12 Reasons Captain America Makes The Best Standalone Marvel Movies
2. They Expand Other Characters Too
Universe building is the only way to do a superhero franchise nowadays. Which would be fine, if the studios pushing it knew what they we doing. Instead we have Sony spending more time on Spider-Man's marketable villains than the heros journey and DC trying to run before they can walk. As the trend-setters, Marvel have done a lot better, keeping fans excited with threads running in the background of their movies, but theyre still not fully mastering the game. Outside of post-credit stings theres generally not that much effort put into pushing anything other than the story at hand forward; the easter eggs are cool, but those sort of winks appear in all comic book movies. Except when were watching Steve Rogers. Partly as a culmination of S.H.I.E.L.D. links and the films' release positioning, his two outings have added weight to other characters. Tony Starks family has had a massive expansion in both films, with The Winter Soldier insinuating his parents were killed by H.Y.D.R.A., while Black Widow, Nick Fury and co. all came out of the second film having actually changed. Of course, its a big leap to start developing heroes outside of their starring movies, but Captain America is leading the charge.
