10 Huge What Ifs That Could Have Changed The MCU Forever
1. What If Iron Man Had Bombed?
Having never experienced a single box office disappointment despite being twenty-three movies deep, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has long since established dominance at the head of the blockbuster totem pole. The power of the brand alone is enough to guarantee success these days, but things weren't quite so clear cut in the build-up to Iron Man's release.
A new and unproven studio sinking $150m into their first-ever feature, directed by the guy who had just seen Zathura flop and was best known for Elf, headlined by a star that was still trying to rehabilitate his reputation in the industry after some highly-publicized personal issues, based on a B-level comic book characters that a lot of general audiences weren't exactly familiar with. What could possibly go wrong?
Obviously the answer is nothing, but hindsight is always 20/20. From the outside looking in, Iron Man was an incredibly risky gamble that could have backfired spectacularly. Had it failed, then the landscape of the entire entertainment industry would be unrecognizable from how it looks today, given how deeply the MCU has embedded itself into the very fabric of popular culture.