MCU Phase 4: 8 Reasons Why It Must Look To The Past

3. Fox Have Been Working Wonders With History

Fox

While Fox must be reprimanded for their absolutely dreadful use of the Fantastic Four license, the way they've turned around the X-Men these last few years has been really impressive.

X-Men: First Class, Days of Future Past and Apocalypse all sported some sort of historical motif, and the upcoming Dark Phoenix is due to take on the nineties in a homage to the team's most iconic decade. While Apocalypse faltered in many respects, both First Class and DOFP were aided by the fact they were both historical and comics-based, a fact that Marvel must surely now be aware of, now that Captain Marvel's sporting a nineties motif.

And again, Fox's success is a testament to the fact that audiences want to see history in their comic book films. The setting might not be placed front and centre, but it's definitely there, and helps to lend a sense of scale to the events of the present day storylines other features predominantly explore.

Nailing the zeitgeist of a specific time period should never be the sole focus of a comic book film, but when it's there, and the attention to detail pays off, you're left with a much more absorbing story as a result.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.