way Home made more than double the box office - unless they meant successful in terms of awards, which is true as Wakanda Forever racked up some Academy Award noms and even a win for Best Costume Design, but then the sentence should’ve been rewritten to reflect that meaning.
They do at least acknowledge the hefty demand Disney placed on Kevin Feige to produce a ton of content for their new streaming service, Disney+, in return for his new position of power (Perlmutter was squeezed out of the picture so that Feige’s new boss was Bob Iger, the head of Disney, only). So the reason for the crappiness of Phase 4 was self-evident all along: quantity over quality - no surprises there.
(There’s a discussion to be had about how Disney seems to ruin great companies after buying them - Pixar, Lucasfilm and Marvel are all shadows of their former glory just a few years after having been absorbed by Disney - but that’s for another day in another book.)
Ultimately, the MCU from 2008 to 2019 remains an incredible achievement - and one we will likely never see again. Many studios tried replicating the success and all of them failed - now even Marvel is failing to do what they pioneered. I’m glad to have been there to experience it firsthand and we’ll always have those movies, even if the ongoing slate of movies and TV shows feels like doing homework, for those still bothering with it, rather than witnessing an exciting spectacle, as they once were.
MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios is a fine, informative overview of what went on behind-the-scenes of the MCU and how it all came together. I didn’t find it consistently interesting nor does it have all that many exciting new revelations, and the Phase 4 section was, appropriately enough, very lacking, but it’s definitely worth reading if you’re an old or new fan of the MCU as there’s something here for all.
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