Marvel fans the company has been turning out alot of really solid movies in it's MCU for over ten years and in the process has brought back the cinematic universe to the point where now everything has to be connected. So I thought that for this post i'd take a look at why the MCU in particular has succeeded where other cinematic universes have failed and incase there are any DC fans out there I want you all to know that i'm a fan of both universes but the let's be honest the MCU is the biggest thing going right now.
The first thing that really does sprung to mind when I thought of this very question was that the MCU is popular because the movies are comic books brought to life. Like actually think about it the big splash pages there the scenes where you get alot of the cool stuff happening in the movies and alot of the single panels are alot of the dialog scenes and a few punches so whenever your seeing a movie in the MCU your seeing a comic book brought to life.
Now it would have been super easy for Marvel to build there universe just around the core Avengers team and they would been very successful at the box office. However Marvel took a risk and it was a risk that needed to pay off that risk was turning a little known obscure as hell comic book property and turning it into a billion dollar franchise and with Guardians Of The Galaxy that was something that the achieved.
Before the 2014 movie know one outside of a few die hard comic book fans had ever heard of Guardians Of The Galaxy and so turning it into a movie was a very risky movie. One which like I said needed to payoff and Marvel not only made these essentially unknown characters into house hold names they opened up the MCU to a whole range of ideas which was needed if the MCU was going to survive.
If you look at alot of cinematic universes right now they all have a few things in common the first of which being there's no clear leader. Say what you will about Kevin Feige but at least he has a clear vision for the MCU which is something that alot of cinematic universes are clearly missing hell some of them change bosses everytime a film flops because the studio has no idea what there doing or are to afraid to commit to one singular vision.
The other thing that they have in common with each other is that there far to bothered with setting up more sequels then they are with telling a good story. If you look back at the very first Iron Man movie they don't set up any sequels or other characters in the MCU which allows you to really get to know Tony and actually care about his journey and his plot which would last several movies spanning ten years and that's something you cannot do if your more bothered about setting up future films.
Now I touched on this before but the fact that one characters journey isn't just limited to their own films is truly something impressive. Bruce's plot line about learning to cope with the hulk starts in the first and only Hulk MCU movie and over the course of the first Avengers films you see him slowly learning to cope with that and you might think that it pays off in Thor: Ragnarok and while I could see your point it doesn't it merely begins to wrap up it's instead ends in Avengers: Endgame by which point we are fully invested in the character.
The characters are also really likeable and i'm not just talking about the heroes when I say that either heck all you have to look at Loki a villain in order to see that he's a likeable person. Thanos is another villain who is made al the more terrifying due to how likeable he is and that is something that i'd never thought i'd say about a villain you can emphasise with him and so you want to see him achieve his goals and that adds to the overall threat of his character as well as his likeability.
Now it would be foolish of me to say that every MCU movie has a great villain because that's simply not the case. However what could be argued is that the ones that are actually good have become popular thanks to the films they've appeared in before Thor came out Loki was a little known character but thanks how good of a villain he is everyone knows his name so much so that Disney are giving him his own series to air on Disney+ in the near future.
The same can also be said for Thanos if you recall back in 2012 during the end credits for the first Avengers movie nobody knew who Thanos was. Now fast forward to after Infinity War he's all people can talk about hell to many myself included he's the best villain that the MCU has produced he in now the bar to which all other villains have to reach now that's good of a threat he really freaking is.
Now just like with the villains not every Marvel movie is good but when the overall majority of them are not only good but great you can forgive them for making one or two bad entries. These films are bad because some of them just don't live up to the previous films Thor and Ant-Man are prime examples of that and in the case of Captain Marvel it was the typical Marvel affair but with none of the heart and soul behind it.
However when Marvel does get it right you get films like Endgame which not only proved this type of storytelling could work but if done right it can make grown men and women cry. The MCU is great at telling these stories that don't just last a trilogy's worth of films but can span numerous films and because of that you get to see characters grow and change and that is something that even people who haven't read the comics can and judging by the box office numbers have noticed.
Now alot of people don't like the fact that the MCU uses a lot of humour and in some cases I can see there point. However there's also a lot of humour in comic books and at the same point in the story when there would be humour in these movies as well and in my opinion alot of the humour doesn't hurt the films that it's in at least not all of the time infact the humour alot of the time is very character driven and so it's plausible that a character would make a joke during a dramatic moment because that's how they'd cope with that situation.
While Stan Lee rightfully gets alot of credit for creating the Marvel Universe the fact is that without him Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby the characters that we love today wouldn't be around. It's due all three of there talents that alot of the makers behind the MCU films could read the comics and get inspired by the characters and by the worlds shown to them and so when it comes to turning those characters into movies those same film makers will won't to do those characters justice because to them they are there child hood heroes and you never want to let down your heroes.