The first step, they say, is admitting you have a problem. And at the very least, Marvel Studios has done that. The company responsible for the most commercially successful film franchise of all time (the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU) is now half a decade deep into – depending who you ask – either a gluey creative slump or terminal decline. Their latest film, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, follows a run of films that either floundered at the box office (this year’s well-received Thunderbolts*), received a drubbing from critics (Thor: Love and Thunder), or, in several cases, both (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania; Captain America: Brave New World). The franchise that had spent years printing its own money now finds itself running out of ink cartridges.
Such is the obviousness of Marvel’s woes that the company has no choice but to address them. Over the weekend, Kevin Feige – the studio’s head honcho and perhaps the most famous working producer in Hollywood – spoke with The Hollywood Reporter, offering fresh details about Marvel’s trajectory, and the reasons for its lapse. Much of what he says is, broadly speaking, true. But the real problem lies in what remains unacknowledged.
It’s self-evidently true, for instance, that the franchise has been over-saturating the market. Since Avengers: Endgame in 2019 – Marvel Studios’ commercial and critical apex, which served as a grand narrative climax – there have been 102 hours of MCU content released: 15 movies – counting the Fantastic Four’s new outing – and an unending flow of streaming series. “That’s too much,” Feige says. And it is. You would, realistically, need to be a Marvel obsessive to keep up with all the franchise’s myriad limbs – a fact that runs counter to the fundamental basis of the MCU’s success. Marvel made its billions by broadening the appeal of comic-book storytelling, making it as accessible as possible.
On this, and a number of other points, Feige is wise to Marvel’s failings. He says films such as The Marvels and Thunderbolts* suffered because audiences thought, rightly or wrongly, they would need to have watched particular streaming series to understand the plot. True. He says the films are too expensive, and the studio is now “grinding down” budgets by as much as a third. He speaks about Kang, the character set up to be the overarching villain of the current multi-year MCU arc. Introduced in the streaming series Loki, Kang was played by Jonathan Majors, but after the actor was found guilty of assault and harassment, he was written out, his role in the two forthcoming Avengers films replaced by Robert Downey Jr’s Doctor Doom. Feige says that Marvel realised Kang wasn’t working even before Majors’ downfall; this is also true.
But in the roundtable interview with American press outlets, there is no acknowledgement of the other glaring flaws with Marvel’s grand strategy. Feige says that Avengers: Doomsday – a film that has already been shooting for three months – still doesn’t have a finished script, and is being added to on the fly. There is no consideration afforded to the widespread criticisms of Marvel’s visual style (or lack thereof), from the shoddy CGI that invited ridicule towards Thor: Love and Thunder to the flat, lifeless colour grading and workmanlike camera setups that pervade the MCU filmography.
Also unmentioned are the pitfalls of Marvel’s chosen storyline-of-the-moment: the so-called multiverse. Since Endgame, the majority of MCU properties have involved the idea of parallel, interconnected universes, a plot conceit that has allowed them to bring in bygone superhero stars (Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men; Patrick Stewart’s Professor X; Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine) to frolic with the younger breeds. The fact is, when the idea is strung out over a run of sequels – as is the case with the ongoing “Multiverse Saga”, spanning 2021’s WandaVision to Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027 – it becomes inherently frustrating. On a very basic level, it can be hard to follow. Even if you can follow it, it becomes a narrative dead end: when every character exists infinitely, across infinite universes, the action ceases to have proper stakes.
It’s unhelpful, perhaps, that some of Marvel’s most egregiously bad films have also been their most lucrative. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) are perhaps the MCU’s most conceptually rotten entries – cynical, artless attempts to plumb nostalgia from cameo appearances. Between them, they grossed well over $3bn, and, judging by the mammoth, nostalgia-crammed cast list for the new Avengers outing, seem to have provided Marvel with the blueprint for the future.
At the very least, Feige’s comments are welcome confirmation that Marvel can’t keep going on like it has. The studio’s dominance of blockbuster cinema was bad enough when everyone was actually enjoying what they put out. When even diehard fans are bemoaning the drop in quality, you have to wonder what anyone is getting out of it. But admitting the problem is only part of the remedy. Understanding it – that’s another matter.
