The Art of Creating a Superhero Cinematic Universe

Endgame, the absolute culmination of 11 years and 22 interconnected films worth of storytelling, all leading to the climatic finale of the infinity saga that started all the way back in 2008 with Jon Favreau’s Iron Man. Truly the movie to end all marvel movies. Ever since Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury end credits scene where he mentions the Avengers initiative, fans had been excited for the future of the franchise. And it shows, as Brad Brevet mentions in his article analysing the records of Endgame that the movie accumulated ”a massive $1.2 billion at the global box office in just its first five days in release” (Brevet, 2019).

The reason for Marvel’s success is consequently due to their patience. By taking their time and planning out their structure with their characters and stories, Marvel developed intricate and varied characters, complex yet coherent plots, and thrilling yet humorous storytelling - all of which contributed to the creation of a successful and immersive cinematic universe. In contrast, other franchise and studios such as DC Extended Universe or Sony, failed at achieving to create their own cinematic universe due to their impatience. This essay will be exploring the importance of time and patience in creating a successful cinematic universe.

The DC Extended Universe - or the Worlds of DC as they call themselves today - are probably the closest to compete against Marvel. This is because just like Marvel Studios, the people behind DC have a vastly extensive and rich history, full of thousands of colourful characters and incredibly popular stories to take inspiration from for their live action counterparts. They tried to create their own cinematic universe back in 2011 with Green Lantern. Unfortunately for them, the movie didn’t bring the success they hoped to achieve as Green Lantern only brought in just over “$219 million” (Boxofficemojo, 2011) in its world wide release despite the film having “a production budget of $200 million” as claimed by Cassam Looch in his article Big Budget Movies That Didn't Break Even. Then, DC decided to abandon their project of creating their own cinematic universe with Green Lantern, and instead start over two years later with their movie Man of Steel which featured their already successful character Superman. Although the movie did see a greater pull with audiences and critics alike, DC’s following impatience and greediness ruined their opportunity to build a successful cinematic universe.

Marvel by 2016, had produced twelve feature length outings, enabled them to flesh out all their characters - both main and supporting - allowing the audience to get attached and engrossed in the universe. Therefore, when putting their main two heroes - Iron Man and Captain America - against each other in Captain America: Civil War (2016), the story and the movie as a whole was more effective and immersive for the audience.

Fantastic Four 1961

With legendary comic book writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby at the helm, Fantastic Four issue #1 was published on November 8th 1961 and was the starting point for Marvel comics at the time. It was also the very first appearance of the characters; Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Thing and the Human Torch - Marvel's first family. All throughout their comic book run the Fantastic Four have always been shown as being dysfunctional, but a loving family.

The idea for the Fantastic Four came after some friendly competition. Marvel noticed the Justice League comic’s success and they envied that. They believed DC Comics’ success was due to the use of a team of superheroes. Therefore, they created their own comic book featuring their own team of superheroes. During the creation of the family, Marvel thought that they would write a story that even themselves would enjoy reading through. They did this by focusing on creating relatable characters - by making them human and having character flaws - in order to engage the audience and have their compassion. For example, the “Thing” in the Fantastic Four, is physically deformed and different from people and therefore is treated differently from others. We feel empathy for this character because most of us struggle to find our places too, and therefore we invest in and support this character’s journey.

Fantastic Four 2005

With a budget of around $100 million, director Tim Story as well as writers Michael France and Mark Frost brought Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s fictional superhero team to life in the summer of 2005. Although this was actually the second live-action Fantastic Four film, as there was a direct DVD distribution of the first film back in the early nineties. Fantastic Four starred Ioan Gruffudd, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis and Jessica Alba as the titular heroes in blue spandex.

With a film duration of 105 minutes, the Fantastic Four was released in the United States on July 8th, 2005. Although it was a commercial success, it did garner somewhat varied reviews. One review by Henry Northmore states, “This is a family action romp, in many ways capturing the spirit of the comics” (Northmore, 2005). Another review by Nev Pierce from the BBC sums up the film best: “The result is hardly fantastic, but it is quite a lot of fun.” (Pierce, 2005). During its worldwide release it managed to accumulate $330 million and in the end, Fox managed to push for a sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which was released in cinemas two summers later in 2007.

Fantastic Four 2015

Fantastic Four was a 2015 film inspired from the superhero team in Marvel Comics that share the same name. This was 20th Century Fox’s third and final attempted reboot of the Fantastic Four film franchise before they would be subsequently bought, with the rights then being acquired by Marvel Studios and Disney in 2018. With Fox announcing their plan to reboot their franchise for the third time, they brought on Josh Trank as director and the film stars Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Miles Teller and Kate Mara as the four main heroes.

The film released in on August 7th 2015 worldwide. Unfortunately for Fox, both critics and audiences agreed that the film was a dull, empty mess with no direction. The film also lacked some much needed humor, had an excessively over the top gloomy atmosphere and poor editing. Many people believe that one of the causes of this was because of the heavy reshoot period that Fox executives forced after being unhappy with the production. In addition, the film was a box-office disaster, grossing just under $170 million globally with its production budget around $150 million.

Despite the fact that the comics always depict the team as a close family, there was a lack of dynamic with the four main characters - making it unfaithful to its source material. Christy Lemire said in her review of the film: “You never get a firm grasp on who these four characters are.” (Lemire, 2015) The ability to get to know the character and consequently relate to them is something that should have been prioritised, as this is one of the main things that people enjoy about the Fantastic Four in the comics.

DC however, had a much different approach to world building. Firstly, instead of giving Superman a much deserved sequel - which would have given him time for character development along with sensible levels of world building - they rushed into the production of Batman vs Superman (2016) as their second film in the franchise. In addition, the film itself is plagued with an incoherent plot, questionable acting and shoehorned elements. For example, in Batman vs Superman there is a scene where Wonder Woman watches short clips of each of DC’s other characters which served as an advertisement for their upcoming films. Unfortunately instead of exciting the audience, the scene felt forced and out of place. It is all a direct nudge and advertisement to their upcoming film: Justice League (2017). This is also very evident in the title of the film, as Christopher Orr says in his article (2016): “As its subtitle announces, Batman v Superman is a setup for Snyder’s upcoming Justice League movie, in conscious apery of the world-building that Marvel Studios has been undertaking for almost a decade”. This was all unfortunately because the executive producers behind the scenes desperately wanted to catch up with Marvel’s success - who at this point already had two hugely well received team up films and just over a dozen standalone stories under their belt that had brought in about 15 billion altogether.

In addition, the comic fans were disappointed as Batman and Superman are by far the two most recognisable and popular superhero characters in the DC universe. Up to this time, the first live action, with a big budget, that was adapted to of one of the most popular comic stories: Frank Miller’s 1986 miniseries The Dark Knight Returns - one of Batman’s most successful stories - made less profit domestically than Marvel Studio’s Guardians of the Galaxy(2014). A film about an obscure team of weird nobodies, from old sixties marvel comics, that no one, not even some of the most dedicated comic fans, had even heard of. Therefore the popularity of the character does not define the success of its movie, in contrast to the efficiency of the well organized story coherence and character development.

In conclusion, when it comes to creating a cinematic universe, it’s important to take the time to build up the characters, allowing the audience to become engrossed and attached to the universe and plot of the story, instead of rushing the development of the story and the characters. In the whole of the first Iron man there is plenty of world building, but unlike their competitors they chose to go for a more subtle route like offhand mentions of things like S.H.E.I.L.D (an organisation that plays a big part in the comics). There are cameos and little things in the background that only the keen-eyed will notice like Captain America’s prototype shield in the corner of Tony Stark’s workbench in the first two Iron man films. The important thing to remember though is that it is all pushed to the side-line so that the filmmakers as well as the audience can focus on the most important thing when it comes to the film: the story.