If you’ve gone to the movies in the last 15 years chances are you’ve watched at least one Marvel movie. They’ve had many box office hits like the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Man, and Captain America films.
The movies were an incredible thing to experience, but now with every project they release there’s less and less excitement.
As an avid Marvel enthusiast myself, I have been so disappointed with the lack of quality content they have been pushing out. Every project feels rushed and uninspired. All the new characters they introduce are poorly developed and all the old characters they left alive have had their character arcs destroyed.
To provide an example, Endgame destroyed Steve Rogers character arc. We got six incredible movies that all helped to build on his journey of moving on from the past and acclimating to the future he now lives in. He has a single tether to his past via Bucky (hello “to the end of the line”). After all the work they put into developing his character, he turns around and abandons Bucky to go back to Peggy making everything he went through for nothing.
Marvel used to take their time when it came to creating. We would only see 1-2 projects a year that were canon in the main MCU timeline, but now we’re getting 7-10 rushed and sloppy projects yearly that are depending on an existing fanbase’s hope that this time will be different.
The most recent Marvel project released The Marvels did not do well in its opening weekend at all, only making $47 million. To put it into perspective, Marvel has not released a movie that has done this bad since the 2008 Incredible Hulk. This film has only grossed $206 million worldwide, but it had a budget of $273 million. This was a major disappointment considering that the first Captain Marvel movie did well on its first weekend in theaters making $153 million.
Too many fans feel comfortable leaving the fandom since they don’t care about the characters they have left. This isn’t to say that every character they’ve introduced recently is poorly written, but too many of them are flat and leave much to be desired. I can count on one hand how many characters I left the theater thinking “Wow I wonder what will happen to them next!”
A big part of why this is happening is a lack of passion solo projects that are focused on developing one character. We had these for Cap, Tony, and Thor and we were able to form connections to those characters because of it. You can see in newer projects that weren’t focused on telling three stories at once that this is what helps viewers care about the projects.
Marvel is getting ready to start production on Thunderbolts, which is supposed to have quite a few characters that fans actually do like, but even now fans don’t seem to be interested in this project at all. This movie might be Marvel’s last chance to prove that they care about these characters and their stories as much as the fans do.
