A Multiverse of Possibilities
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Marvel movies and shows
What’s the Deal
Marvel Studios is a global production company that is loved by many fans young and old. Throughout my childhood, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has been my absolute favourite movie series. Since the first movie in 2008, Iron Man, the MCU has grown in popularity because of its stunning heroes and villains, engaging plots, and countless references and links to Marvel comics and other movies. In July 2023, Marvel Studios became the highest grossing film franchise in the world, with over 45.7 billion Australian dollars in worldwide box office revenue. However, this incredible franchise reached its peak in 2019 with the release of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. These two movies collectively ended an era of heroes and characters in a remarkable endgame battle against Thanos. The Infinity Saga was told through 21 movies over an 11-year period. This provided ample time to develop our favourite heroes, tell their backstories and origins, and let the public grow to love them.
However, the closure of the Infinity Saga has not been an easy time for Marvel Studios as they have practically cleaned the slate with the death or end of many of their central characters. Some of these include Vision, Black Widow, Iron Man, Gamora, and Captain America. The killing-off of beloved
characters has continued. Marvel’s new show, Secret Invasion, holds a record on Disney+ nobody wants. Four out of the five worst rated episodes on Disney+ belong to this poorly rated show. People say that the core reason for this is that they killed off more loved characters at the wrong time. This end to so many adored heroes has put Marvel Studios in an interesting position because their movies could go either way: good or bad. Unfortunately, after Endgame, Marvel Studios has been producing significantly worse movies and the numbers are backing it up.
Can’t relate.
One problem with the new Marvel films is the lack of relatable characters. Because the MCU has ended some of our favourite characters, the new superheroes they are giving us just aren’t as good. This reaction from fans might be because they have no connections to the heroes we know and love. For example, when Spider-Man was brought into the MCU as Tom Holland, he was depicted as having some sort of relationship with Tony Stark (Iron Man). This allowed us to welcome the new hero into our collective group of loved heroes because we knew that he had a direct connection with a character who we already loved.
However, now, we are being introduced to heroes who are separate to the main cast of characters. A prime example of this is Ms Marvel. Despite her name hinting that she is associated with Captain Marvel,
the whole series follows her story without any interference from Captain Marvel. This ultimately makes her seem like she is not properly one of the heroes. With the upcoming movie, The Marvels, Marvel Studios is now attempting to link her to Captain Marvel as they team up. Despite that, people aren’t feeling as excited for this movie because it is too late to integrate Ms Marvel. She has already been depicted as ‘some girl’ and that remains as our first impression.
The MCU has also tried to replace our favourite heroes with new ones. This can be seen across a broad range of shows. In Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Marvel focuses on the role of Captain America in this new world. Starting with John Walker posing as Captain America, to Sam Wilson (Falcon) trying to follow in Steve Roger’s footsteps, somehow, it doesn’t have the same effect of the real
super soldier. Hulk has two new replacements as we found out in She-Hulk. One of them, Hulk’s son who we saw in the credits scene, hasn’t yet made another appearance and it doesn’t look too promising. The other, She-Hulk, herself, doesn’t use her hulk form in the same way at all. Instead of being the unpredictable and engaging green beast that Bruce Banner gave us, she is using it to be the centre of attention at a wedding. Although she does provide a type of comedy, it isn’t what the audience and fans were hoping for.
Another flaw in Marvel’s new phase of movies and shows is that our classic heroes they have kept are not the same. They are significantly different as they are either forced to retire, letting a new generation of
heroes enter, or try to somehow fit themselves into this new world. These heroes, who used to be the centre of the movies, are now retired, making a small appearance to keep fans on their toes. Hawkeye is now a mentor for Kate Bishop and Doctor Strange a mentor for America Chavez. Putting these heroes as side characters in their predecessor’s stories isn’t doing Marvel any good. It makes us feel like they aren’t important anymore when we really want to see the original heroes.
A bit rushed.
The main source of Marvel’s gradual downfall is their tendency to release too many shows and movies. Before Endgame, we were lucky to see two Marvel movies a year. This made the movies worth the long wait and got fans excited and lining up as soon as the next one came out. However, since Marvel Studios paired with Disney+, they have been overloading us. Now, they’re able to produce shows instead of movies, allowing Marvel to constantly be releasing projects in months that would normally take years. Although this sounds like a good thing at first, it brings many negative consequences to their franchise.
An obvious negative effect of releasing so many projects in short amounts of time is that they feel less significant. The MCU is now being overloaded and people cannot keep up. I used to watch Marvel movies as soon as they came out in the cinemas, excited to see the new villains, references, and future of the
MCU. Now though, they’re coming out too fast for me to watch them. Secret Invasion came out almost two months ago and I still haven’t started. I was going to, ready to enter the world of heroes and villains again, but then Loki Season 2 was released and I’m halfway through that. Now, The Marvel’s is soon to be in cinemas, and I still haven’t watched Secret Invasion!Because I can’t manage to follow the quickly expanding universe of Marvel, their shows have become less important. They simply aren’t as exciting as they used to be.
Another consequence of mass-producing shows is that Marvel Studios is focusing on quantity over quality. Before Disney+, Marvel took pride in the time and effort they put into their movies to make them
exactly what we loved. The iconic and relatable characters, and their significant VFX effects and CGI made their films just superb. Whereas now, their writers and editors are having to rush the process to maintain the close deadlines. But why is Marvel doing all of this if it is so bad? The reason is simple: money. The more projects they release, the more money they receive. In the short term, this seems like an absolute win, but a deeper look into the consequences of these actions and it’s the opposite. Because they’re doing this at the expense of the film quality, less people want to watch their movies and shows, which in the long run, could very possibly lose them more money than they think.
Besides bad storytelling and characters, Marvel’s CGI is being damaged in this process. In the past, Marvel Studios has had some of the best uses of CGI in their movies such as Avengers: Endgame. With the demand of so many projects, this important feature of their projects has been getting worse and worse.
This is because the editors don’t have enough time to perfect it. Marvel’s big issue is that they use CGI too much in their projects and consequently, depend on it. CGI is an effect used when things are too expensive or dangerous to perform in real life. But Marvel Studios uses it too often and have taken advantage of it to make things quicker and less difficult. This would be a good thing, but they aren’t letting their editors succeed, turning one of their best features into one of their worst.
What’s next?
Many might be thinking that with all this, there is no hope for the future of the MCU. For now, it might appear that way and might stay that way for a while. We may continue to see unrelatable heroes that don’t live up to the same standards as the classics. We may continue to see more and more bad quality content. We may continue to see poorly edited projects that we know haven’t been handled with care like they used to. However, against all odds, things could get much better. Like I said earlier, when Marvel finished the end of the Infinity Saga, they practically rebooted the system. They created a new canvas for them to paint on.
Marvel is still in the process of developing their new characters and hopefully they will bring them together in later projects. Marvel Studios is planning to make Kang the Conqueror the next ‘Thanos-level’ threat, setting him up in Ant-Man: Quantumania and Loki. We know that he will be the villain in the two
upcoming Avengers movies, just like Thanos was. So, although the MCU might look like its going in a completely different direction, this idea isn’t correct. It still might be too early to tell. In reality we received a few successful projects like Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Loki and more. What all these movies have in common is that they were handled with care and had lots of effort put into them; they had great writers who made interesting and captivating storylines. If Marvel gets more people like this and realises the error of their ways, it is safe to say that the MCU will prevail.
By Aiden Plumbe