I don't want to be too kind to the Oscars, because there are a ton of problems and I really can't stand them most of the time, but I do think they deserve quite a bit of credit for never jumping on the superhero bandwagon. Obviously everyone is pretending to have always hated Marvel now, but for practically the entire 2010s they were trying to force everyone to acknowledge stuff like Avengers 2 as cinema. Endgame is the most powerful film ever, Black Panther is the most bold and important movie ever made, etc. Outside of a few nominations here and there, the Oscars resisted that. I would much rather nonsense like Coda and Green Book win than Marvel. For all their faults, they deserve the award more than something like Infinity War does.
I would say it was more during Phase 3 of the MCU where this was true. Phase 1 really didnt start to take off in hype and popularity until the First Avengers Movie and then after during Phase 2 the numbers started to level off again until Avengers: Age of Ultron. It was only with Phase 3 where the MCU Hype really became all consuming and started to utterly dominate the box office.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-marvel-box-office/As you can see this is how much movies in each phase grossed over a billion:
Phase 1: 1 which was the Avengers
Phase 2: 2 which other than the Avengers: Age of Ultron was Iron Man 3
Phrase 3: 5 and they include the only movies in the franchise to gross over 2 billion(Infinity War and Engame)
Since Then: 2 which were both Spider-Man Movies
