Kevin Feige Not Sure the Marvel Cinematic Universe Will Truly End

Kevin Feige doesn’t have an endgame in sight for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and hopes it will be generational. Since it began in 2008, the MCU has largely changed the way Hollywood operates. All studios are looking for cinematic universes of their own, but so far no one has matched what Marvel Studios has done. In ten years they’ve released nineteen movies and will debut the twentieth (Ant-Man and The Wasp) this summer. It is quite the accomplishment, considering the typically positive reviews and insanely high box office totals they tend to generate.

As the old saying goes though, all good things must come to an end. That is, unless it’s the MCU. They may have just released Avengers: Infinity War in theaters, but Avengers 4 is touted as the culmination to everything Marvel Studios has done so far. We already know that many more MCU movies are on the horizon, so will the MCU ever truly end? Feige sure doesn’t think so.

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Uproxx spoke to the president of Marvel Studios about the long-term vision of the franchise, and whether or not fans will ever get to see how it all really ends. Feige doesn’t have an end game in mind, and rather believes the MCU will go the way of Star Wars and be a generational franchise that can be passed along throughout time:

That’s how I feel about Star Wars or Star Trek and the things that I’ve loved as I grew up. And that’s probably the way it should be as it gets passed down to future generations – parents take their kids and kids become parents, right? I’m a big fan of the Disney parks and those have been around for 60 plus years and the experiences keep being passed down the line.

At Marvel’s current pace, there’s no reason for the MCU to come to a stop now. They’re hitting on all cylinders, and routinely put out some of the years biggest and best blockbusters. That said, even though an actual finale isn’t being considered, they continue to look at the end of Phase 3 as a conclusion to a specific story. As Feige put it:

I will say, the entire intention of Infinity War and the next Avengers film next year was to have an ending – to bring a conclusion to 10 plus years, 22 movie narrative in a way that hadn’t been done before in this particular type of film. It’s been done before in films where there are a finite number of books, and they finish telling the story for the books, so they come to an ending. Characters like Spider-Man or Batman or James Bond or Iron Man, who have been around for so long and are always refreshed in comic books or novels or movies, you don’t necessarily get that kind of an endpoint – and we wanted to do that, which is what these next two Avengers films are. It doesn’t mean the MCU is coming to a close, by any means. But it means the narrative that started when we began 10 years ago will have a conclusion.

Since the MCU largely operates unlike any other movie franchise, the best comparisons to what they’ve done have come in likening the universe to a series of books or a TV show. Each of the 22 movies that will be released by the end of Phase 3 serve as a chapter to one epic story. Avengers 4 certainly isn’t the end – the MCU even has another movie hitting theaters two months later with Spider-Man: Homecoming 2 – but rather the final chapter in the first book.

Marvel Studios is going to continue to tell more stories, just maybe not as interwoven as they’ve done so far. The future appears to be in space, but there’s also quite a few earth-based heroes that will need stories too. Maybe what will ultimately happen is Marvel Studios will split things up a bit more to have a major cosmic narrative and then another major storyline focusing on earth’s inhabitants. With the possibility of the X-Men and Fantastic Four being available soon and properties like Nova or The Eternals being considered, the future is bright for the MCU. As long as Marvel Studios has options and continues to make quality content, there’s no way the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going anywhere.

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