What If? The MCU owned the rights to every Marvel Comic or Character from the beginning?

[CarlManvers2019]

Presume that somehow the MCU managed to get all the rights and could make their own Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and even X-Men movies

How would the MCU’s plot and phases have gone?

 

[Bear Ribs]

Well not having X-Men was probably a good thing, the Mutant storylines tend to not mesh well with the rest of the Marvel Universe and frequently things make no sense there. Spider-Man is probably the most popular Marvel hero so I see little chance he wouldn't have shown up by at least Avengers, probably with his own intro-series.

Fantastic 4 also don't mesh so well with the rest of the MU and their loss wasn't felt much. One of the things the MCU has done well was making sure (most) of their heroes had a solo movie or two and then joined the team so a movie involving an entire team from the get-go might have gummed up the gears.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Well not having X-Men was probably a good thing, the Mutant storylines tend to not mesh well with the rest of the Marvel Universe and frequently things make no sense there. Spider-Man is probably the most popular Marvel hero so I see little chance he wouldn't have shown up by at least Avengers, probably with his own intro-series.

Fantastic 4 also don't mesh so well with the rest of the MU and their loss wasn't felt much. One of the things the MCU has done well was making sure (most) of their heroes had a solo movie or two and then joined the team so a movie involving an entire team from the get-go might have gummed up the gears.

Can't do them "later" like 2010 or 2011 just before Avengers?

 

[Emperor Tippy]

It would be entirely different. For one, there wouldn't have been Iron Man.

The reason that Disney went with Iron Man is that they owned the rights cleanly.

They would have also tried to put the X-Men and mutants into the setting and that really doesn't mesh well at all. If they could make it work, it would have been an entirely different plotline pretty much from day one.

Honestly, if Disney cleanly owned the rights to Spiderman and Hulk it probably would have been enough. Although in that case, Spiderman would have likely been one of the founding Avengers; and we probably would have got some more Hulk movies (which no one has yet done all that well).

 

[CarlManvers2019]

They would have also tried to put the X-Men and mutants into the setting and that really doesn't mesh well at all. If they could make it work, it would have been an entirely different plotline pretty much from day one.

In-Hindsight multiple types of this

Differently Powered Individual - TV Tropes

So, what do you call a superhero? Sure, a lot of individual heroes go by the standard coupling of noun/adjective with gender, or an alias cunningly related to their real name and/or their powers, or just something that sounds nice and somewhat …

tvtropes.org

Would have been confusing or considered redundant and most Deconstruction/Reconstructions of Superhero settings sorta tone down whatever "Fantasy Kitchen Sink" stuff there'd be and make it so there's more-or-less only one origin for superpowers

 

[Emperor Tippy]

In-Hindsight multiple types of this

Differently Powered Individual - TV Tropes

So, what do you call a superhero? Sure, a lot of individual heroes go by the standard coupling of noun/adjective with gender, or an alias cunningly related to their real name and/or their powers, or just something that sounds nice and somewhat …

tvtropes.org

Would have been confusing or considered redundant and most Deconstruction/Reconstructions of Superhero settings sorta tone down whatever "Fantasy Kitchen Sink" stuff there'd be and make it so there's more-or-less only one origin for superpowers

It's less any individual character and more that Mutants warp all of the story lines.

I mean what is Magneto without WW2 and the Holocaust? It is literally his characters defining moment.

Even then, fitting in a relatively small number of mutants could be done relatively easily. But the thing is that there are millions of mutants world wide and they have been active for a long time.

A handful of mutants? No problem integrating them into the MCU.

Mutants as a collective whole? It would be done even worse than 616 manages and they did M-Day and drastically reduced the number of mutants precisely because of how much of a pain they made any semblance of continuity.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Mutants as a collective whole? It would be done even worse than 616 manages and they did M-Day and drastically reduced the number of mutants precisely because of how much of a pain they made any semblance of continuity.

There's also the whole "The first known superheroes were Captain America and much much much later it was Iron Man" and "We're now entering a whole new world and everyone knows it"

There would have been superheroes in public decades ago for one, many mutants who weren't even X-Men

 

[Navarro]

Mutants have always played badly with the rest of the Marvel Universe. They ought to be put into their own separate continuity in the comics too.

 

[MrBirthday]

The reason that Disney went with Iron Man is that they owned the rights cleanly.

Disney had nothing to do with it; Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were released in 2008, Disney purchased Marvel in 2009.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Disney had nothing to do with it; Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were released in 2008, Disney purchased Marvel in 2009.

You know, I really liked Edward Norton for the Hulk, guy actually looks thinner or scrawnier than Mark Ruffalo

And so the whole physical contrast between forms sorta shows more

 

[Emperor Tippy]

Disney had nothing to do with it; Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were released in 2008, Disney purchased Marvel in 2009.

To rephrase, the reason that Marvel went with Iron Man is that they owned the rights cleanly.