15 Ways The MCU Improved Marvel Mythology

One of Stan Lee's greatest storytelling inventions wasn't a character, but Marvel's famous floating timeline, which allowed decades of comics to exist in a few years worth of continuity while always staying up to date with current events. It was genius move that has arguably done more for Marvel's narrative than any one intellectual property, but it did have an unintended side effect.

Because years worth of comics translated to a much shorter time in the Marvel universe, characters were not able to grow as they properly should. Iron Man, for example, was pretty much the same character he was in mid forties as he was in his mid thirties. Poor Spider-Man went to college, got a job, and got married, all while still being the same nerdy dweeb he'd been in high school.

Fortunately, the MCU has done away with this problem by having the movies largely take place in real time. The Iron Man in Civil War is completely different from the Iron Man that was introduced in his first title movie because since then he battled alcoholism, had a near-death experience in space, retired, and helped build a genocidal AI.

And because he had years to process these events, his character was allowed to grow and change accordingly, something his comic counterpart has never managed to successfully do for very long.