8 Ways Captain America: Civil War Shows Marvel Have Learnt From Their Mistakes

2. The Directors Are Happy To Come Back

Marvel has defined itself as a producer-led studio and, while Kevin Feige certainly seems to have his head screwed on right, understanding how to get a movie that pleases fans and general audiences to financial success, there's still the requisite creative clashes that come with each being movie shepherded by some higher power; Patty Jenkins was replaced on Thor: The Dark World by yes-man Alan Taylor, Jon Favreau buckled under pressure on Iron Man 2 and, famously, Avengers: Age Of Ultron pretty much broke Joss Whedon.

Thanks to those horror stories, for a while Marvel looked like a questionable place for a creative to work. However, things are certainly looking a bit brighter now - maybe Feige escaping from the clutches of Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter has has a bigger impact than we first realised.

The Russoshave been given a real freedom within the Marvel framework, able to produce two restrained, tonally unique movies (even allowed to pull off Civil War's anti-convention finale), and, unlike Whedon, are coming back for a third round with Infinity War. Things are similar with James Gunn, who seems positively ecstatic about Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 (and, to a lesser extent, Peyton Reed with Ant-Man). What's most important is that in both of those key cases the films exude the directors' personalities; there's a sense of experimentation that wasn't in some of the earlier entries.