With the initial hype of the Marvel hit “Deadpool and Wolverine” sputtering out, we’re left to figure out what about this movie made it so much more enjoyable than recent Marvel films.
This campy and outrageous movie is an example of the continued interest in more mature and R-rated movies Marvel has previously been known to distance itself from, but even with the smaller audience, it has grossed over $1 billion, and become the highest-earning R-rated movie ever. So thinking about Marvel and more specifically the Marvel Cinematic Universe, why has a Deadpool/ X-Men movie done better at the box office than any Phase 4 movie? (Excluding the Spiderman movie “No Way Home”) What does that tell us about the audience and the new stories of Phase 4?
The real question is what happened to the MCU? With Phase 4 about to enter its fourth year of activity, why is there so little to show for it? I have made three main points as to why I believe the MCU has been so disappointing.
- In the wake of Phase 3, there has been an overall lack of direction and creativity in the stories, Marvel has been putting out.
- Marvel has been putting out a high volume of media, especially seen in the many Disney + mini-series, making these stories sometimes feel rushed or completely unwatchable. This often leads to a higher bar of knowledge needed to watch and understand a typical blockbuster release.
- The core cast the audience has bonded to has mostly been retired, and new characters are struggling to build interest.
LACK OF DIRECTION
“Deadpool and Wolverine” is even a bit of a cash grab, though that is part of the joke of the movie, a random team-up is very Deadpool and the love of this movie and the overall Deadpool franchise is understandable from a growing disillusioned audience. Seeing a movie that can not only poke fun at itself but also at Marvel as a whole is a cathartic experience. The jokes are more than sarcastic snipes from Iron Man wannabes or screaming goats. The marketing didn’t take itself too seriously, the Actors Ryan Renolds as Deadpool and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine are beloved and familiar to audiences. Taking the more serious Wolverine into a Deadpool movie was a fresh spin and helped make the Deadpool trilogy not feel so one note, and even left people wanting more.
These new movies don’t have a larger story they seem to be building toward. After “Endgame,” some of the very best Phase 4 media was building off of those stories. “Wandavision” deals with the aftermath of Vision’s death. “Spiderman No Way Home” is about Peter Parker struggling with losing a lot of the people who more or less brought him into the Avengers. Now though, as we get further away from “Endgame” and the original cast, there doesn’t seem to be the next big thing coming up. The Multiverse is a very big and exciting new part of the canon, but with it, they have seemed to lose traction. The big villain Kang the Conqueror has been dropped after his actor Jonathan Majors got put in hot water for abuse allegations. Instead, Doctor Doom, a character that has little to do with Multiverse stories, seems to be Marvel’s next move. With little to grow on, the audience seems restless and tired of the current trajectory.
HIGH VOLUME
Even Marvel has admitted that their beginning pace of production was too much. Nine projects being released in both 2021 and 2022 gave a lot of content but seemed to decrease in quality. As was mentioned before, “Wandavision” was an excellent introduction to this new phase, but things like “She-Hulk Attorney at Law,” “Thor: Love and Thunder,” and “Eternals” have all begun to widely disappoint. Even more highly rated projects like “Shang-Chi and the Legends of the Ten Rings” have been swept under the rug with the sheer amount of things that were released in those first two years. Of the few movies I have ended up watching, I felt a little lost getting into the plot, with many things having to be re-explained or simply expected to know. This immediately alienates a large percentage of the audience, and especially with the multiverse as a new large part of these stories, keeping up with the different planets and versions of these stories only increases the gap in knowledge between die-hard fans and casual watchers.
LACK OF CONNECTION
Released in 2021, Shang-Chi has been applauded by critics and audiences alike as a great movie, so why are we hearing nothing about it? Earning a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, why don’t I remember a single trailer about this movie? The most I’ve seen about it has been people online complaining about the lack of advertisement it got. With the main beloved cast almost completely out of the picture, filling their shoes is a difficult task. We’re seeing this being combated by the recent casting decision to bring back Robert Downey, Jr. to play the role of Dr. Doom. This not only cheapened his retirement after the death of Iron Man but also cheapened the addition of Dr. Doom to the MCU. It seems that Marvel will be forever chasing the high of the original Avengers, and audiences are disillusioned with these new characters.
With the next MCU projects not coming out until 2025 we are left to wonder if this brief pause will allow Marvel to recoup and try different strategies. In the meantime, things like “Venom: The Last Dance” and “The Fantastic 4: First Steps” are set to come out in the next six months, continuing the break from MCU movies and possibly riding the interest in other Marvel stories. Maybe the truth is the MCU will never recover and get to the popularity it had in the 2010s, and people have become tired of the blockbuster superhero movies. The Catharsis from “Deadpool and Wolverine” might only be a temporary fix, or it has reinvigorated the audiences for a new wave of Marvel movies entirely.
