After Avengers: Endgame, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has never been the same, and there are some aspects of the movie that explain how it broke the universe. The latest of Marvel Studios’ Avengers movies, 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, is the biggest superhero movie of all time. The MCU was at the height of its popularity during Phase 3, so when it came time to end the Infinity Saga, Marvel had to deliver, and the studio did so in spades. Avengers: Endgame was the perfect finale to the Infinity Saga, superbly wrapping up the more than 10 years of storytelling the MCU had set up to that point.
Following Avengers: Endgame’s ending, the MCU had to radically change. Marvel Studios was able to release more projects in Phase 4 than it had ever done before — Phase 4 had a mind-blowing 18 projects over just two years, almost matching the Infinity Saga’s 23 movies in an 11-year span — thanks to Disney+. While the addition of TV series and other formats to the MCU allowed Marvel to introduce more characters and give supporting heroes their time to shine, which movies would not have allowed, there was a clear quality drop from Avengers: Endgame to Phase 4’s movies and series. Sadly, Avengers: Endgame contributed directly to the MCU’s recent disarray.
The article focuses on the production shortcomings and lacking quality of subsequent phases as being part of the decline, but I think there’s another explanation elsewhere.
Prior to the large extended MCU project super hero movies were kinda trash. They were the kind of trash that only really attracted bad movie fans or people who grew up reading the corresponding comics, but then Iron man came out. Not only was it not trash, it was different from the other non super hero offerings at the time as well. It was fresh and fun, and it attracted audiences who didn’t grow up reading the comics.
So they made another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
They just kept making the same thing with different characters. After so many movies of just watching different colored gods shit on the bad guys with the full knowledge that sequels were already in the works so nothing permanent would happen to our handsome heroes the movies became repetitive. They weren’t fresh anymore, and the fun relied more on quips and one-liners than the raw story and action.
People got fatigued.
Then Endgame came along and promised a nice off ramp–see the culmination of this saga you’ve been intermittently watching the last decade then you can be done.
So people watched the end, then decided they didn’t want to get involved in another decade of the same story, and never watched an MCU film or series again.
Personally, I never would have seen the first phase if it weren’t for watching some on a plane and Moviepass overlapping with the phase allowing me to go see some of them for basically nothing. I stopped watching after Endgame, as did most of my friends, not because everything after was bad (we had no clue, we stopped watching), but because we wanted different stories.
Add the investment cost on top of that. When it was one movie a year you could keep up and feel good doing it. Then came the Disney landslide, and I think a lot of people were like me, one there was no way they could handle it and just got out of the way.
This feel close to my experience. I can still remember the feeling of leaving the cinema after seeing Iron Man. It felt quite inspirational, like you could build things and improve the world. I’m not sure the film really stands up to closer scrutiny but that’s how it felt at the time.
More films dilute the experience until eventually it feels very thin and repetitive. It also becomes clear that most of these stories revolve around people hitting each other repeatedly until the third act and that everyone’s powers are arbitrarily elastic.
I also think multiverse narratives can backfire. Oh no! The baddie won/hero died/world ended! But it’s OK, in another universe/dimension/reality the baddie was defeated/the hero is still alive/the world was saved. So, every event can be rewritten, there are no lasting consequences, nothing really matters. Why care? Multiverse settings are writers wanting to have their cake and eat it but that just seems to make for bland cake.
Agreed for the most part. The multiverse angle is to let them discard continuity as necessary, without doing so officially. They can recast the same roles when talent cycles out (or theoretically if it cycles back in, should ScarJo or Chris Evans suddenly decide they want a new deal) but also blend with existing cast when they want. They can tell stories that can be self-contained, but also don’t have to be, and if a story is poorly received or a villain is just too charismatic, you get all the do-overs you need. It’s like the all you can eat buffet of storytelling, but what do you when you can have anything but none of it seems appetizing? Audiences will intuitively understand that there’s no weight to any of it even when seemingly important things happen, and that the narrative will be subject to the commerce, but not even in the still-slightly-risky predictive way it had to be in the past. You can’t even write yourself into a corner anymore. The spectacle and momentary melodrama is all that’s left. It’s like going from prestige TV to pro wrestling.
As long as the quips are there, the smiles are big, and the action scenes being cranked out by the on-staff Action Scene directors, then the movies will still pull in a bunch of money, but it’s going to be a little less as people care less about the overarching story; most of the DC movies had decent global box office numbers, after all.
Gone are the days where Marvel was putting an interesting spin on popcorn cinema, though it’s important not to overstate it. The unprecedented level of interconnectedness led to interesting stakes and repercussions, and was a callback to the comics themselves and old-timey serials. The MCU movies were also fun with how they’d dress up superhero narratives in the clothes of other genres, though admittedly without really changing much: The Winter Soldier is not much of a spy thriller, but it is a pretty cool super hero movie pretending to be a spy thriller. Not going to lie, I’m still hanging with it, but it takes me longer and longer to catch each installment, and I walk away from more of them kind of not caring all that much about what happens next, just willing to find out when I can get around to it. Most of it is still better than DC stuff, but that’s damning with faint praise. It’s also less of an emotional beatdown than the grimdark backlash shows like Invincible and The Boys.
TL;DR: Marvel has a pretty high floor as long as the house style remains light and the production values don’t slip any farther, but there’s just not much special about it anymore.