Superhero Movies MCU-Present

What really changed the face of Superhero movies was the launch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Just like how X-Men upped the ante back in 2000, the MCU upped it again. But it wasn’t seen like that immediately, as it was unsure if this experiment from Marvel was going to work out or not.

Marvel had declared Chapter 13 Bankruptcy back in 1995 or so, and as part of their financial restructuring, they sold off some movie rights to various companies. They sold the X-Men, Daredevil, and Fantastic Four to 20th Century Fox, Spider-Man and Ghost Rider to Sony/Columbia, Hulk to Universal, Blade to New Line, and the Punisher to Artisan. This gave them some cash to keep the company afloat for a while. Thankfully, most of those movies were at least not terrible, and some were actually pretty good. But Marvel decided to get into the game themselves. They created Marvel Studios with the intent to self-produce films, but release through Paramount. Their first movie was Iron Man, which was a huge success both financially and critically (nominated for 2 Oscars). It was good enough that a lot of non-comic book fans (like my parents) even watched and liked it. There were a few nods to other Marvel things, like War Machine, the inclusion of SHIELD and Nick Fury.

The second film, the Incredible Hulk, was a combination of a reboot, remake, and sequel all in one, and only followed Iron Man by a month. It sorta hinted at events from the Ang Lee Hulk movie combined with the Bixby/Ferrigno TV series during the opening credits, and skipped past the origin story – a good move which they would use again years later with Spider-Man in Civil War. It was probably about as good as the first X-Men film, but the best part was that it had references to Stark Industries, SHIELD, and then Tony Stark himself showed up to talk to General Ross. For the first time, these two movies shared a commonality, something that helped propel Marvel Comics to stardom back in the early 60’s.

Iron Man 2 followed, and it introduced War Machine proper, Black Widow, and a bigger role for Fury with a nod to Hulk and a teaser for Thor. This was about the time that it started to become well known that Marvel movies always have a post credits stinger, and this one was huge. Iron Man 2 was still pretty good, but the writing wasn’t quite as tight as the first one, but it more than made up for it with the aforementioned characters and allusions.

Thor came next and had a fine debut movie. Again, having SHIELD show up, referencing Banner, and having Fury again helped cement that all these movies take place in the same universe. And the fact that actors like Anthony Hopkins and Renee Russo agreed to be in it showed that these movies had become respectable, and not just a live action cartoon for kids. Then we come to Captain America: The First Avenger. I honestly didn’t think I would enjoy it because I didn’t like him in the comics, but I came away pleasantly surprised, and again there were a couple of things to tie it into the other movies in the form of Fury and Howard Stark.

And then The Avengers was the next movie. I was terribly worried that this was the film they would screw up. All this buildup would be wasted because of a misfire on the team-up movie. Plus, something like this had never been done before, so there wasn’t a good roadmap to follow. The fact that Joss Whedon was directing gave me a little hope, but I was still uneasy. But it turns out that all my fears were for nothing. The movie was damn near perfect, and all the work they had done getting to this point had paid off in spades. We saw in-team fighting and friction, then assembling.

The fact that this whole plan worked so well made movie studio execs re-think everything. They all wanted the success of the MCU, but didn’t have the patience to set it up correctly or the planning, forethought, and leadership of Kevin Feige [Edit from 2023 - I'm hearing that it was more because of James Gunn's plan and not so much because of Feige, and from how Phases 4 & 5 have turned out, I tend to believe it]. What Marvel did was nothing short of miraculous. Back in the 90’s nobody cared about most of these characters – Marvel actually canceled and rebooted their comic books a few times in an effort to gain new readers. To me, they had farmed out all their good characters to Fox and Sony, and were scraping the bottom of the barrel out of desperation. Instead they basically flipped the table and reversed their fortunes. Now the X-Men are kind of a joke, and Sony got desperate enough to let Spidey back into the MCU.

Anyhow, I don’t feel the need to go step-by-step through each film, other than saying that a couple of them have been only “good,” while most of them have been great, and a few have been masterpieces. But I’ll list them – Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, Captain America: Civil War, Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Captain Marvel, and Avengers: Endgame. Of these, I will say that the only ones that I didn’t like as much were Iron Man 3 and Captain Marvel. In Iron Man 3, I felt the director just tossed aside continuity and connections in favor of big action and a poorly executed twist ending. For Captain Marvel, I think there was a lot more SJW politics involved (both in the movie and surrounding its release), the plot wasn't as careful dealing with past established MCU continuity and was kinda boring overall, and she was overpowered. I think a little bit better writing and had Yvonne Strahovski been cast instead, it would elevate it to the middle of the pack instead of near the bottom. I also think during the "Phase 2" era, there was probably a little bit of coasting done in terms of writing, hoping to just ride on the success of past movies. But I think Winter Soldier kinda kicked them out of this habit.

I will mention that all of them (with the exception of the Guardians movies) have connections with other films, and all of them after Thor 2 started having little cameos become standard (like how Falcon was in Ant-Man). I wasn’t super excited for the first Guardians film because it had no connection to the Avengers stuff they had already started building, but I was pleasantly surprised at how fun it was, how good the music was, and just how well it was made. And now that they have met the rest of the Avengers, I’m really glad they were included.

What I’m trying to say is that they finally cracked the code at making a good comic-book based film that is well directed, acted, produced, and distributed, and its appeal can be enjoyed by the general public. Something else of note is that after Iron Man 3, Disney is actually the company that released the films instead of Paramount due to the fact that Disney bought Marvel and has their own distribution company (Buena Vista Films). But other than a little blurb about BV at the very end of the credits, you wouldn’t know that Disney had anything to do with it, and it would seem that it was all Marvel all along.

On the non-cinema side of things, Marvel expanded by starting a prime time TV show on ABC starring Agent Coulson and some members of SHIELD. It started kind of “meh,” but it was a ploy because it helped set the stage for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where Cap blew up SHIELD and so the show could be its own entity, and it got much better. I did like the little movie connections, like how Coulson’s team found Loki’s Staff and then called in the Avengers or cleaned up after Thor’s battle in Greenwich. On the show, previously unknown characters like Deathlok and Quake were presented, as well as incorporating Ghost Rider back into the MCU. But because of a split between a few of Marvel’s producers, that kind of thing (crossovers) doesn’t happen so much anymore. But I think the so-so start kinda hampered its popularity, and if it was as good as subsequent seasons have been the show would be more popular. During the winter hiatus for SHIELD seasons 2 and 3, there was a couple of mini-seasons of an Agent Carter show that helped paint some backstory dealing with Howard Stark. 

Marvel’s deals with Fox and Sony had stipulations that if a movie wasn’t produced after so many years, the rights would revert back to Marvel, as it happened with Hulk, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, and Punisher. Obviously Hulk was used in the Incredible Hulk and Avengers, while Ghost Rider was included as part of the SHIELD series. But the other two were turned into Netflix series.

The first was Daredevil, and excellent take on the story of the blind superhero lawyer. It was rated TV-MA, so it had a little more graphic violence, language, and some suggestive themes than one would find in the movies. After that, a Jessica Jones series was released, another season of Daredevil (which introduced the Punisher), then Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and finally Defenders. The Defenders
was sort of a street-level version of the Avengers with all of the Netflix series characters (except for the Punisher, who got his own series shortly afterward). These shows maintained connections with the larger MCU with mentions of the alien invasion in NYC from the first Avengers films as well as other name drops, but there haven’t been any major cameos or crossovers. Most of these shows have been in the “pretty good, but not great” category, but the standout is Daredevil.

Later, an Inhumans TV show, a Runaways Hulu series, and a Cloak & Dagger TV show were made. Both Inhumans and Runaways were mediocre, but Cloak & Dagger was probably as good as the Netflix offerings. However, all Inhumans and Runaways seemed to only have a passing connection to the larger MCU – something that I feel could elevate the excitement about them had something been included (like a cameo from Coulson or Iron Man flying overhead). Cloak & Dagger did have a few other name-drops and implied connections, and the fact that it focused on 2 characters rather than 8 or 15 helped it be better.

Overall, once Marvel Studios got going, it kept making hit after hit with only a few mediocre products here and there. But nothing has been terrible like the pre-2000s stuff. However, I do think they should have an end-goal in sight, and that making Avengers: Endgame should be the end of the story so that they don’t run the concept/genre into the ground and end on a high note (like how Seinfeld went off the air as the #1 show by design). Having seen Spider-Man: Far from Home, I think it serves nicely as a "resolution" movie dealing with some of the fallout and consequences of Endgame. 

On the non-Marvel Studios but still Marvel properties side of things (something that probably confuses a lot of people), Fox still held onto the rights of the X-Men and Fantastic Four Franchises, while Sony still had Spider-Man. In an effort to not lose the rights, Sony rebooted Spider-Man with an all new cast and some more mystery into Peter’s parents in The Amazing Spider-Man. What they did was make some changes so that everything Sam Raimi’s version did “wrong,” like the organic web, this movie did right to some extent, while having to change other things that Raimi got “right” in order to distinguish itself. The film was pretty good, but it was weird to have a reboot so soon after the failure of Spider-Man 3. Had more time passed, it probably would have been received even better. Wanting to emulate the success of the MCU, Sony’s plan to have their own little “Spider-verse” didn’t pan out so well. Amazing Spider-Man 2 had a few bright spots but reverted back to lower quality plot/writing in an effort to set up a shared universe, and that was its downfall (combined with internal politics at Sony and a hacker releasing emails). Not long afterwards, Marvel Studios struck a deal with Sony to share the character so he could appear in Civil War and later the Avengers films.

Fox also had a rights retainer in the form of Fant4stic, a terrible reboot of the Fantastic Four that made me recall pre-2000s level of bad. Having lost the rights to Daredevil and seeing Marvel Studios succeed with the character on Netflix infuriated their execs, so they made this garbage-tier movie just to flip Marvel the bird, in essence. It was so bad that I don’t think there will be anything FF related made for quite a while.

However, they had a fairly regular release schedule for the X-Men movies. After the third film in the X-Men trilogy was sorta bad, they went a different direction and did an origins movie for Wolverine. This one turned out to be equally bad, with the director including just about every action movie cliché and ruining perfectly good characters like Deadpool. I will say that about the first 1/3 of the movie was pretty good but then took a severe nosedive in quality after that.

A couple years later, X-Men: First Class debuted, purporting to tell the origins of Xavier and Magneto. It turned out to be a really good film that entwined the Cuban Missile Crisis with the beginnings of the X-Men. Then in another couple of years, The Wolverine released. It was another standalone Woverine story about him dealing with the aftermath of X3 in Japan. For this movie, the first 2/3 of the movie were great, while the big “boss battle” at the end felt more like a video game. But still good overall.

The next film released was a masterpiece, one that tied the First Class era to the original 3 films, as well as fixing all the plot problems. In fact, it was so good that I can now retroactively watch X3 and Wolverine origins and realize that it had its issues taken care of in Days of Future Past. It put such a good ending on everything that I felt they should stop after this one.

And then they scored another hit with the release of Deadpool, a movie that was completely accurate to the character of the comics and poked fun at the retconning and bad writing done in other films. I couldn’t believe how well this one turned out, perfectly balancing the action, humor, 4th wall breaking, and plot in a way I didn’t think Fox was capable of doing (it turns out that X3, Origins: Wolverine, and Fant4stic were all because of a particular executive [Tom Rothman], and once he left there was a major uptick in quality).

However, I spoke too soon, as they went back for a third “prequel” X-Men movie with X-Men: Apocalypse. This one was a mediocre mess, and kinda soured my views on the series again. But then Logan, a movie about the end of Wolverine and Professor X’s life was a good ending. I felt like they shouldn’t have made Apocalypse at all and just had Logan as the last of the X-Men movies. That would have left them on a high note and the series as a whole entity would be regarded as a good franchise. But there was another Deadpool movie, and it was like 98% as good as the first one, which is to say it was still freaking awesome. So overall, I think they could delete Apocalypse and leave it alone, but Fox decided to try a re-do with the whole Dark Phoenix story and managed to get it even more wrong. Unfortunately, the franchise that helped usher in the current age of superhero films went out with a whimper on a low note. And from what I hear, there's a New Mutants spin-off that's being marketed more like a horror film already finished but may never be released after Disney bought Fox. 

On the DC side of things, they, too, wanted a shared universe concept and started with Superman: Man of Steel. This film had some problems. It was visually really great, but it didn’t inspire the hope that Christopher Reeve had, and the last third of the movie was just destruction porn. They also took quite a few liberties with the Superman mythos/history (not that the Christopher Reeve movies didn’t, just that I had hoped that we were in the era of realizing that keeping true to the original characters/story did better).

And then without doing the same 4-year, 5 film buildup that Marvel had done, they went right into Superman vs. Batman: Dawn of Justice – a crossover film that co-starred Wonder Woman. This one had all kinds of issues, with plot holes one could drive a semi truck through. It also fell into the same trap as Spider-Man 3/X-Men 3/Iron Man 3 where they tried to cram too much into one movie. Apparently the 3-hour extended version makes things better.

The next film they made was an odd choice, but one I felt could have worked if executed correctly: Suicide Squad. The trailer for it made it seem like a really cool movie, but the actual film was pretty terrible, and all the good parts had been in the trailer.

The next film they made was Wonder Woman, which actually turned out well. It was a World War I era story of a pilot discovering the island of Themyscira and her getting involved with mankind. It kinda seemed almost like Captain America: The First Avenger for most of the film, but the ending was kinda clichéd. But overall, better than the other 3 films. I thought they had turned a corner, but then . . .

Justice League. This should have been the biggest superhero movie of all time. 10 years beforehand, if you had polled the general public about which superheroes/characters they knew about, Batman and Superman should have been the top 2, and the rest of the Justice League would probably have made the top 10. But it was a mess of a film, and had all kinds of reshoot and director change problems. More and more, it makes me think that it’s not that these kinds of films have finally arrived as much as Kevin Feige is a national treasure, and other studios just bet on the wrong horse.

I haven't seen Aquaman yet, but I hear it's probably on par with Wonder Woman, but I did enjoy Shazam because it didn't take itself too seriously. 

So the state of the genre is that Marvel/Disney is still kicking names and taking ass, DC/WB is floundering, and Fox is terrible with the Fantastic Four but hit and miss with X-Men, and Sony has given creative control of Spidey back to Marvel. While I’m glad there is now such a plethora of movies to enjoy, I really would rather there be fewer movies but ones that are more on the level of the average Marvel movie. But overall, even today’s bad movies are probably better than what used to be considered “good” back before the year 2000. Kevin Smith has the attitude of supporting everything (and I mean everything) that is comics/geek related to draw more attention to it, and to let the producers know to make more. But now that it has kinda "arrived," I would rather only support the better stuff so that Hollywood learns to make it right.

If I could go back in time and tell my high school self that there would one day be an entire MCU of movies that are above average, and even several good X-Men movies with a perfect casting of Wolverine, I don't think I would be able to convince my younger self. But here we are. 

Superhero films from 2000 to about 2007

In my view, what really changed the landscape of superhero and comics related films was X-Men. There were rumors of the film being made circulating ever since the animated series had been popular. Speculation on who would play certain roles was rampant, and Wizard Magazine had several articles on it. I honestly didn’t think it would ever happen. Batman and Superman, and possibly Spider-Man were the only characters popular enough to warrant a well-done, high budget film that would be well received by the general public.

So it was quite a shock to me that while eating breakfast on my last day in Japan when I heard that an X-Men movie was not only being made, but was due to be out within a couple of months. I was initially excited, then worried. Here was the chance that my favorite characters would be portrayed on screen, that the world at large would be introduced to Wolverine, and the possibility that it would be awesome. There was also the very, very distinct (and probable) chance that it would suck, and suck hard. Based on the past movies/shows, I would have given it about a 2% chance of being good, 8% chance of being just okay, and a 90% chance of being bad. I was worried that whatever studio/producer/director combination would screw it up and ruin the prospects of my hobby being accepted by others. I had hoped that a well made movie would hopefully help them (parents/friends/bullies) understand why I loved the characters so much and earn me some vindication as to why I spent so much time and money on them.

So when I walked out of the theater, my first thought was, “That didn’t suck.” In fact, it was kinda good. I didn’t know who this Hugh Jackman was, but he nailed the role of Wolverine. The movie was subdued a little bit – no flashy yellow spandex and they were a bit conservative on the fighting. Specifically, the black leather in place of traditional costumes helped it be more palatable by the general public, and the marketing made it seem somewhat attractive to the sci-fi, comic book, and action movie audiences.

And then X2 was even better. Director Bryan Singer said that X2 was the movie he wanted to make, but that the first movie was sorta like an extended introduction/trailer that had to be made first. Because the first one had been well received, he could experiment a little more in some X-Men history, other characters, and be a little more flashy on powers.

However, X-Men III was a big disappointment. It did well at the box office, but a lot of that was because of the good will earned by the previous two movies. Sure, it had some cool

action pieces and some new characters, but it tried to do too much and combine the Dark Phoenix story with the Cure story while doing neither story justice. It seemed like they (the studio) weren’t as concerned with telling another chapter of a cohesive story about a group of heroes that had previous history as they were about making a single movie. They kinda neglected to do their research about exactly what the previous films had covered and were making a movie by the numbers with an action scene every so many minutes whether the story demanded it or not. On top of that, it felt “subversive” and shocking because so many important characters died (though, it should be noted that some of them occurred because of studio politics more than plot development).

Trading off years with the X-Men movies were the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies. As much praise as I give X-Men for keeping true to the characters/story/history and really only changing it by toning down the costumes, I have to give a lot of credit to how well this movie turned out. The only major change from the comics was that Spider-Man made web organically rather than by using self-invented mechanical web shooters. Everything else was a slight modern day adjustment (like cage fight wrestling instead of a circus and genetically altered spider instead of radioactive). I thought they nailed the characters of Aunt May and J. Jonah Jameson, but that while Toby Maguire was pretty good as Peter, he wasn’t as good as Spider-Man, but part of that may have been the script.

And just like X-Men before it, Spider-Man 2 was even better. It continued the story and had a more believable/relatable villain. My only major gripe was that the kidnapping of Mary Jane would become a common theme. And it continued in Spider-Man 3. Like X-Men 3, they tried to do too much in one movie by combining Sandman, Harry as New Goblin, and Venom. From what I’ve read there was a lot of meddling from the producers and it shows. It would have been better to do Sandman and Harry while teasing Venom for the fourth film. It had some major cringe and seemed like they were on cruise control, not putting nearly as much thought into plot/story/originality, and it kinda put a hiatus on the franchise.

One thing I noted was that because 20th Century Fox had released X-Men and Sony released Spider-Man, there would be no crossover potential, which was always one of Marvel Comics’ bigger selling points.

Around this time, Daredevil and Hulk movies were released. There were good and bad parts of both films, but they weren’t up to the quality of the first two X-Men or Spider-Man films. My hopes that they had finally cracked the code and now most comics-related films would be good were a little shaken. But they were definitely better than the pre-2000’s movies/TV versions, and were at least tolerable/passable, but nothing that would really excite people who weren’t already comics fans. And unlike the X-Men/Spider-Man movies, they didn’t “convert” any new fans to run out and start reading the source material. An Elektra sequel was released, but it was pretty bad. I didn’t see it in the theaters and only ended up getting it on DVD because it was part of a 2-movie set (the other being the director’s cut of Daredevil).

Within this same time frame, there were also 2 Punisher movies, 2 Fantastic Four movies, and 2 Ghost Rider movies. In all three cases, the first one was passable and the second was not as good. I only saw the first Ghost Rider film in the theater, and didn’t even know about the Punisher ones until years later (and I still haven’t seen the second one). Like the Hulk and Daredevil movies, they were just okay. Not great, but not atrocities like the old Captain America movies. Had they been released in the 90’s, they would have been viewed more favorably because they were at least decent, and were better than any comic book movies thus far (Batman 1 and Superman 1 excepted). But because they had been released in a post X-Men/Spider-Man world, they seemed more mediocre.

The Fantastic Four movies were a little bit better, had a little more levity and some camp, but also lacked much of a menacing villain. In the second one they transformed one of Marvel’s most iconic cosmic villains (Galactus) into a cloud. A cloud. Overall I liked them but didn’t love them, but they were at least fun to watch.

On the DC side of things, they released a very badly made Catwoman film with Halle Berry which I haven’t seen and probably never will. Ms. Berry even showed up at the Razzies to accept her award. They also did Constantine and V for Vendetta, which were comics based but not like the traditional superhero in spandex type of film. V for Vendetta adapted the Alan Moore graphic novel into a movie but took a few cues from Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four and lightened up on the anarchy a bit, but was a very good film. On TV, the show Smallville showed the origins of Clark Kent. It was pretty good for about 5 seasons, but the combination of the Writer’s Strike of 2007 and having no real ending planned made it into just another commonplace, meandering teen drama that happened to have someone fast/strong in it. Had there been some sort of plan in place to end after, say, 6 seasons having acquired all his powers, and then transitioned to the big screen in Superman Returns, it would have been great.

Speaking of which, in their efforts to revive the Superman franchise, Superman Returns was released. It had been teased in the late 90’s and in developmental hell for nearly a decade ever since the Death of Superman story arc in the comics renewed interest in the character. Kevin Smith has a humorous story on some of that, but what eventually ended up being released was directed by Bryan Singer of X-Men fame, and starring Brandon Routh, who kinda looked and sounded like Christopher Reeve. The problem with the movie was that it was a sequel to the Richard Donner cut of Superman II, which is hard to explain to a casual fan. The short version is that when Donner was forced out of production on Superman II (even though it was 75% completed), his replacement had to re-shoot stuff to get the sole credit on direction, and the easiest way to do that was to revert back to an inferior version of the script. When the original footage resurfaced, Donner was able to (more or less) put the movie together they way it had originally been intended and it was released on DVD. So Singer was making a sequel to that, ignoring the third and fourth Superman movies and the theatrical release of the second one. What came out was kinda like a remake of Superman 1 almost, with some scenes and dialogue being straight copied from the original. There was also the issue of Superman being kinda like a super powered stalker ex-boyfriend. But the one thing they didn’t screw up on was keeping John Williams’ music. However, the film didn’t inspire any sequels.

However, DC rebooted the Batman franchise with Batman Begins, which sort of follows the Batman: Year One story from the comics. This was a great film by Christopher Nolan that had a very realistic take on the origins of the character. Its sequel, the Dark Knight, was even better, and was so good that I forgot I was watching a superhero film instead of a noir crime drama. However, like the X and Spider franchises, they dropped the ball on the third film. It wasn’t as tight of a story, had some major plot holes, and there were a few odd choices in the character development. But overall it was better than the third movies for X-Men and Spider-Man.

A few other films of note were Watchmen, Jonah Hex, and Green Lantern. Green Lantern wasn’t great, but it was about as good as Hulk or Daredevil. It teased a sequel, but the box office numbers made that somewhat unlikely. Watchmen was greatly hyped and looked fantastic from the trailer, but the film itself was a bit dull and dragged. I didn't see or hear much about Jonah Hex. 

I should also mention that during this time there were also several animated shows (as there always have been) on various channels. TMNT was rebooted twice, there were a couple of iterations of an X-Men cartoon, and various Batman, Justice League, and Teen Titan shows (among a lot of other things). Some worked, some didn't. I would love to say I watched them all, but I was too busy and uninterested. 

Overall, for this era of superhero films, I would say that there were 3 trilogies that made 2 good movies where the second one was better than the first, but where the ball was dropped on the third film (X, Spider, and Bat). There were a lot of mediocre films, but ones that I would never imagined would ever get made because they weren’t as popular (Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Hulk, Ghost Rider, Punisher, Green Lantern, V for Vendetta, Watchmen). And there were a few bad spin-offs/sequels based on characters most people already knew (Electra, Catwoman, Superman Returns). To someone who wanted nothing more than to see some movies in this genre that weren’t terrible, I gotta say that I was fairly happy that this kind of thing was becoming a little more mainstream and accepted. The general public now knew about more superheroes than Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man. But I had no idea that another revolution was about to begin.