> It’s become something of a national pastime of late to obsess over the perceived unraveling of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The box office failure of “The Marvels” — which just suffered through the worst opening weekend in the MCU’s history — is simply the latest indignity. For the past two years, media outlets across the internet (including, and perhaps especially, the one you’re currently reading) have covered with relentless detail all the creative missteps, internal conflicts, external scandals, and outright failures that have bedeviled Marvel Studios, while fans have flooded onto social media to debate and dispute when, how, why and whether Marvel lost its way.
> This matters, of course, because, for over a decade, Marvel Studios was popular in a way nothing in Hollywood has ever been popular before — and now, suddenly, it isn’t, at least not nearly at the scale it used to be. For some, it feels like a genuine loss. For others, it’s a source of endless fascination and debate. And then there are those who are relieved by the prospect that maybe, just maybe, the culture won’t be dominated by superheroes anymore.
> Personally, I’ve felt each of those feelings at one time or another. My beat at Variety is genre entertainment; it’s basically my job to ruminate on the fate of the MCU, as both a storytelling entity and a commercial enterprise. And lately, I’d become convinced that Marvel can only right both its creative and financial prospects by nuking the MCU and restarting with a brand-new timeline built around the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, the two beloved Marvel Comics properties that had eluded the MCU until Disney purchased 21st Century Fox in 2019. No, audiences aren’t ready to see new actors as Iron Man or Captain America, but the breathless speculation that Daniel Radcliffe was getting buff to play Wolverine (he wasn’t) tells me that audiences are ready to get excited for a new Storm, a new Prof. X, and a new Magneto. And just ask John Krasinski and Emily Blunt if the public is interested in who will play the new Fantastic Four.
> But if abandoning the most lucrative creative endeavor ever produced in Hollywood isn’t in the cards, then allow me to make another wildly presumptuous suggestion: Make more projects like “Loki.” You needn’t have seen any Marvel title since “Endgame” to grasp the show; instead, it asks its audience to invest in its characters far more than anticipate how it may relate to a larger universe. “Loki’s” universe is more than enough, and audiences are responding. After this story originally posted, Disney announced that the Season 2 finale had earned 11.2 million views in its first three days, up from the 10.9 million views for the season premiere in the same time frame. According to the studio, it’s the second best viewed season finale in 2023, behind just the Season 3 conclusion of “The Mandalorian.”
>Perhaps all Feige needs to do is let go of those strands and let them develop on their own. Maybe the best way to save the MCU isn’t to kill it, but just to set it free.
Hulk Smash everything to bits
Make worse content while forcing everyone to waste money on Disney+ for something that is almost certainly guaranteed to be mediocre.
Although I enjoyed Loki, I found the finale pretty meh.
Embrace the strange side of Marvel!
or just making shows for content-sake.
also The Marvels was actually good
I just got to laugh at the hand-wringing after All the years of (deserved) DC hand-wringing.
It would be interesting to have a marvel drama set around the snap and the return about how people deal and then move on and boom those people come back. No super heroes, no explosions, maybe reference the news and events taking place elsewhere but have the people side. It would keep the brand going and tell a new story..
STOP!
All that Disney and MCU need to do is just stop.
IronMan was great, then Captain America wonderful, add in Thor….Amazing! Then spin around….we have the Avengers! Holy Cow! There’s a long story line, incredible! More characters both good and evil from every level of the MCU!
Thanos dies, we can breathe now that it’s over and was one hellava ride. What do you mean there’s more? I’m tired and mentally exhausted from super hero movies.
They need to stop for 10 years to start anything that want to approach being a blockbuster. I read the comics and watched the early 70’s tv shows years ago. I witnessed the thanos arc with my kids. I want to watch the next level with my grandkids, not sitting alone in an empty theater.
Excel in Mediocrity
They need how they treated Agent of Shield.
They need to slow the fuck down, they’ve pushing out way too much content and stretching their best talent to thin, and it’s really been showing since she hulk and ant man 3
Just take a break. Tell some orginal stories
I got MCU fatigue a few episodes into The Falcon and Winter Soldier. I haven’t watched any series episodes since then and only saw GotG 3 and Ant-Man 3 in theaters, mostly just to feel some closure for them. Seems like it has hit the majority of people now too.
What about leave them alone? And what about leave us movie goers rest from it for a long while?
How about making more original ethnic heroes instead of going full Panderverse?
Meh there’s thousand different directions they can go, any of them could work as long as the movies are simply “good”, that’s it. Just make good movies. I don’t care if it’s a new MCU with all the 2nd place actors who almost got the parts for the original MCU universe, or have the DC counterparts play in the Marvel Roles (Henry Cavill as Captain America, Gal as Marvel, etc)… shoot get Jared Leto to play all characters in the whole universe, just make it good and ill watch, even if they are connected to each other or not
If there were no more MCU movies that would be alright. Why do so many feel like it must continue? It’s a dead horse if there ever was one.
I think we just all feel a lack of through-line. Phase one was what, 6 films to get everyone together in The Avengers. Everyone of those films had something to do with Avengers. Then it was Ultron. Then Thanos. Now it’s been like 9 and 10 films plus TV series since Black Widow and Shang-Chi, and we still really haven’t seen those characters or storylines connect to anything.
During the first couple of phases, there was a really strong sense of “ooh, I can’t wait to see where this goes next.” Lately, the answer to that question always seems to be “nowhere?”
Loki is going to cross over into the Star Wars universe and become Loki-Wan Kenobi.
tell smaller, cheaper, original stories. in a world where better call saul can run for 6 seasons, she-hulk didn’t need to be a cgi fest— and they made fun of the fact that it was. just let creatives make cool stuff and it’ll pay for itself
So…. Make more things that people aren’t watching? Okay.
Good lord. I hope most of you aren’t actual comic book readers. You’d all petition for any story to be 2-3 issues at most. That’s not how this works. It’s not my money. Keep churning them out. Spend it all. More shows n more movies. I’ll keep reading and watching. That’s what these studies are there for. Not every film before endgame was amazing. But it builds the story. Go full send!!!
They could just stop for a few years.
The rhetoric for the longest time, rightfully so I might add, is that representation matters and people want to see themselves on the screen.
Everyone can understand this yet people seem perplexed that a movie studio moving away from the primary demographic in the US market is suddenly seeing less and less box office return.
They just need to slow down a little bit and get their laser focus back..
the criticism that the actors arent the stars and that the characters are needs to be reversed for a short bit.. just refocus what theyre doing.. its going to be a tougher sell no doubt since everything is auto attacked as being politicized and part of an “agenda” (woke and/or otherwise)… but good storytelling can silence that most of the time
They need a cataclysm
Maybe call it good and do something else? This stuff has been played even before End Game.
I’ve been telling a lot of people this: Loki was awesome because it’s *set* in the MCU, but it doesn’t *depend* on the MCU.
If you saw Phase 1, or really even just Avengers, that’s all you need to go into Loki, and it’s all you need for the entire series.
Sure, there’s a little bit about how Loki became “good” in the end, but that’s something that Variant Loki learns about someone “else”, and the audience can too.
What’s more important in the growth that variant Loki experiences, and it’s all self-contained.
Everything else Marvel put out on “TV” has felt more like “we didn’t think this was enough for a movie”. Maybe an exception for Wandavision because it was really about the creative storytelling, in a way.
I think the TV series can work when it’s taking a movie and spinning it off into TV, but once it’s there, it can never go back to the big screen. It can’t introduce new characters or plots that drive the next movie(s).
I really think Marvel will be using Secret Wars to soft reset the MCU. They can successfully reboot the entire franchise at that point.
Or, hear me out, have direction, purpose, a goal, and then trim the fat of anything that doesn’t specifically move these things forward.
Nah, they just need to end some story lines and give it more time and creativity before they leap into something else. At least that’s my opinion.
I have super hero fatigue.
Marvel, DC, and fox were all churning out super heros and I watched them all. Now they make even more than they use to + mediocre TV shows.
I consider myself a fan but I only have so much time and the more bad to mediocre experiences I have, the less likely I am to watch the next project.
I’ve skipped half the shows, missed some of the movies.
What they need is crime, penetration, crime, full penetration, crime, penetration until the MCU just sort of ends…
To be honest the only two I enjoyed was WandaVision and Loki. Both unique with a great story, Hawkeye ok the rest meh to trash.
Or stop hiring Hallmark romance movie women directors and stop main lining the entire cast with women, and stop having an ALL woman writer team.
Ya know… if you want 100 million opening night, instead of 50, you’re gonna need the other half of all these relationships to visit the theater to…. Not just the female halves. Men don’t want to see this shit.
Nah it’s bloated and they really effed things up with the multiverse. Multiverse concepts have to be done exceptionally well to work or else you end up with a Rick Sanchez problem in that nothing matters anymore because everything and everyone one is replaceable. Time to reboot, but give it a few years…
Fwiw I think Into the spider verse and Invincible both do a good job with the multiverse concept.
They should bring back Robert Downey Jr and then reboot the whole universe
I’m tired of superheroes.
Or someone could just write a fucking story…
You know whose ideas are going to put Marvel back on the top of the box office? Not yours.
It’s so depressing that the bar has dropped so low that people consider Loki to be a good show.
42 comments
Excerpt:
> It’s become something of a national pastime of late to obsess over the perceived unraveling of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The box office failure of “The Marvels” — which just suffered through the worst opening weekend in the MCU’s history — is simply the latest indignity. For the past two years, media outlets across the internet (including, and perhaps especially, the one you’re currently reading) have covered with relentless detail all the creative missteps, internal conflicts, external scandals, and outright failures that have bedeviled Marvel Studios, while fans have flooded onto social media to debate and dispute when, how, why and whether Marvel lost its way.
> This matters, of course, because, for over a decade, Marvel Studios was popular in a way nothing in Hollywood has ever been popular before — and now, suddenly, it isn’t, at least not nearly at the scale it used to be. For some, it feels like a genuine loss. For others, it’s a source of endless fascination and debate. And then there are those who are relieved by the prospect that maybe, just maybe, the culture won’t be dominated by superheroes anymore.
> Personally, I’ve felt each of those feelings at one time or another. My beat at Variety is genre entertainment; it’s basically my job to ruminate on the fate of the MCU, as both a storytelling entity and a commercial enterprise. And lately, I’d become convinced that Marvel can only right both its creative and financial prospects by nuking the MCU and restarting with a brand-new timeline built around the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, the two beloved Marvel Comics properties that had eluded the MCU until Disney purchased 21st Century Fox in 2019. No, audiences aren’t ready to see new actors as Iron Man or Captain America, but the breathless speculation that Daniel Radcliffe was getting buff to play Wolverine (he wasn’t) tells me that audiences are ready to get excited for a new Storm, a new Prof. X, and a new Magneto. And just ask John Krasinski and Emily Blunt if the public is interested in who will play the new Fantastic Four.
> But if abandoning the most lucrative creative endeavor ever produced in Hollywood isn’t in the cards, then allow me to make another wildly presumptuous suggestion: Make more projects like “Loki.” You needn’t have seen any Marvel title since “Endgame” to grasp the show; instead, it asks its audience to invest in its characters far more than anticipate how it may relate to a larger universe. “Loki’s” universe is more than enough, and audiences are responding. After this story originally posted, Disney announced that the Season 2 finale had earned 11.2 million views in its first three days, up from the 10.9 million views for the season premiere in the same time frame. According to the studio, it’s the second best viewed season finale in 2023, behind just the Season 3 conclusion of “The Mandalorian.”
>Perhaps all Feige needs to do is let go of those strands and let them develop on their own. Maybe the best way to save the MCU isn’t to kill it, but just to set it free.
Hulk Smash everything to bits
Make worse content while forcing everyone to waste money on Disney+ for something that is almost certainly guaranteed to be mediocre.
Although I enjoyed Loki, I found the finale pretty meh.
Embrace the strange side of Marvel!
or just making shows for content-sake.
also The Marvels was actually good
I just got to laugh at the hand-wringing after All the years of (deserved) DC hand-wringing.
It would be interesting to have a marvel drama set around the snap and the return about how people deal and then move on and boom those people come back. No super heroes, no explosions, maybe reference the news and events taking place elsewhere but have the people side. It would keep the brand going and tell a new story..
STOP!
All that Disney and MCU need to do is just stop.
IronMan was great, then Captain America wonderful, add in Thor….Amazing! Then spin around….we have the Avengers! Holy Cow! There’s a long story line, incredible! More characters both good and evil from every level of the MCU!
Thanos dies, we can breathe now that it’s over and was one hellava ride. What do you mean there’s more? I’m tired and mentally exhausted from super hero movies.
They need to stop for 10 years to start anything that want to approach being a blockbuster. I read the comics and watched the early 70’s tv shows years ago. I witnessed the thanos arc with my kids. I want to watch the next level with my grandkids, not sitting alone in an empty theater.
Excel in Mediocrity
They need how they treated Agent of Shield.
They need to slow the fuck down, they’ve pushing out way too much content and stretching their best talent to thin, and it’s really been showing since she hulk and ant man 3
Just take a break. Tell some orginal stories
I got MCU fatigue a few episodes into The Falcon and Winter Soldier. I haven’t watched any series episodes since then and only saw GotG 3 and Ant-Man 3 in theaters, mostly just to feel some closure for them. Seems like it has hit the majority of people now too.
What about leave them alone? And what about leave us movie goers rest from it for a long while?
How about making more original ethnic heroes instead of going full Panderverse?
Meh there’s thousand different directions they can go, any of them could work as long as the movies are simply “good”, that’s it. Just make good movies. I don’t care if it’s a new MCU with all the 2nd place actors who almost got the parts for the original MCU universe, or have the DC counterparts play in the Marvel Roles (Henry Cavill as Captain America, Gal as Marvel, etc)… shoot get Jared Leto to play all characters in the whole universe, just make it good and ill watch, even if they are connected to each other or not
If there were no more MCU movies that would be alright. Why do so many feel like it must continue? It’s a dead horse if there ever was one.
I think we just all feel a lack of through-line. Phase one was what, 6 films to get everyone together in The Avengers. Everyone of those films had something to do with Avengers. Then it was Ultron. Then Thanos. Now it’s been like 9 and 10 films plus TV series since Black Widow and Shang-Chi, and we still really haven’t seen those characters or storylines connect to anything.
During the first couple of phases, there was a really strong sense of “ooh, I can’t wait to see where this goes next.” Lately, the answer to that question always seems to be “nowhere?”
Loki is going to cross over into the Star Wars universe and become Loki-Wan Kenobi.
tell smaller, cheaper, original stories. in a world where better call saul can run for 6 seasons, she-hulk didn’t need to be a cgi fest— and they made fun of the fact that it was. just let creatives make cool stuff and it’ll pay for itself
So…. Make more things that people aren’t watching? Okay.
Good lord. I hope most of you aren’t actual comic book readers. You’d all petition for any story to be 2-3 issues at most. That’s not how this works. It’s not my money. Keep churning them out. Spend it all. More shows n more movies. I’ll keep reading and watching. That’s what these studies are there for. Not every film before endgame was amazing. But it builds the story. Go full send!!!
They could just stop for a few years.
The rhetoric for the longest time, rightfully so I might add, is that representation matters and people want to see themselves on the screen.
Everyone can understand this yet people seem perplexed that a movie studio moving away from the primary demographic in the US market is suddenly seeing less and less box office return.
They just need to slow down a little bit and get their laser focus back..
the criticism that the actors arent the stars and that the characters are needs to be reversed for a short bit.. just refocus what theyre doing.. its going to be a tougher sell no doubt since everything is auto attacked as being politicized and part of an “agenda” (woke and/or otherwise)… but good storytelling can silence that most of the time
They need a cataclysm
Maybe call it good and do something else? This stuff has been played even before End Game.
I’ve been telling a lot of people this: Loki was awesome because it’s *set* in the MCU, but it doesn’t *depend* on the MCU.
If you saw Phase 1, or really even just Avengers, that’s all you need to go into Loki, and it’s all you need for the entire series.
Sure, there’s a little bit about how Loki became “good” in the end, but that’s something that Variant Loki learns about someone “else”, and the audience can too.
What’s more important in the growth that variant Loki experiences, and it’s all self-contained.
Everything else Marvel put out on “TV” has felt more like “we didn’t think this was enough for a movie”. Maybe an exception for Wandavision because it was really about the creative storytelling, in a way.
I think the TV series can work when it’s taking a movie and spinning it off into TV, but once it’s there, it can never go back to the big screen. It can’t introduce new characters or plots that drive the next movie(s).
I really think Marvel will be using Secret Wars to soft reset the MCU. They can successfully reboot the entire franchise at that point.
Or, hear me out, have direction, purpose, a goal, and then trim the fat of anything that doesn’t specifically move these things forward.
Nah, they just need to end some story lines and give it more time and creativity before they leap into something else. At least that’s my opinion.
I have super hero fatigue.
Marvel, DC, and fox were all churning out super heros and I watched them all. Now they make even more than they use to + mediocre TV shows.
I consider myself a fan but I only have so much time and the more bad to mediocre experiences I have, the less likely I am to watch the next project.
I’ve skipped half the shows, missed some of the movies.
What they need is crime, penetration, crime, full penetration, crime, penetration until the MCU just sort of ends…
To be honest the only two I enjoyed was WandaVision and Loki. Both unique with a great story, Hawkeye ok the rest meh to trash.
Or stop hiring Hallmark romance movie women directors and stop main lining the entire cast with women, and stop having an ALL woman writer team.
Ya know… if you want 100 million opening night, instead of 50, you’re gonna need the other half of all these relationships to visit the theater to…. Not just the female halves. Men don’t want to see this shit.
Nah it’s bloated and they really effed things up with the multiverse. Multiverse concepts have to be done exceptionally well to work or else you end up with a Rick Sanchez problem in that nothing matters anymore because everything and everyone one is replaceable. Time to reboot, but give it a few years…
Fwiw I think Into the spider verse and Invincible both do a good job with the multiverse concept.
They should bring back Robert Downey Jr and then reboot the whole universe
I’m tired of superheroes.
Or someone could just write a fucking story…
You know whose ideas are going to put Marvel back on the top of the box office? Not yours.
It’s so depressing that the bar has dropped so low that people consider Loki to be a good show.