Many entertainment industry observers love to focus on simple pawns, one move at a time. Disney, on the other hand, is playing multidimensional chess not only across films, but also across decades.
So if you’re overly consumed with how a big picture like Disney/Marvel’s “Captain America: Civil War” opens, and whether that’s a fitting metric to try to measure “superhero fatigue” vs. audience enthusiasm, you’re missing the true big picture, which is this:
Disney is thinking so far beyond sequels — first with its Marvel Cinematic Universe, next with its Star Wars galaxies — that it is now fully, successfully engaging viewers across interlocking narratives. Each time a film like “Civil War” can land with audiences — building upon and/or introducing a dozen key characters — the universe can move not just linearly, but also multilaterally.
That also means that Marvel — unlike other studios with superhero properties — has moved well beyond caring about the relative success of any single film. This is a latticework of storytelling that only gets stronger as it branches out.
“That’s what I think is so fascinating about where we are now in the Marvel Universe,” Joe Russo, co-director (with brother Anthony) of the two most recent Captain America films, tells The Washington Post. “I think we’re reaching uncharted territory in regards to serialization.
“Of course we’ve seen sequelized movies since (at least) the early 1980s,” continues Russo, referring to the era that saw the progression of such mega-franchises as “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” “Rocky” and “Jaws.” “What we haven’t seen (before) is a bunch of really healthy franchises interweaving into one unified narrative.”
And in such an unprecedented cinematic game of 3-D chess, the filmmakers are looking not only at the diagonal moves, but also moves across multiple boards at once.
The current Marvel Cinematic Universe was truly launched with 2008’s “Iron Man,” which soon attracted Disney’s interest and its $4 billion buy of Marvel characters — a purchase that now looks like a relative steal, though the films have depended on Disney’s own savvy, too. The creative and commercial synergy has allowed for Marvel films to be planned and scheduled many years out.
Next up for the Russo brothers, as directors, is the two-part “Avengers: Infinity War” endeavor.
“The ‘Infinity’ movies are going to be a culmination of the most complex, insane amount of characters in this really, really complicated mosaic that we get to play with over two films,” Russo says.
“We’re trying to find templates for it to inspire us,” he notes. “The only thing we can point to are Robert Altman movies, dealing with really multiperspective storytelling. And that’s exciting, because you’re pioneering a different mode of storytelling.”
