Captain America: Brave New World star doesn't believe in those MCU criticisms: "It's keeping cinema alive"

Tim Blake Nelson doesn't think the MCU is having a detrimental effect on cinema. The actor, who plays The Leader in the Marvel movies, is set to reprise his villainous role in the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World.

"Marvel has become this phenomenon that's unprecedented in the history of cinema," Nelson told TheWrap at San Diego Comic-Con. "These scores of movies with characters moving in and out of one another's storylines, coming together, going back apart, fighting against one another in a single universe: it's never happened before in movies. When people attack these movies as, 'Well, it's not real cinema' or, 'It's the death of cinema,' I actually think it's keeping cinema alive, and I really mean that."

The debate over whether Marvel movies are bad for cinema has been raging for years, now, with everyone from Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino weighing in. The argument has also expanded to encompass superhero fatigue, too, and whether that could be behind Marvel's diminishing returns at the box office (until Deadpool and Wolverine 's massive opening weekend , anyway).

"I think it’s fatigue in general. The superhero fatigue question was around long before the work we were doing," Anthony Russo told GamesRadar+ earlier in the year . "So, it's sort of an eternal complaint, like we always used to cite this back in our early days with superhero work. People used to complain about westerns in the same way but they lasted for decades and decades and decades. They were continually reinvented and brought to new heights as they went on."

Joe and Anthony Russo are returning to helm both Avengers 5 , now titled Avengers: Doomsday, and Avengers: Secret Wars , with the news confirmed at SDCC. Robert Downey Jr. will also be back , though, in a shock reveal, he'll be playing Doctor Doom.

You can keep up to date with the MCU with our guide to all the upcoming Marvel movies and shows , or check out our guide on how to watch the Marvel movies in order to catch up.