What would happen to the MCU if Iron Man never took off?

The fate of the MCU stood on Iron Man’s shoulders in 2008, and it was a success. But what would happen if the movie was a flop?

Watch just about any interview with Iron Man director Jon Favreau or Marvel Studios producer Kevin Feige about the early days of the movie, and you’ll hear one thing in common: Iron Man was a coin toss, and they certainly weren’t sure if the 2008 movie was going to be a success with audiences.

Over 10 years later, that’s a laughable thing to think in hindsight. Iron Man is the bedrock of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tony Stark (and, let’s be real, Robert Downey Jr.) is the godfather of the MCU, and Iron Man is currently ranked as the third-best MCU movie on Rotten Tomatoes. (Beat out only by Endgame at No. 2 and Black Panther at No. 1).

But in seeing that list recently, paired together with Favreau and Feige’s worries about the film, it made me wonder: what if Marvel Studios really did drop the ball with Iron Man? What if, somewhere along the process, Iron Man flopped because it was poorly executed or audiences just didn’t resonate with it? Let’s dig in.

First, let’s take a look at the state of movies during 2008. The number one movie worldwide for 2008 was DC’s The Dark Knight, reaching almost $1 billion. Next to that, we have films like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Quantum of Solace, and even Hancock. So it’s definitely not to say the MCU brought action movies and superhero movies into favor during this time. Arguably, Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies did a superb job of bolstering up the superhero genre following the tragedy of some of the late ’90s and early 2000s superhero movies. But that’s another discussion for another day.

Though, the MCU did make a name for itself in creating a vastly interconnected world that’s kept audiences engaged since the very beginning — culminating up to movies like “the most ambitious crossover of all time,” Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. Sure, The Incredible Hulk movie also came out a few months later in 2008 as part of the early MCU. But seeing how that’s fallen by the wayside in our world anyway, things wouldn’t have been looking so good for the MCU without Iron Man’s success.

It’s hard to pinpoint quite when the dominoes would begin to fall as far as the line of next MCU movies, as a few were already put into motion anyway around the same time (e.g., Thor and Captain America.) But for the sake of this argument, let’s just say Iron Man was the one film to ruin them all. In that case, we might not have seen the biggest build-up of them all: 2012’s The Avengers. Or at the very least, if we had made it that far, there probably would have been no threads left loose for the next few movies.

Remember, The Avengers truly sparked the Thanos/Infinity Gauntlet storyline. From that, we got spinoff movies like Guardians of the Galaxy, and new heroes came along the way with connections to the Infinity Stones like Captain Marvel and Doctor Strange. So you could probably say goodbye to any new superhero who wasn’t a part of the original six.

“But these heroes are so popular now, it’s impossible people wouldn’t want to see a Doctor Strange movie or the Guardians of the Galaxy,” you say.

Well, back when Marvel Studios sold the rights to its more popular characters like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, they were essentially left with the scraps. You have to remember it was largely Iron Man’s success that made the lesser-known heroes much cooler to audiences who weren’t familiar with the comics. We built a trust with Marvel Studios to agree to see weird, obscure heroes in movies in exchange for knowing we’d get one outstanding film in the process. (See: the upcoming Eternals movie.)

In this flop scenario, then, Fox and Sony probably would have had time to shine with the characters they acquired.

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The already popular X-Men movies probably would have continued its success, probably being the flagship franchise when it came to Marvel movies. And with nothing for Fox’s 2015 Fantastic Four movie to be compared to, audiences probably would have accepted it with little outcry. (No, just kidding. A bad movie’s a bad movie.) On top of that, Spider-Man would have still remained king. And a growing Spider-Man universe probably would have still been planned the way we see it today (with spinoffs like Venom and Morbius). And those movies would likely set the baseline for what a good superhero movie looks like in the late 2010s and beyond.

At the heart of these scenarios, though, I’d like to imagine that at some point, Kevin Feige retired early from Marvel or he found his true calling as a bread baker or candlestick maker. Because as I thought about the 14 million future scenarios where Iron Man flopped, there was a voice in my head saying: “Kevin Feige would never let that happen. He’d push for characters like Doctor Strange or Black Panther to get their due. And there’s no way he wouldn’t want to build up to an Infinity War storyline.”

And so, while there are many visionaries behind the MCU, like directors Jon Favreau, Taika Waititi and Ryan Coogler, and countless other writers, actors, artists and more, Marvel Studios’ producer seems to have the key to knowing how to build up a movie universe right. Would Disney have ever bought Marvel Studios if Iron Man flopped? Would we get as far as The Avengers? Would we get spinoff shows like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Daredevil or WandaVision? Would audiences even care?

It’s clear the Marvel Cinematic Universe has truly blossomed into something like no other in the movie world. Thankfully, at the center of it all, Iron Man became the hit that it was. And fans will always be saying “We love you 3000” to this beloved little superhero film.

Related Story. A look back at The New Mutants' confusing timeline. light

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What would happen to the MCU if the Iron Man movie never took off?

By Mia Johnson | May 15, 2020

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