When Marvel Studios first started out, no one really had faith in them. Let’s face it, they had already sold off the rights to their hottest characters — Spider-Man and the X-Men — and the way things were going, there was little chance they’d be coming back any time soon. All they had to work with were the likes of Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor.

Now, don’t get me wrong, they’re great characters, but they were by no means mainstream, and couldn’t really sell out theaters based on their name power alone. Marvel had to do real ground-up work in order to get audiences to care about them. And that’s exactly what they did. Now, these characters sell nearly (or more than $1 billion) apiece whenever they hit theaters, which is a huge achievement. And in regards to Thor and Cap, Aquaman director James Wan thinks that may be the studio’s most impressive achievement. Here’s what he said to EW.

“I actually think the most incredible thing [Marvel] did is making Captain America and Thor accessible to the mainstream — especially outside of the United States. The moment you can make a character called ‘Captain America’ work in Russia and China, then anything is possible.”

No kidding. After the success that brought in, the Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man were introduced, further proving that, yes, Marvel can kind of do anything as long as they maintain their character first ideology that served them so well early on.

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SOURCE: EW