MARVEL CINEMATOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (Marvel Cinematic Universe in English or MCU for short) is a vast universe comprising several dozen interconnected films, series, short films, and comics. This universe is managed primarily by Marvel Studios, but also by Marvel Television, a separate entity from Marvel Studios until the reorganization of the whole of Marvel by The Walt Disney Company where Marvel TV is now under the supervision of Marvel Studios since 2020.
The MCU features several hundred characters adapted from Marvel comics, which is an almost inexhaustible source of inspiration with its tens of thousands of characters created during its 80-year history. Right now, the MCU is supposed to be in the Earth-199,999 universe, part of the entire Marvel Comics Multiverse (this may well change in the future).
As previously indicated, the MCU contains films that will form a total of 29 at the end of phase 4, series which will be a total of 19 (8 Marvel Studios series dedicated exclusively to the DisneyPlus platform, 11 Marvel Television series for d ‘other platforms), and a few dozen more or less useful comics and short movies.
PHASE AND SAGA SYSTEM
Marvel Studios has created a complex universe, so it has to be organized. Kevin Feige, boss of Marvel Studios, therefore decided to organize this universe in phases by following a rather simple scheme that consists of having several films from a solo franchise (Iron Man, Thor, or Captain America for example), as well as one or more crossover films. A phase constitutes a narrative arc, which feeds another even larger spanning several phases: a saga (we will come back to this a few lines below). The first two phases correspond to this scheme. With Phases III and IV, this diagram loses its credibility because the phases in question are more different and “free” due to the exponential increase in projects.
To date, we have 4 phases within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The first three phases (from the Iron Man movie to Spider-Man: Far From Home ) make up the Infinity Saga, which runs through Thanos and the Infinity Stones. The next saga, which therefore starts with phase 4 in 2020, should focus on another aspect of the Marvel universe.
BOX OFFICE
Coming.
MARVEL STUDIOS HISTORY
Coming.
THE SUMC
Coming.
