marvel cinematic universe - Why have most Superhero movies ditched the "Secret Identity"?

When I say "most", I primarily mean the Marvel Avenger series. Out of all of them, even Ant-Man pretty much up and exposed himself, revealing his true identity to anyone he looked at.

One of the few movie series that keeps the "secret identity" trope alive is Spider-Man, keeping true to the comics, which added all the tension of keeping his friends and family safe, while having to deal with the stress of not being able to explain his common disappearances, injuries, etc, which (IMO) added a lot to the story.

So why has the superhero "Secret Identity" become little more than an easter egg?

Answer

Quite simply, because Marvel thought the idea was "overplayed". Kevin Feige explained this to BleedingCool a few years ago:

KF: The one we haven’t done in the MCU is the secret identity thing. I thought that had been overplayed for a long time which is why we had Tony Stark out himself at the end of his first movie. We were sort of announcing to the audience that we’re not going to play that game.

He went on to say that they had an idea which may play out at a later date.

KF: I think there is and I think we will get to it at some point. We have an idea. As a matter of fact, I was just talking about it the other day with one of our filmmakers. The fun thing about the job, though, is that idea I was talking about with a filmmaker might not happen for four or five years because it may or may not be appropriate for a first movie.

Comments

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In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

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In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

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When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

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