Sometimes success is suffering, and if you talk about something as successful as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then success would be as painful as chained freedom, as a recent statement by Anthony Mackie might just establish.
Now, Marvel has come a long way, and as of now, you can clearly say that they do have a tried and tested formula, but that has a positive and a negative side. Firstly, Marvel did figure out what the fans want, and that helps the studio to create films which would be loved by the fans, but this also discards the creative liberty of the creators as well.
See, if you are creating or working on something as a big deal, there are fewer chances of affording an error, and as of now, Marvel has to step on glass every time they are making a film, and this is enough to make the creative minds suffer.
Mackie, during an interview, stated his opinion on this, “I would say the Marvel thing is completely different, just because it’s such a space of controlled entertainment. Like, there’s only so much you can do. There’s only so much creativity you can bring to the table because Stan Lee gave us so much content.”
Mackie explained that in the Marvel universe, they had the freedom to introduce characters or unexpectedly kill people, but it was challenging because they couldn’t deviate much from the comic book lines.
“Exactly. And that’s the hard thing about the Marvel universe. It’s like, you can’t really go outside of the lines of those comic books.”
“You know, when we introduced the Falcon, and the growth of the Falcon to Captain America, all of that had to coincide with what Stan had already given us. So it’s an interesting juggle to be a part of that world. And this was more like, ‘Let’s just have fun and figure it out as we go.'”