For quite a while, the school of thought at Marvel Studios was to make movies that catered to both the fans that had seen every Marvel movie beginning with Iron Man and those that had never seen a single MCU film. That's no longer the case according to McFeely and Markus, apparently the MCU has evolved to a state where you'll need to have seen the majority of the previous movies or you're going to be lost. Speaking to The Wrap, the writing duo stated:
"We had to make a decision early that we were OK losing virgin audience member. If you don’t know some of these movies before you walk in you might be lost, but hopefully you’ll still be entertained. We can’t do a ‘previously in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,’ because it will take 25 minutes. [The MCU] isn’t a new thing, it’s an ongoing story that’s organically evolving movie to movie. In the beginning I think [Marvel] did operate as, ‘If this is your first one, it should be as fun as if it were your third one.’ Its a dense ongoing novel at this point."
This news likely pleases the majority of folks around these parts but what of the casual moviegoer - who's only seen a few MCU films? While this new change in policy shouldn't effect the new origin films on the horizon like Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel and Spider-Man, it's quite possible that the Captain America and Iron Man franchises are now too dense with backstory for "virgins" (as McFeely and Markus put it) to penetrate.
This concept is something the big two comic book publishers wrestle with every few years. It's why there's a seemingly never-ending cycle of reboots and relaunches. Do you think the MCU could ever reach a state where they need to do something similar?