In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months, Marvel Studios released its 18th film earlier this year. You could say it was pretty successful, and by pretty successful we mean it garnered over $2 billion at the box office. Now, judging the quality of a film by how much money it makes is a fool’s errand (Transformers: Age of Extinction made over $1 billion), but it does help measure its contribution to pop culture.

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Infinity War was the culmination of a decade of trial and error, along with betting on horses who no one thought would win the race. Despite the massive global profit the Marvel Cinematic Universe has earned, their road to victory is somewhat of an underdog story. Back in 2008, Marvel rolled the dice by giving a character without the brand recognition of surefire money-makers like Batman or Superman his own film. The result was Iron Man, a film that not only revitalized the career of Robert Downey Jr., but also gave the character a level of relevance he had not experienced since being name-dropped on Wu-Tang Clan records.

For the next decade, Marvel Studios would produce film after film, slowly building their world, making each release feel like a component of a larger vision, even if they operated just fine in a vacuum. While films like The Avengers and Captain America: Civil War were huge, series-defining entries, Infinity War was what everything had been leading up to. Patience (if you could called releasing two or three films a year “patience”), it would seem, had paid off… literally.

The Friendly Competition

Man of Steel

But what worked so well for the Marvel pantheon has not exactly led to the same fortune for their friendly rivals. Warner Bros. launched their own interconnected series of superhero films with Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel in 2013. The film was successful financially, but proved divisive among fans and critics.

Despite the negative reactions, the studio pushed on with their series of films (which would become known as the DC Extended Universe) and three years later released a follow-up film, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, which earned even more money while being ever more derided by moviegoers and critics. Still, they trudged forward, as if the act of producing enough material would be the catalyst for creating something audiences would get invested in with the same level of enthusiasm the MCU had garnered. Alas, this is not the case (broadly speaking, anyway).

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For all the high points, like Wonder Woman or Ben Affleck’s amazing Batman costume, the DCEU has not been able to find a singular voice, which begs the question whether this cinematic universe can ever produce the DC equivalent of Infinity War. The short answer is, "maybe?" It’s never too late. Tons of film franchises have lifted themselves up from slumps. It’s easy to chide Warner Bros. for giving us too much, too quickly and taking an unnecessarily dark tone with the material, but what’s done is done. All we can do now is look to the future, to see what can be salvaged as things march forward.

NEXT PAGE: A DCEU Infinity War Will Take Time (And Lots Of It)

The Wonders That Work

Wonder Woman 1984

The DCEU has some good things going for it, specifically with Gal Gadot’s portrayal of Wonder Woman. Her standalone film is pretty much the crown jewel of the franchise, and with good reason: It mixes the classic hero’s journey with a fish out of water story and does so with heart and humor, making it palatable for pretty much any audience. It wasn’t bogged down with a million characters to keep up with or some convoluted mythology. It gave you just enough information to understand why Diana would not fit in during the early 20th century and how committed she is to her quest. Yes, the film did end in a CGI monster slugfest like so many comic book movies do, but overall Wonder Woman was handled with care and made us fall in love with the character all over again.

RELATED: Wonder Woman 1984 Release Moved to Summer 2020

Warner Bros. is wisely doubling down on the demigoddess with the upcoming Wonder Woman 1984, which has been pushed out to a 2020 release. That might sound like trouble in paradise (island) to some, but we see it as a wise move. Staggering their releases to see what fans will gravitate toward is something the DCEU has never been great at, which makes Wonder Woman almost feel like a fluke occurrence. With Aquaman hitting theaters this November, we’ll see if lighting can strike twice. This might be what turns the tide for the entire cinematic universe. If James Wan can do for Arthur Curry what Patty Jenkins did for Diana Prince, we might have a fresh launch pad.

Selective Memory

“But what about the movies that aren’t Wonder Woman,” you ask? Well, nowhere is it written that film franchises have to adhere to one singular continuity. The X-Men films have been doing pretty much whatever the hell they want for almost 20 years and, despite mixed results, we’ve gotten some amazing films here and there. If the DCEU has aspirations to eventually build to something as monumental as Infinity War, cherry-picking the good from prior cinematic transgressions would be wise.

Again, it took the MCU a decade to get to this point and not every release was received with open arms (see: Iron Man 2). If Aquaman can make the audience care about this version of Arthur Curry beyond just being infatuated with Jason Momoa’s charm, then it has done its job. It doesn't matter if the story is familiar, it just has to be told well and have compelling characters.

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If next year’s Shazam! can do the same, Warner Bros. is another step closer. It’s all about focusing on one film at a time, which is what the MCU did at first. Sure, there were Easter eggs and shout-outs in those early installments, but we seriously doubt the tracks leading to a multi-billion dollar film 10 years later were laid out. The idea of the possibility is always fun to play with, but casting the Justice League prior to giving audiences the chance to consider the superhero ensemble individually is putting the cart miles ahead of the horse. Crafting individual stories about likable characters will make audiences forgive a lot of poor choices because, in the moment, all is forgotten.

So, the notion of the DCEU actually building toward something as huge as Infinity War is not a ridiculous idea. If they can build this world organically and connect the pieces without jamming them together, the world’s greatest pantheon of superheroes might finally get the cinematic glory they have always deserved. Now it’s just a matter of letting things breathe and taking shape over the course of the next few years. Warner Bros. have to make fans beg for Shazam and Wonder Woman to share a film together instead of giving people what they think they want. With all the talent behind and in front of the camera, there’s no reason this can’t become a reality.