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Kevin Feige Discusses The Initial Superhero Movies Which Made Way For MCU
Kevin Feige in a recent interview discussed the initial days of shaping the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He cited a few superhero movies which were instrumental in giving the MCU the identity.
It was Iron Man back in 2008, that officially launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe. At that point of time, it was a risky step given the fact that the superhero genre was not so much at the top and the Marvel superhero was not something that people were very certain of success. So, Feige said that they had to go through some criticism for that. In an interview with Deadline, Feige discussed the earliest superhero films that shaped the MCU, we know today.
Kevin Feige discusses the initial superhero movies of the MCU
Today, the MCU is the juggernaut in the realm of superhero movies. It comes and shatters every box office record most of the time. But, just like any other beginning, MCU also faced the what-if kind of situation. Fans had doubts when the studio was getting ready with superhero films. Comic-book hero was not something that was a fully profitable genre back then.
In an interview with Deadline to promote Deadpool & Wolverine, the most recent MCU film, Kevin Feige mentioned that he thought Marvel could still pull off a successful release of a film with a less well-known superhero. Feige said that one media outlet ran an article titled "Marvel Calls Out the 'C' Team" when Jon Favreau brought Iron Man to Comic-Con in 2007.
People asked themselves if, without Spider-Man or the X-Men, they could be able to make anything of these new characters who weren't the major players. Feige remembered. "People thought Marvel had nothing else. And we thought, ‘We have 8,567 other things.’ The audience wants to see a great piece of entertainment."
The superhero movies that shaped the MCU
Even though Sam Raimi's Spider-Man is often credited as a turning point for Marvel films and superhero movies in general, Blade from 1998 and X-Men from 2000 are the films that really started the modern era of superhero cinema.
One can not underestimate how important these two films were for the genre as a whole and Feige knows it. In the interview, he reflected on the early successes of Marvel films, noting that Blade and X-Men were instrumental in establishing the studio's approach, even before his tenure.
"Blade was a character that nobody knew from the comics, or very few people knew. It wasn’t advertised as being from Marvel Comics. X-Men was the No. 1 bestselling comic for the 15 years before the movie came out, Feige said.
Both movies performed exceptionally well, leading to a key realization: the success of a film hinges less on the comic's sales or the popularity of previous adaptations, and more on how engaging the character is and the new cinematic world created around them. This philosophy shaped the development of films like Iron Man, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, and Guardians of the Galaxy.
Iron Man, which earned USD 585 million worldwide and garnered critical acclaim, was a huge hit for Marvel Studios. Marvel was able to confidently license projects starring other lesser-known heroes, such as Ant-Man and the Guardians of the Galaxy, as a result of this success.
The MCU, which is currently in its fifth phase, plans to integrate the X-Men into its universe. Deadpool & Wolverine, starring Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds, is the wildly anticipated film that will kick off this phase.
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