Good info Chip, but I think that for a lot of the movie-going audience that’s too fine a point to be an issue. They’ll see “government makes former bad guys do good things” and that will be that.
Thanks for those numbers, Jake. It seems that the first film wasn't as much of a failure as I remembered. Ironically, I thought Gunn's effort was far superior and it ended up doing a lot less business.
As for what Feige's thinking, who knows for sure. Usually, the perception is that it's DC...
The issue I have with the idea is that DC did it first. Twice. IIRC neither film exactly lit up the box office. Marvel may be looked upon as being a copycat here, a position I don't think they want to be in.