Why I’m being alienated by the Marvel universe – and you are too

«It’s official now,» I declare emphatically to my buddies as we’re leaving the cinema. «If Marvel can make movies as awesome as that about talking raccoons and trees in space, it can do anything!»

It’s a summer evening in 2014, and Guardians of the Galaxy has just become my favourite superhero movie. The comic giant seems to have permanently cemented its place at the top. Soon enough, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) will become ubiquitous. No other franchise will have a greater track record – not even all the Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts films put together.

Crazy.

Almost nine years later, it’s 2023 and things have changed. The MCU is in crisis, with dwindling sales and viewers turning away from the seemingly once invincible juggernaut.

Here’s my attempt at explaining why.

Where’s the enthusiasm?

My pre-release excitement is waning with every Marvel movie. It’s not that Marvel has only been producing bad films or series of late. Spider-Man: No Way Home, for example, is an outstanding service to fans, and Shang-Chi makes for an urgently needed change from the typical North American setting. With WandaVision Marvel actually dared to do something new. And Loki opened interesting doors for the MCU.

But other than that? Mediocrity. And lots of it – if reaching that standard at all.

But this hasn’t always been the case. The MCU has released 31 films to date, with its superhero flicks grossing over 27 billion dollars. Viewers have stormed movie theatres around the world by the millions, even in otherwise protectionist China, where Western films are only shown in exceptional cases. And all this with reviews ranging from good to very good.

Nevertheless, questions about the future of the MCU have surfaced recently. The last Marvel movie not produced by Sony to gross more than 1 billion dollars at the box office was Avengers: Endgame, released four years ago. Not only that, but the reviews are getting increasingly worse. Five of the ten lowest-rated Marvel films were made between 2021 and 2023. Just recently, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania recorded the largest drop in audience figures a Marvel movie has ever seen between its first and second week of release.

So what’s going on?

Films as teasers

People are losing interest. And I’m no different. That’s because a lot of my favourite characters have since left the movies. Take Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, for example, or Chris Evans as Captain America or Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow. The latter even left Marvel on bad terms. She and her fellow actors had been keeping the Marvel engines going full steam ahead for years. Since their departure, however, the corporation has become a sinking ship, seemingly uninspired without them. Unmotivated

and without leadership.

Sure, Marvel is in the process of refilling the gaps, introducing new characters. Characters to carry the story forward and hold our interest. But even Marvel hasn’t managed to do that in a while now. The same Marvel whose great strength was always telling gripping stories with exciting characters who just «happen» to be superheroes. Like when the then-skinny Steve Rogers, in an apparent act of self-sacrifice, throws himself onto a dummy hand grenade to save the more suitable candidates in the military campus. It’s perhaps the most heroic scene in the entire Marvel universe, because at that point, Steve doesn’t even have the superpowers that will later make him Captain America.

The comic-inspired movie studio has long since abandoned this sincerity. Its films have been reduced to expensive but efficient marketing campaigns, with its characters becoming brand ambassadors. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is the most recent example of that. Sure, the movie is entertaining. Marvel films almost always are. But it’s also shallow and ultimately meaningless. The focus is on cameo appearances and cross-references to other comic book adaptations and books. The appearances of the Fantastic Four and X-Men really were for nothing, because they were inconsequential. They might as well have been dropped from the Multiverse, as the story would’ve been the same without them. That’s never a good sign for the script.

But that’s the way things work at Marvel these days: the brand advertises the brand. And then there’s the obligatory post-credits scene that – you guessed it – advertises the next movie. Absurd right?

The Disney Channel problem

Marvel is also ingratiating itself with an increasingly younger audience. Strategically, that makes sense, given Marvel is a Disney subsidiary. Plus, Disney parks are Disney’s second-largest source of income after box office revenues. It’s obvious that Disney wants to exploit synergies within its own portfolio. So, let’s explore that train of thought in more detail. If Marvel’s target audience aligns with Disneyland’s usual target audience i.e. families with young children, then not only will there be more interest in Marvel-themed areas at the parks, but their sales will increase as well. It’s a win-win.

Voilà, welcome to the new Avengers campus at Disneyland Paris.

I personally can’t deal with this shift in target audience that’s been obvious since Endgame – and millions of Marvel fans worldwide are probably with me on that. Take a look, for instance, at the average age of the cast. Previous major characters such as Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Thor, Hawkeye, Steve Rogers, Doctor Strange, Black Widow, Black Panther and Star-Lord were played by actors in their late 30s or even early 40s. This doesn’t just automatically lead to more mature acting performances – it also leads to more mature stories. About fascism, for example, or racism. Or even about post-traumatic stress disorder. Marvel humour aside, the earlier movies mostly took themselves seriously. Seriously enough, at least.

These days, however? Not the case. Even She-Hulk, which was supposed to be a socially critical commentary on the role of women in a male-dominated society, fell well and truly flat and its humour was excruciatingly stupid. What was, in my opinion, a good and courageous approach, degenerated into a persiflage, which, in the end was actually intentionally written so badly that even the main character complained about it on a meta-level. How could Marvel seriously think the MCU needed something like that?

In 37-year-old Tatiana Maslany, the makers of She-Hulk had secured the services of an extremely talented and capable leading actress. The urge to deliver Disney Channel-level content instead of genuine and well-done social criticism was probably too great. With The Last Duel, Marvel needn’t have looked further than its own streaming platform to see how to do things right.

Most other Marvel productions, on the other hand, are forced down to Disney Channel level simply by dramatically lowering the age average of the cast. It even happens with the «old guard» as main characters, because they’re joined by younger supporting ones. After all, no Marvel superhero movie can do without young sidekicks – a new generation. Someone has to be handed the torch, right? It’s just that this new generation doesn’t ignite any desire for new films whatsoever. America Chavez in Multiverse of Madness isn’t a character, she’s a MacGuffin. Cassie Lang in Quantumania is the annoying stereotype of a rebellious pubescent daughter. Then we have Riri Williams as Iron Man’s successor in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, who doesn’t quite seem to catch the spark of her predecessor either. Neither did Kate Bishop in Hawkeye. If anything, there’s more of a glimmer of it in Yelena Belova in Black Widow

or Ms. Marvel in the upcoming The Marvels. She’s likely to succeed Captain Marvel, because Captain Marvel actress Brie Larson has lost all credit with the public. And yeah, that’s a fair bit of «Marvel» in one sentence. Like I said, the films are all marketing. Even their characters are named after their own brand.

The problem isn’t just that these young actors tend to give shaky acting performances – it’s also their infantile Disney Channel humour. The best response it gets from me is an eye roll. The stories rarely have any depth or gravitas. Everything seems shallow and geared towards quick laughs. Humour that I no longer find funny. I can’t relate to it anymore. My colleague Michelle Brändle aptly described this growing imbalance recently on the Digitec podcast:

Spoilt for choice? Or spoiled by choices?

I’m not done yet. In fact, Marvel has made yet another error. It’s not just that the quality of the films is declining (I’m not even going to open the can of worms that is the ever-worsening special effects). The number of films, series and TV specials is on the rise. Here’s the breakdown of the numbers:

• Phase 1 of the MCU: 6 movies (2008–2012)
• Phase 2 of the MCU: 6 movies (2013–2015)
• Phase 3 of the MCU: 11 movies (2016–2019)

To sum up, the first three phases of the MCU, when the Infinity saga unfolded, gave us 23 movies in 11 years. That’s an average of about two films per year, with a slight upward trend in Phase 3.

We’re now in Phase 5, which recently kicked off with Quantumania. Here’s what we got during the preceding phase 4:

• 7 movies (2020–2022)
• 8 series (2020–2022)
• 2 TV specials (2020–2022)

In other words, the Multiverse saga that started with Phase 4 already includes 17 movies, series and TV specials in just two years, not counting Ant-Man. That's about eight to nine (!) TV specials per year! That’s an immense increase compared to every other phase. No wonder Marvel films and series have started to feel like homework that’s got to be done in order to follow the story, as opposed to long-anticipated events.

But as if the sheer amount of new content weren’t enough, they haven’t brought the Multiverse saga forward in any real sense. At least not in the way that the search for the Infinity Stones spun the narrative thread in the Infinity saga, which told more stories in fewer films. In Phase 4, however, many films and series seemed more like sequels to the Infinity saga.

WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, for instance, featured the effects of The Blip. Black Widow even took place before the sequence of events depicted in Endgame. Multiverse of Madness did play around with the Multiverse, but only to celebrate pointless cameos (which we’ve already talked about). And what was Thor: Love and Thunder actually good for? Even Shang-Chi is drifting kind of aimlessly around the MCU. I could go on and on.

What’s missing from the MCU?

What the MCU lacks is a well thought-out direction of travel. A concept. One that prioritises quality over quantity. One in which the characters, not the brand, take centre stage in the stories. And above all, one that doesn’t rely on the cheap humour only capable of raising a laugh from kids watching the Disney Channel on Saturday mornings.

What Marvel needs is something Andor embodied in the Star Wars universe just recently. It’s something also associated with Disney: courage. Courage to tell a fully developed story. One with real effects and consequences, and written in a way that doesn’t insult the average viewer’s intelligence.

At the moment, Marvel is doing the exact opposite. I’m still not over the «My name is Darren and I am not a dick» scene in the last Ant-Man movie. Same goes for the appearance of an acting legend who stooped to doing a cameo, likely because of the high salary. Said legend doesn’t last five minutes before being gobbled up by a cocktail with tentacles (don’t ask). Seriously, Marvel? What were you thinking?

I certainly don’t know. When the Multiverse was introduced in Loki, it still sounded exciting. It’s now degenerated into a narrative gimmick that can be used to undo any consequence, whenever necessary. In other words, whenever the contracts with actress X or actor Y go through. Because of this, Marvel has lost its fun.

In my book, anyway.