Marvel Cinematic Universe is probably the biggest franchise in the world right now. With an estimate collection of $22 Billion, there’s no way MCU is going to end anytime soon. With such huge success, one question might come to your mind – Why is the MCU so popular? Is it because of the characters or simply because they look good? Well science is here to tell you why people love The Avengers Movies so much.

In a recent study, researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS) in Adelaide have tried to use ecology-related concepts to model effective cast sizes for movies, focusing on characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

The study was carried out by Matthew Roughan and his colleagues Lewis Mitchell and Tobin South. Roughan and his colleagues used an entropy based metric system measure the most effective number of characters for the Marvel movies. Roughan told TechXplore:

“We watched the entire MCU again (that was the fun bit) and annotated it with information about the conflicts in the movies. That allowed us to measure how much each character participated in each movie. From there the entropy calculation is actually pretty easy mathematics.”

Probability as a function of effective number of characters

Roughan and his colleagues found out that movies with the biggest cast have been the most successful. Roughan said:

“The biggest surprise for us was that the effective cast size is correlated with the profitability of the movies, with a bigger role-call translating in bigger profits. However, you have to be very careful about such results. What we observe is only a correlation—we can’t get causation from that. We think the true reason for the correlation isn’t just that audiences like bigger casts. The real reason is part of the uniqueness of the MCU.”

Roughan also said that data science could soon help us understand many different areas of research. His study is proof that data science can be further used to work on data collected over the years, to understand the reasons behind the success (or failure) of movies, TV shows and even comics.

Which is your favorite Marvel movie? Tell us in the comments below.