Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe

I went into this expecting an indepth documentary about the creation of the Marvel cinematic universe but walked away rather underwhelmed.

Is it a documentary? Yes I suppose, but it's hardly indepth and comes across more of a breakdown of what has happened so far in regards to movie/short and television releases.

Regarding the actual background, casting and creation it's very thin on the ground and that's a damn shame because it's logically what you'd have expected going into this thing.

Short stubby interviews, a couple of insights but mostly stock footage from Iron Man through to the first Guardians Of The Galaxy.

A real let down.

The Good:

Passable insights

The Bad:

Not enough actual content

Hardly a documentary

Things I Learnt From This Documentary:

Even Jackson admits he was an oddd casting choice for Nick Fury

Agent Coulson is glue

A nice little recap of Phase 1 of the MCU but calling it a documentary is a bit of a stretch. There isn't really any insider knowledge or behind-the-scenes stories, just a general timeline of how films unfolded. Perhaps upon its release it would have been much more interesting, but two phases later it's dated and really just feels like an advert for now long-released films and series.

Originally a DVD extra, "Assembling a Universe" now appears on Disney Plus in the documentary section, which is, if I'm honest a little bit of a stretch - but it does go into the creation of the first phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and does have a few interviews with the key figures.

Starting with "Ironman" in 2008, Marvel's risky decision to stop leasing out their iconic characters to other studios and instead make the movies themselves has paid off in a big way. Their masterstroke though was to set all the movies in one shared universe, allowing for characters to continually cross into each other's stories leading to "Avengers Assemble" their major crossover movie. Their success with the "B-Team" characters allowed not only for riskier and more varied projects going forward, but also for the big players to return home.

Again, it's not really a structured regimented documentary, it's a 40 minute recap / advert for their projects with some teasers for "The Winters Soldier", "Guardians of the Galaxy" and particularly for the new "Agents of SHIELD" show, that it felt at the time might prove to be more important than really it was allowed to be. There are interviews with the stars and directors of the various films, thought I suspect they were actually recorded for the DVD's of the films themselves. There's also interviews with Kevin Feige about his visions for the overall storyline of the universe and how their carefully seeded things in the direction of the Infinity stones and Thanos from an early point.

It's a little dated now and, as I say, more an advert than a true documentary, but as a time capsule curio it was reasonable interesting.

This isn't as much a documentary, but instead a rundown of how it all started and how marvel did something that had never been done in movie history up until that point - To create a cinematic universe. We see all the great actors, directors, writers and so on, give their first impressions on the big Marvel project. We see how that unfolds as we slowly ramp up to the newest movie to release back in 2014, when the "Documentary" was released.

We do stay at surface level through whereas I would have liked it to be more like a real documentary, to dive into the conflicts, the downsides or real battles that everyone had to face. To see what happened behind the scenes as these movies were released, instead they brush all of that away and focus on the great things they have done to create the amazing cultural phenomenon it is in 2021, and will surely continue to be for years to come.

Marvel have reached the same height as pop culture, where everybody know the names of Iron man, Captain America or Spiderman, no matter if you're old or young. If you love Marvel go watch it as they show where it all started, and how they created the amazing universe we know as the MCU to this day.

7/10