After more than a decade of dominating box-office records with consecutive multibillion-dollar runs, Marvel is losing steam both creatively and critically. After reaching a landmark success with “Avengers: Endgame,” Marvel’s target demographic grew to have a far more jaded outlook on this franchise following its widely derided fourth phase. But how can that be when it’s scarcely been half-a-decade since they were on top of the world?
Though diamonds in the rough are keeping the franchise afloat, such as the recently released second season of “Loki,” the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has been limping in recent years. Already off to a rough start with the mixed reception of “Ant Man and The Wasp: Quantumania,” the start of Marvel’s fifth phase of live-action projects has also recently gained the distinction of being the first Marvel Studios production in 16 years to have Razzy Award nominations.
“Ant Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” has been nominated for a grand total of four awards for Worst Supporting Actor for both Michael Douglass and Bill Murray, as well as director Peyton Reed for Worst Director and the film itself is a heavy contender for Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off, or Sequel. This is notable because while there have been movies nominated for the Razzies based on Marvel properties that have been produced by other film studios such as Sony and Lionsgate, this is the first movie produced as part of the seemingly untouchable MCU to have earned a nomination for an infamous Golden Raspberry.
But what about the box-office impact of the film? Sure, a movie is judged on the quality of its work, but in the eyes of many corporate enterprises, success doesn’t come from the ratings they receive, but rather the money flowing in from ticket sales and streaming figures.
Following the mammoth success of “Avengers: Infinity War,” Marvel was raking in an exorbitant amount of wealth in the box-office, with the subsequent film, “Captain Marvel,” grossing over a bmillion dollars worldwide during its release. However, whereas its predecessor had soared to great financial heights, “The Marvels” has made only the barest fraction of that despite featuring the same creative talent, grossing only a little more than 200 million dollars in 2023. Whereas “Captain Marvel” was flying high off of Avengers’ success, “The Marvels” was shot dead in the water financially.
One of the more derided aspects of the most recent batch of Marvel content is that, despite the serious undertones of some of these movies’ plots, there is a serious issue with immersion due to jarring tonal shifts and the overall way they implement humor.
While Marvel has, in the past, found a great deal of success by employing humor and witty dialogue in its works and not taking its concept as seriously, such as projects such as Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Trilogy,” there was always a majority of scenes in which the plot was treated with a sense of weight. The struggles that the characters underwent were not shrugged off and distilled with a poorly-timed quip to take the audience out of the moment. During the MCU’s infancy, moments of levity were used to help provide a sense of relief from the tension of the movie’s plot while also supporting character development. Now, humor is fired off from the hip at a moment’s notice just to force a cheap laugh from the audience at the expense of characterization and narrative weight.
When the news first broke that a slew of mainstream directors found the popularity of Marvel at the time to be concerning and a potential detriment to the production of quality cinema, many fans and actors affiliated with the films were in an uproar. Notable director, Martin Scorsese, stated,“closer to theme parks than they are to movies,” a sentiment that many fans have begun agreeing with in recent years. In the rear-view were the days of deep emotion-driven storytelling, where the CGI spectacle hadn’t yet drowned out the true heart put into a film’s script. Where Marvel’s concept of an interconnected film universe had once been regarded as ground-breaking for filmmaking, now they are seen as having broken the ground for other films to stand on in a market catered to the Marvel formula.
But the question remains: is there a way to undo all of this for Marvel? Is there a way, as The Avengers had done in “Avengers: Endgame,” to undo the unfathomable losses they had suffered in the preceding movie? Undo the snap and bring back the fanbase? Is the superhero genre doomed to die out and revert back to its lowbrow underground state as it had been before the late-‘90s?
One of the chief reasons why the Marvel Cinematic Universe took off as it did was the way it broke away from the superhero tropes of the time. The stoic heroes invested in their own stories with utmost seriousness, even in films that were filled with campy elements, and obsessed with secret identities were thrown to the wayside when Robert Downey Jr. debuted as “Iron Man,” backed by Jon Favreu’s direction and visual style. Where “Iron Man” and shows like “Daredevil” on Netflix broke new ground by subverting the expected tropes of superhero media in the early 2010s,, breaking the recent tropes the MCU cemented could help foster growth and generate new life for these next few films.
In spite of the general outcry of superhero fatigue, there are still films in the genre that receive acclaim for the genuine talent put into them Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” and the “Spider-Verse” series captivated audiences with their attention to atmosphere and artistic vision unhampered by overwhelming restriction. But, above all else, they focus on telling their own stories first and foremost over prioritizing the set-up work for the next dozen films.
Should Marvel follow suit? Absolutely they should, because why prioritize the set-up work in your movie if that movie’s already causing the audience to change the channel?
