| Robert Redford, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Rudd, and Angela Bassett now disappear into movies whose plots can come down to “Keep glowy thing away from bad guy.”  Illustration by Maxim Usik If you find yourself distressed by the ubiquity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe—thirty-two superhero movies and counting, with handfuls of streaming shows, all with stories that are interconnected in increasingly complex ways—be thankful, at least, that you aren’t responsible for creating visual effects for the studio. “Effects artists have been seen crying at their desks during eighty-hour weeks,” Michael Schulman writes, in his deeply sourced new reporting about the company in this week’s issue, “tortured by Marvel’s immovable deadlines, last-minute rewrites, and too-many-cooks indecision over, say, Thanos’s exact shade of purple.” That’s just one striking scene among many in this remarkable story, which explores how Marvel has amped the theatregoing experience up to what some critics have likened to a carnival ride, and locked some of Hollywood’s brightest stars into years-long contracts to play superpowered characters arranged in different formations across screens large and small. And, even if the name Thanos means nothing to you (he’s the giant bald supervillain with a wrinkled chin), there’s much to learn from how a small, beleaguered comic-book company managed to become the leading force in global entertainment—and why its Hulk-like grip on the culture may someday come to an end. Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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