How The Marvel Comics Transformed Into The Marvel Cinematic Universe

today the Marvel Cinematic Universe is an amazing and expansive place spanning across many great movies and various franchises from Iron Man to Captain America to Thor to the Avengers there have been so many box-office smash hits in the last ten plus years of the MC use existence but there was a time when all of these characters and stories were confined to the pages of comic books much to the chagrin of Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee it's been a fascinating journey from comic to movies for Marvel and there were various things that went terribly wrong along the way right now it seems as though Marvel's an absolutely unstoppable company but this wasn't always the case there was a time when Marvel was desperate for money and trying to sell off the rights to some of their most beloved characters but before we start talking about what went so horribly wrong let's take a moment to talk about what went right and how Marvel got started in the first place everyone who's ever seen a Marvel movie knows who Stan Lee is and most comic book fans have heard a fellow comic creators like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko but few people ever talked about publisher Martin Goodman who founded the very company which would someday become Marvel Martin started out publishing Western pulp magazines back in 1933 when he noticed that kids were going crazy over superheroes and it was the new popular trend up until this point American comic books were just reprinted comic strips in color that were originally run in local newspapers Martin was interested in capitalizing on the trend so he started timely publications with the intention of publishing comic books but the problem was he didn't have any content so he made a deal with a company called funnies Inc who'd been creating traditional comic books up until that point timely comics then released Marvel Comics number one in October of 1939 this was the first time comic book audiences were introduced to the Human Torch and a Namor the Submariner although Martin had taken a risk by branching out into comics it was one which paid off almost immediately the first issue was such a massive success he printed it again the next month and sold nearly 900,000 copies between the two run for the first year all of the timely comics came from funnies Inc but eventually this changed Martin bought the rights to the existing characters under the name timely comics and then hired his own comic creating staff Joe Simon and Jack Kirby got to work creating some patriotic themed superheroes including Captain America Martin also hired his wife's cousins Stanley Lieber to work as an office assistant around this time eventually this humble office assistant worked his way up to an editor but he was embarrassed about spending his days creating comic books he had dreamt of being a writer but worried nobody would take him seriously in the future so Stanley Lieber decided to come up with a pseudonym to write under and started calling himself Stanley if that name sounds familiar that's because it's V Stanley he would go on to become one of the most influential comic book writers in the world despite being embarrassed to admit he was a comic book writer at the beginning during World War two comic books featuring superheroes were extremely popular but when the war ended people gradually started to lose interest sales of comics dropped and Martin decided to diversify in order to keep his business afloat instead of focusing all of his resources on comics he started pushing out horror westerns humor crime and pretty much every other comic genre you can think of during this time Martin was releasing comic books using the logo of Atlas news company which was a distribution company he owned according to Stanley Martin was just trying to push out work as quickly and cheaply as possible while still maintaining minimal standards of quality it may not sound like the most heroic way of conducting business but it kept the company afloat during this difficult time but in the 60s things started to turn around when Martin began releasing more modern comic books under the Marvel Comics label DC had been coming out with popular heroes like the flash in Green Lantern and it was time for Marvel to follow suit they decided to design superheroes who'd appeal to people of all ages and not just children up until now most superheroes had been virtuous beyond reproach but now they were holding petty grudges fighting amongst themselves and ditching their secret identities for fame Marvel's most successful character was a teenage boy plagued with doubt who worried about mundane everyday things like getting to school on time who also happened to be bitten by a radioactive spider it was so far from what audiences were used to and they couldn't get enough of it Marvel had found what worked when it came to creating compelling characters that people loved Marvel wasn't afraid to show good characters who looked like terrifying monsters like the thing in the Incredible Hulk during this time other comics kept things safe and avoided talking about real world events but Marvel wasn't afraid to get political their heroes didn't guard the make-believe streets of Metropolis or Gotham City before this comic revolution there was no way anyone would have published a book about a superhero like Iron Man we didn't dislike these characters because of their flaws it just made us all the more interested in their lives and it just goes to show how timeless what makes a good character is because these are the things which make Marvel movies so great and keep us going back to the theater to see each new release but even though Marvel had finally hit their stride their troubles weren't over not by a long shot thinking about some of the crazy things we've seen happen in the MCU some of the daring things Marvel did during this time may seem kind of tame but we learned that Stanley really doesn't enjoy compromising on his vision in 1971 Marvel Comics was approached by the United States Department of Health Education and Welfare they asked Stan Lee who was the editor-in-chief at the time if he could put together a comic which would essentially be an anti-drug PSA he agreed to do so but the comics code Authority wasn't happy about it at the time comic books would be submitted to the CCA for approval and they'd grant the covers their seal of approval if it met certain standards apparently they didn't approve of spider-man remarking that he would rather face a hundred supervillains than throw his life away on drugs and refused to approve the story but Stan Lee published it anyway in the amazing spider-man 96 through 98 and surprisingly enough audiences really enjoyed it even the CCA was forced to revise their own code as a result not only was Marvel doing extremely well but they finally pulled ahead of longtime rival DC Comics the company had branched out into different genres of comic books but now they were taking their work off of printed pages and bringing it to the people in different ways there are many people to thank for making Marvel what it is today and for coming up with some of our favorite characters but there's a reason that Stanley is the face of Marvel Comics and that's really because he always wanted to be getting superheroes on the big screen was his goal and he did everything possible to make that happen when Marvel released a radio series and a record in 1975 Stanley was there as the narrator comic book fans had been enjoying his Stanley presents comic book openers and now they were listening to him announce stories about the Fantastic Four and spider-man even Stanley's now famous catchphrase excelsior was designed to make him stand out from his fellow comic book writers he was also a familiar face the Marvel comic conventions which began occurring on the outside Marvel seemed to be flourishing but on the inside things weren't going so well during the 80s comic book collecting was a popular hobby and Marvel as well as plenty of other comic producers took advantage of this they were releasing many different editions of their products promising that they would be worth significant sums of money someday at the time fans couldn't get enough of them but it was only a matter of time before this rapidly expanding bubble would burst everyone knows that eventually Sony ended up with the rights to spider-man and all associated characters but it was really all the way back in 1985 when the rights were sold for the first time Stan Lee loved the idea of a spider-man movie but studios simply weren't interested that may seem unbelievable now but keep in mind the last big superhero movie was Superman 3 which came out in 1983 and failed to achieve the success of its predecessors in 1989 we'd get Tim Burton's Batman but that hadn't happened yet and studios were skeptical about superhero movies being profitable Canon films specialized in low-budget films which amassed cult followings like Hercules enter the ninja or missing in action they agreed to pay Marvel 225 thousand dollars over a five-year period in addition to a percentage of the film's revenue but the catch was that they had to make a spider-man movie before 1990 or the rights would return to marvel they also found someone interested in the Fantastic Four in the form of German producer Bernd who owned constantine films the deal was that i singer would have the rights to the Fantastic Four in the Silver Surfer as long as he made a movie within the next seven years in total he paid $250,000 for the rights to create a Fantastic Four movie which is just a bit more expensive than what Canon films paid for spider-man before he knew it I singer was running out of time and he desperately didn't want to lose the ability to profit from these characters he did end up making a Fantastic Four movie but if you've never heard of it there's a reason for that the movie was so horrible that a VR ad from Marvel offered to return Barents 1 million dollar investment on the film if he agreed to destroy all of the copies the movie was so bad that even during these desperate times Marvel would rather spend a million bucks than have the good name of the Fantastic Four besmirched forever since they had technically made a Fantastic Four movie Constantine films was able to sell the distribution rights to Fox who made their own mediocre fantastic four movies all of the profits Marvel was raking in attracted the attention of a businessman named Ronald Perelman in 1989 Ron spent eighty two point five million dollars to buy a Marvel Entertainment Group from new world pictures who owned it at the time in a couple of years Marvel was on the stock market and Ron was spending money as fast as possible he spent seven hundred million dollars of Marvel's money on toy trading card and sticker companies almost as soon as the ink dried on these checks Marvel had a serious issue on its hands in 1992 not just one but seven of its most valuable artists got up and quit to start their own company called Image Comics under the umbrella of Malibu comics then in 1994 Marvel ended up buying Malibu at a time when cash flow is becoming a serious issue some people believe the blame for marbles downfall rests solely on Ron Perlman but that's debatable he was correct that if he raised the prices on comic books in the amount they produced people would buy more of them the numbers corroborate that pretty clearly and boosted by this Ron sold 40% of Marvel's stock however he promised investors that the trend would continue when in reality the bubble was ready to burst because of the high cost and decline in quality people stopped buying Marvel Comics and their stocks plummeted their shares have been worth up to 35 dollars and 75 cents each in 1993 and in 1996 they were worth 2 dollars and 37 cents each that was a huge loss for Marvel investors Ron had a plan about how to get out of this mess he wanted to buy the remaining shares of a company called toy biz merged with Marvel and used this to fund Marvel Studios but nobody liked the idea of Ron spending even more of the company's money so they opposed him at every turn Ron decided to simply file for bankruptcy on behalf of Marvel so that he could reorganize the company without getting permission from shareholders but things didn't quite go according to plan although Marvel Entertainment Group did merge with toy biz Ron was ousted in the process along with anyone who had ties with him now the company was in the hands of Isaac Perlmutter and avi arad two people who were truly passionate about Marvel Comics and remember candan films who had bought the movie rights to spider-man through a series of mishaps and bad investments of their own they ended up going bankrupt and the movie never ended up getting made this was probably for the best Stanley was horrified by the early Canon scripts but to get his precious spider-man back he had to undergo a lengthy court battle which finally wrapped up in 1999 funnily enough spider-man had arrived just in time to save the day Marvel was desperately hurting for money and as luck would have it they had an interested buyer and this one was much larger than Kenan Films gyre Landau of Sony Pictures was interested in acquiring the rights to spider-man but Marvel decided to sweeten the deal desperate to buy time to recover from their financial disaster Marvel offered Sony the rights to not just spider-man but some of their best characters these included Iron Man Thor Black Panther and ant-man at a bargain price of only 25 million dollars to put that in perspective years later Marvel Studios would kick off its own universe with an Iron Man movie that grossed 585 million dollars worldwide not only did Sony say no but they believed that nobody cared much for any superhero not named spider-man in the end Sony purchased the rights to spider-man in his associated characters for 7 million dollars like their deal with canon Marvel also included a clause which requires Sony to make at least one new spider-man movie every five years another superhero franchise to be sold off during this time was the x-men who ended up being purchased by Fox for the paltry sum of 2.6 million dollars if it seems like Marvel was just giving their characters away well they kind of work but these studios were also taking risks superhero movies didn't really catch on yet and if they hadn't caught on eventually these studios would spend millions of dollars on a useless property now Marvel Entertainment Group was getting started making movies and trying not to over extend their reach they produced x-men in 2000 and although it was distributed by 20th Century Fox it proved marble had some valuable assets at their disposal avi arad didn't want to sell off any more characters because he felt that doing so was giving away the best part of the company and thankfully for Marvel fans these heroes came through when it was time to rescue the company in the early 2000s Marvel was doing much better when a talent agent named David Maisel got involved with the company you may not have heard of him but if you love the Marvel Cinematic Universe you really have him to thank he joined up with Marvel in 2003 and a time when the company was worth about 400 million dollars he agreed with Abby that they shouldn't be selling off any more characters or producing content to be distributed by other Studios David reasoned that since Marvel had so many characters they could truly create their own universe with characters and storylines that crossed over just like they do in the comic books his plan involved going back to what made Marvel comics so great in the first place but moving forward would require convincing the Board of Directors and getting enough money to pay for it in 2005 Marvel was ready to take a risk and bet pretty much everything on heroes like Iron Man Captain America and Thor they offered these heroes as collateral on a five hundred twenty five million dollar loan from Merrill Lynch if they couldn't make a profit on their movies the bank would then own the heroes Merrill Lynch gave Marvel the money over the course of seven years on the condition that they could spend it on ten movies as soon as the deal went through Marvel announced they to be making a movie centered around the character of Iron Man not only did Marvel have the cash to start making movies but they acquired a person whose name we're sure you're familiar with notorious comic fan Kevin Feige was named president of Marvel Studios in 2007 and there's no denying he's had a huge role in shaping the MCU into what it is today while it's easy to look at the box office numbers today as evidence of Marvel Studios success that really downplays what a huge risk Iron Man was Marvel was risking a huge sum of money and important intellectual properties and they were doing so with perhaps their riskiest character Stan Lee's a guy who isn't afraid to challenge himself and at the height of the Cold War he decided to see if he could convince audiences to like a very unlikable guy people were tired of war and weapons so Stan Lee created a villain who made a fortune making weapons and selling them to the Army in regard to Tony Stark he made the character wealthy self-centered and basically everything most of us would despise in another human being but people ended up loving Tony Stark just the same that being said his comic book popularity had taken a hit after the 2006 civil war storyline since he fought against another incredibly popular superhero in Captain America making him an even more precarious choice for a movie star let's talk about Robert Downey jr. for a moment he had been a huge star back in the day but his career had been totally derailed because of his struggles with addiction when you consider that many stars get arrested for driving under the influence and it's barely a blip on their resume that makes you realize just how dire his problems were he would frequently show up late if at all to film projects and wasn't putting forth his best performances he was arrested multiple times for offenses including walking around barefoot and intoxicated in public he even walked into his neighbor's house and fell asleep in their son's bed once it's safe to say it wasn't the best of times for Robert around this time nobody wanted to hire Robert Downey jr. and even those who did couldn't afford to not because he charged too much but because insurance companies wouldn't cover him it's pretty much impossible to imagine anyone else as Iron Man at this point but unsurprisingly Marvel Studios wasn't interested in hiring Robert it was only because of the insistence of director Jon Favreau that he got the part while a script was being developed Jon realized the character of Tony Stark lined up with Robert Downey jr. in many ways he made this non-negotiable and this meant Marvel Studios ended up casting an unemployable actor as an unlikable superhero clearly Marvel Studios had the perfect actor for the job and now all they had to do was create the perfect movie but even Marvel Studios was unprepared for how successful Iron Man would be and they kind of hedged their bed on the film Marvel was absolutely planning a universe but it was one in which Iron Man wasn't necessarily an integral part but that all changed when the movie came together arguably the best part of the movie happens right at the end and it's when Tony Stark says the now-infamous phrase I am Iron Man that line wasn't in the script Robert Downey jr. just said it while filming and Kevin Feige absolutely loved it the big reveal that Iron Man's secret identity wasn't really a secret took the movie to the next level in the comic books Tony eventually goes public with Ironman but it takes him years to work up to it the decision to include it in the movie was a bold choice but Kevin Feige was confident that it had payoff it seemed that in keeping with the character Marvel Studios was willing to take a risk by leading it in the movie all of these risks paid off big-time and the movie earned 585 million dollars on a budget of 140 million dollars it was nominated for an Academy Award and named one of the best films of the Year by the American Film Institute perhaps more importantly it really was the perfect starting point for the Marvel Cinematic Universe the next movie in the lineup was the Incredible Hulk and if you remember what we said earlier this was anticipated to be a way bigger movie than Iron Man but as we all know it definitely wasn't and to this day it's kind of the black sheep of the Marvel family it's not irredeemably terrible or anything it's just not really up to MCU standards at this point what was odd about the film was that Bruce Banner is portrayed by Edward Norton while in every other movie he's played by Mark Ruffalo the movie lacked the humor and emotional depth of Iron Man and it had even less connections to the MCU as a whole but in the defense of everyone who worked on the film the Hulk is a difficult character to portray when the Hulk is on screen all he wants to do is smash everything around him whether it be friend or foe and that's only compelling for so long on the other hand when Bruce Banner is on the screen he's just a normal guy albeit a brilliant one combining the characters of Bruce Banner and Hulk and the other MCU movies instead of another standalone film has been a great move it's allowed both Bruce Banner and Hulk to develop their personalities which failed to flourish in the Incredible Hulk movie in 2009 something happened to Marvel Studios which elicited a mixed reaction from fans remember back when Iron Man was released in the company was worth about 400 million dollars well in 2009 the Walt Disney Company purchased Marvel Entertainment for a whopping 4 billion dollars of course fans immediately began speculating about how this would affect the MCU what if Disney's vision for Marvel Studios was completely different what does this mean for the future of the MCU there were plenty of questions and even Disney fans worried that their beloved media behemoth had over paid for their newest acquisition a few years prior Disney had purchased Pixar for approximately eight billion dollars and now they were risking even more billions of dollars on a studio that had so far put out only Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk but the fears of everyone were proven to be unfounded Marvel movies and the rights to their characters have proven to be insanely profitable and the quality of Marvel movies hasn't taken a hit since Disney got involved despite your opinion on Disney you have to admit this company is good at making money and it knows not to mess with what works they didn't want to take a successful enterprise and change things they just wanted to reap the profits of that success the subsequent movies in Phase one of the MCU were Iron Man 2 Thor and Captain America the First Avenger these movies are all great on their own but what they were really doing was getting audiences ready for the ultimate movie crossover and the final movie in phase 1 the Avengers Marvel made some extremely successful movies and proved that superhero movies could be both popular and profitable but now it was time to see if the characters they had been so carefully cultivating would work together all at once one huge part of why the MCU movies have been so successful is because they're consistent sure everyone has their favorite movie and one that they didn't like as much as the others but overall the movies adhere to certain standards which few other Studios can pull off this is important when you create a shared narrative across multiple movies having a singular studio involved in the creation process has allowed Marvel to create movies which are character driven and thrive on continuity they're able to span various different storylines across many years and multiple movies and that's something which simply hasn't been done by other Studios at least not successfully that is since Avengers infinity war is still fresh in everyone's mind just think about danos for a moment if you weren't already the very first time we caught a glimpse of an Infinity Gauntlet was all the way back in the first Thor movie where we spotted it in Odin's vault sure it turned out to be a fake as we learn to ring for Ragnarok but it gave comic-book fans a hint about what was going to happen in the MCU then during the mid credit scene of The Avengers we saw Thanos himself for the first time on the big screen we learned that Thanos was the one who gave Loki the tesseract and kicked off the events of the movie The Avengers was confirmation for both the studio and fans that the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a good idea and that it could work it also served to raise the stakes significantly by introducing a greater threat than any of our heroes had encountered so far the mad Titan didn't just pop up during infinity war to be immediately considered the universe's most dangerous threat Marvel Studios was able to build suspense for his arrival for years even in movies he didn't appear in he was supposed to have a large role in guardians of the galaxy but it was decided that the movie just wouldn't do the character justice instead we just got a small dose of Thanos usually when we see a movie we only know about the villain from maybe one or two previous films of the franchise or from the trailer but with Thanos we got six years of movies building up the hype for what happened during infinity water we know that we tend to take it for granted but it's pretty incredible when you think about it now let's talk about spider-man or more specifically how spider-man ended up in the MCU when we last saw our favorite web slinger the rights to his character were owned by Sony but the money they forked over to Marvel was only part of the agreement in order to maintain their right to spider-man they had to actually put together some movies about the character if they wait too long to do so Marvel gets the rights to spider-man back spider-man has always been immensely popular and considering how big of a deal superhero movies are right now you can probably imagine how desperately Sony wants to cling to spider-man and the first spider-man movie they made in 2002 was what helped kick off the superhero craze in no small part we got to see Tobey Maguire portraying Peter Parker and spider-man became the third highest-grossing film of that year it brought in over eight hundred twenty 1.7 million dollars worldwide after the third spider-man movie the studio ran into difficulties Sam Raimi had directed the first three movies but now he and Sony weren't exactly seeing eye-to-eye he admitted that he was very unhappy with how spider-man 3 turned out and that's pretty much how audiences felt about the movie - he claims he hated every version of the script for the fourth movie and ended up bowing out of directing now Sony was scrambling to a spider-man movie before the deadline in order to maintain the rights to the character this is why we got the amazing spider-man in its sequel in 2012 and 2014 respectively these movies also weren't very well received by fans but Sony was about to get lucky Marvel Studios was working on Captain America Civil War and they were desperate to include spider-man in the film by now the MCU had been so built up that the absence of spider-man was really noticeable he's the most iconic Marvel superhero and fans desperately wanted to see him join the rest of them in the MCU directors Joe and Anthony Russo agreed and were able to work out a deal with Sony they'd get to use spider-man in three of their MCU movies and two standalone movies and this would satisfy the requirement of Sony making a spider-man movie every five years this also had another major benefit for Sony who had been struggling to create a good spider-man movie for quite some time even devoted fans were starting to lose interest in seeing spider-man on the big screen because Sony just couldn't seem to get it right this was their chance to have a major and successful studio completely rebrand spider-man and turn him back into a character audiences wanted to see so even though no money changed hands here Sony was reaping the benefits of allowing Marvel Studios to use spider-man he was a huge hit in civil war and we got to see him again during Avengers infinity war we also expect to see him appear in Avengers endgame so what happens to spider-man after far from home comes out it's hard to say after that the rights of the character will revert back to Sony and they can do whatever they want with it however using the Tom Holland version of Peter Parker in their universe would be kind of complicated he exists in the MCU and if he shows up in a Sony movie it'll seem as though the two universes are connected when Sony created the movie venom they were also attempting to set up their own Cinematic Universe spider-man wasn't involved in a movie at all despite his character being closely involved with venom in the comic books but the movie was a success which means it seems likely Sony will want to have spider-man back in its arsenal after all Marvel Studios worked it's magic and gave audience as a character we could all fall in love with and with spider-man and to the spider-verse it's clear that Sony has heard about the whole multiple universes thing it would be easy enough to explain that they're Tom Hall in spite and simply comes from an alternate universe known as the MCU this would avoid the issues of the Sony and Marvel Universe's interacting with one another while still allowing Sony to use the spider-man that everyone likes so much spider-man's a really profitable character and Disney does love making money they also have no shortage of it to spend on acquiring thing so it's possible they'll make an attempt to maintain the use of spider-man it's possible Disney will do whatever it takes to maintain the rights to spider-man and they'll get to keep him in the MCU as for our beloved MCU we're currently approaching the end of phase 3 avengers endgame will mark the end of phase 3 and spider-man far from home we'll start phase 4 as usual Marvel's keeping quiet about what fans can expect but we're looking forward to the long-awaited Black Widow solo movie we're also guessing that at some point we'll see a sequel to the ultra popular black panther Captain Marvel is going to introduce some comic-book favorites into the MCU including Carol Danvers and the infamous kree-skrull war let's not forget that Disney has also acquired Fox and therefore now has the ability to incorporate characters like the Fantastic Four in the x-men into the MCU it'll probably take some time for these heroes to get introduced into the MCU in the way they deserved so they don't conflict with the current course of the universe there are so many great storylines and characters that already exist in the MCU but we can't stop being excited for what comes next what do you think about the state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are you hoping spider-man sticks around or do you just want to see as many new characters as possible let us know in the comment section below and don't forget to subscribe to CBR for more MCU content thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: CBR

Views: 668,909

Rating: 4.9109015 out of 5

Keywords: CBR, Marvel, MCU, comic books, movies, Spider-Man, Stan Lee, Avengers, Infinity War, Endgame, Thanos, company, history, Timely Comics

Id: 18qNFy5xDhw

Length: 29min 36sec (1776 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 17 2019