These days, Marvel is one of the most famous brands in all of popular culture. Its characters are literally world famous. There’s hardly a soul alive on this planet who doesn’t know Spider-Man or the X-Men or Iron Man.
That’s these days. But in the decades between the rise of Marvel in the early 1960s and the birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the late 2000s, the company and its characters were not viewed as entertainment-industry juggernauts. (Except maybe Juggernaut. He was always a juggernaut.) Hollywood took almost a half century to recognize the full potential of Marvel’s library of heroes. Their attempts to adapt Marvel characters to the screen in the interim were inexpensive, half-hearted, or really inexpensive. And in contrast to the MCU and its ever-present movies and shows, these films have largely been forgotten, resigned to the proverbial Void alongside Richard E. Grant’s Loki and that big Giant-Man skeleton.
Today we’re shining a light on some of the more obscure corners of the Marvel film multiverse. None of these movies were left on a shelf like the Roger Corman Fantastic Four; all 12 films below were released in some form or fashion. Either they aired on television, or they were sold on VHS. A couple got full-blown theatrical releases! They were all fully licensed, entirely authorized Marvel adaptations. And they have all faded away, as if a warmongering space god snapped his fingers and erased them from existence.
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The history of Marvel movies is much bigger and stranger than just the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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