The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
There is no doubt that since its launch in 2008, Marvel had taken off with its first movie of the series, Iron Man. Marvel has since ended in three phases of movie segments in just over a decade, or about 13 years, yielding in around $20,000,000,000 (that’s $20 billion American dollars) in profit, which is essentially good news for the world: more will be made because the industry is profitable.With great amazement, the world watched in anticipation and un-realization of just how popular the movies in the series would be.
Before these series of movies took off, we were entertained with random movies that stuck closely to a comic, but often seemed as if it were meaning to be a standoff movie, while trying to create a series of the same movie. Sony Entertainment and several other studios still own the rights to some of the Marvel properties, which means that there are limitations on what can be done. Marvel and eventually Disney, who would acquire the rights to most of the property, and the history of Marvel entertainment was written into the big screen.
It would be the very first time that characters from different comics, who crossed paths endlessly, were seen together. No longer would these movies be stand-alone, featuring only the characters within them, but rather, it brought Iron Man into Hulk, Black Widow into Iron Man, Iron Man into Spiderman, and the a slew of Marvel characters into Captain America. And finally, all the characters were brought together and fought together in the Avengers movies. The wow factor with the franchise was endless.
With it brought the world’s attention to Hollywood, particularly English-speaking movies that featured nonstop action and entertainment. It also was the first time where movies began to see increases beyond just the typical one Spielberg movie that grossed nearly a billion dollars and held that rank for nearly a decade, which was Avatar, a movie that pushed technology beyond its limitations to give us a whole new way to experience the movie theater in 3-D and IMAX.
Marvel movies were making nearly a billion dollars each, while costing about a half a billion dollars to make these types of films, ultimately yielding a profit and bringing Marvel Studios out of its own debt and shedding light on a whole new era for Disney, in which not only would Disney be able to own human childhood but now had access to adulthood as well, as Marvel movies tend to be enjoyed both by children and adults. And if you are an investor, you already know that if you put up $50 and your return is $100 or $200, then you’re in business, which will want to make you put up more money for such a great investment, and when entertainment is consumed by both children and adults, business is quite good and very profitable.
There was yet another advantage to this popularity of Marvel movies, something I noticed while working remotely for a company overseas in Malaysia. It was not that their English was bad, but you can always tell whether any distinct language is native to someone’s language, or if they learned it. When you are taught from infancy into adulthood your own language, it is your native language. When you learn English, you tend to understand the phonetics and even memorize words so that you my recall them at a later time. For some people, language is embedded into memory, while others struggle to recall or memorize any type of language.
When I taught English in Israel, I had noticed the difference from the children who were raised by parents who spoke English at home to the parents who learned it later in life and taught their children. Children who were taught Hebrew and English from a very young age could switch back and forth without any issues. Children who were only speaking Hebrew in the home had a harder time remembering words. Fortunately, it was fun games that helped these children remember the English language. Doing something fun and exciting or even watching something fun and memorable can help anyone learn the English language.
And this is where Marvel taught the world English. Aside from being engaging, from video games to action figure toys that Sony Entertainment, Marvel Studios, and Disney worked hard to produce, and cashed in millions on the Marvel name alone. The movies were fun, exciting, and filled with adventure, action, and thrilling entertainment. Since this was Hollywood Studios that made it possible, the dominant language was English. It would be subtitled for non-English speaking countries and eventually it would be dubbed over in the languages of those non-English speaking countries, but for the most part, if you wanted to see a Marvel movie, you saw it in English, regardless of what country you were from.
This was later also realized when I began the My Life As A Woman Project Initiative in which I acquired the stories of over 500 women from 200 countries in English. The vast majority of women were already speaking English and there were just about 30 countries that required an additional translation from the original language into English. The English from the overseas company I worked, who all watched Marvel movies, I could tell their English has improved significantly as well. It was as if many of them spoke English naturally and understood a lot of the English language far better than before. And in just over a decade, Marvel had brought and taught the entire world some form of the English language, likely sealing the fate that English will always be the most dominant language of the human race.
