Warning, small spoilers from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Marvel Comics!
In one of my previous articles I reviewed Marvel's latest hit Captain America: Civil War. In it, I pointed out one big difference from the movie and the comic that really bothered me and it was the fact that no one from the movie died. In the comics, many heroes on both sides of the fight were killed off one way or another. Granted the comics had many more characters to work with so it is easier to say goodbye to many of the characters and also some of the people who died aren't really that important in the long run.
I think the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or, MCU) is trying to hold back on killing its heroes. Killing side characters isn't as bad (ex. Quicksilver in "Avengers: Age of Ultron") because, well, they don't herald their own movies. The heavy hitting marvel heroes can probably expect to live for quite some time in the MCU. Why is that? Well, some would say money. Why kill off a character that is making you millions? While I think that this is a perfectly good answer, I think there is a deeper reason as to why this is.
With comics you have five different series going at the same time telling different stories of the same character. So if he/she dies in one of them it doesn't affect the others and they can continue on. But in a movie conglomerate like the MCU where everything is connected, it acts as one huge movie series. Everything presented in the same universe so there is only a set amount of characters at a time that Marvel can mess with. Now I also talked about the longevity of comic book movies and in that article I described that eventually producers would need to make alternate universes for their heroes in order to keep their spark going, but that can go only so far in cinema.
The next portion of this article references a former article I wrote, which can be found HERE.
Marvel is building up to their big Avengers film with "Avengers: Infinity Wars" Parts 1 & 2 which will be final part of their Avengers series (but not the last film in the MCU). Marvel hasn't said yet when they plan to stop in this universe, but doing this only gives so much leg room for what they can do for the heroes. If they kill someone off now they won't have them until the end of this universe. That leaves an empty void for that hero and viewers wanting more of that character. So when we loose a hero (or maybe a villain) they are gone forever. Now Fox killed off many of their characters in their X-Men series, but they decided to overhaul the series so they were able to restart and gather their roster back. With only three movies in their first franchise, it was easy to restart. With the MCU though, Marvel can't just restart when they kill off a character so they need to be careful about who they might give the ax too.
Marvel is also starting to give many of their beloved heroes stand-alone films so it would be silly of them to kill someone off then make an origin film. Could this be a clever ploy to not have to kill a character? Maybe.
One final thought I had was the marketing for these characters. The popularity has risen for so many heroes within the MCU that their fame and glory has spread to many other mediums of entertainment. So if Marvel was to kill off a character in one of their movies, that ends the plethora of goods that character provides.
So in closing Marvel is playing it safe by keeping their main heroes on lockdown. I doubt they will keep everyone alive through the entirety of their universe, but I believe they will hold onto certain characters for as long as possible to make sure their characters get the proper send out.
