Okay, the question of whether the MCU has failed recently is obviously a very complex one. Of course, by most standards, every Marvel Studios movie has absolutely crushed it. However, compared to the MCU’s earliest days and the massive mania it engendered in people during its earlier phases, there has been something of a slowdown. And even Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige admits that recent movies like Thunderbolts* have “failed” despite being good movies. In a recent interviewOpens in a new tab, Feige spoke of the intense overexpansion the MCU saw its past years, and how Marvel movies ended up starting to feel like homework for many. Let’s dive into the Marvel Head’s perspective of where the MCU has failed, and what it’s doing to course correct.
Feige shares simply that looking back at all the MCU’s output in recent years, he can see “That’s too much.” In total, over the last six years, Marvel has produced 127 hours of content. (Vs. the 50 they created in the eight years before that.) And while some of that content has been incredible, in Feige’s eyes work like WandaVision and Loki, “It’s the expansion that is certainly what devalued” the output. In putting out so much, the MCU failed to make anything specifically a priority and, instead, overwhelmed its audiences.
In Marvel’s defense, it was seeing incredible success, and much of the output came at the height of the streaming wars and during a time when the pandemic limited entertainment options and kept eyes on screens. Feige explains, “It was a big company push, and it doesn’t take too much to push us to go, ‘People have been asking for Ms. Marvel for years, and now we can do it? Do it! Oscar Isaac wants to be Moon Knight? Do it! So there was a mandate that we were put in the middle of, but we also thought it’d be fun to bring these to life.”
And it was fun, but ultimately, just A LOT to take in. Feige agrees that this was absolutely one of the failures of the MCU’s plan in these past years. He shares, “It’s that expansion that I think led people to say, ‘Do I have to see all of these? It used to be fun, but now do I have to know everything about all of these?’ And I think The Marvels hit it hardest where people are like, ‘OK, I recognize her from a billion-dollar movie. But who are those other two? I guess they were in some TV show. I’ll skip it.’” And this impact was seen as recently as Thunderbolts*Opens in a new tab.
Feige goes on to say that he recognizes how featuring characters who had only appeared in Marvel Disney+ TV series may have harmed the movie. “Some of them were still feeling the residual effects of that notion of, ‘I guess I had to have seen these other shows to understand who this is.’ I think if you actually saw the movie, that wouldn’t be the case, and we make the movie so that’s not the case. But I think we still have to make sure the audience understands that.”
So, where does Marvel go from here as it works to rectify the places where the MCU has failed? Well, for one, less content is on the horizon. Recently, Bob Iger revealedOpens in a new tab, “We’re slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two, or a maximum of three. And we’re working hard on what that path is.” Some years may even have only one Marvel movie, while others may have only one MCU TV show. And “Marvel has started ‘grinding down’ on budgets, with movies costing up to a third cheaper than the films from 2022 or 2023.”
Additionally, the MCU aims to be more flexible in the type of content it creates. Feige offers that tonal malleability is a key to Marvel’s success. And that means more R-rated movies and television shows are heading to the MCU. We’ve already seen this in movies like Deadpool & Wolverine and shows like Daredevil: Born Again, but the MCU is losing that sheen of family friendly wholesomness it wore like a supersuit for a very long time. Feige notes that characters can be deployed in different ways and intents, sharing, “You can have the Green Goblin build snowmen in Disney+’s Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, but then kill Aunt May in Spider-Man: No Way Home.”
A Punisher TV-MA special is already in the works, for another example. But “when Punisher is in the Spider-Man movie, it’ll be a different tonality,” adds Feige, and confirms the character is in the next Spidey film.
We can see some of this overall changed perspective in the MCU’s latest movie, The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Feige notes, for example, the MCU specifically made the choice to have the movie exist as a period piece. “It was a unique aesthetic that felt like it could absolutely be its own world, its own reality. And when we show it to audiences in the screening process that we do leading up to it, people just accept it right off the bat and feel liberated that they can just enjoy what’s ahead of them.” Feige emphasizes, “It is no-homework-required.”
Well, it seems like the idea of homework is really where the MCU thinks it failed its audiences. But, of course, a little homework is what made these movies fun in the first place. We guess we’ll have to wait and how the MCU’s future unfolds.
