>>76925918In 2008, Jon Favreau went out of his way to assemble a talented cast, RDJ was largely unhireable by Hollywood but was making a comeback, Jeff Bridges was willing to shave his head and play a villain against type, and gwenyth paltrow "lowered herself" to doing a superhero film.
From there Marvel set a standard of usually hiring unexpected directors with strong casts, even willing to do superhero stories with unusual settings. Kenneth Branaugh and Joe Johnston, both film veterans, delivered solid reviewed films with First Avenger and Thor.
(I know /co/ hates Thor for the romance, lack of asgard, lack of cosmic space scale, and the 'downgrade' to aliens, and Idris Elba, but /co/ forgets even making a Thor film was considered un-castable, un-doable, and unlikely to be a financial success. All of which Thor did)
From there Marvel has mostly been able to repeat its formula and improve on it, with the big hiccups being Thor the Dark World, which made over 700 million dollars.
And then GotG happened and was nearly as big as Avengers. So now Marvel is doing even weirder shit like Ant-man, Dr Strange, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, etc, all previously considered too weird, or too difficult to cast, etc.
