Hiya!

Marvel just released the latest entry in their long running Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Marvels. This should be a global event if you look at the early years, essentially Phase 1 to 3. There should be swarms of people heading out to the movie theater and proclaiming Disney and Marvel has done it again. This is definitely not the story for The Marvels. The movie took in around $47 million in the United States and, internationally, $63 million. All-in-all, that’s still a juicy $110 million in ticket sales and, normally, nothing to be sneezed at.

However, this is a Marvel Cinematic Universe entry, so the rules are much different. In its heyday, a Marvel movie would have been raking in $150 million total on its first weekend easily. In fact, The Marvels is the lowest grossing movie in the franchise’s history! With the way its trending, The Marvels will have some difficulty recouping the $220 million Disney spent making the film.

Sure, there will be defenders who will say The Marvels is tanking because the general audiences don’t like female superhero leads, which feels like a copout to me because fellow Marvel Cinematic Universe film, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever grossed around $860 million worldwide. Others will say the general audience is feeling superhero fatigue, which, again, feels like over rationalizing since, once again, there are still very successful Marvel Cinematic films, like the previously mentioned Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, as well as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Heck, Thor: Love and Thunder managed to get $760 million worldwide! The Marvels seems like the exception here!

However, while the Marvel Cinematic Universe can still be called a success, I will admit the quality of the films and even the television shows have lost its luster. Some of it has to deal with bad writing and subpar special effects. However, that’s not the biggest reason why I personally am not all that excited for The Marvels or the latest slate of Marvel movies. My biggest gripe with the current Marvel movies and television shows is that I don’t see the point. I don’t see why I have to keep watching all of them now.

To understand my point of view, we have to go back, way back, to 2008 when the very first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, Iron Man, first hit theaters. It was a fine movie, to be sure, and, by the end, I and many moviegoers who weren’t Marvel comics fans wanted to see more. However, what really piqued the interest of avid Marvel comics readers was the after credits scene. You know the one. It’s where Tony Stark encounters Nick Fury in his living room and the eyepatch wearing leader of SHIELD wants to talk to the billionaire philanthropist about the Avengers Initiative.

This blew comic book fans’ brains. Are they actually going to make an Avengers movie? Nah, that’s impossible! No way could they bring together Earth’s Mightiest Heroes into one movie! Making one superhero movie is hard enough, let alone put together a star-studded cast of heroes in one film! Well, slowly but surely, they were putting the pieces together to do just that. After Iron Man came the Incredible Hulk and this film had an after credits scene with Tony Stark, the Iron Man from the previous Marvel film, talking to General Ross about “putting a team together”, once again hinting at an Avengers movie. By this time, the word was out and even non-comic book fans were salivating at the thought of a grand coalition of Marvel superheroes in one big movie.

Iron Man 2 came out next and, in that film’s after credit scene, we saw Agent Phil Coulson reporting that a large hammer had just fallen out of the sky, signaling the arrival of Thor. The Thor movie then came out and its after credits scene showing the Cosmic Cube, an object strongly associated with the Red Skull, Captain America’s arch nemesis. Sure enough, the next film was Captain America and, in its credits, they heralded Captain America “will return in the Avengers” as well as a trailer for, yep, the Avengers.

So, you can see why the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase 1 was a huge draw. Each movie built upon each other all the way up to all of the heroes teaming up in the Avengers, a glorious film which no one could have believe would ever happen. A crossover event to end all crossover events. Marvel wasn’t done yet, however, as the Avengers had one quick hint on what was to come in, you guessed it, the after credits scene. It had a strange purple guy grinning at the thought of fighting the Avengers. Oh, there was also a shot of the Avengers eating shawarma, which is cool.

Back to the purple guy, though. This guy was, of course, Thanos, which hinted at probably one of Marvel comics most beloved stories, the Infinity Gauntlet. Non-comic book fans questioned who the purple guy was but comic book fans were screaming how awesome this was.

Granted, Phase 2 wasn’t all that hot. There wasn’t any real buildup to Ultron. Rather, Phase 2 was all about building up to Thanos and the ending of Phase 3 and, boy, did things hit a fever pitch then! By then, we were all wrapping our heads around the Infinity Stones and how they were sprinkled in all throughout Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3. This all cumulated to Avengers: Infinity War with the shock of Thanos actually winning! We knew this couldn’t be the end as there was still another Avengers film coming out later and Avenger: Endgame felt like, well, the end of it all. Avengers: Endgame was the culmination of a decades worth of movies, stories and character development.

Oh, it also had some of the hypest scenes ever. Why? That’s because we were all aboard since Iron Man way back in 2008! We all followed the significance of why these characters suddenly dying had significance. We all knew why it was amazing to see Captain America wield Thor’s hammer. We didn’t need to read the comics to know Mjolnir can only be lifted by someone who was worthy so seeing Captain America use it effortlessly was a big deal and why seeing all of these characters, both the ones who vanished and didn’t finally come back was a tearjerking moment and why Cap whispering for the Avengers to assemble for the last time was so exciting.

We then get to Phase 4 and 5 and, once again, I have to reiterate that I don’t see the point. What are all these movies and television shows leading up to? Is it so we can see the remaining Marvel superheroes take on Kang the Conqueror? No, because Ant-Man already kind of did that in Quantumania. Is it so we can see the Thunderbolts? No, because they’re not really the focus of the films and TV shows. Is it the entire multiverse idea? If so, so what? What’s the point of showing off a multiverse if you aren’t showing a foe who is so powerful that it will take multiple universes to take down?

Right now, it just feels like Marvel and Disney are pumping out superhero movies and television shows. In theory, that’s alright. However, because they already developed the early Phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to have one cohesive story, it just doesn’t feel tonally right to do that right now. I don’t have the impetus to keep on seeing subsequent entries of the Marvel Cinematic Universe because I don’t need to as they’re all standalone stories at the moment. I can’t be excited to see Valkyrie do a cameo in the Marvels or Wong pop in She-Hulk because it’s just a cameo and doesn’t really lead to anything big.

Maybe I’ll be proven wrong and Marvel has actually been really clever in sprinkling all the breadcrumbs that lead to the climax and all of it will make sense down the line. I doubt that but I would really like to be wrong this time.

Byee!

What do you think is the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s greatest problem right now for you? Let me know in the comments section below!