Marvel StudiosThe creation of Marvel’s cinematic universe marked a landmark moment in cinema history and a massive undertaking for the studio itself.
In the second and third phases of Marvel’s cinematic universe, weaving together dozens of disparate storylines under one banner required an understandable amount of streamlining in terms of the style and tone of each individual film.
While Guardians of the Galaxy and Iron Man 3 stand out as notable comic exceptions, films like Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant Man have tended to conform to more or less the same overall style.
However, Marvel president Kevin Feige has suggested that we may start to see this trend breaking down, if not the studio’s next few releases, then certainly in the eagerly anticipated MCU ‘phase four’.
Marvel StudiosIn an interview with Vulture, Feige proposed the idea of refocusing the Marvel lens to smaller and more intimate storylines such as the upcoming Thor/Hulk buddy movie mashup Thor: Ragnarok.
Feige suggested the studio may start producing more films that reflect more of the MCU directors’ individual creative input and focus on smaller-scale team-ups rather than massive action epics.
Here’s what he said:
There are so many, but I would say, both because of the characters and the actors who’ve created them, Doctor Strange and Tony Stark. Particularly in Infinity War and the movie after that, there are… unexpected team-ups.
Marvel StudiosThe studio head continued by suggesting that the escalation in scale of recent Marvel films wasa necessary tool to tell the stories that the studio wanted to tell.
He explained:
It never is intentionally about ‘being even bigger.’ Arguably, one of the biggest scenes we’ve ever had in a movie was the airport battle in Civil War, and there weren’t world-ending stakes in that scene, there wasn’t an asteroid smashing into a city in that scene, but there was a conflict between the characters that made you feel something.
To us, it’s less about continuing to go bigger with spectacle – although in some cases, we will – and more about continuing to go deeper with those character interactions.
Whatever happens we’re sure Marvel’s got an exciting future ahead of it.
