The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Hardcover – Illustrated, October 19, 2021

This is a chronological story of Marvel Studios, from way back when the first Marvel characters came to movie screens (even before Iron Man), and going in exquisite detail in the road from the first Tony Stark adventure up to their latest projects, including Disney+ releases.What is interesting of the book is that, apart from gorgeous photography (and many cool behind the scenes gems), it has a rich text that shows you how each film came to be from initial idea into their premieres and box office results, but in perfect MCU fashion, this is told as a single story where many directors, producers, VFX artists, etc are "interconnected" and create a much larger story: the one of a studio that started in small offices inside a kite factory (yes, you read right) into one of the largest movie studios of history. At the core (sorry for the DC reference), there's their own Superman-Batman-Wonder Woman trinity of heroes - Kevin Feige, Louis D'Esposito and Victoria Alonso.Being a lifelong Marvel fan (and also recently of the MCU) I came with very high expectations about this book and I was greatly surprised about the heart and the soul of the underlying story, the excellent pictures and behind the scenes secrets (which I won't spoil here!) and of course a very beautiful presentation. Chapters dealing in detail with Taika Waititi's process for Thor:Ragnarok or Ludwig Goransson's process for Black Panther as well as the mamooth storytelling and logistics effort for Infinity War and Endgame are real gems---Buy this book before it's sold out and becomes a collector's item...

First, let me say this is a gorgeous product. The two volumes are fabric-bound hardcovers with a gold embossed image on the front of each (Iron Man on the first, the Infinity Gauntlet on the second). The pages are thick, high quality paper, and the color and images are beautiful. Each volume is about 250 pages, and they are quite heavy!I collect the "Art of..." Marvel hardcovers, and I worried that this book would basically be a conglomerate of all of those. That's not what this is at all. The art books focus on development and concept designs. These volumes are much more focused on production. There are many, many behind the scene photos to show you how they filmed different shots in the movies (Tony Start in the donut, Vision flying, the circle up in Avengers, to name a very few examples).There are a LOT of photos in this book, but there are also a lot of words! Snippets from different interviews with cast and crew are scattered among the pages. Ever wonder how Don Cheadle reacted when he found out Rhodey would be paralyzed? This book will tell you.Something worth noting is that this book is broken down by year rather than by film. The first volume covers the inspiration for and creation of Marvel Studios up through 2014; the second covers 2015 through 2019 with an additional chapter titled "The Future." This means that all the content from any given movie cannot be found in one place; while you read about filming Ragnarok, they will talk about casting Captain Marvel, then jump to some info on Black Panther, then bring you back to Ragnarok in the next chapter. It flows really well because this book is about movie production, not the individual movies themselves.All together, I highly recommend this book if you love the Marvel movies or are interested in how they are filmed. It's a high quality set that's perfect for collectors.

This two-volume set is a comprehensive and insightful dive into the Marvel film franchise, covering each film's conception from vision to reception, ranging from 2008's Iron Man to Spider-Man: Far From Home in 2019. There are even touching mentions of earlier Marvel films like the animated productions, Blade, and Ang Lee's Hulk. Everything is covered with deep affection and disarming honesty, and the films' creators are forthcoming about why some details didn't work so well, but mostly why we consider these films to be a part of the greatest cinematic success stories in existence today. Most of all, creators and artists who are hungry for knowledge about how to deliver compelling storytelling that's informed by great design will appreciate the in-depth look at the creative process, and how to turn challenges into opportunities. It's a textbook for how to turn comic book fans into film buffs and film buffs into comic book fans. It's also a treatise on passion projects that draw us all in. It makes the case for allowing nerds to run artistic mediums that handle the material they're nerdy about. It's a magnificently assembled (excuse the term) compilation of the movies that have been keeping us coming back to the darkened auditoriums and bright screens for 10 years, even through a pandemic. In addition, it looks gorgeous on the shelf and is built to last. If you're a Marvel fan, a moviegoer, or an artist needing inspiration, this is for you. Don't miss it.

This was a really fun read and a great coffee table book for your house if you are a fan of the MCU. This is official and straight from Disney/Marvel, which means you won't necessarily see much of the politics that really went down, but to get an official source to market how they grew, this is a fun retrospective on the what went behind the scenes for the last 22 movies.