What Comes After Marvel? Better Hope It’s Not Something Worse

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Fifty years ago, the release of two movies — “Jaws” in 1975, and “Star Wars” in 1977 — changed movies, America, and the world, not just by giving rise to “the blockbuster mentality” but by ushering in the cinematic age of all-popcorn-all-the-time.

There had been antecedents, of course. In hindsight, much of our fantasy culture sprung from the loins of J.R.R. Tolkien. And there was a film that preceded “Jaws” and “Star Wars” that I think had just about as great an influence on movie culture: “The Exorcist.” That said, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are inarguably the transcendant game-changers of the second half of the Hollywood century.

That’s a fact that justifiably became a mythology. In many ways, the Age of Marvel is also a mythology, one that’s often been thought of as a ramped-up sequel to the Lucas/Spielberg revolution.

Not that the rise of comic-book-movie culture happened overnight. It took place gradually, over the decades, kicking off in 1978 with “Superman,” building through the ’80s with the “Superman” sequels and, in 1989, the next-level marketing juggernaut that was Tim Burton’s “Batman” and its scattered sequels, then hitting a new plateau of centrality in 2002, with the release of “Spider-Man.” By the mid-2000s, it felt like we were swimming in comic-book movies — but how quaint that feeling now seems considering that even then, we had no idea what we were in for.