Regardless of how you feel about the movies, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s 2008 — 2019 run is one of the most impressive achievements in commercial filmmaking history.
Starting with Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man,” Marvel turned several of the company’s B-level superheroes into A-level film franchises.
Getting non-geeks amped up for the assemblage of “The Avengers” was miraculous enough; playing the long game, and cramming every member of the expanded MCU roster into a largely satisfying two-part blockbuster event via “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame” was unprecedented in terms of expense and narrative scale.What’s most amazing to me is that, after the runaway success of “Iron Man,” every single one of these movies was a preordained box-office smash.
Even “Guardians of the Galaxy,” the members of which were completely unknown to the vast majority of the moviegoing public, made bank.
Entertainment journalists tried to portray some of these films as risks,…
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