It's been an amazing 10 years for Marvel Studios. As they get ready to debut the company's biggest movie to date, Marvel takes a look back at the last decade of movies. A new video includes several members of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, both the cast and the crew, as they talk about the journey that they have been part of and the crazy experiment that is the MCU. Check it out.
The video opens with interview footage of Iron Man director Jon Favreau that was recorded just before the film opened. It's remarkable to see the director unsure of what is about to happen. At that point the MCU was little more than an idea, he was focused on whether or not Iron Man was going to be well received in its own right. It seems almost ridiculous now to think there would have been any question, but a decade ago the world was a very different place. Marvel Studios had never made a movie before, Iron Man as a character wasn't necessarily all that well known among the general film-going audience, and Robert Downey Jr. wasn't a huge movie star. Yeah, a lot has changed in over the last decade.
From there we get the perspectives of several of the Avengers themselves, like Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth, as well as the likes of Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige and Avengers: Infinity War co-director Joe Russo. Feige credits casting director Sarah Halley Finn as the person responsible for bringing together the insanely talented cast of people that make up the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's nice that she gets a chance to speak in this little featurette, as casting directors rarely get a lot of time in the spotlight, and it's certainly true that the cast of the MCU is one of the most impressive collections of actors and actresses ever assembled.
Nobody had ever tried anything like Marvel's experiment 10 years ago. The idea of trying to create a series of films that could stand alone, but also be interwoven with each other, in the same way that comic books have worked for decades, was far from a sure bet. However, it's clear now that movie fans were more than happy to go along for the ride. Not only was the first Iron Man a huge success, but nearly every movie that Marvel has put out has been a smash hit.
While the MCU will be having something of a finale with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers 4, the franchise will certainly continue. While it's unclear exactly what form that will take, Marvel will need to begin a new experiment. After having proven that a cinematic universe was possible, they'll next need to prove that it can survive radical change. In 10 years we can look back once again and see how well that worked.
