No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings. →
On October 18, millions of us are rising again to show the world: America has no kings, and the power belongs to the people.
The scale and scope of the MCU’s story feels unprecedented. Yet its main innovation is not narrative - it’s that it’s told via film, rather than voice, or text, and that it’s readily understood as fiction, not history. But if the rise of cinematic universes reflects our fundamental desire for the epic form, why did they ever go away?
—Matthew Ball and Jonathan Glick, in “Cinematic Universes Aren’t New; They’re the Oldest Stories on Earth (Marveliad: Eps. I + II)”