I referred to Spider-Man and Guardian comics not movies being separate franchises even though they share continuity and are made by the same company.
Basically the way I see it is Thor The Dark World isn't about Iron Man, Iron Man isn't about Captain America, Captain America The First Avenger isn't about The Incredible Hulk which isn't about Thor which isn't about Captain America and so on
Whereas every Hunger Games is about Katniss, Every Transformers about Optimus and his Autubots, every Star Trek about The crew of the Enterprise, every Star Wars about the Skywalker family and so on
If the MCU was one franchise then every movie would be about the same characters or same concept, but they aren't, they each are about different characters so each are separate franchises.