5 Movies That Learned The Right Lessons From ‘The Avengers’

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the domestic debut of Marvel’s The Avengers. I went long last week, on the ten-year-anniversary of its overseas debut, about how Hollywood spent ten years learning the wrong lessons in futile attempts to copy the Joss Whedon film’s $623 million domestic/$1.519 billion box office success, namely in thinking it meant audiences wanted superheroes and cinematic universes at the expense of all other kinds of would-be blockbusters. However, there were a few outliers, films that represented examples of learning the right lessons from the superhero ensemble flick, or at least explicitly ignoring the wrong lessons. So, without further ado, here are five theatrical hits from the last decade that didn’t pull an Amazing Spider-Man 2 or a King Arthur and the Legend of the Sword to be the next MCU.

Jurassic World (Universal/2015)

$652 million domestic and $1.671 billion worldwide on a $150 million budget

You’re probably wondering what Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic Park legacy sequel has to do with The Avengers, and the answer is “absolutely nothing.” And that’s the point. The film has exactly one character from the earlier Jurassic movies, namely BD Wong’s nefarious Dr. Wu (promoted from cameo player to supporting actor). It plays around with franchise-specific nostalgia but otherwise tells a new story with new characters (played by Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard) with a killer hook (The park is open!) that does not count on brand interest. Oh, and the promotional campaign for Jurassic World had not a peep about what might happen in Jurassic World 2. And yet, despite this, the film earned more than The Avengers on a smaller budget. The most important lesson of Jurassic World, Universal’s Furious 7 (which earned $1.515 billion earlier that year) and Sony’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle ($962 million in 2017) is that there was more than one way to make a blockbuster.

10 Cloverfield Lane (Paramount/2016)

$72 million domestic and $110 million worldwide on a $25 million budget

General audiences didn’t even know this movie existed until its teaser trailer debuted with opening night showings of Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. The cryptic teaser offered what seemed to be an original thriller about a woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) trapped in a bunker with an older, scary guy (John Goodman), while promising loose connections to Matt Reeves’ J.J. Abrams-produced Cloverfield. However, the gambit only worked because audiences had already seen and enjoyed the first Cloverfield ($80 million/$172 million/$30 million in 2008) and were interested in seeing a new vaguely supernatural thriller set in that film’s continuity. That Dan Trachtenberg’s single-location thriller was itself a good movie didn’t hurt, but its modest success is a reminder that audiences must accept the first serving before you ask them to get excited about a would-be cinematic universe. You must sell people on Iron Man (and, if necessary, Thor and Captain America) before you can ask them to flock to The Avengers.

Wonder Woman (Warner Bros./2017)

$413 million domestic and $821 million worldwide on a $150 million budget

The Avengers wasn’t just about Iron Man and Captain America hanging out in the abstract, but specifically about Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark and Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers doing battle together. In the MCU, the specific cinematic incarnations of specific superheroes are the main draw, and Wonder Woman gave DC Films its first A-list movie star. I’d argue that Zack Snyder’s visually dazzling rock opera Batman v Superman banked too much, at least commercially, on the mere abstract notion of Superman and Batman palling around onscreen, Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman remembered that it wasn’t just the mere idea of seeing Wonder Woman kicking ass and saving the world. In Wonder Woman, DC had an iconic hero whom audiences liked specifically because of Gal Gadot’s specific cinematic incarnation. Ditto, 1.5 years later, with Jason Momoa’s Aquaman who helped James Wan’s kitchen sink epic swim past $1.1.48 billion worldwide. Of course, both actor+character combos were introduced in Snyder’s aforementioned Dawn of Justice, so credit where credit is due.

The Nun (Warner Bros./2018)

$117 million domestic and $366 million worldwide on a $22 million budget

I guess I could pick any of New Line’s seven (or eight if you count The Curse of La Llorona) entries in The Conjuring Universe. But this is the highest grossing film of the franchise despite being the least connected to the core Conjuring trilogy or even the spin-off Annabelle series. James Wan and Walter Hamada‘s Conjuring Universe had (accidentally?) become the first entirely successful cinematic universe since The Avengers sent Hollywood in a mad dash for their own would-be MCU. However, this series isn’t about superheroes (Bloodshot, Netflix’s Jupiter’s Legacy), nor is it retrofitting existing IP to make their movies seem more like superhero flicks (Robin Hood, The Mummy). These are mostly stand-alone, period-piece, supernatural and explicitly Catholic, R-rated horror movies that are just safe enough for your religious grandmother. The Conjuring was their Iron Man and, like most MCU movies, you can walk into any of them without having seen any of them. Moreover, it was arguably “the next Avengers” by being nothing like The Avengers.

Glass (Universal and Disney/2019)

$111 million domestic and $247 million worldwide on a $20 million budget

M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass understood that the excitement from The Avengers came from seeing characters from different existing movies, characters who you knew and liked, rubbing elbows in a single motion picture. Unbreakable, which was a comic book superhero deconstruction well before the comic book movie became an A-level tentpole sub-genre, introduced us to Bruce Willis’ David Dunn (a physically invincible security guard turned violent vigilante) and Samuel L. Jackson’s Elijah Price (a fragile genius revealed to be a mass murderer). In early 2017, Split offered up a horror movie about three teen girls abducted by a superpowered murderer (James McAvoy) with multiple personalities, only to reveal as an epilogue that the film took place in the same world as Unbreakable. Only after audiences loved Split ($137 million/$256 million on a $9 million budget) did Shyamalan combine both properties into a single thriller. That Glass “only” earned about as much as Split and Unbreakable reminds us that sometimes double the value doesn’t mean double the box office, especially when the audience is the same for both properties.

Epilogue:

You can also argue that Marvel’s post-Avengers movies also learned the right lessons from its trendsetting, game-changing blockbuster. Yes, there was that edict in May of 2012 that even the solo MCU movies would be big-deal, big-budget blockbusters, something that became noticible with Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s mid-air action finale featuring not one but three helicarriers crashing into the sea. But Kevin Fiege and friends kept the focus on stand-alone character-specific movies that didn’t require audiences to know or care about the other MCU films or, at worst, only expected you to have seen the big Avengers installments. The irony of course is that Hollywood sabatoged itself chasing MCU-like glory while missing that The Avengers was a singular success (it was the first of its kind in modern times, benefited from Whedon’s then-unique sensabilities and had the added benefit of being a glorified 9/11 revenge fantasy) as opposed to an easily replicable road map. Ironically, one of the few studios that understood that was Marvel itself.