Marvel Studios: Is the fairy tale over?

The Marvels released in theatres earlier in November.

Earlier this month, The Marvels had the lowest opening of a Marvel Studios movie ever. The sequel to the billion-dollar-grossing Captain Marvel has made less than 2008’s The Incredible Hulk (not adjusted for inflation). Is this the beginning of the end of Marvel’s stranglehold on Hollywood?

In the last 15 years, the moviegoing audience has seen a whopping 54 movies (55 if you count Zack Snyder’s Justice League as its own entry) from Marvel and DC, grossing nearly $40 billion in box office receipts. However, over the last few years, superhero movies have been on a decline, with tepid reactions from the box office, critics, and fans alike. Things have got so bad that the only superhero movies on the release calendar for 2024 are Deadpool 3, which is not even part of the MCU proper, and DC’s Joker: Folie à Deux, which is hardly a comic book movie. How did things go so wrong?

The Origin Story

The beginning of the modern era of superhero cinema can be traced back to 2008, when Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark looked down the barrel of the lens and said “I am Iron Man”. It was the first of a series of happy accidents combined with wishful thinking that eventually led to the birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or the MCU, as it is popularly known. On the DC side of things, 2008 also saw the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, whose gritty and dark approach defined DC’s tone for better or worse.

What goes up must come down

In 2019, Tony Stark brought the decade-long Infinity Saga to a close with the same line of dialogue that began this odyssey. Avengers: Endgame briefly became the highest-grossing movie of all time and along with its other two releases that year, Marvel rang up an earth-shattering $4 billion at the box office. Marvel was on top of the world.

Kevin Feige, Marvel’s chief creative officer and the mastermind behind the interconnected MCU, wasn’t content to bask in its success. He turned his eye to television, seeing it as an opportunity to explore the stories of fan favourite characters who did not lead their own movies. The pandemic happened, cinemas were shut down, and Marvel’s parent company Disney decided to double down on its fledgling streaming service, Disney+. All of this resulted in the infamous Disney Investor Day event in December of 2020, where Feige announced a number of shows and movies that were nowhere near ready.

The pressure from its corporate overlord to feed the streaming beast was immense. Fans were initially ecstatic about the glut of content, but quality naturally suffered as a result. It quickly became obvious that the studio was not equipped for this type of episodic storytelling, nor was it ready to handle this volume of content.

The drop in quality extended to the cinematic side of the studio as well. The last few entries have been pale imitations of what made earlier Marvel movies enjoyable. Ironically, The Marvels is the first movie in a long time to have some of that MCU zing, but it’s bogged down by the weight of interconnected storylines from other movies and TV shows, and a hastily reworked third act.

Avengers… (dis)Assemble

Meanwhile, the studio has been dealing with personnel issues of different kinds, both in front of and behind the camera. First, Chadwick Boseman tragically passed away in 2020, and the MCU lost its Black Panther and the de facto leader of the post-Endgame Avengers. Then, Marvel abruptly fired Victoria Alonso, its president of production and visual effects, in unusual circumstances. Alonso had been a key member of the brain trust since Iron Man and was responsible for keeping the engine running from a content delivery standpoint.

And, finally, the studio had placed a big bet on up and coming actor Jonathan Majors to play its big bad Kang the Conqueror for what has been dubbed the Multiverse Saga. Majors first appeared in the streaming show Loki, followed by Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and has been slated to make multiple appearances in a slew of upcoming shows and movies. However, Majors is now embroiled in a domestic assault case and Marvel is adopting a wait-and-watch approach to this PR (public-relations) nightmare. If Marvel drops Majors, it could mean a complete retooling of the next four years of the movie and TV pipeline.

Whatever it takes

Marvel and Feige seem to have realised that they created a quantity over quality problem for themselves, and are now taking steps to correct it. A number of shows and movies have been either cancelled or pushed back (the dual Hollywood strikes played a role, too). The studio needs to take a step back, and reassess its entire content strategy. As Joanna Robinson, co-author of the bestselling MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, put it — “Marvel has a scaling problem, there’s only one Kevin Feige.”

Feige still has a couple of aces up his sleeve. Disney’s acquisition of Fox in 2019 brought two prime properties back to the Marvel stable — the X-Men and Fantastic 4. The fan excitement to see MCU versions of these heroes is sky-high, and Feige is smart enough to know that he cannot squander either of these opportunities. Marvel is taking it slow, and has yet to announce any details of when and how either of these teams will appear in the MCU. Marvel will need to hit both X-Men and Fantastic 4 out of the park, if they are to make it out of this existential crisis.

‘Higher, Further, Faster’ is an inspiring motto for Captain Marvel, but Marvel Studios will need to do the opposite if it wants to survive.