‘Avengers: Endgame’ One Year Later: Why Marvel Thrived While DC Films And The Dark Universe Struggled

The Marvel Cinematic Universe emphasized character over plot and world-building, crafting a series of mostly stand-alone (and mostly pretty good) movies that treated interlocked, multi-franchise narratives as a bonus rather than the main hook.

One year ago today, I was doing the math in regard to Avengers: Endgame and its jaw-dropping $357 million domestic debut (38% larger than the opening for Avengers: Infinity War a year earlier) and $1.2 billion global launch. The most impressive stat that weekend, beyond the sheer size of the number, was that it had a bigger opening weekend jump than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, which had opened with $169 million six months after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I had opened with $125 million (+35%). That, despite Harry Potter 7.2 playing in 3-D and Harry Potter 7.1 playing in 2-D. In the end, it would earn $867 million in North America alone. It would top Avatar’s seemingly unsinkable $2.789 billion global cume, thanks to China’s 71% jump from Infinity War and resulting $619 million cume.

As a singular event, it was the culmination of 11 years of earned audience goodwill, selling itself as the end of the line for the original group of Avengers and the end of the “Infinity Saga” after 21 prior well-received, well-reviewed and mostly pretty damn good popcorn entertainments. Warts and all, the MCU put their characters (the heroes and their heroic supporting cast) first, while putting plotting third and inter-connectivity first. Audiences would show up for the characters they liked, these specific cinematic incarnations of somewhat well-known superheroes, with the inter-connectivity being an earned bonus. The Avengers was a kick because it was Chris Evans’ Captain America hanging out with Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, not just “Hey, it’s Hulk and Thor!” The MCU worked because each movies, save for the Avengers installments (and arguably the Captain America sequels) were mostly stand-alone adventures.

The DC Films franchise initially put the longform plotting first while expecting that the mere idea of Superman and Batman hanging out would be of equal interest to audiences. Like Fringe in its day, DC Films eventually downplayed the mythology and started emphasizing the core characters. After all, The X-Files didn’t get mythology-heavy until the middle of season two (which itself was necessitated by Gillian Anderson needing maternity leave and thus getting abducted by aliens). Ditto the MCU, which didn’t go all-in on the whole “Thanos is hunting infinity stones!” story until the end of Phase Two. The cruel irony of Batman v Superman faltering by putting plot over character is that Zack Snyder’s casting of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and Jason Momoa as Aquaman was “Chris Columbus casts Harry Potter 1”-level impressive and worked like gangbusters in their respective solo movies.

Universal’s doomed “Dark Universe” made the mistake of thinking that the mere idea of a cinematic universe was itself a winning hook. To be fair, the idea of known grown up movie stars like Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie and Russell Crowe palling around in the world of Universal’s “classic monsters” wasn’t without a certain appeal, and having Tom Cruise front the first one gave a certain amount of false hope. Alas, The Mummy wasn’t a very good movie and was far more concerned with long-term world-building than being a singular piece of high-quality popcorn entertainment. Marvel didn’t announce their big “road to Avengers” plans until the Monday after Iron Man, a 99% stand-alone movie, opened with $102 million in May of 2008. Marvel hooked audiences with one well-liked superhero flick and then said “Hey, there’s more where that came from.”

That was the secret to Marvel’s “once in a lifetime” success story. Even after they knew, via the $700 million-plus successes of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014, that audiences would show up partially thanks to the MCU brand name, they didn’t go out of their way to interconnect the movies. They still offered mostly stand-alone films that were, mega-bucks action and spectacle notwithstanding, character studies that made a point to have more to say about their protagonist than “You have to embrace your destiny as the special.” Audiences could see Black Panther without having seen Thor: The Dark World. More importantly, they could see Ant-Man and and the Wasp without seeing Captain America: Civil War. My oldest kid saw and understood Avengers: Endgame without having seen Infinity War (she just wanted to show up her friends by seeing it before them).

It also helped that comic book superhero movies really began, around 2014, to stand out from the crowd of blockbuster movies. This was both due to them just getting better and because they had to, both Marvel and their competitors, be more than just a superhero movie. They began to monopolize genre-friendly moviegoers while other would-be franchises found themselves trying to be “like a superhero movie.” At least in terms of blockbuster action fantasies, the likes of Wonder Woman, Black Panther and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse were better than Robin Hood, The Mummy, Solo: A Star Wars Story and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. They approximated genre movies and were often better than the genuine article. So, yes, relatively speaking, Logan > Blood Father and The Winter Solider > Shadow Recruit. I’d be shocked if Sony’s He-Man is anywhere near as good as Thor: Ragnarok.

Avengers: Endgame earned 24% more domestically than Avengers: Infinity War. In terms of “part three to part four” jumps, it sits behind only Thunderball, Live Free or Die Hard (12 years after Die Hard with a Vengeance), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Sudden Impact (seven years after The Enforcer and at the peak of Dirty Harry’s popularity), Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (5.5-years after Mission: Impossible III), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (18 years after The Last Crusade), Fast & Furious (really more of a direct sequel to The Fast & Furious compared to the Tokyo Drift spin-off), Jurassic World (14 years after Jurassic Park III) and Mad Max: Fury Road (30 years after the comparatively cult-ish Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome). For a conventional part four to conventional part three not spaced years and years apart, Avengers: Endgame stands almost alone.

If you choose to count Captain America: Civil War as an Avengers movie (humor me for a moment) and thus count Avengers: Endgame as “part five,” then its 38% jump would be just above the record-setting 35% jump from Fast & Furious ($155 million) to Fast Five ($209 million). By the way, yes, it had a bigger jump than Harry Potter 7.1 ($295 million) to Harry Potter 7.2 ($381 million, again in 3-D). Like Harry Potter, the MCU finale broke records by essentially bringing out every general moviegoer who had ever seen even a single MCU movie in a theater. Ironically, the first long-form MCU arc came to an end right as studios were realizing that cinematic universes weren’t an answer unto themselves, and that even would-be cinematic universe installments (Aquaman, Kong: Skull Island, Venom, The Nun) needed to stand on their own two feet.

In the year where Game of Thrones and Star Wars ended with a thud, the MCU was the rare long form fantasy narrative that stuck the damn landing with a generally satisfying series finale. No matter what happens to the MCU going forward, the 11-year, 22-movie, $17 billion triumph stands unique unto itself as a towering cinematic achievement. Looking at the theatrical landscape, both in terms of how the current pandemic will affect moviegoing habits, what franchise installments remain and the sheer impossibility of getting audiences to show up for “new” franchises, we may never, save for maybe Avatar 2, see the likes of Avengers: Endgame ever again. One year ago, Avengers: Endgame struck like Thunderball. To paraphrase another series finale to another game-changing blockbuster franchise, it will be a very long time before a movie… inspires us the way Avengers: Endgame did.