When you think about the Marvel Cinematic Universe anywhere from 2010-2015, what comes to mind? I immediately think packed theaters and midnight premiers, and while those ideas are still far from extinct the intangible feeling of excitement that accompanies a new Marvel movie seems to be suffering from diminishing returns. According to some, the novelty of the MCU has begun to wear off… but how true is this and why is it happening?
If you frequent any sort of MCU Facebook groups (or pretty much any other social media groups pertaining to Marvel), then you’ve probably noticed that the general consensus of post-Endgame fan opinions is that there has been a noticeable decline in overall project quality. This is not to say the movies themselves are low quality, with one of the largest offenders, The Eternals, also being one of the most visually stunning to date. Most Marvel box office misses post-Endgame have some redeeming qualities but the main issue with this phase of movies is the lack of a strong, clearly defined plot that drives everything else forward without causing confusion. We are firmly in the (kind-of) cancelled “Multiverse Saga”, or at least we were prior to this year’s palate cleanser: Deadpool & Wolverine. The 2024 X-Men team-up being the only Marvel release of 2024 made it evident they were looking to change some things up.
If we are going to look at the “Multiverse Saga” to find where the missteps occurred, the giant elephant in the room is the somewhat sloppy baton pass from Jonathan Major’s Kang to Robert Downy Jr.’s return to the MCU as Doctor Doom. As far as the MCU is concerned, there’s a giant stadium of Kangs about to attack Earth, along with a number of other difficult-to-resolve plot elements. Majors was infamously released from the MCU due to his personal conduct, meaning that the giant stadium of Kangs introduced in Ant-Man Quantumania is now kind of just stuck there without an actor. There are a lot of ways that Marvel can resolve the loose threads, and it looks like they have a plan in motion, but I can’t help but be skeptical about some of the recent decisions over the past few years.
Disney+ Over-Saturation
If you go over the complete MCU timeline you’ll notice that the frequency of movies has been greatly increased from Phase 1: two movies in 2008 (Iron Man and Hulk, no movies in 2009, one in 2010 (Iron Man 2), two in 2011 (Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor), and capped with The Avengers team-up in 2012. Phase 2 remained consistent at two movies per year in 2013, 2014, and 2015, and Phase 3 upped it to a consistent three movies per year from 2017 until 2019. This pattern topped off at 5 movies in 2021, directly after theaters started to reopen from pandemic closures. Since then, Marvel pulled back to three movies in 2023 and then released Deadpool & Wolverine as the one and only entry in 2024. This timeline from Rotten Tomatoes breaks it down clearly by year and phase.
If the MCU were movies alone, this wouldn’t be so bad as I believe three movies per year is the over-saturation sweet spot where it’s the max you can go without calling it “too much”. The main culprit we’re looking at here with project over-saturation isn’t theatrical releases, but Disney+ and the slew of shows either already released or on deck to be released. (Disclaimer: Some of these shows are good, some are not. Those are just facts.)
If we are going to call a spade a spade here, I think Marvel could have gotten away with the over-saturation and had a successful multiverse saga (more on that debacle later) if they would have been more careful with their Disney+ debut. Referring back to RottenTomatoes, there have been 11 shows on Disney+ from the MCU since 2021. 11 shows. Marvel fans like Marvel, but not even Marvel fans like Marvel that much. The larger issue with the shows is that there didn’t seem to be an overarching story in more than a few of them, which let’s be honest is one of the main reasons people want to connect with the MCU the way that they do. The movies and shows are self contained, but they should all be adding to a larger story at the same time and with the theme being the multiverse saga, those stories were going everywhere. It almost got to the point it felt like it was going to take a couple decades to tie up all story threads introduced here. People want to get invested in the long-term story, but they want a story that is easy to follow. The Infinity Saga was a perfect example of this: here’s six McGuffins, now go find them around the universe and create cool stories with Marvel characters to build that narrative. The multiverse saga? I’m sorry but I don’t even know where to begin explaining this one, and if it can’t be easily explained there is a solid chance an audience won’t be able to follow it and will ultimately lose interest.
Let’s take a look at all the shows that Disney+ has put out in the MCU since 2021 and their RottenTomato scores:
- Ms. Marvel – 2022(98%)
- WandaVision – 2021 (92%)
- Hawkeye – 2021 (92%)
- What If…? – 2021 (89%)
- Loki – 2021 (87%)
- Moon Knight – 2022 (86%)
- The Falcon & The Winter Soldier – 2021 (85%)
- Agatha All Along – 2024 (83%)
- She-Hulk: Attorney at Law – 2022 (79%)
- Echo – 2024 (70%)
- Secret Invasion – 2023 (52%)
With so many characters being added at such a rapid pace, it seems almost impossible that quality could keep up; if we keep going at this rate we’re out of characters to pull from by 2035. And by quality, I don’t mean visuals because you can throw money at CGI and top actors as even the worst of the Marvel entries are still visually appealing. I am referring to the writing, the stories, the dialogue, and the tone of the movies, all of which need a certain touch if you want to get them right in a way that will hook audiences. When the MCU began, every movie had a unique tone. Iron Man didn’t feel like Thor, and Thor didn’t feel like Guardians of the Galaxy. And while they go for the same idea with the Disney+ shows, the fact that each represented tone has multiple entries in such a short period of time (Echo and Hawkeye feel similar, Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk have similar tones, etc) points to lower quality for each entry. For example, instead of doing both Hawkeye and Echo they should have just done Hawkeye and gave it double the budget. That way, Hawkeye clearly and exclusively represents the tone that Marvel was going for and avoids both over-saturation and property confusion. Is Echo more of a Hawkeye spin off or a Daredevil spinoff? MCU entries should be clear how they fit into the overarching plan if they want to be memorable, but the Disney+ shows simply fail to do that and are anything but seamless.
How can Marvel fix this? I personally believe that, like mentioned earlier, we need less entries with a heavier impact. Stop spreading the budget thin by throwing new show after new show at the wall until something sticks, and go in with a precise plan giving the largest budgets to the heaviest hitting projects. Also, stop green-lighting spin-off projects before you know the project it is spinning off from is even going to be successful itself. Disney+ entries should strive to have just as large of an impact on the overall continuity as the theatrical releases if they want to maintain positive fan reception. (Okay, rant over.)
Disney+ should be used as a companion for the Marvel cinematic entries, but so far it feels like all it has been is a testing ground for ideas that they are unsure about. By doing that, you are going to eventually lose Disney+ as a streaming service that people consider high quality and will start to think of it as the home of C and D list projects, harming the brand (and ultimately the Disney brand as well) as a whole. I don’t think Marvel should be putting money into projects below a B+ in the first place, and if they don’t pump the breaks on the Disney+ over-saturation they will no longer be seen as the gold standard powerhouse they have been for the past 15 years.
Post-Endgame Movie Misfires
As most Marvel fans are already aware, consistency has been one of the major lacking factors in the modern MCU. At no point in time had the MCU ever had a perfect track record with a flop or two in every phase, but the percentage of hits to flops has gone done significantly over time. If you look at the first phase of movie box office numbers, only one movie (The Incredible Hulk) was not a successful movie from a budget-to-box office perspective. Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor were not huge hits either but they both did more than double their budget in revenue and all the movies got consistent audience reception. Iron Man II did very well bringing in about three times it’s budget, then as we all know The Avengers blew the lid off the box office doing an absurd for the time $1.5 billion in revenue. Iron Man III followed and did another $1.2 billion following the success of The Avengers. From there you have the phase one sequels, all doing relatively well in the box office even if there was a subtle decline in critical reception with movies like Thor: The Dark World.
Let’s take a minute and bring up something that has not been mentioned yet. While all these movies ranged from doing relatively well to being major hits, one factor that needs to be looked at more closely that doesn’t get mentioned nearly as much as it should, is the idea of, “how does this movie fit into the universe and help move the story forward?”. Going back to the example used above, I think most of us can agree Thor: The Dark World was not great. Yet we still, as Marvel fans, all went to see it and, as the numbers suggest, went with even greater numbers to the next movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier. According to numbers.com, the Thor sequel brought in $6.44 million with the Captain America sequel surpassing it at $7.14 million with the entire MCU fandom knowing good and well the Thor movie they just sat through really… wasn’t that great. But we still went to see the next movie, and were we rewarded with The Winter Soldier. Anyway, looking back, why did we all go to see Thor: The Dark World? It was because it was the next entry in the Infinity Saga and we all wanted to see what happened. Thor wasn’t just a two hour movie, it was a two hour portion of a 20 part movie.
How to Proceed
Now that we’ve gone over all the negatives, let’s turn this into a constructive analysis by offering some ideas and possible solutions. There’s a good chance that the people who get paid a lot more than me to make these decisions are already doing some of the things I’m going to mention (making Deadpool & Wolverine the only movie of 2024 was a brilliant first step, for example) but it’s still worthwhile to go over them.
First and foremost, start pumping the breaks. Just because Marvel is on a pedestal right now doesn’t mean it’s time to open the flood gates and put out an endless stream of rushed and misguided projects just to find out what works. Every step should ideally be thought out and move forward the main MCU story line in a logical way without being confusing about it. The ideas of time travel and the multiverse are already so abstract that not being clear with your version of those concepts will lead to confusion and a decrease in interest because viewers just can’t follow, which is exactly what happened. Pick one large, easy to follow narrative that will drive forward the universe as a whole and then use that to explore the occasional outlier character. We don’t need She-Hulk followed by Ms. Marvel when let’s be honest… nobody asked for either and no time was taken to test any sort of fan reception before the decisions were made.
They’re not bad characters and it isn’t to say they don’t have a place in the MCU, but let’s get a proper Hulk sequel first before we put anymore effort into a She-Hulk show. I still don’t really know where they were hoping to go with that, and if viewers can’t make any kind of connection as to where a show should be going in an overarching storyline then that show probably shouldn’t be a part of that storyline. Ms. Marvel was made for some reason when Captain Marvel is still one of the worst performing characters in the MCU. Nothing against that property or character, but nothing about that decision makes any sense. Captain Marvel has to have positive audience reception first before they should have ever even thought about spinning a character off. It made Disney+ feel like a character testing ground, and that is something that needs to be avoided at all costs if they want their TV entries to have any sort of real impact and maintain the streaming service’s credibility. Nobody is going to watch the shows on Disney+ if only half of them are any good by design. If you’ve ever heard the acronym KISS, it applies perfectly to this scenario: keep it simple stupid. It was recently announced that Marvel shot-caller Kevin Feige is cutting back on movie and television properties per year and I think that is a genius first step until they catch their stride again.
Movies and television properties can and should coexist, crossing over and using one to expand the other and so on and so forth. Marvel has done this but they don’t seem to be doing it with any real rhyme, reason, or cohesive long term vision. There is a noticeable decline in cohesion between the Disney+ MCU shows and movies from the Infinity Saga to the Multiverse Saga, with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. arguably having a larger connected impact on the cinematic universe than any Disney+ show has had so far. H.Y.D.R.A. infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D. on the ABC show has had more long lasting impact on the movies than anything from Disney+ so far. Matt Reeves has already taken this idea and applied it to his Batman universe with The Penguin on HBO Max, and while Disney has all the properties and infrastructure to do the same in an organized manner they are actively choosing not to. Put out a movie, test reception, find a character that audiences connect with, make a show, create characters for that show and eventually put them in movies, rinse and repeat at a controlled rate that emphasizes quality over quantity. Right now it looks like they put a bunch of random people in a room and just started taking ideas from an anonymous peanut gallery on things that could work.
For now, the MCU still has not lost its way and is actively building itself back up to be as critically acclaimed as it has always been. Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, and Daredevil Born Again are all potentially massive projects in the pipeline with a lot more to come from the X-Men, Blade, the Fantastic Four, and much more. Marvel is a far from away any sort of failure, and one article on the internet isn’t going to change anything on any real scale, but I consider myself positioned firmly in the target audience for these properties and qualified to voice an opinion on them. I’ve been through the highs and lows of every phase of the MCU, the DCEU Snyder-verse, the Fox X-Men movies, the Sony movies, and out of those production companies the MCU easily has the highest bar when it comes to quality and consistency. While the MCU has wavered slightly from being as seamless as it has been in the past, if the fans aren’t vocal now about what brought them into the theaters in the first place to see these movies then we can’t expect them to maintain the same level of consistent quality moving forward. In a world that needs heroes and positivity now more than ever, we’d be doing future generations of movie goers a huge disservice if we didn’t at least voice our opinions on the entertainment properties that we were raised with and are passionate about.