Star Wars vs MCU

Star Wars has always been about the story.  The audience cared what happened to the heroes because they were the catalyst for what happened to the galaxy. the struggle of the Rebel Alliance was the story of the galaxy.  Star Wars tells stories that last not just for a single movie, but that span multiple films in  trilogies that all focus on the same story. 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe turns this concept on its head.  Because the characters are indestructable, it truly does not matter what happens to them in any individual book or movie.  In Thor Ragnarok, Odin dies and Asgaard is burned to ashes, and in both cases Thor literally tells the audience that it does not matter.  Marvel movies are all about the characters and their immediate environments.  Story is not important.  Story is mutable.  Something could happen in the narrative in this installment which will be reversed and negated in the very next episode. Asgaard will rise from its own ashes the next time around.  No one is really worried that Odin has gone for good.  It is axiomatic that no one ever truly dies in a comic book world.

And that is one of the strengths of the format.  You can have dramatic conflicts and huge seemingly world altering events take place without sacrificing continuity, because change is continuity for a superhero universe.  Instead of being a single long story, MCU films tend to be a series of short stories told within a single movie.  From the previous example, we have a series of three giant set pieces (for example the Hulk vs Thor fight, the Thor vs Hela's army, the destruction of Asgaard). Each of these set pieces is only marginally related to each other.