EDITORIAL: Marvel Studio's Secret To Success May Be Older Than Marvel Itself

Has the recent success of Marvel Studios been a real stroke of genius or are they dipping into a 100 year old bag of tricks?

Editorial Opinion
By Zuriel - Apr 12, 2014 05:04 PM EST
Filed Under: Marvel Comics
Something occurred to me today about the current formula of Marvel Studio’s films, and it actually came from a strange place.  I was reading a story about how yet another YA movie adaptation was taking the now tired road of splitting one of its interpretations of a novel into multiple films.  The last book in the Divergent series, Allegiant, is going to be split in two much like Harry Potter, The Twilight Saga, and the Hunger Games.  Obviously there is an argument for and against this, but whether you agree that the last book in a series deserves this treatment (while the others do not?) or whether you think it’s unnecessary, we can all pretty much agree it accomplishes one thing: it gets movie studios the chance to milk another few hundred million out of the fans.

In other words, it does what studios have been trying to do for a hundred years now; it puts butts in the seats.

While thinking about this I couldn’t help but have a slew of stupid memes run through my head about Hydra, which lead me to thinking about the latest Captain America movie and its tie in to the Agents of Shield series.  Maybe it was the character treatment itself, of the Captain America superhero, but suddenly it dawned on me what Marvel is actually doing.  The fact that we are getting two or three of these films a year along with a television tie-in, all sharing continuity, is something quite different than studios just cranking out sequels and reboots every few years.  It’s actually much like an idea they started using at the dawn of cinema.

Serials may have started back as far as 1911 and continued on into the 1950’s.  They were sometimes westerns, and sometime superhero tales, that ran in episodic format.  Each week, theater goers would have to return in order to catch the next installment of an ongoing story.  Audiences of the time didn’t have television sets, and this was a way to see their heroes in live action or animation instead of listening to them on the radio.  It was also a way to see news headlines during the war.  Even Captain America had a very bad interpretation of its own in this form.

This is very similar, even though it’s not on a weekly basis, to Marvel’s current model.  Because they are not just sequels, but a continuation of a much larger story, Cap and Thor and Ironman’s movies are getting us back into the theaters to find out what happens next.  By doing this, Marvel Studios is at this point at least guaranteeing themselves a return on every film they crank out; good or bad.  It might be an ancient formula, but it’s brilliant.

What’s extremely satisfying about their efforts?  Well, in order for their audience to keep up on the story and the resulting social conversation about it, we’ll go see whatever crap they put out.  The bonus for us, so far, is that these films are smartly made.  They are genuinely well written, well-acted and with very high production value on the effects.  It’s very neat knowing at this point, what I believe is the ninth installment so far, didn’t have to be one of the best comic based films of all time, but it was.
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RextheKing
RextheKing - 4/12/2014, 6:05 PM
If it's not broke, don't fix it... Marvel get's it.
MrCBM56
MrCBM56 - 4/12/2014, 6:10 PM
^^^^^
Abary
Abary - 4/12/2014, 6:46 PM
Why does everyone mess up with pictures?! Does it not show in preview, I mean who would go ahead and post an article when it is [frick]ed up in preview?!
GizmoEl
GizmoEl - 4/12/2014, 7:29 PM
I love the episodic format. I'm so incredibly excited to see how netflix delivers it's four shows
Pheezmatic
Pheezmatic - 4/12/2014, 7:54 PM
@Omega

Its like a mixture of the old school serial format, the ongoing comic book series format, the graphic novel format and the Marvel Event format, all rolled into one.

I feel like some coexist more than others and thats what I love...Marvel refuses to stick to just one formula. Like you said, as long as the quality upholds, not many people will ever get tired of the MS/MCU brand because they have proven that risk taking and thinking outside the box is one of their main objectives.
Pheezmatic
Pheezmatic - 4/12/2014, 8:33 PM
@Omega

Exactly...I still don't think people have really realized how much of a risk it was to make TWS SOOOOOOOOOOO much different from TFA. I really don't think there has been a sequel that has been so different in tone from the first one, in history. I could be wrong but I can't think of one. Injecting sub-genres into the CBM genre has reinvigorated the Marvel movie brand (which could've almost went to shit after what Fox was doing with Daredevil/Elektra, FF and Sony with GR..also can't forget Man-Thing and the Punisher movies)
GuardianDevil
GuardianDevil - 4/12/2014, 9:30 PM
@0mega
That's not true in it's entirety. While a few deviate from the norm such as TIH, Cap2 and IM the remaining seven fall under the same ol' generic action comedy routine. I'm not saying this means they are bad, because I loved Avengers quite liked Thor: The Dark World as well. But most of them fall under the same style. Sure they've diversified, but not that much. Hopefully with how Cap2 has deviated from the standard they'll keep going with similar ideas.
GuardianDevil
GuardianDevil - 4/12/2014, 9:30 PM
Lol, six not seven.
GuardianDevil
GuardianDevil - 4/12/2014, 9:33 PM
Even so I have liked every MS movie so far, Iron Man 2 is the worst yet it still has it's moments. Then again I am a CBM enthusiast and I find it hard to hate or completely pan a CBM. The only unwatchable CBMs are Superman IV, Batman & Robin, Catwoman and Elektra.
Lhornbk
Lhornbk - 4/12/2014, 10:04 PM
Ummmm......yeah, George Lucas did this around 35 years ago with Star Wars. He was very quick to admit that they were partly taking after the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials of the 50s. He didn't continue it at the time, until the 90s when the Star Wars EU basically did the same thing in novels and comics, because you always wanted to buy the next novel to see what happened. He continued it to an extent with the prequels and the TV show Clone Wars and the continuation of the novels. To an extent the James Bond films kind of did it for awhile in the 60s with all the movies with Blofeld and Spectre as the main enemy. And it's what Disney is going to attempt with Star Wars again starting in a couple of years (actually, to an extent it will start this fall with the new animated TV show.) So no, Marvel isn't doing anything new, just maybe taking it a little farther than others have done.
QuestionDAnswer
QuestionDAnswer - 4/12/2014, 10:07 PM
Marvel just did, what DC was doing years ago in animation.










sikwon
sikwon - 4/13/2014, 12:33 AM
You know as weak as Iron Man 2 was, it's one of the most important MCU movies. It was kind of a sacrifice to the larger plan. IM2 had to tie the whole thing together. It had to have a heavy Shield presence. Something else that it did was really open the door for Stark and Cap to show the seeds of a small rivalry. This was also carried into the Avengers. It's nothing now, a little banter back and forth but if Civil War ends up being a movie the seeds were laid in IM2. It showed Starks daddy issues then Avengers high lites his jealousy over Howards respect for cap.. "this is the guy my dad never shut up about?" I'm just saying, even though it was one of the weakest Marvel movies there's a lot going on and it absolutely tied the universe together.

Zuriel
Zuriel - 4/13/2014, 11:05 PM
Thank you all for reading. I don't know what's up with the pictures. Obviously I did what I always do and uploaded them, then copied and pasted the embed code. Maybe they didn't approve of them.

It's a shame I made them all myself actually.
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