The Big Picture
Bob Iger, the CEO of the Walt Disney Company, has a frank assessment of the current state of the MCU: they dropped the ball. In a refreshing mea culpa from the head of an entertainment conglomerate, Iger admitted that by increasing the movie output and the number of television series, Disney had stretched their creative personnel too thin, “taxing our people way beyond their time and their focus.” But in assessing the cause of poor box office returns for recent MCU releases, Iger, for all intents and purposes, lays the blame at the feet of the Marvel television series, stating that they “diluted focus and attention, and that is more the cause than anything else.”
To a degree, it’s a fair assessment. One of the criticisms of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law were the dodgy visual effects, noticeably well below the standard the MCU had set for itself in its previous fare. Additionally, the number of MCU projects per year has tripled on average from the MCU’s beginnings with two films, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, and no TV series in 2008 to three films and three Disney+ series in 2022. Combined with productions from other studios, the VFX industry is dealing with an unprecedented high in the number of shots being thrust upon overworked, stressed-out visual effects artists, a reality that saw both Marvel and Disney’s VFX artists overwhelmingly agreeing to unionize.
However, for Iger to place the blame solely on television’s taxation on visual effects for the poor box office of the MCU is short-sighted, at best. The truth is that the reasons for Marvel’s movie failures of late go above and beyond the small screen and expose troubling issues that the MCU would be wise to address sooner rather than later.
Marvel’s Multiverse Saga Is Following Blueprint As the Infinity Saga
With a few exceptions, if you look at the movie posters for the MCU films as a whole, there’s a sameness to them. The main character is front and center walking forwards — or, particularly if you look at the posters for Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, and Avengers: Infinity War side by side, almost identical in appearance. That sameness extends beyond the promotional material to the films themselves: introduce the hero, insert villain, some funny bits, wrap up film with an epic battle, repeat, then throw in a team-up here and there. In fairness, it’s a broad generalization, given how the MCU has delivered some astounding moments (anyone who says they definitely knew Thanos [Josh Brolin] would come out on top at the end of Infinity War has pants on fire), but when the audience has been trained on what to expect, it becomes that much more difficult to set the films apart from one another.
This leads directly to the next issue: expectations. The Infinity Saga of the MCU taught moviegoers that the films work together to build up towards a big finish, a la Avengers: Endgame. The Multiverse Saga that the MCU is in now is following that exact same trajectory, with a bunch of movies setting Kang (Jonathan Majors) up as the “new Thanos” that will eventually end with the big event film Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027. Unless you’re truly invested in the entire storyline, why waste your time and money on the precursor films when you can see the spectacle of all the heroes on screen at the same time fighting a common enemy? This becomes more clear when you consider that the original lineup of the MCU is either dead (R.I.P., Iron Man [Robert Downey Jr.] and Black Widow [Scarlett Johansson]) or is otherwise no longer present (hey, Steve Rogers [Chris Evans]), barring some weird multiverse resurrection of sorts.
The MCU Is Figuring Out What To Do With Its New Players Like Echo and Ironheart
With the legacy MCU characters now few and far between, the future of the MCU lies with characters the public doesn’t know to the same degree as a Captain America or Spider-Man. Even casual comic book fans were unlikely to know who Echo (Alaqua Cox) was prior to Hawkeye. Now, without a significant amount of screen time in that series, Echo’s got her own Disney+ series on deck, set for release on January 10, 2024. Ironheart (Dominique Thorne) is in a virtually identical situation. The argument would be that no one knew who the Guardians of the Galaxy were prior to their first film, but back then, obscure characters were a rarity rather than the norm, and the public had an entire film with which to fall in love with them. One account puts the amount of time to catch up to every single MCU film and TV series at 6,787 minutes. So, unless you have watched every single minute of every single MCU project, an MCU film like The Marvels has main characters that may be entirely new to you.
The MCU’s Issues Are Deeper Than Bob Iger Would Have You Realize
Iger’s insistence is that the MCU’s issues lay with VFX and over-saturation, but recent details suggest that the problems are even bigger than most people realize. A recent article from Variety points to a number of issues that the Marvel brain trust is dealing with right now, but the most damning, arguably, comes from the top down. As part of Iger’s zealous restructuring of Disney, two executives were let go: Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter, the chairman of Marvel Entertainment, and executive producer Victoria Alonso. However, Variety sources claim Alonso was a scapegoat, and that the VFX issues, specifically with She-Hulk, are evidence of a deeper problem.
One source said: “The so-called bad VFX we see was because of half-baked scripts. That is not Victoria. That is Kevin [Feige]. And even above Kevin. Those issues should be addressed in preproduction. The timeline is not allowing the Marvel executives to sit with the material.” One alarming example given is in the original arc for She-Hulk, a flashback of Tatiana Maslany’s transformation didn’t happen until Episode 8. Only after seeing the footage, Marvel execs decided that the scene needed to happen in the pilot, which resulted in a new script and the need for more VFX to be added in post-production. Likewise, even after shows like WandaVision had already begun, final effects were still being added. The lackluster reception of Marvel’s Secret Invasion only seemed to serve as confirmation of what was being said.
Is the MCU too far gone to rekindle its magic? Not in the least. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the biggest success in what has been a low point in the MCU, proved that a good story — especially a straightforward, different, white hat/black hat one that isn’t mired in multiverse gobbledygook — still has the power to draw people in. Should common sense actually win out over dollar signs, reducing the MCU output of both movie and TV stands to restore the quality associated with the franchise, not only with visual effects but the stories and characters as well? The recent unveiling of Marvel Spotlight, a banner under which Marvel Studios will be releasing content that focuses on character and realistic stories, promises that the TV series and films will stand alone, with viewers not being placed in a position where they need to see every MCU offering to understand what’s going on.
If Marvel Spotlight delivers as promised (starting with the first series being released under the banner, the aforementioned Echo), they stand to simplify what is already an overly complex narrative. If they insist on introducing relatively unknown characters, then give them the time and devotion, so fans can fall in love with them too, as they succeeded in doing with Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) in Black Widow. The far more favorable reception to Season 2 of Loki would suggest that maybe, just maybe, lessons about releasing a series that strives for quality in all stages of production have at least been learned. The movies and TV series of the MCU, like all other content from the television and film industry, succeed on the basis of bringing something special, something deeper, to the viewer’s experience. It is what the MCU was built on, bringing to the screen the heroes of the page in a manner that made them truly come alive, with stories that shared a healthy, loving respect for the characters that, at times, eclipsed that of the most ardent of Marvel fans.
Marvel movies and TV shows are available to stream on Disney+ in the U.S.
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