Marvel Cinematic Universe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The
Marvel Cinematic Universe (
MCU) is an American
media franchise and
shared fictional universe that is centered on a
series of
superhero films, independently produced by
Marvel Studios and based on characters that appear in publications by
Marvel Comics.
The franchise has expanded to include comic books, short films, and
television series. The shared universe, much like the original
Marvel Universe in comic books, was established by
crossing over common plot elements, settings, cast, and characters.
Clark Gregg has appeared the most in the franchise, portraying
Phil Coulson, a character original to the MCU.
The first film released in the MCU was
Iron Man (2008), which began the first phase of films, culminating in
Marvel's The Avengers (2012). Phase Two began with
Iron Man 3 (2013), and is set to conclude with
Ant-Man (2015). Marvel is also preparing Phase Three, beginning with the release of
Captain America: Civil War (2016). The universe began to expand with the release of the first official
tie-in comics in 2010, and saw further expansion with the
Marvel One-Shots direct-to-video short films in 2011 and the TV series
Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the
2013–14 season. Marvel has multiple films and television projects in various stages of development.
The franchise as a whole ranks as the
highest-grossing film franchise both in the United States and
worldwide, and has inspired other film studios with comic book character film rights to attempt to create similar shared universes.
Development
"It is daunting but it's fun. It's never been done before and that's
kind of the spirit everybody's taking it in. The other filmmakers aren't
used to getting actors from other movies that other filmmakers have
cast, certain plot lines that are connected or certain locations that
are connected, but I think... everyone was on board for it and thinks
that it's fun. Primarily because we've always remained consistent saying
that the movie that we are making comes first. All of the connective
tissue, all of that stuff is fun and is going to be very important if
you want it to be. If the fans want to look further and find
connections, then they're there. There are a few big ones obviously,
that hopefully the mainstream audience will able to follow as well.
But... the reason that all the filmmakers are on board is that their
movies need to stand on their own. They need to have a fresh vision, a
unique tone, and the fact that they can interconnect if you want to
follow those breadcrumbs is a bonus."
—
Kevin Feige, President of Production for Marvel Studios, on constructing a shared film universe.
[1]
By 2005,
Marvel Studios began planning to independently produce its own films and distribute them through
Paramount Pictures.
[2] Previously, the studio had
co-produced several superhero films with
Columbia Pictures,
New Line Cinema and others, including a seven-year development deal with
20th Century Fox.
[3]
Marvel Studios made relatively little profit from its licensing deals
with other studios and wanted to get more money out of its films while
maintaining artistic control of the projects and distribution.
[4] Marvel Studios president
Kevin Feige realized that unlike
Spider-Man and the
X-Men, whose film rights were licensed to Columbia and Fox respectively, Marvel still owned the rights to the core members of
The Avengers. Feige, a self-professed fanboy, envisioned creating a shared universe just as creators
Stan Lee and
Jack Kirby had done with their comic books in the early 1960s.
[5] To raise capital, the studio secured funding from a seven-year, $525 million revolving credit facility with
Merrill Lynch.
[4] Marvel's plan was to release individual films for their main characters and then merge them together in a
crossover film.
[6] Feige initially referred to the shared narrative continuity of these films as the "Marvel Cinema Universe",
[7] but later used the term "Marvel Cinematic Universe".
[8] Marvel has designated the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Earth-199999 within the
continuity of the company's
multiverse, a collection of fictional alternate universes.
[9]
Kevin Feige was an early visionary for the franchise, realizing a shared
media universe could be created with properties Marvel owned.
In November 2013, Feige said that "in an ideal world" releases each
year would include one film based on an existing character and one
featuring a new character, saying it's "a nice rhythm" in that format.
While not always the case, as evident by the 2013 releases of
Iron Man 3 and
Thor: The Dark World, he said it is "certainly something to aim for."
[10] Feige expanded on this in July 2014, saying, "I don't know that we'll keep to [that model]
every
year," but we're doing that in 2014 and 2015. "So I think it would be
fun to continue that sort of thing. I don't know that we will [do that]
all the time, but as a general model, I think that would be fun."
[11]
In February 2014, Feige stated that Marvel Studios wants to mimic the
"rhythm" that the comic books have developed, by having the characters
appear in their own films, and then come together, much like "a big
event or
crossover series,"
[12] with
Avengers films acting as "big, giant linchpins."
[13] After the reveal of multiple release dates for films through 2019 in July 2014,
[14]
Feige stated, "I think if you look at some of those dates that we've
announced, we're going to three in a few of those years. Again, not
because there's a number cruncher telling us to go to three, do more
than two pictures a year, but because of the very reason just laid out:
It is about managing [existing] franchises, film to film, and when we
have a team ready to go, why tell them to go away for four years just
because we don't have a slot? We'd rather find a way to keep that
going."
[15] After the titles were revealed in October 2014,
[16]
Feige said, "the studio’s firing on all cylinders right now... which
made us comfortable for the first time... to increase to three films a
year [in 2017 and 2018] instead of just two, without changing our
methods."
[17]
On expanding the characters in the universe and letting individual
films breathe and work on their own, as opposed to having Avenger
team-ups outside of those films, Feige stated, it’s about "Teaching the
general movie going audience about the notion of the characters existing
separately, coming together for specific events and going away and
existing separately in their own worlds again. Just like comic readers
have been doing for decades and decades... People sort of are accepting
that there's just a time when they should be together and there’s a time
when they’re not."
[18] In April 2014, Feige revealed that
Edgar Wright's pitch for
Ant-Man
in 2006 helped shape the early films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
saying, "We changed, frankly, some of the MCU to accommodate this
version of
Ant-Man.
Knowing what we wanted to do with Edgar and with Ant-Man, going years
and years back, helped to dictate what we did with the roster for
Avengers
the first time. It was a bit of both in terms of his idea for the
Ant-Man story influencing the birth of the MCU in the early films
leading up to
Avengers."
[19]
In October 2014, Marvel held a press event to announce the titles of their Phase Three films.
[16] The event, which drew comparisons to
Apple's
Worldwide Developers Conference,
[20] was done because all the information was ready. As Feige explained, "We wanted to do this at
[San Diego] Comic-Con
this year. Things were not set... So the plan has been, since a few
weeks before Comic-Con when we realized we weren’t going to be able to
do everything we wanted to do, is to decide 'let's do either something
we haven’t done in a long time, or something we've never done.' Which is
a singular event, just to announce what we have when it's ready. I
thought that might be early August, or mid-September, it ended up being
[at the end of October]."
[17]
Business practices
Marvel Studios developed specific business practices to create its
shared universe. For example, when the studio hired Kenneth Branagh and
Joe Johnston to direct
Thor and
Captain America: The First Avenger, respectively, it made sure both directors were open to the idea of a shared universe, and that they would have to include
Avengers set-up scenes in their films.
[5] Joe Russo, one of the directors of
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
added, "That's the exciting component of [incorporating references to
the larger universe]. 'What can we set up for the future?' You're
constantly pitching out ideas that not only affect your movie, but may
have a ripple effect that affects other films... It's a weird sort of
tapestry of writers and directors working together to create this
universe that's sort of organic."
[18]
Joe's brother and co-director, Anthony, added, "The great thing about
the Marvel [Cinematic Universe], just like the publishing [arm], it’s a
very vast, inter-connected universe, where characters will have their
rise and fall, so to speak, and hand off to other characters. As the
cinematic universe moves forward, you may start to see the cinematic
universe adopt that same pattern, as the publishing has, where there’s
closure with some characters and new beginnings with other characters.
How those hand-offs are made is always part of the fun.”
[21]
Anthony also said, that in order for directors to "fit" in at Marvel,
they must "understand how [to] take a larger story and wrangle in [
sic] into a moment, yet keep [it] connected."
[18]
On allowing directors and writers to work within Marvel's shared
universe concept, Joe Russo said, "I think the way Kevin [Feige] does it
is there are big pieces that he knows he wants to build towards, but
the way that you get there is open to interpretation and improv a little
bit. That’s defined by who gets involved with the project, the writers
and directors involved in the project." For the Russos in
The Winter Soldier, they had to deal with the idea of
S.H.I.E.L.D. being infiltrated by
Hydra
and thus subsequently falling, with Joe saying, "how we get there is
all up to us. And I think why Marvel has been so successful is because
it’s been such a clear plan, that everything is interconnected and
they’re building emotional capital with each movie that you can then
trade off of in the next film."
[22]
The studio chose filmmakers that were considered "out-of-left-field",
given their previous work. Feige remarked, "You don't have to have
directed a big, giant visual-effects movie to do a big, giant
visual-effects movie for us. You just have to have done something
singularly sort of awesome,"
[23] adding "It's worked out well for us when we've taken people [such as
Jon Favreau,
Joss Whedon, Branagh and the
Russo brothers,] that have done very, very good things. Very rarely are one of those good things a big giant blockbuster superhero movie."
[24] Marvel also began contracting their actors for multiple films, including signing actor
Samuel L. Jackson to a then "unprecedented" nine-movie contract.
[25]
In July 2014, Feige said that the studio has all actors sign contracts
for multiples films, with the norm being for 3 or more, and the 9 or 12
film deals "more rare".
[26] In August 2014,
Vincent D'Onofrio,
Wilson Fisk in
Daredevil,
said, "The thing about Marvel is that they’re not–they’re into real
acting. They’re looking for artists that are willing to take chances and
are willing to create characters, even if that character has been
around for years and years in comic books, they still are depending on
us to create something and take it somewhere else."
[27]
In August 2012, Marvel signed Joss Whedon to an exclusive contract
through June 2015 for film and television. With the deal, Whedon would
"contribute creatively" on Phase Two of the MCU.
[28]
In March 2013, Whedon expanded on his consulting responsibilities,
saying, "I understand what Kevin [Feige] is going for and where he’s
heading, and I read the scripts and watch cuts and talk to the directors
and writers and give my opinion. Occasionally there could be some
writing. But I’m not trying to get in anybody’s soup, I’m just trying to
be helpful. Every time you work on a project it’s a little vacation
from the project you’re working on the other 23 hours. That’s the thing –
it replenishes you to do something else. And they’re very aware that if
I’m too tired or busy to help with anything, that’s fine. But if I can
help and not get in the way of the actual filmmakers, that’s what I’m
going to do."
[29] Whedon later elaborated that "Since the story has already been approved and everybody knows what we're doing with
Avengers 2,
we can really lay it out. It's not like anyone's saying "well I don't
know, what if I need that?" It's like "doing this is troublesome for us,
whereas doing this will actually help us." It's a dance, but I had to
do it on [
The Avengers] too. You want to honor the events of the last movie but you don't want to be beholden to them, because some people will see
Avengers[: Age of Ultron] who did not see any of the movies inbetween or even
Avengers 1." He also found working in television and
script doctoring
to be "great training ground[s] for dealing with this ... because
you're given a bunch of pieces and told to make them fit - even if they
don't."
[30]
Distributors
Over time, the
distribution rights to Marvel Studios' films changed hands on multiple occasions. In November 2006,
Universal Pictures announced that it would distribute
The Incredible Hulk,
[31] in an arrangement separate from Marvel's 2005 deal with Paramount deal, which was distributing Marvel's other films.
[2] In September 2008, after the international success of
Iron Man, Paramount signed a deal to have worldwide distribution rights for
Iron Man 2,
Iron Man 3,
Thor,
Captain America: The First Avenger, and
The Avengers.
[32] In late December 2009,
The Walt Disney Company purchased
Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. In October 2010,
The Walt Disney Studios bought the distribution rights for
Marvel's The Avengers and
Iron Man 3 from Paramount Pictures,
[33] with Paramount's logo remaining on the films, as well as for promotional material and merchandise.
[34][35] (
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures is the only studio credited at the end of these films.)
[36] Disney has since then distributed all subsequent Marvel Studios films.
[37] In July 2013, Disney purchased the distribution rights to
Iron Man,
Iron Man 2,
Thor and
Captain America: The First Avenger from Paramount.
[38] The Incredible Hulk
was not part of the deal, due to an agreement between Marvel and
Universal, where Marvel owns the film rights and Universal owns the
distribution rights, for this and any future Hulk film.
[39] In February 2015,
Sony Pictures Entertainment and Marvel Studios announced a licensing deal that would allow
Spider-Man to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with the character first appearing in
Captain America: Civil War.
[40][41] Marvel Studios will also explore opportunities to integrate other characters of the Marvel Cinematic Universe into future
Spider-Man films financed, distributed and controlled by Sony Pictures.
[40]
Expansion to other media
Marvel is complicated in that we’re part of the Marvel Cinematic
Universe, and so after [running something by Jeph] Loeb we’ll run it
through New York, Joe Quesada, Dan Buckley and those guys. We pitch our
stuff to Kevin Feige and his movie group to see if there’s something we
can tie into, to see if they’re okay about us using a character, or a
weapon or some other cool thing. Everything is interconnected, and
that’s really what we have to pay the most attention to. It’s
challenging but fun as we try to lace some Easter egg in, something that
ties into a movie or, if not, at least the comics so fans can find
those little things that nobody else knows about.
—
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. executive producer
Jeffrey Bell in September 2014, explaining the process of working in with the MCU
[42]
In 2010, the first official tie-in comic was released. Marvel Entertainment CCO
Joe Quesada
outlined his plan to expand the MCU into comic books in November 2010,
saying, "[F]or the uninitiated, the MCU [comics] are going to be stories
set within movie continuity. [They are] not necessarily direct
adaptations of the movies, but maybe something that happened off screen
and was mentioned in the movie, and we'll tell that story... [T]he folks
that are involved in the movies on the West Coast will be involved in
these stories. It won't be like one of our comic book writers saw the
movie and has an idea for a story. No, these stories are originating at
the very top. Kevin Feige is involved with these and in some cases maybe
the writers of the movies would be involved in... generating these
ideas and then either just giving them to some of our writers or maybe
some of these guys writing them themselves."
[43]
In August 2011, Marvel announced a series of
direct-to-video short films called
Marvel One-Shots.
Co-producer Brad Winderbaum said "It's a fun way to experiment with new
characters and ideas, but more importantly it's a way for us to expand
the Marvel Cinematic Universe and tell stories that live outside the
plot of our features."
[44]
Each short film is designed to be a self-contained story that provides
more backstory for characters or events introduced in the films.
[45]
By July 2012, Marvel began considering expanding to television after the positive response to
Marvel's The Avengers, with the series that eventually became known as
Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.[46][47]
By September 2013, Marvel was once again developing another series due
to positive reception from one of their properties, this time due to the
Agent Carter One-Shot,
[48] eventually becoming the series
Marvel's Agent Carter.
[49] In November 2013, it was announced that Marvel and
Netflix would air the series
Marvel's Daredevil,
[50] Marvel's A.K.A. Jessica Jones,
[51] Marvel's Luke Cage,
[52] and
Marvel's Iron Fist, leading to a crossover miniseries,
Marvel's The Defenders.
[53][54]
In March 2015, Marvel's Vice President of Animation Development and
Production, Cort Lane, stated that animated tie-ins to the MCU were "in
the works".
[55]
Films
Television series
Short films
Comic books
Recurring cast and characters
List indicator(s)
- This table includes cast members and / or characters who have appeared in multiple MCU media.
- A dark grey cell indicates the character has not appeared in that medium.
- A P indicates a new appearance in onscreen photographs only.
Additionally,
Paul Bettany was the first actor to portray multiple characters in the universe, voicing
Tony Stark's
artificial intelligence J.A.R.V.I.S. in the
Iron Man and
Avengers films, and portraying
Vision in
Avengers: Age of Ultron.
[150] Stan Lee, creator or co-creator of many of the characters seen in the MCU, has
cameo appearances in all of the films and television series.
Reception
Jim Vorel of
Herald & Review
called the Marvel Cinematic Universe "complicated" and "impressive" but
said, "As more and more heroes get their own film adaptations, the
overall universe becomes increasingly confusing."
[151] Kofi Outlaw of
Screen Rant, stated that while
The Avengers was a success, "Marvel Studios still has room to improve their approach to building a shared movie universe".
[152]
Some reviewers criticized the fact that the desire to create a shared
universe led to films that did not hold as well on their own. In his
review of
Thor: The Dark World,
Forbes critic Scott Mendelson likened the MCU to "a glorified television series", with
The Dark World being a "‘stand-alone’ episode that contains little long-range mythology."
[153] Collider's Matt Goldberg considered that while
Iron Man 2,
Thor and
Captain America: The First Avenger
were quality productions, "they have never really been their own
movies", feeling that the plot detours to S.H.I.E.L.D. or lead-ups to
The Avengers dragged down the films' narratives.
[154]
Following the conclusion of season 1 of
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Mary McNamara at the
Los Angeles Times
praised the connections between that series and the films, stating that
"never before has television been literally married to film, charged
with filling in the back story and creating the connective tissue of an
ongoing film franchise ... [
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.] is now not
only a very good show in its own right, it's part of Marvel's
multiplatform city-state. It faces a future of perpetual re-invention,
and that puts it in the exhilarating first car of television's
roller-coaster ride toward possible world domination."
[155] Terri Schwartz of Zap2it agreed with this sentiment, stating that "the fact that [
Captain America: The Winter Soldier]
so influenced the show is game-changing in terms of how the mediums of
film and television can be interwoven", though it was noted that "the
fault there seems to be that
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had to bide time until
The Winter Soldier 's release", which lead to much criticism.
[156]
In response to the first
Ant-Man trailer, Michael Doran of
Newsarama and Graeme McMillian of
The Hollywood Reporter
had a "point-counterpoint" debate regarding how the trailer should be
viewed in the context of the already established universe by Marvel.
Doran stated, "Marvel has raised the bar
sooo high that as opposed to just allowing another film to finish under the
Avengers/
Guardians of the Galaxy
bar, we're all overly and perhaps even eager to overreact to the first
thing that doesn't clear it, and in the case, the first trailer that
doesn't". McMillian responded, "at this point, Marvel's brand is such
that I'm not sure it can offer up something like [the trailer]
without it seeming like a crushing disappointment. Without buying into the hype, I think part of Marvel's brand is that it
doesn't
offer the kind of run-of-the-mill superhero movie that you're talking
about, that it's, if not better, then at least different enough to tweak
and play with the genre somehow: doing it bigger, doing it funnier,
doing it... different... It really all comes down to expectations. The
fact that there's such upset about this trailer being... well, okay -
it's not that it's
bad, certainly, it's just not very good, either - suggests to me that the audience
is
expecting something to knock their socks off." Doran concluded, "That
does seem to be the point here – the expectations fans now have for
everything "Marvel Studios." It’s the same reason
Thor: The Dark World
is now looked upon in hindsight in some circles as some sort of major
misfire when the film was perfectly well-received during its release...
Marvel
is going to eventually falter. It's not a matter of if, but when."
[157]
Impact on other studios
After the release of
The Avengers in May 2012, Tom Russo of
Boston.com noted that aside from the occasional "novelty" such as
Aliens vs. Predator (2004), the idea of a shared universe was virtually unheard of in Hollywood.
[5]
Since that time, the shared universe model created by Marvel Studios
has begun to be replicated by other film studios that held rights to
other comic book characters. In April 2014, Tuna Amobi, a media analyst
for
Standard & Poor’s
Equity Research Services, stated that in the last three to five years,
Hollywood studios began planning "megafranchises" for years to come,
opposed to working one blockbuster at a time. Amobi added, "A lot of
these superhero characters were just being left there to gather dust.
Disney has proved that this [approach and genre] can be a gold mine."
[158] However, with additional studios now "playing the megafranchise game", Doug Creutz, media analyst for
Cowen and Company,
feels the allure will eventually die for audiences. "If Marvel's going
to make two or three films a year," he says, "and Warner Brothers is
going to do at least a film every year, and Sony's going to do a film
every year, and Fox [is] going to do a film every year, can everyone do
well in that scenario? I'm not sure they can."
[158]
DC Entertainment and Warner Bros.
In October 2012, following its legal victory over
Joe Shuster's estate for the rights to Superman,
Warner Bros. announced that it planned to move ahead with its long-awaited
Justice League film, uniting such
DC Comics superheroes as
Batman,
Superman and
Wonder Woman.
Warner Bros. was expected to take the opposite approach of Marvel
Studios by releasing individual films for the characters after they have
appeared in
team-up film.
[159] The release of
Man of Steel in 2013 was intended to be the start of a
new cinematic universe for DC, with that film "laying the groundwork for the future slate of films based on DC Comics."
[160] In July 2014, DC CCO
Geoff Johns confirmed that the universe present in the publisher's television series,
Arrow and
The Flash, is separate from the one being built in their films with
Man of Steel and
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
[161]
In August 2014, Warner Bros. and DC announced a slate of nine dates for
untitled films, similar to Disney and Marvel claiming dates for films
years in advance,
[162] with the titles revealed in October 2014.
[163] In October 2014, Johns explained DC's difference in approach to Marvel, saying "We look at it as the
multiverse.
We have our TV universe and our film universe, but they all co-exist.
For us, creatively, it’s about allowing everyone to make the best
possible product, to tell the best story, to do the best world. Everyone
has a vision and you really want to let the visions shine through ...
It’s just a different approach."
[164]
20th Century Fox
In November 2012, 20th Century Fox announced plans to create their
own shared universe, consisting of Marvel properties that it holds the
rights to including the
Fantastic Four and X-Men, with the hiring of
Mark Millar
as supervising producer. Millar said, "Fox are thinking, 'We're sitting
on some really awesome things here. There is another side of the Marvel
Universe. Let’s try and get some cohesiveness going.' So they brought
me in to oversee that really. To meet with the writers and directors to
suggest new ways we could take this stuff and new properties that could
spin out of it."
[165] X-Men: Days of Future Past, released in 2014, may be Fox's first step towards expanding their stable of Marvel
mutant properties.
[166] However, in May 2014,
Simon Kinberg, screenwriter for
Fantastic Four, stated that the film would not take place in the same universe as the
X-Men films. "None of the
X-Men
movies have acknowledged the notion of a sort of superhero team--the
Fantastic Four--and the Fantastic Four acquire powers, so for them to
live in a world where mutants are prevalent is kind of complicated,
because you’re like, 'Oh, you’re just a mutant. What’s so fantastic
about you?' No, they live in discrete universes," said Kinberg.
[167]
Sony Pictures
In November 2013,
Sony Pictures Entertainment Co-Chairman
Amy Pascal announced that the studio intends to expand their universe created within the
Marc Webb Amazing Spider-Man series, with spin-off adventures for supporting characters in the
Spider-Man franchise,
in an attempt to replicate Marvel and Disney's model. She stated, "We
are going to access Marvel's full world of Spider-Man characters."
[166]
Sony Pictures Entertainment chief Michael Lynton added, "We do very
much have the ambition about creating a bigger universe around
Spider-Man."
[168] Director
Marc Webb
has stated that the announced fourth film "may not just be a Spider-Man
movie," and "there are so many ancillary characters, that have
enormous, cinematic potential," echoing Pascal and Lynton's statements
for expanding the Spider-Man universe.
[169] In December 2013, Sony announced
Venom and
Sinister Six films, both set in the
Amazing Spider-Man universe. With the announcement,
IGN stated that the spin-offs are "the latest example of what we can refer to as "the
Avengers effect" in Hollywood, as studios work to build interlocking movie universes."
[170]
Sony is choosing not to replicate the Marvel Studios model of
introducing individual characters first before bringing them together in
a team–up film, instead making the Spider-Man adversaries the stars of
future films.
[158]
In February 2015, Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios announced that the
Spider-Man franchise would be retooled once again, with a new film
co-produced by Feige and Pascal releasing on July 28, 2017. The film
comes after the character will be integrated into the MCU. Sony Pictures
will continue to finance, distribute, own and have final creative
control of the
Spider-Man films.
[40] With this announcement, sequels to
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
were cancelled, and spin-off films based on the Sinister Six, Venom and
female characters in the "Spider-Man" universe were "still moving
forward", though without Feige's involvement.
[171]
Cultural impact
In September 2014, the
University of Baltimore announced a course beginning in the 2015
spring semester revolving around the Marvel Cinematic Universe, to be taught by Arnold T. Blumberg.
[172]
Other
Television specials
Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe (2014)
On March 18, 2014, ABC aired a one-hour
television special titled
Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe,
which documented the history of Marvel Studios and the development of
the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and included exclusive interviews and
behind-the-scenes footage from all of the films, One-Shots and
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and sneak peeks of
Avengers: Age of Ultron,
Captain America: The Winter Soldier,
Guardians of the Galaxy, unaired episodes of
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,
[173] and
Ant-Man.
[174] Brian Lowry of
Variety
felt the special, "contains a pretty interesting business and creative
story. While it might all make sense in hindsight, there was appreciable
audacity in Marvel’s plan to release five loosely connected movies from
the same hero-filled world, beginning with the cinematically unproven
Iron Man and culminating with superhero team
The Avengers.
As such, this fast-moving hour qualifies as more than just a
cut-and-paste job from electronic press kits, although there’s an
element of that, certainly."
[175] The special was released on September 9, 2014 on the home media for
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 1.
[176]
Marvel 75 Years: From Pulp to Pop! (2014)
In September 2014,
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. executive producer
Jeffrey Bell stated that in order to meet production demands and avoid
having to air repeat episodes, ABC would likely air a Marvel special in
place of a regular installment at some point during the first ten
episodes of
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 's second season.
[42] In October, the special was revealed to be
Marvel 75 Years: From Pulp to Pop!, which was hosted by
Emily VanCamp, who portrays
Agent 13 in
Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and aired on November 4, 2014.
[177] The special features behind the scenes footage from
Avengers: Age of Ultron and
Ant-Man, as well as footage from the
Agent Carter television series previously screened at
New York Comic-Con.
[178] Brian Lowry of
Variety
felt an hour for the special did not "do the topic justice" adding,
"For anyone who has seen more than one Marvel movie but would shrug
perplexedly at the mention of Jack Kirby or
Steve Ditko,
Marvel 75 Years: From Pulp To Pop!
should probably be required viewing. Fun, fast-paced and encompassing
many of the company’s highlights along with a few lowlights, it’s a
solid primer on Marvel’s history, while weaving in inevitable
self-promotion and synergistic plugs."
[179]
Eric Goldman of IGN also wished the special had been longer, adding,
"Understandably, the more you already know about Marvel, the less you'll
be surprised by
Marvel 75 Years: From Pulp to Pop!, but it's
important to remember who this special is really made for – a mainstream
audience who have embraced the Marvel characters, via the hugely
successful movies, in a way no one could have imagined."
[178]
Live attractions
After the acquisition by Disney in 2009, Marvel films began to be marketed at the
Innoventions attraction in
Tomorrowland at
Disneyland. For
Iron Man 3, the exhibit, entitled
Iron Man Tech Presented by Stark Industries,
features the same armor display that was shown at the 2012 San Diego
Comic-Con, with the Marks I-VII and the new Mark XLII. In addition,
there is a simulator game, titled "Become Iron Man," that uses
Kinect-like
technology to allow the viewer to be encased in an animated Mark XLII
armor and take part in a series of "tests,” in which you fire repulsor
rays and fly through Tony Stark's workshop. The game is guided by
J.A.R.V.I.S., who is voiced again by
Paul Bettany.
The exhibit also has smaller displays that include helmets and chest
pieces from the earlier films and the gauntlet and boot from an action
sequence in
Iron Man 3.
[180] The exhibit for
Thor: The Dark World is called
Thor: Treasures of Asgard, and features displays of
Asgardian relics and transports guests to
Odin's throne room, where they are greeted by Thor.
[181] Captain America: The Winter Soldier 's exhibit,
Captain America: The Living Legend and Symbol of Courage, features a meet and greet experience.
[182]
In May 2014, the
Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. (Scientific Training and Tactical Intelligence Operative Network) exhibit opened at the
Discovery Times Square
center. The exhibit features replica set pieces, as well as actual
props from the films, mixed with interactive technology and information,
crafted through a partnership with
NASA
and other scientists. Titus Welliver also provides a "debrief" to
visitors, reprising his role as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Felix Blake. Created
by Victory Hill Exhibits,
Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. cost $7.5 million to create, and is expected to run through January 2015.
[
