Bingo sure is an interesting game. Among the many online/offline games of available to people, bingo is probably the only non-card based game which gives one just as much enjoyment from playing it as one does from actually winning. There’s just something about the anticipation, the buildup generated by punching out hole after hole, hoping that the next number might be an integral piece to the required pattern.
It’s with this kind of interest generation that Marvel Studios has approached the release of each subsequent movie under its Marvel Cinematic Universe banner (i.e. the Avengers films). As everyone surely knows by now, Phase One has already finished, and with resounding composure at that. The question now is if Marvel Studios can capture lightning in a bottle twice (or for the eighth time, depending on how you’re counting).
Echoing a sentiment in a Betfair forum thread, “The first and most essential tip is to understand as much as you can about the overall action you wish to perform before beginning to actually perform.” Marvel Studios follows this to a tee. The production company doesn’t just churn out movie after movie. Every release has been carefully planned out not just as a standalone film, but also as a part of the overall grandiose ambition: to create a seamless interconnected universe of heroes not unlike the comic book source’s superhero landscape.
Going back to bingo, the analogy might not seem to work considering Marvel’s pre-planned methodology versus the random nature of releasing bingo balls. However, when one really thinks about it, even the most cautious planning of a movie isn’t a guarantee of blockbuster success.
If anything, Marvel Studios’ success with its Avengers movies probably has more to do with the connecting threads it has established in between each film and among them as a whole. Each movie hooks up seamlessly with every other, through little things like quick glimpses of Captain America’s shield, to the more obvious little snippets like Nick Fury paying a visit to one of the heroes, to the encompassing multi-film story arc ideas like the search for the perfect super soldier.
It’s the connections between each film that make the overall series the success that it is. A perfect pattern formed, much like bingo; and there we have our analogy back full circle.
