10 Ways That The Marvel Cinematic Universe Has Ruined Cinema

3. Movies As Television

When you actually take a second to think about it, the MCU has more in common with that of a TV series; the structure, what with its "to be continued..." mentality, frequent cliffhangers, nods to future installments, and overarching story-lines, pretty much defines it as such. It just so happens that the "episodes" run at two hours instead of one, and each installment costs $200 million dollars instead of... well, a whole lot less than that. But movies aren't television. Movies are supposed to exist, first and foremost, as themselves. It makes little sense for pictures to require so much outside knowledge prior to an audience member sitting down to watch it. Despite their best efforts to avoid that, a random person off the street with no experience of an prior MCU flicks is going to have a hard time following something like Thor: The Dark World; it can't be embraced without proper context. So whilst the MCU has gone on to define this "movies as television" approach to filmmaking, it's had a profound influence on the way in which other studios are choosing to deploy their own flicks - as feature-length "episodes." Cinema has reached a point in which the lines between TV and film are entirely blurred, then; it's not all bad, but it does make it easy to yearn for a time when movies were actually movies - self-contained and independent.