In the last couple decades superhero films have progressed towards more extensive and complicated storylines spanning over multiple films, and now even franchises. Blockbuster juggernauts like Marvel Studios can release films such as Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: No Way Home (two of the highest grossing movies of all time) and superfans will trample each other trying to get into theaters, but casual fans are often left confused and underwhelmed by these films due to not understanding the story being told.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has nearly perfected its own style of using a series of films to build up to a box office breaking “super flick” that ties together years of loosely connected characters all developed within the same cinematic universe. While most movie-goers look to the MCU as the primary example of this style of storytelling, many forget (often by choice) the X-Men franchise featuring Hugh Jackman and Sir Patrick Stewart (as Wolverine and Charles Xavier respectively) attempted it first.

The X-Men franchise lasted for 20 years, starting with X-Men and ending with The New Mutants. This franchise evolved from a simple team-up movie to complicated time travel escapades in which the entire cast besides Hugh Jackman was recast and the original movies getting retconned. Jumping around in time like X-Men: Days of Future Past confused fans, especially when Sir Patrick Stewart reprised his role as the older Charles Xavier in the 2017 masterpiece, Logan. Introducing complex storylines to a franchise already based around lesser- known characters lost X-Men a lot of fans to the MCU upon its 2009 debut.

While building stories around complex world-building mechanics like time travel can cause plot holes and conveniences, it can also create wide and compelling stories that tie together multiple different storylines and characters or even just make for entertaining content. Avengers: Endgame is a prime example of time travel done well within superhero cinema.

Joe and Anthony Russo created their own rules for how time travel works within the MCU. Doing this broke the mold for many time travel movies featuring mechanics in which the past directly affects the future like X-Men: Days of Future Past and Hot Tub Time Machine. In the

MCU, changing the events of the past creates a whole different timeline but keeps the first timeline intact. The mechanics of this form of time travel was explored more in the Disney+ show Loki. The Avengers traveling to moments in their own past and interacting with characters from previous movies as well as new characters from the established history of the franchise created fun and meaningful moments like Tony Stark receiving closure of the relationship between him and his deceased father.

Audience members who haven’t seen the whole franchise may get confused when character cameos like when the Red Skull appeared on Vormir take place since appreciation of his scenes in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame require knowledge of Captain America: The First Avenger. The most casual fans of the MCU won’t observe the same form of reverence for these scenes as long-time fans will. Creators of blockbusters must craft stories that will please fans as well as gain the interest of first-time viewers.

The introduction of the multiverse within the MCU has started a shift away from what is easily understood by casual fans and first-time viewers. Spider-Man: No Way Home was the first MCU film to pull different iterations of the same character from different franchises into one film. While Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire all playing their own iterations of Spider-Man and battling villains from Garfield and Maguire’s universes was truly iconic, audience members who have not seen the collective ten other movies they have all portrayed Spider-Man in will not care about their team up.

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness releases in theaters this May and will be the most ambitious attempt at a multiverse-centric storyline yet. This film will really make or break the potential future for the MCU. There are many theories swirling around about how characters from the X-Men franchise or other Marvel properties will show up. Fans will of those “older” movies will absolutely freak out in theaters much like the overwhelming reactions to Garfield and Magiure’s Spider-Men or even Charlie Cox’s appearance as Matthew Murdock/Daredevil from the Netflix Original series of the same name.

Trailers for Multiverse of Madness look insane enough with two different Wandas, three Doctor Stranges, and several new and forgotten about characters. This movie will struggle with walking the line between excessive comic book/outside-of-MCU-movie references and crafting an original story. Longtime fans of the franchise should be wary of the potential for fan service going into this film. Hopefully with Sam Raimi directing the film, it will lean much farther into the good story side, but Disney has the tendency to push its talented directors to turn a project into an attempt to profit off of fans more than entertaining them.