Kevin Feige, the President of Marvel Studios, and the Chief Creative Officer (CCO) of Marvel Entertainment. Almost everybody within the Marvel Cinematic Universe fandom is well aware of who Feige is, and the important role he has played in the development of this monumental media franchise. Working at Marvel Studios when they were not more than an interim oversight board for the productions of other studios, Feige's first major contribution to live-action Marvel entertainment came on the set of X-Men (2000), where he was as an associate producer. He maintained producer positions in the following two Fox X-Men films, while also holding producer positions on nearly every other Marvel film in production in the early 2000s, most notably Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy. Of course, his most notable contribution to the live-action Marvel space came in 2008 with the release of Iron Man.
Amalgamation[]
Iron Man is often referred to as the start of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That's almost a ridiculous statement though, right? It is the start of the MCU, right? Well, it is now, anyway. The truth is, during the development of the first Iron Man film, it was not conceived as the beginning of a new Marvel universe. It was instead seen by Feige as an opportunity to merge the existing live-action Marvel franchises from the other production companies he had been working with for eight years prior. By now, fans are likely familiar with the alternate extended post-credits scene of Iron Man that was revealed by Marvel Studios after the release of Avengers: Endgame. This would completely change the public understanding of the MCU's conception, giving us more insight into Feige's original intentions with this universe.
In the deleted scene, Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury uses much of the same dialogue he would use in the final version of the scene, referring to Tony Stark's uncooperative personality. Instead of simply ending at that confrontation, however, Fury reveals a few secrets about this new universe; he reveals that it isn't a new universe at all. This universe has apparently had some "radioactive bug bites" and "an assortment of mutants". Given that both a fourth Spider-Man film and fourth X-Men film were in development by Sony Pictures and Fox at the time, it is clear that this scene was shot as a way to connect to those other Marvel universes that were previously thought to be separate. It would not go according to plan, however, as after filming the scene, Marvel Studios was still unable to obtain the necessary agreements from Sony and Fox to be able to include this scene in the film. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was born, but it was born without any of the content it was supposed to originally include, leaving Iron Man to truly be its first film, as it is today.
Even The Incredible Hulk, a reboot of the Hulk franchise, was not originally supposed to be a first entry. The film was developed from its conception as a direct sequel to Ang Lee's Hulk (2003). This actually may seem obvious to some fans, as The Incredible Hulk actually shares a lot of continuity with the 2003 film; it was very clearly written as such, given the timeline similarities. This shifted during development with a host of recasts, but it is very likely that only a minorly-edited alternate cut of the film could have made it the sequel it was originally conceived as. This again shows the intention with the MCU to combine what already existed into an amalgamation of a media franchise and shared universe, with studio conflicts preventing this from happening.
Reboots[]
While working at Marvel Studios during the development of The Avengers (2012), Feige remained in close contact with Sony Pictures via email. He would often weigh in on studio developments related to their Spider-Man films. It is here that it was revealed that Feige is not the biggest fan of reboots. When Feige saw footage of Sony's upcoming film, The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), he was disappointed to discover that it was a reboot of the Sam Raimi trilogy, with a completely new origin story for its version of Peter Parker. He was notably not disturbed by the recasting of Tobey Maguire with Andrew Garfield, but instead disliked that the actual continuity of the previous three Spider-Man films was being completely ignored, specifically pointing to the differences in how each respective Peter is bitten by the radioactive spider. He felt that it was a disservice to the audience to tell them that everything they had previously seen and enjoyed was simply to be disregarded, as if it was all a mistake. He compared the idea to a reboot of the Iron Man film series, noting the absurdity of pretending that the previous films did not exist for the sake of repetition.
In spite of disliking this decision, Feige would remain close to Sony even closer to the release of The Avengers. At this time, it actually seemed as if Feige was going to get something close to what he originally wanted with the MCU, as both Marvel Studios and Sony were working together to merge the Amazing Spider-Man film series with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This would first be shown in The Avengers, where the Oscorp Tower from the first film was going to be displayed in the New York City skyline. This fell through, however, as the CGI for the skyline had already been completed for the film when the agreement was made, and it was too close to the release date to have it redone. Another opportunity for unity of the Marvel live-action universes, and it was again lost to contracts.
From this point, the idea of integration was essentially disregarded by Sony. They moved to continue developing The Amazing Spider-Man 2 as an independent sequel to the first film, and while Feige retained his active production connections to the company, he still was not any closer to his combined shared universe. This would change in 2015, when the poor critical reception and underwhelming box office performance of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, mixed with a dramatic fallout with Andrew Garfield, caused Sony to begin work on another reboot. At the same time, Marvel Studios was actively producing Captain America: Civil War, the third entry in the Captain America film series. The writing duo of the film, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, were actively committed to Civil War being the introduction of Spider-Man to the MCU. This would lead to a deal that would see Spider-Man join the MCU in the film, with a solo MCU trilogy to follow. Because Andrew Garfield had already been fired by Sony, and the company had already begun pre-development on a new Spider-Man film, there was no way out of rebooting the Spider-Man IP a third time for the MCU, and so it was. The character's debut saw up-and-coming actor Tom Holland cast in the role, with zero relation to the previous film series, made especially evident with the release of Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017). It is worth noting that this entire situation, stemming from the firing of Andrew Garfield, was out of Feige's control. He did not make any decisions, and if his previous stances were any indication, he likely would have worked to make the exact opposite ones if he were able to.
What This Means for the Future of the MCU[]
It is often erroneously stated that Feige is extremely willing to reboot things, and in fact wants to reboot media that he did not have a hand in. This is obviously untrue according to the background context, but that is often not addressed when discussing these situations. The issue now is that the MCU has a very well-established continuity, and so reboots of certain properties, such as X-Men, are unavoidable in the same way they were for Spider-Man. However, Feige seems determined to defy all expectations on this front in spite of this.
One example of this comes with the Venom franchise. When Spider-Man was originally brought to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sony had been developing a film based on Venom as part of the Amazing Spider-Man film franchise. This movie was not absorbed into the Marvel Studios production schedule, as Sony instead chose to rework it as the beginning of a separate universe based on Spider-Man villains, which is now known as Sony's Spider-Man Universe. This universe, despite clear attempts early on to exist independently within the continuity of the MCU, was never recognized as such. In its first film, it had essentially already sealed its fate with an implausible-to-connect timeline and what many believed to be a contradiction to established MCU continuity in regards to the existence of aliens. Yet, in spite of it clearly existing as its own continuity at that point, Marvel Studios and Feige still made a decision that prevented a reboot of Venom from occurring. In the post-credits scene of Venom: Let There be Carnage, Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote were transported to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and in Spider-Man: No Way Home, a film that already avoided rebooting many previous Spider-Man film villains, they were again seen in the MCU. They were sent back to the SSU in the end, but a piece of the Venom symbiote was left behind, allowing for Venom to exist in the MCU without what would previously have been an immediate total reboot. This is one example, but there is actually a far more notable example in the film, involving media that is actually already part of the MCU continuity.
No Way Home features the return of Matt Murdock/Daredevil from the Daredevil television series (2015-2017). This series was produced by Marvel Television rather than Marvel Studios, but it was still set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, much like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013-2020) and Agent Carter (2015-2016) before it. All of Marvel TV's MCU media is looked at today by a large portion of the MCU fandom as being non-canonical, largely based on a misunderstanding of Feige's feelings towards these series and the concept of reboots. Many of these fans are quick to describe Feige's will as being to completely reboot everything from these series, keeping only some of the actors and basic backstory (often erroneously referred to as a "soft reboot", which is a term that actually has the complete opposite meaning). This is entirely baseless speculation, but certain sections of the community accept it as fact regardless. Even after Vincent D'Onofrio returned as Wilson Fisk/Kingpin in Hawkeye (2021) and re-confirmed that Daredevil is canon, these sections of the fanbase remain unwilling to accept that the previous series are canon, and they will still often point to Feige's vision, completely unaware of how Feige typically handles these types of situations and the quite literally decades of evidence to show this. This all omits the more obvious inclusion of Edwin Jarvis in Avengers: Endgame following his appearance in the Agent Carter series, another example to show very clearly that Feige and the rest of the producers at Marvel Studios have exactly zero intention to reboot anything set within their continuity; they never have.
Stop Pointing to Feige[]
Concluding this piece with my very scathing opinion on this topic, fueled admittedly by some Twitter e-rage in the past few years, I find it absolutely absurd that people point to Feige and his hypothetical vision as being proof or even evidence that a reboot of various properties is coming. I find it doubtful that even Deadpool 3 will be a reboot. I have no doubt in my mind that the version of Deadpool that we will see in the MCU is directly lifted from the first two films via the multiverse. At this point, that seems obvious. This is all amidst reports that Anson Mount is returning as a variant of Black Bolt in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a character who first appeared in the critically panned Inhumans. As a variant and a part of the Illuminati, he will not be the same version of the character featured in that series, similar to the other variants that are set to appear as part of the organization in that manner, which maintains the character's status in the MCU as being the one from the series. This is in spite of all calls to reboot the property, and in spite of its critical failure. If "Feige's vision" is unwilling to reboot even the most horribly despised parts of the MCU, or multiple properties that aren't even originally part of the MCU, I truly am shocked that anybody thinks that he will reboot any Marvel Television series at all. It simply is not the direction that has been occurring up to this point, and it becomes a less tenable proposition as time goes on. As of now, it is simply not happening, and I believe that as a community, we need to come to accept that reality in spite of any personal preferences of canonicity. Feige's vision is clearly not at all what people think it is, and it never has been. We can point to out-of-context quotes in ignorance of the many supporting quotes by Feige, doing no more than play for a canon clout war, or we can be objective about this topic and recognize Feige's true feelings that he has expressed to the community many times before. I know what choice I'm making.