Dont Tell NetflixDont Tell Netflix

By George Robbins

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, is easily one of the biggest franchises in the world at the moment and it seems it will easily stay that way for the foreseeable future. There is not many franchises that can actually reach the same heights that we have seen with MCU films and the only other one known world wide is Star Wars. The Star Wars franchise is one that has maintained its popularity for many years now and will continue to hold its popularity for a long time. The big difference between the two franchises is that the side content for each is what determined the popularity over time. Star Wars maintained its popularity through the use of canon side-content instead of just the mainline movies.

Star Wars has had many pieces of media released over the years to give more context to the universe in which everything inevitably takes place. This has been shown through novels, comics, toy lines, and even television shows over the years and it has given the franchise something to latch onto. Nothing has been able to really establish itself so well as a worldwide phenomenon until the MCU came along. When the first ‘Iron Man‘ film released, no one really knew what was going on and the film itself is held up as this piece of media that really changed the world of cinema. What followed was a series of films that no one really expected and a franchise that would turn a lot of things upside-down.

After the next few Marvel films released, the Marvel Cinematic Universe became an established franchise. People recognized pretty quickly that it had the potential to reach. and even top, the Star Wars franchise in popularity. This is how we ended up with Disney being the company which would end up purchasing Marvel Studios which was working on making the new films for the MCU. Disney would go on to take control of both the MCU and and the Star Wars franchise, giving them the most profitable franchises across the world. What they came to quickly realize was that while they had a lot of the pieces for their franchise puzzle, they didn’t have them all.

Unlike the DC franchise, control of every character in that universe was not under the umbrella of a single company. DC is owned by Warner Bros. which has control of the intellectual property rights of every single character so that they can make whatever piece of media they want about them. Marvel is a different story in its entirety and many of the characters from the Marvel comics were not a part of the MCU. Many of the Marvel Comic book characters were given to companies such as Fox some years back. This is why they had control over the entirety of the X-Men for so many years and why the MCU never so much as mentioned them.

For the longest time, no one knew if the X-Men or any related characters to their comics would end up being a part of the MCU. Fox had been making those films since the late 90’s and they continued doing so all the way up to the point where the studio was essentially bought out by Disney. If not for this, they probably would have just kept making those films and their films weren’t really doing so great with the last of them tanking critically. Things were not looking so well for them, but now those characters have a good chance of becoming a part of the MCU now that they are under the same umbrella company. It will probably be a long time off before we get to see them, but it is the best chance we have at seeing a good X-Men movie.

Furthering the hope that we can see the X-Men characters in MCU films is the fact that Spider-Man has been made such a huge part of the MCU. For those unaware, Spider-Man, and characters related to his comics, are owned by Sony and have been for many years. Luckily, a deal was made where Marvel Studios could use Spider-Man in their films, thus making him a part of the MCU. This means that there are now plenty of different interactions we could end up seeing in the near future in regards to other characters from the Spidey comics. Now that the MCU has complete control over X-Men characters, things should work out even better for them in theory. We just have to play the waiting game from now on to see just how they plan on integrating the characters into their shared universe.

As previously stated, the movies under the Fox umbrella of Marvel movies were never going to be a part of the MCU and that still isn’t changing. The characters themselves are highly expected to become a part of the larger universe, but it will be some time before we actually get to see them in action. Even though those movies may not be a part of the MCU as a whole, they are definitely important to the cinematic shared universe at its core. This stems from the fact that the movies are still based on the same comic books and it will continue to be that way forever. There is nothing we can do about the past except to accept the fact that these movies existed and that the MCU wouldn’t be what it is now without them.

Before ‘Iron Man’ released back in 2008, there were plenty of superhero films which released based on Marvel characters. I just discussed those movies which came from Fox and Sony and they helped open the roadway for the MCU films we have now. The superhero movie genre existed, but it just wasn’t perfected to the point where the masses would enjoy it until ‘Iron Man’ came out. It seems Disney is now acknowledging this fact with the label they have given to these other films. Disney has officially re-branded these non-MCU films as Marvel Legacy movies on Disney+. This just shows what these movies mean to the industry and hopefully going forward it will remind people of what we have now due to what we had before.