Assemble for Justice

This is Asteroid G’s regular column documenting the rise of superhero films in Hollywood. For the complete story, make sure to read the previous parts:

• Part 1: Batman '66
• Part 2: Superman '78
• Part 3: Wonder Woman '75 and the Incredible Hulk '78
• Part 4: Batman '89
• Part 5: Batman & Robin
• Part 6: Blade
• Part 7: X-Men
• Part 8: Spider-man
• Part 9: Iron Man

When Marvel came onto the scene it was pretty clear they’d be the dominant force for an entire cinematic era. Iron Man blew everyone that saw it away, being a great piece of action cinema that treated its superhero properly. And then, when the last scene came up hinting at further adventures to come in a shared universe, everyone was shocked. It was bold and different and people were eager to see where it would go. And then Marvel kept coming. Not all their follow-ups were hits – The Incredible Hulk was bad, Iron Man 2 and Thor were both middling, and only Captain America: The First Avenger showed the promise of Marvel’s work everyone wanted. Audiences didn’t show up for those films the way they did for Iron Man (well, and its sequel), but that was fine. Groundwork was getting laid down.

The groundwork was key. Marvel understood something fundamental: to build a great superhero crossover, you first had to build the heroes. You had to have Iron Man and Black Widow, Hulk and Thor, Hawkeye and Captain America, all so that those heroes could then crossover with each other and build the shared universe properly. Five films to lay the needed foundation so that Marvel could pull off the impossible: the great superhero crossover, but on the big screen.

Six Heroes, One Movie

Hero team-up films weren’t really anything new. The X-Men had been on the big screen for a while at that point, ever since 2000’s X-Men, and they were the clear definition of hero team. But what Marvel wanted wasn’t just a hero team film, they wanted a total shared universe where heroes could have their own films, do their own thing, and then come together when an even bigger threat called for it. They wanted to be able to build a whole crossover experience, like they had in comics, but on the big screen, which really had never been done before. And they did it with the lead up to The Avengers. And because of that, their crossover film was a smash hit.

Leading into the release of The Avengers certainly no one expected it to be a massive, Billion-dollar-plus hit. Before its release, the best performing film in the series was Iron Man 2, which raked in a very respectable $623 Mil. The other films made between $370 Mil and $585 Mil, except for The Incredible Hulk, which brought in a paltry $264 Mil. If the film had done Iron Man 2 numbers it would have been a hit. Anywhere above would have been a smash. But The Avengers nearly lapped Iron Man 2 three times, collecting an astounding $1.52 Bil. With a B. It was a shock to everyone in Hollywood.

It managed it for two reasons. The first, as we noted, was that it laid the groundwork. We got to know most of the heroes in the film (sorry Black Widow and Hawkeye) in their own movies first. We got to learn about all of them, find out what made them heroes. We got to enjoy their journeys such that we wanted to see them altogether. It wasn’t just about one character or two, but all of them hanging out and being heroic all on the same team. No one could have predicted how much more audiences would love that in comparison to the solo films.

But what also worked in the favor of The Avengers was that the film was really good. Co-written by Zak Penn and Joss Whedon (the former of whom had most of his credit removed from the film by the latter, cutting him out of a bunch of residuals, once again proving just how big a dick Whedon really is) and directed by Whedon, the film is nothing short of fantastic. It has the right balance of character moments and humor contrasting against action and stakes. It manages to bring all the heroes together with a deft hand, giving them all interesting scenes in which they can shine, and then uses them wisely in the action.

And, yes, the action is great. There are a ton of entertaining, action-packed sequences that use the skills and powers of the heroes wisely. It has fun smashing its action figures together, and we get to enjoy all the sequences because they’re filmed so well. It’s a well put together, solidly constructed film that understands exactly what it has to do and does it as well as it can. Audiences loved it, and they kept showing up, turning Marvel from a solid superhero film studio into a juggernaut of the industry.

Earth’s Mightiest

Because of The Avengers, the entire superhero genre shifted basically overnight. Suddenly superheroes weren’t just solid performers; suddenly they were the biggest business ever and everyone needed to have their own superhero franchise. DC was the first to recognize this, trying to get their own cinematic universe out the door, but they weren’t the only ones. Valiant and Universal and so many others tried to jump into the pond. Most didn’t make it past a single movie.

The Avengers also redefined the summer blockbuster, and if a studio couldn’t get a superhero franchise off the ground they could at least try and get spectacle going. More Mission: ImpossibleIntroduced in 1966, the original Mission: Impossible featured a team of agents (with varying skills) heading out into the field to solve puzzle-box like cases on a weekly basis. This simple concept spawned a long-running series, a second series in the 1980s, and a hugely successful movie franchise starring Tom Cruise that continues today., more The Fast and the FuriousStarted as a film about undercover policing in the illegal street-racing community, this series has grown to encompass a number of different genres and become one of the most bankable franchises in the world., more Transformers. More bigger and more louder! More! And audiences ate it up, too. For a while there studios were raking in cash hand over fist, and no one did it better than Marvel and Disney. It was their greatest era and they dominated it in ways no one else could.

But How Did It Redefine Superheroes?

How did it not? Before The Avengers studios made different kinds of superhero films. DC had the Batman Begins trilogy. Sony had Spider-man. Fox had X-Men. After, though, single hero films weren’t enough. If you couldn’t set up big franchises then you were doing something wrong. DC rushed things to get their DCEU off the ground and ended up making a massive mess of their ambitions, swinging wildly without ever creating anything cohesive or good. Sony couldn’t just have one hero, they had to make a web (if you will) of various Spider-man villains. And Fox… well, Fox just kept trying to get their films to work, but their only successful spin-offs were WolverineAlthough not one of the original X-Men, Wolverine is certainly the most popular, even before he was played, to much acclaim, by Hugh Jackman in the Fox film series. and Deadpool… and then Disney bought them, too.

And for the next ten years Marvel dominated not just superhero films but all of modern cinema. For a decade there was everyone else, and then there was Marvel. The Avengers had turned their films into must-see events, and suddenly audiences were showing up like never before. It was too much money, too much adulation, for the other studios to ignore. Of course they were going to try and do what Marvel did. They couldn’t just sit back and be a second-string studio. That’s not how Hollywood works. Once someone is successful at something, all the other studios follow. That’s what audiences want, right?

Next Time On…

DC Tries, and fails, to give audiences what they want with the rushed and terrible launch of their cinematic universe. It’s a dark day in Gotham as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice comes to town.