As predicted here on Out Of Dave’s Head (though I’ll grant you I didn’t really need a crystal ball), Avengers: Endgame has blasted off with a record-breaking $1.2 billion opening weekend take at the worldwide box office.

Marvel’s astonishing experiment in long-form storytelling has smashed the year-old Avengers: Infinity War records by nearly $100 million in the U.S. and a jaw-dropping $560 million worldwide.

The 22nd movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which launched in 2008 with Iron Man, has seen the linked multi-franchises bring home more than $19 billion in worldwide box office to date, and with a whole slate of films lined up for the forthcoming Phase 4, that figure seems likely to grow.

The much-discussed “superhero fatigue” that critics love to load onto these films seems to be pretty non-existent when it comes to Marvel movies, possibly because their release plans are carefully thought out and almost certainly because the films are far from the cookie-cutter exercises those same, lazy critics write them off as.

Long-form cinematic storytelling is certainly nothing new, of course, having been around since at least 1912, with Edison’s What Happened to Mary, before finding huge popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with the likes of Flash Gordon, Spy Smasher and The Adventures of Captain Marvel (or Shazam! as he’s now known). 

And movie sequels have been around forever, but were generally regarded as poor relations to the source material and usually awarded declining budgets and box office receipts (the original Planet of the Apes films, for example).

Star Wars and its subsequent offerings have done much to pave the way for this latest iteration, with the linked trilogies of the Skywalker saga we’ve had since 1977. But Marvel have taken this to a truly intriguing new level, launching a number of different franchises which link to form one longer narrative. Story strands, character arcs and thematic resolutions occur in Avengers: Endgame which have carried through from that first Iron Man movie in 2008. Carrying these elements across a franchise is one thing, but to test audiences with knowledge needed across multiple franchises really is quite brave for a studio, and something Marvel should be lauded for.

And while Spider-Man: Far From Home, released in July, sees Marvel’s Phase 3 come to a conclusion, the as-yet unannounced slate of Phase 4 films is likely to include Black Panther 2, Doctor Strange 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (happily with James Gunn reinstated), the long-promised Black Widow movie, a likely return for Captain Marvel and debuts for Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu (directed by Destin Daniel Cretton) and The Eternals (helmed by The Rider‘s Chloe Zhao, and rumoured to be starring Angelina Jolie). And those are just the productions we know of, Marvel are sure to have some surprises up their sleeves.

So as Marvel sit back and prepare to work their accountants hard in the coming weeks, rest assured that we’ll likely be giving our hard-earned money to the company for some time to come.

And personally, if they continue to make films as engaging, enjoyable and emotional as these have been, I’ll be very happy to do so.