Most superhero films start with an origin story where we see the character come into their own and earn their title as a hero. We’ve seen it with characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and even Thor. All of that changed though with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. This was the first MCU film to skip over an origin story and hop straight into the action. Some fans liked this. After all, we’d already had two other Spider-Man iterations with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, so was there really a need to go through that over again with Tom Holland?
Some fans thought hopping straight into a hero’s story without his origin was a disservice to both fans and the character. One Reddit user even started a thread in the marvel studios community about how fans felt about the idea of potentially not having an origin story for the upcoming Fantastic Four movie.
Fans seemed to be split down the middle on if they felt we needed one or not, but most people claimed it depended on which character(s) were involved. Much like Spider-Man, we’ve seen two other versions of the Fantastic Four on film, both of which being origin stories. Like user lifesyndrome said, a flashback could’ve added to Holland’s Spider-Man. Other users claimed that it depended on how well-known the characters were prior to their introductions.
Another worry that was brought up was having characters like America Chavez in Multiverse of Madness where her backstory felt half baked because it wasn’t the focus of the film.
While America Chaves was a massive part of Multiverse of Madness, she wasn’t the main character by any means and instead was used as a plot device, so we only saw bits and pieces of who she was as a character.
Meanwhile, some reddit users simply don’t care as long as the movies have a good pace to them.
It appears viewers don’t like watching heroes struggle with the idea of being a hero and would rather just see the beginning and end while skipping the middle. However, the middle is what makes the hero who they are, so if there’s going to be an origin story, that part is pretty important.
There are many different opinions on hero origin stories and if there’s still a place for them within the MCU. All we can do, though, is wait and see what happens in Phase Five.