After the glorious success of “Avengers: Endgame”, it seems that the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is on its way to downfall
So far, MCU’s latest cinematic movie, “The Marvels”, has only generated 47 million USD in box office sales, officially replacing 2008’s “The Incredible Hulk” as the Marvel film with the lowest first-week sales in North America. This is a huge shock to Marvel, considering that “The Marvels” lost to a movie from 15 years ago, and even fell behind the “failures” of its opponent, DC, such as “The Flash” (55 million USD) and “Black Adam” (67 million USD).
With “The Marvels” failing miserably in Marvel Studios’ home country, experts believe that it’s high time the production company reflected on its somewhat stagnant rate of release. In particular, in 2024, Marvel Studios only intended on releasing “Deadpool 3” along with some TV series. Meanwhile, other comic-based cinematic works scheduled for the same year, such as “Madame Web”, “Venom 3”, and “Kraven The Hunter”, will be produced by Sony.
“Avengers: Endgame” may be MCU’s actual endgame
For over a decade, Marvel Studios has created an extremely successful cinematic universe that revolves around their superheroes. Starting with “Iron Man”, Marvel has introduced over 30 movies and series in the same universe, surpassing iconic franchises like “Star Wars”, “Harry Potter”, and “James Bond” to becoming the most successful cinematic franchise with revenue of over 30 billion USD.
However, after Iron Man, a core member of the MCU, died in “Avengers: Endgame”, MCU has been on the decline, with criticisms pouring in from both critics and previously loyal fans.
The 4th phase of MCU, which started with the movie “Black Widow” and the series “WandaVision” – the franchise’s first exclusive series for Disney+, and concluded with “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”, has marked Marvel Studios’ most prolific era. However, quantity doesn’t always go hand in hand with quality, and many MCU projects were deemed as shallow and described as Marvel Studios’ attempt in “milking” the cinematic universe’s previous glories.
In phase 5, MCU continues to see poor performance, with the failure of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “The Marvels”. Whilst “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” garnered a lot of praise, it also put an end to many favorite characters of the audience, bringing worries for the future of the franchise.
Experimenting but struggling to find a way out
After the events of “Avengers: Endgame”, MCU entered a completely new chapter as it expanded on the “Multiverse” approach. As a result, people were excited to know which superhero will be the focus next, only for this excitement to dim the longer their wait gets.
In particular, Marvel has been introducing new characters, who have so far, failed to leave deep impressions compared to previous iconic characters in “Avengers”. In addition, some characters are simply never mentioned nor explored again in future MCU works, such as Hercules in “Thor: Love and Thunder”, Clea in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”, Starfox in “Eternals”, and Namor in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”.
In addition, due to the “multiverse” approach, a lack of connection between each Marvel project starts to emerge. To make it worse, the studio doesn’t take this matter seriously, and instead attempt to make their works…. “Funnier”, so that people will be distracted away from major plot holes.
The “Multiverse” was first introduced in Phase 4’s “Loki”, and has since been expanded in various projects such as “Spider-Man: No Way Home”, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”, and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”. However, the definition of “multiverse” continuously changes through each and every word, making it confusing for viewers, who are already struggling to keep up with MCU’s various movies and series.
Nowadays, avid fans of the MCU are basically telling each other to “put away their analysis abilities” when watching new releases in their attempt to ignore glaring plot holes.
However, the audience’s patience is not limitless, and the past 3 years have posed to be too long for many. The failure of “The Marvels” can be regarded as the last straw that broke the camel’s back, as fans grow frustrated with poor-quality works that have persisted for years.
So far, Marvel Studios seem to be aware of their own downfall, and have made efforts to “revive” their once glorious franchise. The studio has been buying the rights to other superheroes owned by Sony and Fox with the aim to attract the fans of these characters. In addition, they are paying more attention to details so as to great more well-rounded releases that won’t disappoint viewers.
Source: k14
