10 Times The MCU Gave Fans EXACTLY What They Wanted
These crowd-pleasing moments gave fans precisely what they asked for.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the biggest movie franchise in the world and has shown no signs of slowing down, what with its reputation for delivering impressively consistent entertainment across almost 30 movies since 2008.
While the MCU hasn't always served up the most challenging or provocative blockbuster fare, it has mastered the art of doing one thing: giving paying customers exactly what they asked for.
Though you might not agree with every single creative decision Kevin Feige and company have made over the years - Iron Man 3's Mandarin, anyone? - for the most part the franchise has a massive success rate when it comes to paying-off its characters and storylines.
They might not always give fans precisely what they want, but when they do, the results are practically unrivalled in the blockbuster space. Whether you're a die-hard comic book fan or simply a more casual viewer, these 10 moments represent the MCU at its crowd-pleasing best.
From single lines of dialogue imbued with a ton of meaning, to stunning action sequences, incredible character introductions, and everything in-between, these moments are all proof perfect of why the MCU is such a pervasive, generation-spanning success...
10. "I Am Iron Man" - Iron Man
Let's kick this list off with something that fans didn't actually realise they wanted at the time, yet in retrospect it's tough to imagine things going any other way.
In the lead up to Iron Man's release, it was widely expected that the film would keep Tony Stark's (Robert Downey Jr.) superheroic persona a secret identity, as per the tradition of the comic books.
Yet the film instead ended with Stark holding a press conference and bluntly revealing that he is, in fact, Iron Man.
Beyond being an hilarious and unexpected punchline on which to end the film, it did an extremely bold thing for a burgeoning franchise, by dispensing with the expectation that most of the MCU's superheroes would have secret identities.
Considering the tendency for secret identities to come off as goofy and implausible in live-action form - think Superman's low-effort disguise in the Christopher Reeve movies - it was thrilling to see the MCU obliterate this notion in its very first movie.
Again, fans didn't know they wanted this at the time, but it quickly confirmed itself to be a smart and important storytelling choice, ensuring the bevy of subsequent origin movies didn't bog themselves down in dull identity-preserving nonsense.