What's right and what's wrong with Marvel today?

It’s not much of a surprise that The Marvels didn’t fare so well at the domestic box office in its first weekend. Sure, it came in at No. 1 with $47 million, but that’s the lowest opening of any film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Factor in the $41.4 million it made internationally, and that’s still less than $90 million total—a far cry from the film’s reported $275 million budget, and light years removed from Captain Marvel’s $456.7 million worldwide opening weekend.

It’s hard to blame The Marvels’ lack of success solely on the quality of the film. Even Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, which was a lot less fun than The Marvels, earned $106 million domestically and $225 million internationally in its opening weekend. And don’t give us that crap about women-led superhero films not appealing to a wide audience—Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman blew that stupid argument out of the water. Instead, The Marvels’ lackluster debut points to a growing problem with the MCU: call it superhero fatigue, call it a decline in quality, call it whatever you want, but fans just seem less interested in what Marvel has to offer. To understand why that is, we asked A.V. Club staffers to share their thoughts on the current and future state of the MCU in our roundtable.

Where does the MCU stand right now?

Sam Barsanti: I think the MCU is stuck in a weird transitional period … What sports teams call a “rebuilding year,” except it’s been going on for a while. It needs to find (and clearly express) a reason to exist, like Thanos hunting for the Infinity Stones, that is leading to a definite place with a definite purpose. Either that or it needs to completely abandon any big plans and never again build up to one big thing unless it happens organically.

Mary Kate Carr: I do think the MCU is in decline, and that’s based on my own feelings about their recent output rather than viewership or box office numbers (even if those are also declining). There are a lot of reasons we can cite for it, but for me, it’s just that the current “Avengers” lineup, such as it is, isn’t as compelling or exciting as the original roster. I hopped on the MCU bandwagon around Winter Soldier, and the franchise just had momentum at that point; even the less-strong entries felt like solid building blocks for the “Infinity Saga.” But the cracks were already showing by Endgame, which was super satisfying for fans but not a great film on its own, with a too-sprawling scope and an overall muddy CGI mess of a visual landscape.

Saloni Gajjar: Unfortunately, Marvel is a major reason we’re going through superhero franchise fatigue. There’s no denying it. They saw the massive, well-deserved success of everything that led up to Avengers: Endgame and were in a rush to replicate it, resulting in a dwindling of quality for the films and TV shows despite a talented cast and crew. Marvel is in a bit of a bind right now by trying too hard to connect everything, which makes the MCU not addressing some stuff (Eternals, Shang-Chi, Moon Knight) even weirder. Like what’s going on exactly? No one seems to know!

It also didn’t help to announce a ton of highly anticipated projects like X-Men, Blade, and The Fantastic Four without a plan. Whatever ideas they did have got delayed because of the pandemic followed by the strikes. Still, I don’t have much faith in any contingencies. In retrospect, Kevin Feige should’ve taken a longer beat to figure out the next steps. And more crucially, they should’ve spent time developing projects individually instead of making it all about the grand scheme of the MCU. The urgency to put out content (and make money) led to the downfall. As much as I’m invested and will most likely keep watching what they churn out, the MCU stands to lose quite a bit of momentum right now.

William Hughes: I’ve always been an a la carte Marvel viewer, skipping those projects that didn’t have anything overtly appealing to them (or which my wife, a more completionist fan, didn’t want a plus-one for). But the pickings on the cart, so to speak, have certainly gotten more slim over the last few years: Before signing on to review this latest season of Loki, the last Marvel project I approached as a civilian, so to speak, was Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, and that was mostly because I just like giving Sam Raimi my money. (Ignore the shoddy way it treats the excellent WandaVision, another one of my oh-so-picky picks, and Raimi’s flick is just enough of a Sam Raimi movie to be a genuine blast.) On that same note, I consider it a major strength of Loki’s recent finale that it pays almost no lip service to the wider MCU (outside of a brief allusion to Ant-Man 3), freeing itself from an endless web of references and advertisements for other shows and movies I’m never going to watch.

So it’s with very little skin in the game that I put forward the not especially controversial idea that the MCU, as a larger-scale storytelling project, is basically spent. Even as a fair-weather fan, the run from Iron Man to Endgame was a fascinating thing to watch, unprecedented in modern media. But it’s also the sort of trick that maybe only works because it was unprecedented, a sort of multi-billion-dollar novelty act—and only for a brand that has successfully captured so much of the public attention that it can successfully demand millions of people keep track of all its moving parts. That momentum’s not coming back for anybody, I think, Marvel included. The studio will still make good, or at least satisfying, movies from time to time. But the magic trick is over.

What’s the next MCU project you’re actually excited for?

MKC: I’m still excited to see The Marvels, but in the past I’d be rushing to see an MCU film opening weekend, and this one I’m not feeling the rush. Beyond that, I can’t say I’m actively excited for any new Marvel project. The television shows have become too much to keep up with, and the film slate has a lot of issues that I feel personally skeptical of (dubious politics in Captain America: Brave New World, an uninspired heroes lineup for Thunderbolts, the Jonathan Majors of it all in Kang Dynasty). Everything in between has become a shrug.

SG: Now that I’ve seen The Marvels, I will honestly say I’m looking forward to Iman Vellani becoming the next MCU ruler. She has exactly the right kind of on-screen energy, charisma, and talent that they need; a real breath of fresh air. Spoiler alert: Kamala Khan is clearly bringing heroes like Kate Bishop and Cassie Lang to form the Young Avengers, so I wouldn’t mind her becoming the next big unifier here. They’re going to need it.

In terms of actual upcoming projects, I’m a sucker, so I’m excited for Echo based on the trailer alone. And I’m excited for Deadpool 3 because I love X-Men stuff the most, so I’m excited to see Wolverine. We’ll see how both of those go. I was waiting with bated breath for Daredevil: Born Again but it doesn’t seem to be in good shape right now. I hope that changes. And I don’t even want to think about Phase 6 at the moment, to be honest. Mostly, I’m excited to see if and when they figure a way out for all their elements to make sense together.

SB: The next thing I’m excited for would’ve been Daredevil: Born Again, as Hornhead is my favorite comic book character by a wide margin, but knowing that’s having so many issues behind the scenes spoils the fun a bit. I liked Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop, so I guess I’m looking forward to whenever there’s more of her. You’ll notice that that’s not a tangible thing, which seems like a problem.

How has your relationship with the MCU changed?

SG: Folks, we’ve been on quite a rollercoaster with the MCU, huh? For the most part, I’ve loved everything about it, but it’s getting tiresome now to see the same type of story, the same type of CGI fest, the same type of third act. I think what I appreciated the most was seeing how the creators of Marvel projects challenged the genre while adapting the comics. The Winter Soldier, Black Panther, etc. are great examples. At this point, I’m just kind of wandering along with them, hoping to be wowed again.

SB: This year I made a conscious decision to completely skip a Marvel movie for the first time since the launch of the MCU, both because I was bored by the concept and because it had too many problematic elements (I’ll let everyone guess what I’m referring to!). I was someone who figured that The Avengers was the best thing I had ever seen 10 years ago, and now I’m the kind of person who reads spoilers for the stinger and will then watch every movie/show when they’re free on Disney+—well, every movie/show except for a specific recent one.

MKC: I’ve always had a soft spot for superheroes, but Winter Soldier made me really excited about the kind of varied storytelling that Marvel could pull off. It felt like the comic books, how an individual title could be tonally completely different from the team stories but still have the characters come together in fun ways. Between that film and Thor: Ragnarok, it felt like Marvel Studios was genuinely attracting cool new talent and letting filmmakers put their own stamps on the films. These days, I am more in the camp that Marvel is wasting years’ worth of time of some of our brightest new cinematic talents, churning these artists out and making them complacent at best and defeated at worst. The stories themselves have become bloated, and visually less fun to watch. When I think back on the original Avengers movie, despite its faults, it had a campy comic book colorfulness to it that was joyful to watch. I miss that.

Is there anything that’s actually working for Marvel right now? What’s not working?

SG: What’s working: Iman freaking Vellani, as I said. She immediately stood out after Tom Holland as the perfect bit of casting in recent years in Ms. Marvel, and this proves true in The Marvels, too. I do think they’ve got an amazing roundup of actors for their upcoming stuff (Julia Louis Dreyfuss, Steven Yeun, Florence Pugh, Mahershala Ali!). It’s the material that’s the problem.

What’s not working: Well, the material. The pace at which they threw mediocre stuff at us. There’s so much focus on interconnected universes, and how they’ll fold in mutants and F4, that most of the scripts lack heart. Hopefully that changes. Not to mention the Jonathan Majors problem, which so far doesn’t seem to have a solution (he’s replaceable, that’s all I’ll say).

SB: I’ll say that Kang, as a concept, isn’t working for me at all. He Who Remains was a compelling villain in Loki, but nothing since then has really lived up to it (and Victor Timely sucks). I’ve read some good Kang stories in the comics, but he’s always been a third-tier villain to me. I wouldn’t complain if they threw out all of their plans and introduced Dr. Doom or just made the Kingpin the main villain. Speaking of, I’m biased in favor of anything related to Daredevil, but Disney’s decision to bank on Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk is something out of Marvel Studios I’ve consistently enjoyed over the past couple of years.

MKC: I still think Kevin Feige is smart for looking towards interesting indie filmmakers as possible stewards of his tentpole films, but maybe it’s too much to rest on the shoulders of inexperienced directors? Or maybe, the studio needs to back off a bit, worry less about the whole interconnected nature of the universe where every movie is a commercial for the next movie, and get back to making solid, standalone character pieces that draw on great comic book storylines. Then see how those stories can intersect. That worked before, and it can probably work again. But the VFX issue and the lack of an exciting core cast of Avengers really has to be solved. (And maybe it’ll be solved by being X-Men instead.)