Bob Iger, fresh from signing an extended contract that sees him as CEO of The Walt Disney Company until 2026, has a candid assessment of the MCU’s current state: You’ve dropped the ball. In a refreshing mea culpa from an entertainment company boss, Iger admitted that by increasing film production and the number of television series, Disney has stretched its creative staff and “stretched our people far beyond their time and focus.” But in assessing the cause of the under-grossing of recent MCU releases, Iger blames every aspect of it on the Marvel television series, stating that they’ve “diluted focus and attention, and that’s the cause more than anything else.” “
To a certain extent, it’s a fair assessment. One of the criticisms Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and to a lesser extent She-Hulk: Lawyer were the dodgy visual effects, which were well below the standard the MCU had set itself in its previous fare. Additionally, the number of MCU projects per year has tripled on average since the MCU’s inception with two movies. iron man And The incredible Hulkand no TV series in 2008 to three movies and three Disney+ series in 2022. Combined with productions from other studios, the VFX industry has been grappling with an unprecedented level of shots that have plagued overworked, stressed visual effects artists become.
However, it’s short-sighted at best for Iger to blame the MCU’s poor box office returns solely on television visual effects taxes. The truth is, the reasons Marvel movies have failed lately stretch well beyond the small screen, exposing troubling issues that the MCU should be addressing sooner rather than later.
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In the MCU, the more things change, the more they stay the same
Image via Walt Disney PicturesIf you look at the movie posters of the MCU films as a whole, you can see a similarity with a few exceptions. The main character stands front and center and walks forward – or, especially if you look at the posters Thor: Ragnarok, Black PantherAnd Avengers: Infinity War side by side, almost identical in appearance. That sameness extends beyond the promotional material to the films themselves: you introduce the hero, throw in a villain, a few funny scenes, close the film with an epic fight, repeat yourself, and then drop in a team here and there. To be fair, that’s a broad generalization given how the MCU has delivered some amazing moments (anyone to say they definitely knew Thanos). [Josh Brolin] “The film that would come out on top at the end of Infinity War is burning in the pants), but once audiences know what to expect it becomes all the more difficult to tell the films apart.
This leads directly to the next topic: expectations. The MCU’s “Infinity Saga” taught moviegoers that the films work together to create a grand ending, a la Avengers: Endgame. The Multiverse saga the MCU is currently in follows exactly the same path, with a series of films starring Kang (Jonathan Majors) as the “new Thanos” that will eventually end with the big event movie Avengers: Secret Wars in the year 2027. If you’re not really invested in the full storyline, why waste your time and money on the prequel movies when you can see the spectacle of all the heroes on screen fighting a common enemy at the same time? This becomes clearer when you consider that the original cast of the MCU is either dead (RIP, Iron Man [Robert Downey Jr.] and black widow [Scarlett Johansson]) or is otherwise gone (hey, Steve Rogers [Chris Evans]), save for a weird multiverse resurrection.
The MCU has too many new kids on offer
Image via Marvel StudiosWith few old MCU characters left, the future of the MCU lies with characters that the public doesn’t know to the same degree as a Captain America or Spider-Man. Even casual comic book fans probably didn’t know who Echo (Alaqua Cox) was before hawk eye, and now, with no significant screen time on that series, Echo has her own Disney+ series on board. Heart of steel (Dominique Thorne) is in a nearly identical situation. The argument would be that no one knew who the Guardians of the Galaxy were before their first film, but back then, unknown characters were a rarity rather than the norm, and audiences had an entire movie to fall in love with. Characters like Ironheart and Echo act more like quick introductions to get more output—and that output, oy vey. According to one report, the time it takes to watch each MCU movie and TV series is 6,787 minutes. Unless you’ve watched every single minute of every single MCU project, a movie like the upcoming MCU release The wonders has main characters that may be completely new to you.
Has the MCU progressed too far to rekindle its magic? Not in the slightest. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, the MCU’s biggest hit at a rock bottom, proved that a good story — especially a straight-forward, different white-hat/black-hat story that’s not mired in multiverse gibberish — still has the power, folks to be captivated. Should common sense indeed prevail over dollar signs, we are reducing the MCU output of both the film and television stands to restore the quality associated with the franchise, not only in the visual effects but also in the stories and characters. When they stop necessarily watching the Disney+ shows to understand what’s happening in the movies, and vice versa, they simplify an already overly complex narrative. If they insist on introducing relatively unknown characters, give them the time and dedication to let fans fall in love with them, as they did with Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) In Black widow. Better visual effects alone don’t sell movie tickets, Mr. Iger. MCU films, like every other film since the early days of the film industry, are successful because they offer the cinemagoer something special, something deeper.