Five Things About the Marvel Universe

If you're reading this, welcome to my very first test post. A version of this piece appeared on my blog yesterday and was emailed to exactly no one!

I got active on Threads again during the run of The Acolyte, because — by happenstance or design — the algorithm was being nice to me and I was seeing people actually being happy about that show, which differed from pretty much every other online space in which I saw reference to it. The good vibes continued through Marvel’s big announcement weekend 2 weekends ago, which (of course) couldn’t quite compare with that lightning-stricken night in 2019 when they announced Thor: Love & Thunder and the rest of Phase 4, but certainly didn’t lack for bombast.

A few things that have been on my mind, with regard to the MCU:

1. The Perfect Storm (not Johnny)

Most of the critical commentary on Phases 4 and 5 will generally align on the premise that the storytelling hasn’t been as good as it was in the prior phases. I don’t entirely hold with this idea, but certainly, the entertainment megacomplex known as Marvel Studios has faced three triangulated disasters that were not comparable to anything that hampered creative production in the prior phases.

The first is the most obvious and the one that probably gets the most play in reporting: the Jonathan Majors thing happened, sucking the lynchpin villain out of this sweep of story points. Not irreperable on its own, but I suspect that when coupled with the degree to which Quantumania underwhelmed and underperformed, may have reversed some internal thinking on the viability of Kang as a phase-spanning Big Bad.

(I also retain a pet theory that Kang wasn’t intended to be “the guy” anyway, so much as “the guy who gets us to the guy,” and that whatever happened in what was once titled The Kang Dynasty was always going to get us to Dr. Doom by Secret Wars anyway. I am now genuinely wondering how much of this month’s Downey reveal has been in play for a lot longer than is being reported.)

The second disaster is also reported on, but perhaps (like much of the pandemic itself) not in the full measure of its damage: Covid happened, and (former) Disney CEO Bob Chapek threw the hammer down on Disney+ production, which resulted in a bonkers 22-month timeframe in which audiences were called upon to absorb eight seasons of Marvel television and seven movies. There are a lot of pieces of that era of decisionmaking that I find questionable, but cadence is certainly top of the list.

(That said: who didn’t, in early 2021 as the pandemic had moved heartbreakingly into its second year, welcome a bit of Marvel levity on their home systems? WandaVision, Falcon, and Loki all felt like a breath of fresh air after a year of absolute shittiness and two years since Endgame, at least to my recollection.)

The third disaster doesn’t get mentioned much in this commentary at all, but really should be: Chadwick Boseman died, and a focal-point character on the level of an Iron Man or Captain America was removed from the saga. Boseman’s death is a devastating loss for a lot of reasons, but I’m surprised by how quickly fans have moved away from reckoning with what that did to both the story and fans’ engagement with the story.

2. Time To Market

Since the Marvel bubble burst last year, one of the most confounding things about all that’s followed simply comes down to production time: these movies and shows take a long time to make (years!), which means they are not and can not be responsive to market forces. Throw in one or two union strikes, and we’ll be seeing movies and shows well into 2025 that were fully along in production before Quantumania underperformed, tipping off the bubble-burst.

Which means the projects that have surfaced to answer the challenge of diminishing returns on Marvel are… weird.

Deadpool & Wolverine, a (phenomenally successful, as of this writing) R-rated comedy that doesn’t take place in the Marvel Universe. Captain America: Brave New World, a relaunch of the Cap franchise with a new star and supporting cast (which is therefore, absolutely, going to be hit by the same alt-right hatestorm that came for The Acolyte). Thunderbolts*, a team-up movie comprised, hilariously, of team members from all the Phase 4 projects that many viewers claim to have disliked or skipped entirely. Agatha All Along, a sequel to what was once a signature Disney+ success but has now, at least in the mainstream media narrative, been swept into a dustbin labelled “all of the Disney+ shows were bad.” Not exactly the starting lineup you’d be looking for to reboot the universe.

Of course, the real reboot of the universe will happen with Fanastic Four: First Steps (not literally), before taking its true form (literally) in Secret Wars, when I assume the X-Men timeline and the MCU timeline are going to get smooshed together into one new, “final” universe in which we’ll go forward. Those films, by the way, will be the first actual projects that will be purpose-built to answer the problems of Phases 4 and 5.

Some good news: as of the Comic Con presentation, at least, Marvel seems to have carved out an identity for each of the (movie) projects that might help them evade both the “Marvel stuff is all the same” snark from journalists, and to also slip the “I have to see everything in order to understand anything” mantra that seems to have infected the casual fanbase. Captain America is a stand-alone spy thriller; Thunderbolts* is a stand-alone team comedy; Fantastic Four is like if Matt Shakman was directing Star Trek, which he was going to do, until he got Fantastic Four. The path forward for the MCU might be demonstrating the differences between the properties, instead of the “it’s all connected” mega-storytelling of it all.

3. FOMO

One of the things that really gobsmacks me about the response to The Marvels — and there are a lot of such things, because that movie rules — is the premise that if one had not watched all of WandaVision (where Monica Rambeau is introduced) and Ms. Marvel (which does the same for Kamala), The Marvels is indecipherable.

On the face of it, the movie fully and intentionally gives audiences who aren’t familiar with those shows all the information they need in order to understand who these characters are, what powers they have, and what they’re like. The prevalence of the complaint, however, suggests that it didn’t work.

This makes me wonder if it’s less about whether audiences actually have the information they need in order to enjoy a movie, versus whether they feel like they are missing something. If it’s the latter, the MCU is going to have to work that much harder to undo all of the “it’s all connected” branding as they move further and further into the future.

There was a time when my friend Demetre and I could binge all of Phase One before going to see The Avengers. There was even a time, during the pandemic, when my pal Sabrina could catch up on all of Phases One, Two, and Three before we all went to see Shang-Chi together. Those days — especially if you count the TV shows, which clearly, Marvel currently kind of does not — are over.

Feelings trump reason on things like this. If audiences feel like they aren’t “getting it” when they go see a movie because of a core assumption that there’s a bunch of backstory and character building in shows and movies they haven’t seen, they aren’t going to be talked out of that feeling. They have to be felt out of that feeling. It’s going to be a significant, ongoing challenge.

4. No, But Seriously: Where’s The TV Strategy?

Look, rebuilding brand equity takes time, and the focus at Comic Con was clearly on the movies. Still: it was weird that Disney+ TV shows have evidently fallen completely off Marvel’s roadmap.

(Note: this post was written prior to D23, when the upcoming Disney+ slate for Marvel was, finally, teased.)

I am not poisoned on the premise of MCU TV. I think that on the whole, MCU TV has done exactly as advertised, and has been overall successful: two or three problematic projects (and one outright bad one), versus half a dozen memorable, interesting expansions of the range and storytelling of the Marvel Universe, including Loki, WandaVision, Moon Knight, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Ms. Marvel, and What If?

I also happen to think TV is exactly where I think Marvel should put the X-Men, although I know I’m going to get outvoted on that. Imagine for a moment, though, a new Avengers team being built in the movies while the week-to-week YA dramatics of Xavier’s school play out on TV, à la Wednesday or Star Trek: Prodigy. It would be a better format for the storytelling and it would turn Disney+ into a destination streaming platform in a way it hasn’t managed to be yet. Call me, Kevin.

Instead, we have an even stranger rack of unfinished television projects waiting to dribble out over the next few years — see above, re: time to market — which do nothing to establish Disney+ as anything other than a weird gulag where disjointed Marvel edge cases go to die. I’m as confident about Agatha All Along as anyone, but even I will own the fact that Ironheart, Marvel Zombies, Eyes of Wakanda and whatever is going on with Daredevil are going to make for some serious tonal whiplash… not to mention, no small amount of homework, since they’re all spinoffs or sequels to other shows and movies.

Fingers crossed. I think there’s a lot of room on TV to do Marvel storytelling in a different way, and I hope they keep trying to do it, but I suspect Disney’s overall mission statement — now that Iger’s back in charge — is going to be “back to the movies!” for both Marvel and Star Wars for the foreseeable future. We’ll see.

5. Doomsday

Finally, some good news: pivoting to Dr. Doom (if pivot they did!) for Avengers 5 was long in coming, but casting Downey in the role was genuine, straight-from-the-tap Feige brilliance.

It stabilizes the core pillar of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — the Avengers story, the overarching frame of it all — with huge brand recognition, huge audience affection, and an actor who is, let’s say, pretty good at this. That sense of stability, in light of pretty much everything above, is what has been missing. And with that stability, hopefully, comes a bit of room (and relief from audience / Wall Street gripes) to play around a bit more with the other things Marvel clearly wants to be doing, like continuing to diversify their hero lineup, and launching new types of teams (A-Force, anyone? Young Avengers, hello?) that can appeal to the people that this is all theoretically for: children and young people.

Here’s a funny thing: everyone who made the MCU what it is comes from Gen X, just like me. Arguably, Millennials and older Gen Zs made up its bumper crop audience for the first three phases; but, if kids are gonna keep going to Disneyland wearing Marvel masks, those kids are going to be Gen Alphas now. There will be a time for a nostalgia play for some of those Phase 1-3 heroes at some point — probably in the ’30s — but it ain’t here yet. For now, 8-10-year-olds need some identifiable iconography they can get excited about.

It wasn’t ever going to be Kang, but I can see it being Doom and the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. Everything’s pointing towards a big resurgence in the back half of this decade, and if it won’t quite be Endgame-sized, it might also be better if it isn’t: consistency and stable returns was always the secret to Marvel’s success, and that might be what they’re aiming themselves at now.