The biggest films of each year are almost often connected to a franchise. In 2024, some of the highest grossing films were tied into film and multimedia universes: “Deadpool & Wolverine,” “Dune: Part Two,” “Venom: The Last Dance” and “Godzilla x Kong” are each connected to other movies belonging to their respective universes. It takes until number thirteen on 2024’s best grossing list with “It Ends With Us” to find a movie that isn’t based on an existing film universe, although even this movie is based off of a book by the same name. How did cinematic universes become so dominant, and should they continue their reign in box offices?
It’s important to distinguish between what is considered a series, a franchise, and a cinematic universe. A series is defined by a string of movies, each sharing continuity with the last in order to tell a connected story. As an example, the first four “Alien” films form a series. Each movie is a direct sequel to the last, following the central character of Ellen Ripley as she attempts to rid various locations of Xenomorphs.
A franchise is a collection of films and potentially other media that centers around a certain story, but each piece of media doesn’t necessarily share continuity with every other one. An example would be the “James Bond” movies, based on the books by Ian Fleming. Over the course of the 25 Bond films, the titular character is reborn many times, being played by six different actors. Although films containing the same actor as Bond may share continuity with each other, they do not share continuity with other series of Bond movies. As such, the James Bond franchise is made up of various different series.
A cinematic universe is somewhere between the two. A cinematic universe generally contains many disconnected stories that impact each other and share continuity. However, these films do not necessarily contain the same characters or tell the same story. A prime example is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU. The MCU contains stories of many different superheroes, but each story is its own. Thor doesn’t necessarily appear in any of the Iron Man movies, but the story from the Thor movies impact those told in the Iron Man movies. For example, “Iron Man 3” is significantly different from the first two Iron Man movies, because in-universe the third movie takes place after the crossover movie “The Avengers,” which has impacted the story told in “Iron Man 3.”
One of the earliest and most popular cinematic universes is “Star Wars,” a movie released in 1997 directed by George Lucas. The movie is now known as “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope” due to the prequels released telling the story leading up to the events of the movie. The main Star Wars timeline is split into three “trilogies.” The original trilogy, containing “Star Wars,” “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi,” tell the story of Luke Skywalker, a young master who battles and defeats a tyrannical empire who has kept a chokehold on the entire galaxy. The three movies released next are the prequel trilogy, telling the story of the main villain of the original trilogy, Darth Vader, before he became so. The sequel trilogy would be released much later, telling the story of Luke after the original trilogy through a character named Rey.
These nine movies tow the line of what is considered a series. They each share continuity and tell one connected story, although each focuses on a different character and different era. With the release of the television series “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” in 2008, the series shifted into franchise territory. The franchise was certainly multimedia, having taken the mediums of film and television, but the television series still focused on familiar characters from the prequel trilogy. It wouldn’t be until the follow-up series, “Star Wars: Rebels,” that the Star Wars franchise became a true cinematic universe.
“Star Wars: Rebels” does not follow the same characters from the main series of films. It shares continuity with them, using the universe they set up to tell its own story. However, the information given in Rebels is essential to understanding other Star Wars television shows such as “Ashoka.” Further spin-offs such as “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” and “The Mandalorian” would also contain essential details to the plots of other spin offs like “Andor” and “The Book of Boba Fett.” At this point, each new piece of Star Wars media that releases is based off of every other one, and they all must be watched in order to understand the whole story.
One big problem arises when the quality of each piece of media is taken into consideration. Sure, if one eight-episode miniseries isn’t good, it may still be worth watching in order to understand the rest of the universe, but how many weak links between the series until it all falls apart? Is it worth watching three bad TV shows to understand one good one? What if the bad TV show is one of the longer ones, such as Clone Wars or Rebels? In that case, it wouldn’t be worth spending the time to sit through such a long show, even if it provided crucial information to understand other pieces of media. Of course, in the age of the internet, background information is available for any piece of media one might want to watch, but who wants to do homework just to watch Star Wars?
In order to understand another problem with the cinematic universe, let’s look at one of the more commonly known examples of one, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The MCU started with “Iron Man” in 2008, and since then, 34 films have been released under the universe. That is 34 different movies, each at least 100 minutes long, each focusing on different characters, and each with certain events that impact each other. This isn’t even mentioning the 11 television shows that have been released within that past three years. That’s an average of just over two movies released every year and almost four TV shows every year since they began releasing on Disney+. Additionally, Marvel has more than 10 projects in development with plans to release over the next three years.
In total, that’s 45 pieces of media released over 16 years. Miss one film, and any number of plot points in any number of the other pieces become totally indecipherable. This is a feature, not a bug. The studios making these movies and TV shows assume they have a guaranteed audience because either people will be so invested they’ll need to see the newest release, or people had already spent so much time watching the other movies that they may as well see the next one.
This strategy may have worked near the beginning in terms of box office results, with the film “Avengers: Endgame” grossing over $1 billion during its theatrical run. Results have slowed down ever since, with recent release “The Marvels” grossing only $209 million on a break even point of $440 million. The movies themselves also seem to be dipping in terms of quality. According to Rotten Tomatoes, an aggregator that tracks how many critics recommend certain movies, the four least liked MCU movies are all 2020s releases, including “The Marvels.” This content density isn’t working for the studios or the audiences.
This isn’t a Marvel-exclusive problem either. The DC Extended Universe, or DCEU, launched successfully, with profitable releases seen by “Wonder Woman,” “Aquaman” and “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” However, as more movies were released, they began taking in less money, with the seven lowest grossing films in the DCEU being 2020s releases.
The idea of a cinematic universe is not inherently a bad one. Especially when dealing with comic book characters that are already implied to exist in a shared universe through their crossovers, it makes sense for the movies released based on those comics to also exist within a shared universe. The problem comes with each movie’s overreliance on each other. If one has to watch 33 movies in order to understand one, it’s work, not pleasure.
With the upcoming Superman film intended to start a new cinematic universe based on DC Comics, the movie brings dismal promises to the screen. These cinematic universes tend to turn audiences away, even if they start strong, and without the eyes of the audience, the art of filmmaking is lost.
Cinematic universes are not a long-term strategy. Eventually, they collapse under their own size. When such a complex web is formed by such a large volume of media, there’s nothing for it to do but crumble. The era of the cinematic universe is ending, and movies will be better off for it.
