It was on August 31, 2009 when Disney made a monumental announcement that very few expected: Mickey Mouse’s house bought Marvel Comics with its entire gallery of superheroes.
This brutal movement represented the seed of what we would all later know as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
At the time, it was incipient, a project headed by Bob Iger, Kevin Feige, Jon Favreau and a team of executives determined to replicate the interconnected narrative model of comics but now landed in feature films and other audiovisual products.
When the acquisition became official, there was no lack of mocking memes where we saw Wolverine, Spider-Man and other iconic characters now wearing a Mickey Mouse hat.
But now, 13 years after the union began, we have a clearer picture of what has been achieved after this movement.
The biggest changes promoted by Disney after the purchase of Marvel
The reorganization of everything and the opportunity of streaming
The original acquisition agreement was for USD $4,000 million and from there the creation of two divisions was detonated: Marvel Studios and Marvel Television. Both bases were the cornerstone of the MCU, while the business with comics was kept active.
Studios, for its part, functioned as a base to produce the tapes and Television filled some gaps in the plot such as Agents of SHIELD, although that would later evolve with the birth of Disney Plus.
The streaming platform made the Marvel series evolve to give them greater weight. Currently they do not serve to cover gaps or holes in the plot, but rather are bridges for the stories that we see in theaters.
Focus on young audiences
The second big change that Marvel implemented was to develop their films always thinking of the young audience at all times.
Although Iron Man is not a hyper-violent and exclusive film for adult audiences, it was noticeable that after the entry of Disney the films became lighter and more friendly.
Almost every dark nuance was lost, but that gave way to the birth of external franchises not yet within its power, such as Deadpool, which was owned by Fox at the time.
But this also became a virtue when they were able to bring Spider-Man back, achieving a more balanced, comprehensive and friendly version of the wall-crawler with Tom Holland.
The characters changed in their essence
To adapt the comic book heroes and villains in more than one film, it was essential to apply a peculiar series of changes in the traits of some characters and their character.
Perhaps the most obvious example is that of Bruce Banner and Thor, who became much more comical, light, naive and even nerdy (in the case of the Hulk), something that is far from their version of the comics, but there are several cases .
There’s Star-Lord, whose MCU version bears almost no relation to what has been seen in comics for decades. From his origin story to his behavior, everything looks and feels different.
On the other hand, the original lineup of the Avengers was made up of Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Ant-Man and Wasp. But for the first film we saw a very different ensemble with the addition of Captain America, Black Widow and Hawkeye.
Thanos, in fact, as the maximum villain of the first era of the MCU was very different from the original and here the expectation is that the same thing will be repeated with Kang.