Is Marvel Fatigue finally setting in?

With Marvel’s latest release disappointing both critically and commercially Josh looks into the health of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Credit: Disney

In 1996 Marvel, the company behind today’s hugely successful Marvel Cinematic Universe, filed for bankruptcy. As a result of this, many of the film rights of their biggest characters were sold to rival companies such as Sony Pictures who bought the rights to Spider-Man. Interestingly, Sony was offered the rights to the rest of Marvel's characters but reportedly turned them down due to 'nobody caring about characters other than Spider-Man'.

In 2008 more than a decade on from their bankruptcy, but still struggling with funding, Marvel embarked on the risky venture of building the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or the MCU, out of the characters that 'no one cares about'.

Starting with ‘Iron Man’, starring Robert Downey Jr. and directed by Jon Favreau, Marvel have crafted the most profitable and successful film franchise in the world.

Image credit: Disney

As of June 2022, the MCU is said to have grossed $26.6 billion, with the second highest grossing franchise 'Star Wars' having under half of that profit with a total gross of $10.32 billion. But, despite the story of rags to riches and the boasts of incredible box office revenue, there seems to be a growing disconnect between Marvel and its audience; so 15 years on from Iron Man, are people finally getting bored of the MCU?

A common complaint by fans of the superhero genre as a whole is that there's just too much content. "I find the superhero market to be too saturated these days. Where marvel used to be pioneers in this genre their films now feel generic and relying on fan service or shock to draw in audiences. With low stakes and lack of character development the stories feel devoid of joy" says Talia Burrell, a casual fan of the MCU.

Talia isn't the only one who feels this way. Aaron Jones, an MCU fanatic who is currently in the process of re-watching each of the films expressed a similar concern. He says, "I think people are getting tired of the MCU very quickly. It’s showing in the box office of the newly-released movies and the viewership of the Disney+ shows. I think people just can’t be bothered to watch all of the MCU media, especially when there’s so much in different forms. There’s the movies, TV shows and now special presentation things like Werewolf by Night. At this point, there’s so much to watch; I just think keeping up with it all is becoming more of a chore for a lot of people, especially when the overall quality of MCU projects is decreasing”.

Interestingly both fans mentioned similar gripes, there being too much content to consume and an overall decrease in the quality of MCU projects. The second issue is not unique to Aaron and Talia, a quick glance at Marvel Studios' Metacritic page tells a similar story. Marvel breaks the chapters of their cinematic universe up into 'phases'; by looking at critic reviews on Metacritic and averaging the scores of Marvel’s previous phase, which included ‘Avengers Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’, has an average of 72, a positive score by Metacritic's grading system. However, the recent slate of films following that ‘phase’ only has an average of 61, over a ten point drop, indicating that the drop in quality of the films is something both moviegoers and critics are picking up on.

But why the sudden drop in quality? As someone who's watched from the beginning Aaron has a theory,"I think recent Marvel movies are suffering from a lack of thought by being rushed out to fit Marvel’s four-movies-a-year schedule. I think the storytelling in recent Marvel movies can seem very rushed and incohesive as Marvel is trying to spread out too far too fast”. Marvel’s rate at which movies have been releasing has definitely been increasing; from 2013 to 2016 Marvel only released two films each year, however that number increased to three per year in 2017. However in 2021 alone Marvel released ‘Black Widow’', ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’, ‘Eternals’ and ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ and from 2024 onwards Marvel plans to consistently release four films a year. Of course, none of this takes into account the MCU's expansion into the TV show market.

"I think there are good and bad marvel shows, more bad than good. I really enjoyed ‘Moon Knight’ and ‘Loki’, I found the rest kinda mediocre. I don’t think the implementation of shows works in the MCU, as they differ from movies in terms of pacing and storytelling" says Aaron, who continues by saying "I think the MCU should stay as movies so it’s consistent and easier to consume for people who watch to stay caught up". In 2021 Marvel released five TV shows alongside the four films mentioned above, thats almost a show every 2 months and with each having an episode count of 6 or 9 episodes on a weekly release schedule, the content stretches out to be almost constant for the year of 2021 which is a lot for anyone to consume.

However, the race for constant content has its toll on the creators as well, although it's already been suggested by Aaron that the constant releases is resulting in rushed products, there's also been trouble at Marvels VFX studios with employees reporting being overworked and burnt out. Despite all this, Marvel’s slate of shows doesn’t seem to be making a dent in the streaming world.

According to statistics released by Nielsen, the most watched superhero program of 2022 was none other than ‘The Boys’'; a show that mocks the superhero genre by turning it on its head and making the superheroes the villains.

Image Credit: Amazon

The only other superhero show to make it onto Nielsen’s list was ‘The Umbrella Academy’; another superhero show that defies genre norms. In fact, none of the MCU shows even make it onto Nielsen’s top 15.

However, it's all well and good talking about critic reviews, fan perceptions and streaming statistics, but at the end of the day the MCU is a movie franchise and movies are a money making business. Regardless of how many people on the internet complain about bad story telling or poor quality VFX, the only thing that truly matters to movie executives is box office revenue, so how is the MCU doing? Although there was a slump in box office revenue during the pandemic, for obvious reasons, some of the more recent films performed relatively well. ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ made $955 million while ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ made $760 million, both of which received mixed reviews from fans and critics alike.

However, the MCU's most recent release, ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’, is not doing so well and, with no pandemic to blame for its box office shortcomings, it looks like the lower quality offerings from the recent MCU might be starting to catch up with them. As of the time of writing ‘Quantumania’ has made $470 million in six weeks and current projections show that it is unlikely to break even on its budget or surpass the revenue of the previous two ‘Ant-Man’ films, which it actually outperformed on its opening weekend.

The trailers and pre-release interviews for ‘Quantumania’ largely focused around the film’s villain ‘Kang the Conquerer’ who is intended to be the MCU's overarching villain going forward, similar to Josh Brolin’s 'Thanos' in the earlier films. However, with tumbling review scores, poorer box office performances and Kang's actor, Jonathan Majors, being arrested recently the trouble for the MCU seems to be mounting up. However, the general consensus seems to be something Aaron mentioned earlier on, people do seem to just be "getting tired of the MCU very quickly".