Comment: What is the Marvel Cinematic Universe (M.C.U)?

Ever wondered what the M.C.U was? And why X-Men and Deadpool don't fit into it? We've got your geek 101 right here.

Geeks have truly inherited the Earth.

Gone are the days when the only superhero movie you'd get would be Judge Dredd with your beloved character looking and acting nothing like the source material they were based on.

Remember the first X-Men film when everyone dressed like extras in The Matrix and made jokes about wearing 'spandex' that resembled costumes from the actual comics?

Now we live in a world where if the latest X-Men villain Apocalypse doesn't look the right shade of blue, fans protest loud enough that filmmakers scuttle to correct that shiz in post-production.

Because you must keep the fans happy: after all, they're the ones who have turned superhero movies into one of the most overwhelmingly popular genres.

Comic book blockbusters make bank, which everything from The Dark Knight trilogy to the Avengers franchise being billion-dollar box-office record-breakers.

Yet given we now get half a dozen of them a year, it can be confusing to work out which movies fit together.

The 'big two' in comics is commonly referred to as DC and Marvel.

When it comes to the big screen, all DC Comics properties sit at Warner Bros - that includes Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and the forthcoming Justice League.
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Source: Supplied
As for Marvel, welp, that's where things get a little more tricky.

Oiginally Marvel comics had tried and failed to make their own films (see the God-awful Fantastic Four from 1994 and Captain America from 1990 for reference).

In a tight spot financially, they started selling off the film rights to some of their most popular comic book characters in a bid to avoid bankruptcy.

Spider-Man was snapped up by Sony, X-Men and most of the characters within that universe - Deadpool, Wolverine, Gambit - by Fox, along with Daredevil and Fantastic Four, and, erm, Universal got Namor ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

While some of those movies were commercially and critically successful in varying degrees, it wasn't until Marvel launched their own cinematic universe in 2008 with Iron Man that the model was officially broken.

Marvel Studios mimicked the layout of their comic book world, designing films where supporting characters could co-star along main characters before branching off into their own solo films which then all came together in Joss Whedon's juggernaut Avengers in 2012.

Their set-up was such a hit, in fact, that Disney bought Marvel for 4 billion in 2009 and helped expand their Marvel Cinematic Universe (M.C.U) even further with television series such as Jessica Jones, Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D, Daredevil and Agent Carter and enough merch to satisfy a country of five-year-olds (and their parents).


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3 min read

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By Maria Lewis

Source: The Feed


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