If you can believe it, today marks exactly 15 years since Iron Man exploded into theaters on May 2, 2008 and instantly changed the face of cinema forever by acting as the launchpad for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Trying to imagine what the complexion of the industry would look like today had Kevin Feige’s ambitious gambit backfired doesn’t even bear thinking about, with the shared superhero franchise making a seismic impact across all of entertainment, one that still hasn’t been duplicated or replicated.
In a delicious twist of irony, though, today is also the anniversary of another blockbuster comic book adaptation that did the exact opposite. Precisely nine years ago today, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 swung into theaters and ended up as not just the lowest-grossing and worst-reviewed live-action outing to ever feature the web-slinger, but it killed Sony’s first stab at mimicking the MCU formula.
Prior to the sequel’s release, the studio already had release dates for The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and 4 locked in, while Drew Goddard was set to write and direct a Sinister Six spin-off, just one of many additional stories set in the same world as Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker.
It is somewhat fitting that two movies set in the exact same genre with the exact same intention would be released on the exact same day and experience such a difference in fortune, but that’s just the kind of coincidence that Hollywood loves to throw up on a regular basis, even if Spidey has gone on to appear in no less than six MCU features since then.
