The 'Endgame' is here: Does Marvel Studios' achievement change film?

Ten years, 23 films and a worldwide box office of $15.8 billion and counting.

Based on the numbers alone, the 10-year experiment was not only a success, but it was a success. Not only were the films financially successful, because they were, but they signaled a change in the way film franchises are produced.

No longer is there an emphasis on the individual film, at least not in the way Marvel Studios created a decade-long tapestry that comes to a conclusion of sorts this month with the release of "Avengers: Endgame." It culminates all the storylines of the last decade into one three-hour showdown, featuring most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — not counting the TV franchises — in a final battle with the Mad Titan Thanos.

Instead of the individual film, there was a much larger goal, one in which viewers would be introduced to an entire universe. And while many of the films had singular themes, they were all in service to a much larger whole, with a story unlike any seen before, even if we have, indeed, seen it before in a more contained sense.

Starting with 2008's "Iron Man," Marvel Studios used its available catalog of sub A-list heroes and made them into cultural A-listers and superstars out of niche and mid-level actors, in the process attracting more and more top talent to play a part in the MCU. What began with "questionable" performers like Robert Downey Jr expanded into top talent like Sir Anthony Hopkins, Glenn Close and Robert Redford.

The first half of the 10-year cycle was presided over by a specific creative committee that would give notes to filmmakers, guiding each film to ensure it was a part of a bigger whole, alongside aiding in maintaining a sense of canon throughout the MCU.

This sort of method wasn't without its set of complications, the most notable of which was the messy departure of Edgar Wright from 2016's "Ant Man," a film Wright shepherded as a passion project of sorts. And it was one that seemed like a boon for fans of Marvel and Wright, who instantly regarded the collaboration as a marriage made in heaven.

Wright wasn't willing to conform to Marvel's creative committee and at the end of the day, "Ant-Man" belonged to the studio, making it simple enough to replace him while keeping the overall story with the changes needed to fit within the mold necessary.

And through it all, through the overall leadership of producer Kevin Feige (along with Louis D'Esposito), not only were the films mostly good, but they also displayed a new type of filmmaking. A diverse group of filmmakers were now asked to create a puzzle piece designed to fit into a specific place to serve a larger story they weren't necessarily leading.

So now that we’ve come to the end of the first — for lack of a better term — saga from Marvel Studios, what comes next?

From Marvel, more films, obviously, especially with the recent closing of parent company Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox, including a number of Marvel assets previously unavailable to them such as the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. But that’s not exactly what we mean.

The real question is what comes next from the film industry?

There were no shortage of attempts to capitalize on the Marvel Studios method of franchise building. Studios rushed to kick off their own shared universes, all with varying levels of failure either financially or critically, or sometimes both.

Universal tried to create a shared universe around its collection of monster movie icons, such as Dracula and The Mummy. Both films based on those classic properties, 2014’s “Dracula Untold” and 2017’s “The Mummy," failed to impress viewers despite the inclusion of A-list talent in the form of Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe.

Warner Bros., Marvel’s direct competition (heh), had all it needed to create a shared universe of its own with DC Comics properties, including the perennial cash cow Batman, alongside Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and others. Despite raking in serious cash on the truly awful "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice," the plans fizzled almost immediately. Fans and critics didn’t care much for the dark and dreary world created by director Zack Snyder, resulting in him leaving follow-up film “Justice League” in the wake of a personal tragedy (although some believe other factors weighed heavily).

Some things can be imitated, but rarely are they ever duplicated, which seems to be the case for Marvel Studios. As we’ve seen, the magic it's created over the course of a decade is one clearly hard to match, and now the light shines back on it. After the unprecedented success, is Marvel in a position to follow that for another decade? Is it even something that should be tried?

For all the success of creating a 10-year-long storyline, not every film was a home run on its own merits. Whether it was 2010’s "Iron Man 2," largely regarded as more a bridge to 2012’s "The Avengers" than its own film, or the thematically weak "Avengers: Age of Ultron," — another film that made a mint for Marvel/Disney but left audiences wondering if the grand experiment was worth it at all — the idea that making films as virtual trailers for films that haven’t been produced yet is a dangerous path that can ding even the most successful studios.

Looking through the films and heroes featured on Marvel Studios’ resume, one wishes we had a few more solo adventures from the likes of Captain America and Iron Man, particularly the former whose sequels, including studio-best "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and "Captain America: Civil War," felt more like Avengers subplots than freestanding films.

For the genre to grow and sustain itself after achievements such as the Infinity War/Endgame saga, there has to be more tangibility for individual stories or else audiences may stop caring. It's difficult to enjoy the film you’re watching if you’re preoccupied with what it will mean for future installments.

That said, superhero films, like romantic comedies and period dramas, are here to stay, ingrained within our pop culture psyche from now until whenever. They aren’t going away anytime soon but if they hope to last, it may be best to look at achievements like those from Marvel Studios as something to aspire to more than to imitate.