I was never a Marvel comics fan, but once Marvel started making blockbuster moves (some of which I've got credit on), Marvel became pretty hard to ignore. It wasn't that I had anything against Marvel, it's just that I started buying comics a few years after the 1989 Batman movie came out, so Batman was the logical entry point. I collected the entire Knightfall story as single issues, until I discovered trades, at which point I only expanded my interest into Elfquest, Wonder Woman, and indie graphic novels. But I recently re-watched some of the early Marvel movies (starting with the first Avengers movie) and it reminded me how easy those films made it for us all to be casual fans of Marvel stories. I also realised why that was true, and it's because they're good enough movies to let non-Marvel fans be Marvel fans. In that sense, I earnestly consider at least the first decade of Marvel movies to be legitimate cinema classics.
Maybe you enjoy the Marvel movies. Maybe you enjoyed them at first but have grown weary of them. Or maybe you never enjoyed them at all. Whatever the case, you have to admit that some folks at Marvel clearly had a vision for what the Marvel cinematic universe (MCU) was going to be, and have executed that plan. Marvel kept on course through blockbusters and financial disappointment. I don't know what they expected for Ant Man, for example, but they released 2 of those movies regardless of critical or box office reaction. They seemingly released movies and TV shows that made sense for the story they were determined to tell, not based on what was trending at the time.
Obviously Marvel was able to be resolute due to massive amounts of money, so don't mistake my praise for a delusion that vision and force of will can alter the reality of box office returns. What I'm praising is the concept that a highly developed plan can result in a cohesive end product. I don't have to be a real-lfe Marvel fan to appreciate a comprehensible story arc and, come to think of it, who better to build a story out of tightly integrated but wholly disparate narratives than a comic book company? Ensuring that readers can drop into a serial at any stage is precisely what comic books have perfected over the past century.
We have a good example of what happens when a serial isn't planned, too. There's no property bigger or more loved than Star Wars, and after Disney spent billions to buy the franchise you'd expect their next move to be calculated and flawless. Surely they couldn't do any worse than Lucas himself did with the rereleases and the prequels? Of course, we know how that story ends, with sequels that disappointed everyone including Luke Skywalker himself.
Star Wars surely had more public buy-in than Marvel did, and managed to spend millions of dollars to squander it, while Marvel started with a bunch of comic book nerds and managed to get basically everybody on side. Marvel didn't have to be so successful. They could have gone in without a clear vision, and no plan aside from reacting to what they thought the box office was telling them. Instead, they started out with a weird movie about a Norse god and a snarky guy with no actual super powers aside from an impossibly expensive tech suit that transforms him into a not very likable Superman. And everybody signed up for 2 decades of content.
I start every Marvel movie I watch with zero investment. The fight scenes go on too long, the dialogue is rhythmic and unrealistic, and the setup is pretty goofy. I don't even find myself on the edge of my seat during the movie, and character death literally never bothers me. But I know a compelling story when I see one, and Marvel almost always delivers.
Nobody's perfect, so we did get an Iron Man movie that asked us to believe Tony's castle hadn't been attacked before only because he'd never given out his address on TV yet. But mostly, the stories are engaging in the same way a D&D adventure is engaging. There's a MacGuffin, and the heroes HAVE TO GET IT or else bad things will happen. For an action movie about immortals fighting other immortals, that works for me.
I'm not going to defend modern VFX because on the whole I feel like that industry peaked at Jurassic Park (or thereabouts). I also acknowledge that modern VFX, however cartoony they are, make a lot of impossible shots and stories come to life. It's not always necessary or enjoyable (if I never see another shot of a major metropolitan centre being decimated again, it'll be too soon) but it does match the visuals of a comic book story.
I guess most of us have come to accept VFX as they are, in the same way ancient Egyptians accepted that drawing with people's feet turned at 90-degree angles were reasonable. It's not realism, but it is a common language we all understand for communicating a fantastic story.
There's serious superhero fatigue at this point, and I accept that. I'm tired of Marvel movies, too (not as tired as I am of profoundly disappointing DC movies, to be fair.) But Marvel fans are the target audience, and I have to assume they're loving it, because when I'm a serious fan of something there's no such thing as too much. In my past, that's been Star Trek and Star Wars, and right now it's Warhammer and Lovecraft. Market saturation is a gift, and frankly it's something you've got to appreciate when it's A) Good and B) Happening. It's hard to believe now, but Marvel won't always be this good or this bountiful. I trust that its true fans are basking in its success now, and as a casual fan I'm honestly happy that the True Fans are seeing their dreams come true. We should all be so lucky.
I don't have a horse in this race, but I daresay that the Marvel cinematic universe is essentially a masterpiece of modern filmmaking. The word "masterpiece" is all I can think to describe what Marvel has produced. It's not an emotional judgement, and I can happily live without Marvel movies in my life. But I honestly believe that having Marvel movies in the world, and especially in the geek world, is a net positive.
Marvel has demonstrated how a "cinematic universe" (bearing in mind that the term "cinematic universe" didn't really exit until Marvel created theirs) ought to be done. I know to a lot of people, myself included, it often feels like geek culture and pop culture are now one and the same. There's a whole generation who doesn't hear an insult when they hear the word "geek" or "nerd." You can feel vindicated about this, or you scoff at how pop culture doesn't really understand that which it is attempting to wield, but the MCU is an important symbol of how geek culture operates.
In fact, Marvel is the closest pop culture can get to comprehending geek culture because it has so accurately adhered to its source material. Sure, the MCU has deviated from comic book canon, but hey so do comic books. Marvel movies, as a complete work, follows Marvel's way of storytelling and presentation and delivery. That's more than can be said for most movies made for the general public.
The MCU has spread geek culture probably as much as the widespread adoption of video games have. But it's not just brute forcing the names of geek heroes into people's brains, it has created new fans (myself included, I guess) while staying true to its source material. Marvel movies, despite the occasional falter, are one of the most accurate portrayals of geek canon we've got. And they're finely crafted and actually entertaining. As a very picky fan of lots of geeky properties that haven't been treated well, I admire and appreciate Marvel's efforts.