The Fall of the MCU

Yes, I know, I bang on about Marvel films far too much. This is to do with my past and writing about the MCU scratches an itch. However, it seems that my analytical approach to all things Marvel isn't that unique, in fact it's becoming ubiquitous. There are more negative articles out there in media land than there are positive ones. The sport of MCU Bashing is alive and well and not the exclusive property of white virgin men with massive chips on their shoulders and small dicks in their trousers...

The news that Jonathan Majors has been arrested on suspicion of some nasty domestic violence towards a friend will be sending worrying signals all the way to the top of Disney. Majors is the next big villain; he is Kang the Conqueror; there's even an Avengers film with his name on it. Obviously, this might come to nothing; Majors' star is rising almost weekly and this might be a storm in a teacup or even something blown up by the press - it's not like they're not playing to their own agendas; however, talk is he was due to appear in at least three MCU films before 2025's Kang Dynasty, which makes sense if he's the Big Bad of Phase Five. So what if the current allegations turn into facts? What then for the MCU? Especially given that more and more information about 'sociopath' Majors is surfacing almost hourly at the moment.

Putting Kang to one side, the MCU has a problem already without this adding to it. The last four films have been 'flops' in many ways - yes they've made a lot at the box office, but critically all of them have been slagged off by the press and the fans. Thor: Love & Thunder - a comedy about lost loves and cancer - has the lowest ever score, on IMDB (6.3) and Rotten Tomatoes for a Marvel film and Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania is 0.1 above it but has been on release for considerably less time. Wank Ada Forever sits at 6.7 and the Dr Strange sequel has a 6.9 rating but deserves so much less. Critical acclaim might not mean much to Disney, but if it starts impacting on box office takings then expect 'consolidation' and changes to the schedule. Incidentally, Quantumania ranks the same as Black Widow in takings and that was Marvel's first post-pandemic release with cinemas all half empty.

The last four MCU films have largely been pants and surely Kevin Feige and his team must be looking at the reactions and thinking that something needs to change - especially in light of what has now happened with Majors. How the chief of the MCU could stand there and tell people how important Quantumania is to the next phase of Marvel stories only for it to wander around for two hours before going back to normal with no changes at all - even the post credit scenes garnered laughter rather than awe. To be fair, as I haven't seen it I can only report on what I've read, but it was not the only part of the film to get unintentional guffaws from the audience... Can you say Modok? 

Feige is in the firing line here; one of his execs has already been sacrificed. That was Victoria Alonso, who many feel was responsible for Marvel's more [ahem] ... woke ... approach to films and TV. However Alonso has been involved with the company since Iron Man in 2008 and the way corporate USA tends to work, she will have been sacrificed to keep someone else in their job. No one knows for sure why the Argentinean-born executive has parted with the company, or even whose decision it was for her to go, but at an uncertain time this looks a bit fishy.

It's not like the TV shows have helped; despite its renewal, Ms Marvel was watched by less people than any other MCU show - no wonder there are massive concerns about the Marvels film, so much so it's been delayed until November - and there's a lot of hope resting on Secret Invasion, which does look good but that's based on trailers and all MCU trailers fail to really encapsulate how bad the finished product can be. She-Hulk is a subject all on its own and Moon Knight pissed more people off than it pleased.

What about the forthcoming Echo? The Hawkeye spin-off character who is disabled was hardly met with universal positivity; the character was deemed as surplus to requirements in Hawkeye by most reviews, yet Marvel/Disney's push for diversity and inclusivity saw a series fast tracked without wondering if it would appeal to the fans. 

It's not just the fact these films and TV shows have all had shit stories, they're also jam-packed with really substandard special effects and far too much comedy, while the TV series have all largely followed a similar pattern, have been low on quality, poor on story, and most have been dependant on existing ideas; only Moon Knight tried to do something differently and in the process destroyed a premise that the MCU had pretty much lived by - that Asgardians were not really Gods, but long-lived super powerful aliens and actual 'gods' didn't exist. Introducing Egyptian gods as actual supreme beings has muddied the overall story and Thor: Flub & Blunder did nothing but make the situation worse. It's like the MCU is rewriting itself on a daily basis and ignoring the past.

This summer if Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 and Secret Invasion are not massive hits then the coming couple of years will need some serious work putting into them to save the MCU. And now they have to deal with one of their major stars being involved in a domestic violence case; could it get any worse?

Actually it could. The moving of Marvels back to November instead of late summer is far more important than you can imagine; films are rarely delayed for positive reasons. There is still absolutely no details about the Fantastic Four film; it's due to start filming in 2024 for a spring 2025 release. It has had at least three different directors linked with it, several script writers and no one has even been cast in any of the major roles and the one thing we had hints at was that Jonathan Majors would be playing a Kang variant in it - because Kang was a constant thorn in both the FF and the Avengers sides back in comic days. 

According to reports, Kit Harrington hasn't been spoken to about the Black Knight, has not been told anything about an Eternals sequel and is not going to feature in Blade despite the character speaking to him in the post credits scene of Eternals. Gemma Chan was asked about reprising her role from the film and said none of her team has heard anything from Marvel since the film finished promotion duties. Some websites are claiming that filming on the new Captain America film has been beset with script problems and also problems with actors - this is due in fourteen months and is nowhere near finished. 

If problems with the films weren't enough; the news that Agatha Harkness: Coven of Chaos is likely to be an 8 part series with a 'musical theme' was greeted with stunned silence and a wee bit of anger and that the next Daredevil series, Born Again, is likely to feature a slightly different Daredevil than the one we saw in the Netflix series. It's still going to be Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio, but it'll be an MCU DD and Kingpin not the Netflix versions, which is suggesting to some critics that it will be very PG rated and possibly have things like humour and characters with outlandish super powers. The sense of disquiet among the fan base is palpable and Marvel must be aware of this and must be aware that while they continue to flood the market with substandard product they enter the law of diminishing returns. 

There is also the suggestion that Disney wants to curtail Marvel product, not expand on it, which suggests more standalone films (which might not be a bad thing) and less interaction, because there has been a sense that they're wanting to create their own different compartments in the universe to avoid problematic questions like: what were you doing while Thanos was laying waste to the planet? 

Here's another wrinkle, that may or may not have anything to do with the MCU. The new Captain Marvel comic book has been shelved before it comes out; it seems that the Carol Danvers Captain Marvel still has far reaching problems; far more complex than a bunch of sexless fanboy fascists complaining about the actress. 

And then there's the X-Men problem, which seems to have been solved with the news there is going to be a new X-Men cartoon called X-Men 97 which will be a direct follow up to the original animated series that ran between 1992 and 1997. Other than this and the supposed Logan/Wolverine role in Deadpool 3 there has been very little talk about how Marvel is going to use mutants and the smart money is they won't. They might introduce certain mutants into the MCU, but it will be a slow process, because insiders at Marvel suggest 2030 at the earliest for an X film or TV series, although a 'version' of the X-Men may well appear in Avengers: Secret Wars, which, some have suggested, will feature superhero variants from different universes fighting each other, but given the nature of that kind of film, it is unlikely to be very in-depth (more a box ticking exercise for fan boys). 

Oh and let's not forget the not that well publicised problems Marvel/Disney has had with the companies that have produced their CGI. The company has a growing reputation for being someone you don't want to work for, especially if you're a CGI artist. You end up overworked, stressed out and pressurised to get product out and the quality threshold seems to drop and that has been reflected in recent films which have had absolutely shoddy CGI and special effects. Then there's She-Hulk which looked awful, was badly received and that reception wasn't just from a bunch of Incels who wanted another female target to pick on; She-Hulk was a bad call in that format. Yes, it worked in 1991 when John Byrne turned the comic on its head by making it a breaking-the-fourth wall oddity, but everything about this series was wrong from the second episode on (and even the first episode struggles to hold up to any scrutiny, it's just not as cringeworthy). 

Even Mark Ruffalo has 'gone on record' suggesting the entire Marvel franchise is in trouble; this echoed the words of Dave Bautista, who has left Marvel and will not return to his role as Drax the Destroyer (further suggesting that Drax will die in GotGv3), who was extremely scathing about the entire company and the way it treats everyone who isn't an executive. Oh and let's not forget the aforementioned Marvels which has been described by one person involved in it as 'a shit show', Brie Larson is extremely unhappy about the dropping of the Captain Marvel 2 moniker and there has been several major rewrites on the film and it's still in post-production and still beset with issues. Some people inside Marvel have suggested this film might yet end up being cancelled and that it could make up the basis for the next Ms Marvel series (which was green lit recently after speculation it wouldn't happen). The bottom line with this film is the 'main' character is one of the most contentious in the MCU's history and she is joined by a minor supporting character from WandaVision (albeit linked to the first film) and Ms Marvel, the lowest viewed show from the MCU - it has busted flush written all over it...

The most outlandish 'theory' I've seen so far is that the reason there has been no release date announcement for Secret Invasion is because Marvel/Disney are trying to see if it can be edited into two Nick Fury feature films, with some added guest stars/superheroes, to be released in November and then February 2024. Just to throw another wrinkle in, Blade has been so plagued by troubles, reshoots and special effects problems it has already been shuffled around in the schedules; Mahershala Ali is not happy with the product and has hinted this might his only outing as the character - so it begs the question, why bother to resurrect an already failed idea into a universe it clearly doesn't belong to?

In fact, there's little to be optimistic about. Marvel created a jumping off point with Avengers: Endgame and as a result it has been busy throwing shit against a wall to see how much of it will stick while trying to convince us they had a coherent plan all along. None of the Phase 4 films have been truly any good, some of them have been misjudged disasters and it failed magnificently at trying to convey the point it was trying to get across which is the MCU is expanding and it's time to be introduced to the newer components. 

Let's also look back for a second: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans and Scarlet Johansson are all gone; the more years that pass the more ridiculous it would be to bring them back in character, but Marvel is missing the corner stones of it's original shared universe. Iron Man, the original Captain America and the Black Widow were the thread that held most of the Phases 1-3 together and were massively important in Phase 4; without them you have nothing. Hawkeye doesn't warrant a film, the Hulk is still mired in contractual problems with Universal and Thor has steadily gone from great character to waste of time. They don't own enough of Spider-Man to make him 'a leader' and none of the rest of the MCU has what the missing heroes had; even recasting these characters with younger actors in a rebooted MCU isn't going to change the fact that people are moving on from this kind of superhero movie this frequently. Maybe a big blockbuster Marvel film every year might work for them, but it's not the profit Disney will want and as we all know we live in a world where profit for the shareholders is more important than anything else.