Iron Man (2008)

Directed by Jon Favreau, who played Happy Hogan a main stay character in the Iron Man franchise within the MCU. The movie was released on May of 2008, just 2 months before the release of Christopher Nolan's highly anticipated Dark Knight, the follow up to Batman Begins. In the weeks leading up to the Dark Knight, Marvel Studio's gamble on Iron Man paid off, the film made a profit. Iron Man (2008) made back double the cost of its $140,000 budget domestically, and accumulated slightly over half a billion dollars world-wide.  With Producers Avi Arad, Jon Favreau, Peter Billingsley, Louis D'Esposito, Kevin Feige, Stan Lee, and a few others behind it. Marvel Studios was now in a position to command more talent and resources.
In 2004, Avi Arad had taken out a large loan, on par with the world wide Box office total of Iron Man to in-house create 8 Marvel franchised movies over 10 years, this was in part due to profitability and the returns of Daredevil, Blade, (Sony's Spider-Man), and Elektra and that its vault of characters could be sustainable, and with the financial returns of Iron Man, Marvel Studios was re-born.
In 2009, Disney who initially passed on buying Marvel around 2004, bought Marvel Studios for $4 billion; and under Kevin Feige and Louis D'Esposito leadership Marvel Studios continue to run an economically sound flag ship franchise. With Favreau being an executive producer for Star War's Mandalorin , another of  Disney recently acquired properties.

Jon Favreau, Kevin Feige, Louis D'Esposito (left to right)

Iron Man is an origin story of Tony Stark, it was the film that first condition its audience to stay to the end of a films post credit scene, when the name Samuel L. Jackson as  Nick Fury appeared when credits began to roll it caught fire by word of mouth to stay for the end of the credits. Now to say watch Iron Man and then Endgame would make no sense, it would be as if the world itself had lost it's mind. Iron Man laid the ground work of an 11 year odyssey of  21 separate stories that all lead to the Endgame.
With a high caliber cast - Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert Downey Jr., and Terrence Howard, it was revolutionary, it was nominated for two academy awards, for best sound editing and best visual effects, a first for Marvel towards having a property being excepted in mainstream Hollywood. It was also different because it was not driven by green screen special effects, everything Downey interacted with was actual present and before him. Using the pages of the comic book as a skeleton, Favreau allowed the actors to improvise. To provide the actors a chance to give their characters more life and realism than what sometimes maybe ridged on the page, you got a rapport of his girl Friday between Downey Jr. and Paltrow, and wonderful on screen banter between the full cast of characters who now seem to know each other for years.

Hulk (2003)

A character that has been pillar of Marvel Comics since it debut in 1962, The Incredible Hulk and his alter ego Bruce Banner has been synonymous with the culture of superheroes and of comic books. Being just one of the many creation of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, the Hulk's arc has remained generally the same, The battle to control his dangerous alter ego with varying success over the near 60 years of its inception. A lonely isolated character, who inadvertently became a matriarch of a family of hulk like characters, and a founding members of the Avengers. Has found short-lived peace by separating the man from the beast, from coming to terms and controlling the hulk as a complete entity, and at one point actually dying and laid to rest for a number of years, just to be resurrected for nefarious gain.

Hulk (2003)  is based on the backstory of the comic book history of Bruce Banner and the story of his abusive father, as Bruce would eventually grow up to be a shy but brilliant scientist. An accidental exposure to an extremely high levels of gamma radiation has acted as a catalyst to form and create the Hulk, but the source of the rage that fuels the Hulk has come from traumatic childhood experiences. The comic book did a deep dive that resulted in a truce at a point when Banner had a coming of terms and symbiotic relationship with his alter ego. Director Ang Lee took that construct and made a movie about the broken relationships of a child and their parent, With Bruce and his father David, with Betty Ross and her father General Thaddeus Ross.

The major difference was that Bruce was born with the Hulk already inside him as a result of passed  on genetics of mad scientist father David Banner.  The movie introduced Hulk like dogs, a concept designed by Ang Lee's son.  In the comic books the Ross's would eventually become gamma infused with father and daughter becoming Red Hulks, Bruce's cousin Jennifer becoming a green She-Hulk from a blood transfusion, and Rick Jones becoming a character known as A-Bomb from his latent exposer to gamma radiation, all of whom have become surrogate family to the original green goliath.

Captain Marvel

The Character of Carol Danvers first made an appearance in Marvel comics back in 1968. Introduced as an officer working within a top secret military base, and rescued by a doctor named Walter Lawson / The original Captain Marvel during a near fatal incident.  The essence of that initial run carries over into the 2018 film adaption, now 50 years later.
Co-written and Directed by Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden,  a collaborative duo who achieved critical success on their first motion picture debut film Half Nelson (2006) a film that garnered it's star Ryan Gosling critical praise and positioned him in Hollywood to be taken as a serious leading man.

Actress Brie Larson coming off her Academy award winning performance in the Room, was cast in the title role, which drew the attention of the indie directors to Disney and pitch their version of Captain Marvel. Bringing a special attention to character development with relationships, personal flaws, struggles, and the nuance of what makes a fully realized character.  

The movie became a period piece taking place in two specific periods of time 1986 and 1995, its reflected in retail markets of the time like radio shack and blockbuster video, with the level of available technology like computer loading times,  pagers and corner phone booths, as well as the popular music of its time, with reference to music group Nine inch nails from a tee-shirt and  songs from artists Lita Ford, Heart, Salt-N-Pepper, and No Doubt all of which can be found in the motion picture soundtrack.

This film also served as an origin story for level-3 Shield Agent Nick Fury, played by
Samuel L. Jackson, It is here that Nick Fury is introduced to the existence of extra-terrestrial life, beings of tremendous powers, and a much larger looming threat that lie beyond the stars.
Agent Coulson played by Clark Gregg and largely Samuel L. Jackson were given a near flawless
de-aging special effects process, making the seventy-year old Jackson appear near Forty years of age. The year 1995 is provided to the audience by the final living cameo appearance of Stan Lee, playing himself reading the script for the movie Mallrats (1995) to which he would have a cameo appearance in.

Ben Mendelsohn as Talos

Rounding out the cast are leading co-stars Annette Benning, Lashana Lynch, Ben Mendelsohn and Jude Law .

Mendelsohn who had worked on the directors last project Mississippi Grind found casting him as an alien leader Talos was  an easy decision, knowing the actor personally for

that stretch of filmmaking and knowing his strength as one of the best character actors of his generation.

Heralded as the 21st film released by Marvel Studios,
Captain Marvel was released on March 8, 2018.
International Women's Day.
The first ever Marvel film to be headlined by a woman,
that thematically endorsed, and became an ambassador towards female empowerment. 

With an estimated budget of 175 million US the film made 1.12 Billion dollars worldwide; and is currently placed 26th as the highest grossing film of all time. The sequel is rumored to be released in 2023, as part of Marvel's phase 5 rollout.