Since the inception of the popular Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the idea of having a Cinematic Universe has attracted many Hollywood studios, like Warner Brothers (WB), who wanted to create a cinematic universe with their DC comics characters, but unfortunately their efforts went in vain as DCEU (DC Extended Universe) has not been performing as well as it’s rival MCU.Similarly, Universal studios tried by creating their Dark Universe comprising of fan favourite horror characters like Mummy, Dracula, Dr Jekyl and Mr.Hyde etc. The Dark Universe started with Dracula untold (2014), the film did not perform well but the studio was still in hopes to kick start their universe, so they relaunched the universe with Mummy (2017), which explored the universe even further presenting some very interesting ideas but the unfortunately the film was not well received by the audience. One may ask what is the reason of the failure of other cinematic universes and how Marvel has been able to create such a successful and popular cinematic universe? Some of the reasons for the failure of other studios are: Mismanagement, Not listening to the fans, Interference by the studios with directors, writers and their project (an example being Justice League, 2017).Studios have also been making unnecessary projects for their cinematic universe, for example: Sony studios has been making Spiderman spin off movies like Morbious (2022), which was a total failure and became a internet meme material.

Studios feel that a cinematic universe is a money making machine, which has proved to be true for MCU, but they should also realize that they should not allow business to take over creativity during the film making process.To create a successful cinematic universe, the studios should work with people who are familiar with the source material, like Kevin Feige (President of Marvel Studios) who has been a fan of Marvel Comics since his childhood, he not just another business executive, he knows what the fans want, he knows the opportunities that lie ahead of him, he understands the potential of the source material and most importantly he is ready to listen to the fandom, unlike other people who just want to , copy the success of Marvel without understanding the creative process behind it and impose their own decision on the film makers without taking into consideration the fan demands and the loyalty of the film towards it’s source material.

But what is the reason for the success of cinematic universe as a concept?

The answer is speculations and discussions. When we see a standalone movie, there are no future opportunities to be explored after the movie ends and there is no discussion about the future of the characters of the movie.But in case of a movie like Iron Man (2008) we are curious about the future of the character as we know that it’s adventures have just begun and after the introduction of characters like Captain America and Thor we speculate about the future interactions between these characters, or maybe the fights between these characters, and as the universe expands, the lore becomes deeper and people start coming up with fan theories which set up the anticipation for the next movie releasing, and to keep the fans satisfied the studio should also be able to meet their expectations and also create connections, interactions between different characters time to time in order to create hype among the fans.For example:Makers of Spiderman:No way home (2021) used this method before it’s release to create a hype about the return of Tobey Maguire’s Spiderman and Andrew Garfield’s Spiderman, which generated a lot of hype for the movie before it even started filming and as fans of these characters we were amused by the opportunity to see these characters together on the screen and this coupled with nostalgia factor made the movie a big success. Also in a universe there an opportunity of couple different genres of movies together under the same franchise, this creates diversity in the content and also makes the cinematic universe feel more alive and exciting, because if your films get too formulatic the fans may start getting bored, something which was happening with MCU recently but to counter this MCU came up with new genre movies like the recently released Werewolf by Night on Disney+ which has a touch of horror in it, and it’s future lineups like Deadpool 3 and Blade will give two opposite flavours of Comedy and Horror in the same universe. Another example is, Captain America:Winter Soldier which was a more grounded and serious thriller as compared to other movies of the franchise.

Cinematic Universe as a concept has become such a popular trend that Indian Filmmakers have also started exploring it. Some attempts to create a cinematic universe in Indian Cinema are; Sooryavanshi(2021), belonging to the police universe, the recently released Brahmastra was also an attempt to kick-start a Cinematic universe.But the most successful example of a creating a cinematic universe is this year’s Tamil blockbuster Vikram (2022) which has become a topic of discussion pan India, although the film did not perform well in North India when it released due to limited promotions and less screens, still thanks to OTT it has reached a pan India popularity, its BGM(Background Music) have become ringtones and dialougues are becoming whatsapp status.

In my personal opinion Vikram is the only successful start to a cinematic universe which has a huge potential, as the ones mentioned earlier are nothing but half baked attempts to imitate the style of Marvel, whereas Vikram was totally original in all it’s aspects and had a different feel to it, it was truly a director’s original product and did not feel like a rip off of some other movie.

In conclusion, creating a cinematic universe is not an easy task it has it’s own set of challenges, and the success ratio of cinematic universe has been very low till now.As a concept it is exciting and presents profound opportunities to film makers and studios.On the other hand one can also say that it’s just a trend which may die out soon just like the 3D technology trend in movies that started during the release of Avatar(2009) but since then has become less popular, but that trend has it’s own story which we will I will discuss some other day.As of now we can only hope that our Indian Cinema can also make use of this concept and generate more awareness, opportunities and movies for cinephiles like us.