Marvel, once renowned for its epic cinematic universe, seems to be stuck in the mud ever since last year. It is hard to imagine that today’s Marvel is the same studio that was at its golden age during the release of Avengers: Endgame, one of the most popular movies ever that gave both a satisfying and heartfelt goodbye to Avengers fans all around the world.
“Across all 11 films, the MCU brought in an unbelievable $13.49 billion, with each individual movie averaging just over $1.2 billion,” Kyle Kruske of Movieweb said. Due to the incredible success of Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2016-2019), Marvel characters were household names, so much so that everyone knew Iron Man and Spiderman without even watching the movies.
Yet nowadays, even some Marvel fans can’t tell who the villains Celestials or General Dox are, simply because they have faded into obscurity. This can be clearly seen with Marvel defaulting back to hiring Robert Downey Jr., the actor for the canonically dead Iron Man, to be the villain of the next team-up movie (Avengers: Doomsday). How did Marvel manage to lose all of its steam?
For starters, one of the most lackluster departments of Marvel are the shows on Disney+, which showcases an overuse of CGI and nonsensical plots, perhaps due to the sheer number of shows about uninteresting side characters being pushed out. Not only does this speed make less time for the films’ quality to be policed, it also makes people feel tired of having to watch what they deem as dull content just to understand the other projects and cameos.
Take the Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV show, for example. One protagonist, Sam Wilson (The Falcon), was merely introduced as a side character in Captain America: The First Avenger, the one where the original and audience favorite Captain America had been in. The upcoming Captain America movie, Captain America: Brave New World, rides on the character development and the plot of that show. Not only that, Thunderbolts*, the big side character team-up movie after that, also rides on the character development of Bucky, the Winter Soldier, another side character of the original films of Marvel’s golden age. As the original fan-favorites are absent, it is not surprising that no matter how good the quality of each show may be, the audience does not feel motivated to engage with today’s Marvel universe.
The CGI qualms and annoying characters can be seen by She-Hulk, the TV show in which the original Hulk’s cousin becomes a Hulk herself too. The horrible CGI effect on She-Hulk’s appearance and her irksome personality, and inconsistent plot points, makes the show unbearable to watch. It is especially infuriating to watch for OG fans like me to see her continuously state that she can control her powers better than her cousin. The political undertone that Marvel is enforcing is also patent, as it seems to indicate that She-Hulk is more capable because she is a woman, while the original Hulk had more trouble adapting to his abilities because he is a man—an extension of Hollywood’s recent struggle to seem as liberal as possible.
The deaths and the departures of the original Avengers team have left the Marvel team confused and directionless. With the adventure of the original characters coming to an end, Marvel was forced to make everything multiverse related, meaning that practically everything that they do must have continuity with the other shows and movies. As a result, it also decided to overload its movies and shows with unnecessary cameos in a Hail Mary to increase viewership. However, it arguably has not fully worked, as only Spiderman No Way Home and Deadpool & Wolverine become famous box office hits while also cameo based content like Madame Web, What if?, and The Marvels have spectacularly flopped. Under such situations, Marvel is failing to both attract and maintain viewership.
The executive board’s decision to bring back dead characters as a way to revive their former glory is a disgrace, as it minimizes the emotional impact and the legacy of their stories, belittling the sadness the audience felt while watching Endgame.
Overall, the departure of the beloved heroes, inconsistent story lines, and uninteresting characters fall.
