Ultimate Movie Year finds the best films from weekends past to build an all-star lineup of cinema.
"The Avengers"
Released May 4, 2012
Directed by Joss Whedon
In short order, the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies have become the biggest box office franchise of all time, eclipsing the Star Wars movies and making more money than the James Bond, Batman, and Harry Potter movies combined. There have already been two dozen films released so far, with lots more on the way. There's no doubt that the success of Marvel shocked and changed the movie industry for the foreseeable future.
And yet, it was only eight years ago when nobody was exactly sure how this was all going to pan out.
That's not to say superhero movies weren't a reasonably safe bet for box office dollars. Richard Donner's "Superman: The Movie" was the first major comic book that scored with audiences, the second top-drawing picture of the year. Just over a decade later, Tim Burton's "Batman" in 1989 was another phenomenon. Meanwhile, Marvel suffered from years of cheap and delayed films before getting the right pieces together for 1998's "Blade," 2000's "X-Men," and 2002's "Spider-Man," the latter of which became an immediate, massive hit.
The problem was that despite some big hits, most of the other superhero movies didn't match the quality of the films mentioned above, or the sequels were frequently suffering from diminishing returns with rare exceptions. There was no real consistency to the quality of filmmaking and writing from movie to movie, even after the debut of the MCU with 2008's "Iron Man."