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.
It’s very weird, the narrative being constructed here. At least in movies, the facts don’t support the implied claim. (And in TV, there’s not much to compare pre- and post-Endgame.)
Of the top 10 MCU movies in worldwide box office (aka the ones making over $1B), three were post-Endgame. 3 in 4 years versus 7 in 11 (since Iron Man/Incredible Hulk).
In the next group of 10 (down to $676M worldwide), 4 were post-Endgame. Again: that’s 4 in 4 years versus 6 in 11.
This means that in the top 20 MCU movies, 7 were post-Endgame. 7 in 4 years (1.75 per year) versus 13 in 11 (1.2 per year).
I think… I think they’re doing fine…? In the real world, among real people, most of the things the article points out (like the CGI quality) don’t rate a second thought. They just don’t care. Did they have fun? Yes or no? All the little detail bullshit that the chronically online like to harp about is just not important to the vast majority of moviegoers. They do not fucking care.
What could be argued is that things have dipped from 2021 to 2023, since none of the 5 movies from the past 2 years have cracked $1B and only one cracked $1B in 2021. But that’s not “post-Endgame” that’s “mid- and post-pandemic.” Not exactly the same thing. Can we at least admit that the most world-changing event of the past 80 years might actually be more responsible for any perceived “break” than something as nebulously undefined as “superhero fatigue” or as ridiculously unimportant (to most people) as “marginal drop in quality”?
I wonder how much of that was momentum that took a bit to show. Folks went to the post endgame movies high on marbel and got ground down to where they stopped showing up for what you call the mid end game.
I’ve tried to see all MCU’s offerings following the endgame, and only Loki feels like worth it. Other tv shows felt pretty trash, and latest movies have been “meh” at best.
This season of Loki has been “technically” fine but… each episode amounts to nothing. It’s just barely not boring for my friend and I.
Honestly, I preferred Ms. Marvel more than this, since it actually had direction and seems to try to make some kind of point. Right now, Loki S2 just seems like it’s scrambling. I feel kind of wild seeing so much praise for it online - again, it’s not bad but that doesn’t mean that it therefore is good.
Also, a global pandemic and extreme political issues worldwide.
I can think of only two authors who have created worthwhile multiverses, and neither of them work primarily in comics: Michael Moorcock (Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon, etc.) and Stephen King (The Dark Tower). The DC and Marvel multiverses are just a way to stave off the “too many cooks” effect of having dozens of writers doing dozens of reboots of threadbare characters.
tl;dr: Superman should have stayed dead.
