4) Limit The Universe-Building
From day one, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has put plenty of focus on the “universe” component. Ever since the first Iron Man post-credits scene teased The Avengers Initiative, each installment in the MCU has helped build up and expand what came before. However, while the universe-expansion components are entertaining, they can get out of hand.
With the first Avengers, any expansion of the MCU world only took place with the Thanos tease during the credits. Compare that to Age of Ultron, which ended up teasing Civil War, Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok DURING the movie. It’s essential that if the standalone entries are meant to build up to the main Avengers films, then fans need to feel that these movies don’t serve as just more teases for future MCU installments.
For that reason, Infinity War needs to avoid the universe-building so that it doesn’t overshadow the main plot. All too often, those Marvel execs get too excited about the future of their world and compromise the current story to promote the next MCU movie. Avengers: Infinity War is meant to be the crown jewel of the Marvel Studios brand, so saddling the film with an abundance of teases and in-movie Marvel promotions would only hurt the audience experience.
This doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be ANY teases for the future of the MCU, but make it reasonable. After all, once a movie focuses solely on building up the universe instead of telling a satisfying self-contained story, then you lose sight of what makes the cinematic universe special in the first place.
