Almost all MCU fans know the score by now: 2019's Avengers: Endgame releases a few months ahead of Spider-Man: Far From Home, which would be intended to cap off Marvel Studios' grand, twenty-three film Infinity Saga. It's all well and good until one considers the marketing minefield Sony Pictures and Marvel found themselves in around this time.
Of course, Endgame contained massive spoilers for moviegoers (The population-erasing Blip, Tony Stark's demise). Those spoilers played heavily into the overall plot of Far From Home.
What was Sony to do? They couldn't just release a standard trailer for the hotly anticipated Spider-Man sequel. That would be too risky for keeping Avengers plot details unspoiled.
A new book on the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been making the rounds as of late. This commemorative volume contains a host of untold behind-the-scenes stories and details about the making of The Infinity Saga.
A Clever Marketing Solution to the Endgame/Spider-Man Issue
The book mentioned above, The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe by Tara Bennett and Paul Terry, delves into the "amazing" way that Sony handled the marketing of Spider-Man: Far From Home with this quote from Marvel Studios president, Kevin Feige:
"Sony did such an amazing job with the marketing. If you look at the teaser trailer for Far From Home, it's a fun summer adventure with Peter Parker and his friends, and crazy villains happening. And then the second one is: Tony is dead. What is Peter gonna do?"
Feige continued by comparing the challenge of marketing the film with the issues faced by Disney and Marvel with Avengers: Endgame:
"Revealing that was not dissimilar to the even greater challenge that Disney had which was to market all of Endgame with really only the first fifteen minutes of the movie..."
The solution to this challenge? To release the second, Endgame-spoiler-laden Spidey trailer, preceded by a message from actor Tom Holland explaining that the subsequent video contained plot details for Avengers: Endgame
Marvel and Sony's Secrecy Paid Off
It's no secret that both Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home made over a billion dollars each, with Endgame even cracking two billion and briefly holding the title of "highest-grossing film of all time.
Is this success partly due to the plots for both films being kept so tightly under wraps? Given that some individuals claim that spoilers "ruin the movie," it's not much of a leap that a subsection of those people would choose to simply skip any film whose story details have been compromised. Granted, such a group would be negligible in size when compared to the overall audience.
Fans simply don't like being spoiled, however, often going to great lengths to avoid it. At the end of the day, what matters is that Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: No Way Home delivered a satisfying one-two punch to cap off Marvel Studios' Infinity Saga.
Tom Holland's Web-Slinger will next be seen in December 17, 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home.
