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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