“With great power
comes great responsibility.”
Comics Picture: Erik Mclean / Header: Deepak Churaisiya
By Dave Jones: Columnist
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, is something of a phenomenon and whether you’re a film fan or not the franchise has become so big you’ve likely heard the name from some source or another. However, despite its grand beginnings, the on-screen Marvel superhero sheen seems to be dulling of late. In fact, it raises the question: has the MCU lost its way?
At the beginning, it was hard not to get swept up in the hype. Marvel, and later Disney too, had a way of giving superheroes few people outside the fandom had heard of – Iron Man and Captain America, for example – such enjoyable films they became household names. After a film’s credits rolled, there’d be a scene linking movies together and promising a teamup, just like with their comic book counterparts.
In a masterful move, Marvel and Disney blew fans’ minds by uniting the characters in the same movie for a huge, epic adventure. Fans filled cinemas, cheered at screens, and box office ticket sales kept rising. This didn’t happen just once, but on three big occasions – The Avengers, Infinity War and Endgame – until something shifted. With Disney’s acquisition of the MCU, more and more titles began appearing and suddenly Disney+ was full of them.
The movies weren’t just something you’d see on the big screen, but flooding your TV, too. And while that’s not a problem in itself, the many interacting stories began to lose the cohesion which made them so enjoyable in the first place.
Originally, it would help if you saw each character’s films individually, but that wasn’t a necessity. You could drop into a movie casually and enjoy it on its own merits without knowing every single character’s backstory. That became less and less the case as time went on, and the introduction of the MCU’s multiverse made it almost impossible.
By the time the Loki TV series ended, everything was a tangle of parallel dimensions and alternate timelines, and it wasn’t just for that series. It was spread across a large portion of the MCU’s titles, making casual viewing – and in many cases, dedicated viewing too – too complicated without a roadmap.
That’s not to say there haven’t been some amazing titles. The Guardians of the Galaxy and Black Panther movies are stellar, and select TV outings such as WandaVision and Werewolf by Night were fun and original. But viewing figures dropped, and some of the best content was contradicted.
WandaVision, for example, set up Wanda Maximoff as a nuanced and interesting character grieving for her lost loved ones. With the emergence of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, though, she’d be consigned to an almost purely villainous role.
Olsen revealed in a 2023 interview with Vanity Fair, “[WandaVision was] a similar arc that I had to play in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. There could be parallel stories being told there, of dealing with grief and loss. Well, I proposed that to the writers who wrote Multiverse of Madness. I said, ‘Do you know what we’re doing in WandaVision? Have you seen it?’ and no, they had not seen it, because it wasn’t finished yet. So I had to try and, I don’t know, play it differently, right? I had to attack the same themes in order for it to be interesting for me, I think, and potentially for the audience. I had to come at it from a different point of view so that it wasn’t repetitive.”
It would seem that even the minds behind the MCU weren’t fully able to follow the twists their characters were experiencing, but it’s more than just confusion over storylines. There’s been significant vocalizations from fans about the quality of recent MCU content.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Thor: Love and Thunder, Eternals and She-Hulk all left viewers underwhelmed according to ratings. The TV series Secret Invasion likewise made fans both confused and disappointed, with some plot points that have seemingly been completely forgotten, perhaps to be retconned entirely in the future.
In 2023 Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige told Entertainment Weekly, “It is harder to hit the zeitgeist when there’s so much product out there – and so much ‘content.’
But we want… the MCU projects to really stand out and stand above. So, people will see that as we get further into Phase 5 and 6, the pace at which we’re putting out the Disney+ shows will change so they can each get a chance to shine.” Perhaps the problem lies with inflating the movie stakes to ridiculous levels. Some of the most popular films work better when they’re focusing on the street-level heroes or following the stories of characters trying to save their personal lives rather than deciding the fate of the entire multiverse. Hawkeye was a surprisingly enjoyable series with clear influences from Die Hard, and that was less super and more hero so there’s something to the theory that less is more.
It’s hard to say where the MCU will go from here. Deadpool & Wolverine proved popular for its cameos despite a convoluted and nonsensical timeline-hopping plot, so perhaps we’ll see more movies bringing in supporting characters to increase their popularity. It certainly worked for Spider-Man No Way Home too - seeing three Spider-Men fighting together was a highlight for many Marvel fans, whether they’re old or new to the MCU.
Regardless of its recent decline in quality, it’s not too late to save the MCU from itself. It’s fair to say that there’s plenty of life still left in there - it’s just waiting for its second wind before rising to its feet. Even if it’s losing the battle, let’s hope the franchise can raise its fighting spirit to win the war. We all need heroes, after all.
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