Its pretty similar to when iron man was introduced.
Not alot of ppl thought iron man would be the great face of MCU or how successful MCU would be. Myself included. I didnt even care to be honest and thought it would be a generic one off.
Boy was I completely wrong
To be fare at the time they were just doing one offs without any sort of singular vision or direction by the Same people.
We couldn’t have seen. This then, it wasn’t the plan at the time anyway.
Hulk 2003
Directed by Ang Lee, Story by James Schamus staring Eric Bana
Iron man 2008, five years later Marvel studios first time for avi and Faverou for a marvel film, but hadn’t taken control yet by the Russo’s.
Incredible Hulk 2008, marvel studios
Directed by Louis Leitterier
Screen play by Zak Penn, however Norton was also tasked to rewrite Penns story to more closely match the tv series of the 70’s/80’s. And the comics of the same time.
Edward Nortan, this time a “reboot” to have Nortan continue on as hulk in avengers, but differences caused them to replace Norton.
It almost fell apart in the beginning before they even got it off the ground.
Iron man 2, 2010 was the first of the Fiege films, where we really start to see coherency.
Captain America didn’t come out till 2011, a fiege film the second fiege and it rolled on from there.
Saying you didn’t see all this at Iron Man 1 is fair, since they didn’t have thier shit together yet anyway and didn’t either imo.