Stars and the producers of the MCU were featured in a Marvel mini-documentary detailing the journey of the MCU and how successful the films are after 10 years.
Irony can sometimes work in wonderfully odd ways, especially given the success of the MCU. Just 10 years ago, before the first Iron Man debuted, producers hardly had a clue if the film would resonate with audiences.
In hindsight, it’s laughable to think the Marvel Studios team was ever worried about the film’s success. But in a featurette released by Marvel celebrating the MCU’s 10-year anniversary, a clip from 2008 revealed just how uncertain Iron Man director Jon Favreau was about the movie’s future.
“I know I’m proud of it; I know that we’ve done everything we can,” Favreau said. “I really don’t know how people are going to react to this thing. This could be anything from a flop to a moderate single, or something that’s beyond what other people’s expectations are.”
Favreau’s last sentence was something of a kicker, given how much the franchise has grown since then. Following that interview from 2008, the rest of the featurette showed an excited cast enjoying being part of the cinematic universe. Looks like all that risk-taking in 2008 paid off.
“I had a lot of faith in Kevin Feige and the people at Marvel,” Chris Evans said in the video. “You want to give everything you’ve got because they’re going to give everything they’ve got.”
Evans’ Captain America, since appearing in his first movie in 2011, has easily become one of the top MCU favorites among fans. And now that Evans is departing the MCU, it’s certainly bittersweet for him and his fans to have to let such a good thing go.
But as the franchise grows, more Avengers are on the rise. Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Chris Pratt expressed that he and the rest of the stars were incredibly grateful to be part of the experience.
“Our lives are monumental changed by our involvement in this world,” he said. “To have taken such an instrumental role in what Marvel has done in the past 10 years is just so incredibly meaningful to us.”
The video also featured behind-the-scenes looks at the filming of movies like The Avengers and Black Panther, as well as a look at the how the Marvel 10 Year Class Photo came together.
All the clips are enough to get even us emotional, as the fans have been just as big a part of the journey as the stars. To think that the MCU has been around for 10 years is incredible, and we’ve come to grow attached to all of our favorite characters in phases one through 3 so far. But it’s even more remarkable to think about what’s to come in the future and how MCU will take its movies to the next level.
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To go from one movie in 2008 to three movies in 2018 is certainly a feat. Along with Black Panther, which opened in February, Avengers: Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp are the next MCU movies set to debut this year.