The latest comments about Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse underline just how impressive Avengers: Endgame and its results really are, even 7 years later. The impact and significance of Avengers: Endgame both inside the superhero genre and outside of it is hard to overstate – which is perhaps unsurprising given the Marvel movie’s staggering $2.7 billion box office gross.
In the years since, the knowledge that something like Avengers: Endgame is possible for the MCU timeline has served as both a blessing and a curse, simultaneously providing the blueprint for how a superhero movie can resonate on a scale like never seen before, while also building audience expectations for similar films sky-high. Almost a decade later, the discussion around Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse puts the 2019 film’s success in new context that makes its success even more striking.
Spider-Verse trilogy writers and producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller recently delved into the delays that have occurred to push back the release date of Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse to its current 2027 window.
The pair looked back at the decision to take the film series from a duology to a trilogy – which led to the prior plans for the second movie being split into Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse – and the challenges this created for Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, with Miller stating that “Having to take it apart to put it back together again was really, really [the] real thing that made it take longer.“
With Chris Miller also stating that “once you looked at that second half of a movie, you’re like, ‘Well, that’s not just a story arc that has a beginning, middle, and end.‘” it’s easy to see how the specific pacing and placement of Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse has presented unique story trials for those involved in its creation.
This is all the more interesting because the biggest superhero movie of all time falls into very similar story territory. Avengers: Endgame comes as the climactic ending to the Infinity Saga, and has to navigate constructing a cohesive self-contained narrative despite starting in a decidedly unusual place due to the ending of Avengers: Infinity War, which closes with the Snap wiping out half of all life.
Ultimately, the fact this kind of narrative territory is still presenting challenges for those involved in making superhero movies underlines how complex it truly is, and how well everyone who played a role in creating Avengers: Endgame did in order for the film to be both massively fiscally successfully, and also consistently presented as an example of how huge and acclaimed superhero films can be when done right to this day.
The MCU Is Set To Mirror Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse’s Story Challenges With Avengers: Secret Wars
As it stands, 2027 is set to see Marvel face the narrative challenges Avengers: Endgame navigated with style two times – once with Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse, and once with Avengers: Secret Wars, which will bring the Multiverse Saga to an end much in the same way Endgame brought the Infinity Saga to an end several years before.
Seeing how these films fare in similar territory should prove a fascinating experience, and one that will no doubt further highlight how impressive Avengers: Endgame itself is, since there’s a very real chance that even the box office results of Beyond The Spider-Verse and Secret Wars combined won’t equal Endgame‘s own – and indeed, both 2027 films could still be big successes without reaching this metric.