Remember When Marvel Felt Special?
I watched the previous Marvel films again, and after Endgame the magic just feels lost. The coolness and excitement I used to feel are gone. Rewatching the older movies brought back the hype—made me feel happy and nostalgic—but everything after Endgame just feels bland. There’s no clear direction, no major villain driving the story forward.
Most of the TV shows also feel weak, except for a few like Loki and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Shows like She-Hulk and Ironheart feel like they undermine the main heroes and their ideals. I don’t know what went wrong. It makes me sad that the universe I once loved has become such a confused mess.
I’m not sure if Secret Wars will bring back the magic of the original Avengers, but I really hope it does.
Do you think the magic is gone because the earlier Marvel phases focused so much on the original trio—Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor? Two of them are gone and Thor: Love and Thunder didn’t really land. Maybe we were so attached to those core heroes that the new phases just don’t feel the same.
Most of the TV shows also feel weak, except for a few like Loki and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Shows like She-Hulk and Ironheart feel like they undermine the main heroes and their ideals. I don’t know what went wrong. It makes me sad that the universe I once loved has become such a confused mess.
I’m not sure if Secret Wars will bring back the magic of the original Avengers, but I really hope it does.
Do you think the magic is gone because the earlier Marvel phases focused so much on the original trio—Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor? Two of them are gone and Thor: Love and Thunder didn’t really land. Maybe we were so attached to those core heroes that the new phases just don’t feel the same.
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It's not there in the post-endgame Marvel
I have made the argument that if you were to cut the fat, stuck to 3 projects a year, the saga would've felt more tightly connected, lets say for example the Multiverse Saga was just the following (Based on what we know about Doomsday/SW) ableit with some changes to remove tie ins to projects that currently aren't relevant to the main narrative (as far we know):
WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki S1, Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Hawkeye, No Way Home, Multiverse of Madness, Ms. Marvel, Wakanda Forever, Quantumania, Loki S2, The Marvels, Deadpool 3, Brave New World, Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four. It would feel more tightly connected, since many of them have Multiverse centric stories or themes or link back to a movie that introduces characters/elements we'll see in Doomsday/SW
Like some people are going that the problem is that Marvel is doing stuff with characters nobody cares about and i am like..........i remember people going that nobody cares about Guardians of the Galaxy and now they do and where Guardians succeded where some of the other projects failed? it had a fantastic script that made us care about the characters, so something like say Eternals could've had the potential to be the next "Guardians" if they had delivered on a movie that was beloved by the masses. instead of a movie that split the audience
Also, You do know that if we're only using box office the most "successful" family films this year is freaking MineCraft and Lilo and Goddamn Stich right?
Before Endgame, the MCU had 21 films and 16 of them made over $600M. So even if a few underperformed, the franchise was incredibly consistent overall.
After Endgame, only 6 movies crossed $600M and all of them were established IPs like Spider-Man, Black Panther, Thor, and Deadpool. None of the new Phase 4/5 characters reached that level. Covid affected some releases, but even after that, the newer films haven’t connected the same way.
And honestly, the feeling of consistency and connection is gone.
The pre-Endgame movies felt seamless everything was building toward something. The newer phases feel scattered, which hurts audience investment and box office
There may not have been an overarching villain for the first 10 movies, but there was an overarching story with heroes and themes. The first ten movies are about The Avengers, but mostly Tony and Steve and Thor, and even then mostly Tony and Steve (and even then mostly Tony). They represented a conflict between America's idealized past and its idealized present.
The next ten movies they introduced like twenty more characters and, of course, Thanos, but it was still mostly about that dynamic. The new movies don't have that--whose the main character? What's the Multiverse Saga about?
The sum total of the MCU has *always* been more than the individual parts. There have been good, sometimes great, movies and shows, but the interconnectivity was always what made it fascinating. Being split into 3 narratives, The Studios side (the avengers), the network TV side (mostly AoS) and the streaming side (defenders and the YA stuff) really was a smart way to break up the universe into digestible bits. Having them all under one umbrella now really makes the narrative and combination of characters and stories feel overwhelming and unfocused.
Really, I don't think we have many more characters now that we did in those first few phases. Maybe a few more, but not much. But having them all combined into one location, and making it so that almost none of them get any significant follow up, only spin offs, which really aren't follow ups. It just seems like there isn't *a* character or group of characters we're following anymore. It stopped feeling like an MCU story, and now the MCU just feels like a sandbox for stories to be told in.
Which... is fine, I guess? I still enjoy it. But it's definitely the reason people are tuning out. They don't care about the world, they care about the story. I hope that going forward, they care less about giving every. Single. Character. Their own show and series, and become more comfortable letting characters just be part of other characters movies. I'm not saying we need 1000 Thunderbolts or Avengers or Young Avengers. We need more Rhodey in Iron Mans, or Thor’s friends from the Thor movies or... other examples I can't think of right now.
After that it's like assembling jigsaw puzzle where each of your pieces is from diferrent set. It doesn't mean they are bad pieces they just don't fit together.
If you want to get a sense of just how much the world outside this fandom doesn’t give a fuck about Marvel or DC much right now, sign out of Reddit and look at the popular tabs they show you without it being catered to your data profile. You won’t see this sub or superhero movies mentioned at all. Nobody outside these very specific fandom subs is talking about superhero movies anymore, and if they are, it’s in the negative mostly. But they mostly aren’t.
When you’re a fan of this stuff and your Reddit app is showing you constant posts from subs you follow, it gives a slanted view on reality. The casuals aren’t talking about Marvel anymore. The Marvel train of content isn’t the gigantic cultural juggernaut it once was.
Not many will like me saying this but outside of the box office bump for Spider-Man BND, Doomsday and Secret Wars, I honestly think it’s going to be down and down for Marvel from then out. Rebooting X-Men so close to the old movies won’t fly with enough of the audience and this entire thing will become streaming only as they drop budgets to match waning enthusiasm.
To think this thing can and will simply go on forever just isn’t feasible.
There's alot to like. I appreciate the experimentations that took place. Alot of the MCU felt formulaic in the earlier days (even though I liked it). I think people are too nostalgic about phase 1-3. Phase 4 had an amazing set of villains. Alot of the earlier ones were forgettable.
With Riri, the writing tends to go in the opposite direction. She’s introduced as already being better than Tony at everything—smarter, morally “above” him, more capable, etc. Instead of letting her grow into the role, the story frames her as instantly superior. On top of that, she sometimes does questionable things (stealing materials, causing problems she never really pays for), but we’re expected to ignore it because she’s the “new genius.”
What really bothers me is when the story has her belittle Tony, like saying he only built the suit because he was rich. Meanwhile Tony literally built his first armor with nothing and risked his life to do it. It feels unfair to tear down Tony’s journey just to make Riri look better.
Riri could be a great character, but the writing is soo bad it’s doesn’t let Riri be a great character.
Now my problem with She-Hulk is simple: the writing is awful. They keep telling me Jen is amazing without ever showing it. She never struggles, never fails, never earns anything. Every scene is just another cheap, easy win.
There’s no setup, so the payoff falls flat. Same with her Hulk origin—she becomes She-Hulk by accident and immediately outperforms Bruce, while mocking everything he went through. It’s terrible character work.
In the end, it feels like the writers wanted a self-insert power fantasy instead of a real hero with growth, consequences, or an actual story. Lazy writing all around.
\> They keep telling me Jen is amazing without ever showing it. She never struggles, never fails, never earns anything.
I'm not sure you've actually seen either of these two shows.
I mean it's still good, but it's like, oversaturation you know. I don't have the fuckin' time to watch all the MCU tv shows and the few I did watch did not impress me much. I still watch every movie though.
There was no possible way for it to be as good. Marvel had to churn out content for Disney +, during a time in which - There was a world changing pandemic, their number one box office star still in the universe *DIED*, movie theaters were closed, and the CGI artists suddenly has 3 times the workload. It wasn’t sustainable and it’s a small miracle that they’ve been able to reset a bit, and focus on the future.
But, we got to see Spider-Man riding on Mjolnir, THROWN by Captain America, holding the Infinity Gauntlet. How do you top that?
Yes, there were a few unforeseeable tragedies, but there's a few other things too. Mainly, Disney (probably under Bob Chapek) wanted to speedrun the next Avengers Endgame and *did not want to let the pandemic, or Boseman's death, or Spidey's rights issues, or the fact that they were still figuring out the the Fox deal get in the way of that*.
They had a timetable to keep. Fans wanted a new Infinity War with a new Thanos--not a new Avengers 1 with a new Tony, Steve and Loki (what they should have done)--and the producers wanted another three billion dollars.
If Kevin at any point explained "that was a once-in-a-lifetime event that took twenty movies of buildup" the response was, inarguably "fine, do twenty movies of buildup in the next few years. Some of them can be tv shows. Whatever." If you try to explain that its not just the *number* of movies, but how they develop characters and themes, they'll say back "James Cameron is working on four Avatar movies that will make two billion each, they require no buildup and most people don't even know the characters names; if you can't match that with what we're giving you, you're out".
In the Infinity Saga (IS), all of the movies felt special and good. And then we got to look forward to the characters in those movies being connected together by an ensemble movie.
Most of the movies in the Multiverse Saga (MS) still have that same special feeling and are good. Yes there have been more misses (Eternals and a few others) than in the IS but they are mostly still good. Most of the TV shows ah e also been good and had that special feeling. Again a few misses (Secret Invasion and a couple of others) but most of them good.
Where the magic falters is the lack of connectivity and not getting to see the heroes again. The longest we had to wait before seeing a hero return was Hulk at four years between Incredible Hulk (2008) and Avengers (2012). Everyone else was seen again after 1-3 years.
They don’t do that in the MS for a lot of characters.
- Shang-Chi - 5 years
- Eternals - Who knows? (I’m playing they don’t return, the movie sucked and I wish they had just left it out of everything)
- Spiderman - 5 years
- Hawkeye - Who knows?
- Kate Bishop - Only got a cameo and from there, who knows?
- Dr Strange - Who knows?
And so on and so forth. I’m not going through the entire list.
So we haven’t got to see those heroes come back in any meaningful way. Yeah they showed up in cartoons as different versions of themselves but that doesn’t feel the same.
What happens in the movies also felt like it had an impact on other movies. As in the events, not the characters.
- What happened in The Avengers had an impact and it was mentioned in Ironman 3, The Dark World and Winter Soldier.
- What happened in Winter Soldier had an impact on Age of Ultron and Civil War.
- What happened in Age of Ultron had an impact on Ant-man, Civil War and Ragnarok.
- What happened in Civil War had an impact on Homecoming, Black Panther and Ant-man and the Wasp.
Meanwhile, in the MS, we have a celestial being that started emerging from the ocean and being turned into turned into rock and whatever else followed by another celestial being showing up right next to Earth and no one ever mentions it. For three and a half years.
- Still no mention of shape shifting aliens replacing world figures. Over two years.
- Still no mention of the sun starting to go dark. Two years.
In the IS, world changing events seemed to matter. Not so much in the MS.
So yes, there have been missteps over the last few years. But the magic is definitely not gone.
The delay due to the writers strike only added a year to the numbers. And many of the numbers are still question marks.
Explore character dynamics and build up a new group of heroes to follow and plotlines to explore. Have the FF or Deadpool or whatever fill the "Guardians" role as "side-story thats secretly developing the climax" with Doom or Kang or whatever.
But that didn't happen. The pandemic happened and then Boseman died and people were weird about Larson and Sony didn't want to share its toys and the public and producers didn't want another Avengers 1--they wanted a new IW and Endgame--so they just decided to throw content at the wall until they had enough for that.
But now with Disney+, Disney wanted Marvel to take a more quantity over quality approach, make as much content as possible, who cares if it sucks people will eat it up and that's what caused the damage. Something that Disney has even came out and said yeah in our quest to feed our platform we tainted the brand.
If something like Quantumania, She-Hulk, Eternals, Ironheart, Brave New World, etc were on the same level in terms of quality as the first Iron Man, Guardians, Civil War, etc they would still feel special
No, it's because Feige was put in charge in 2019, and then demonstrated he is not capable of leading. He needs someone to keep him in check, because he just wants to treat the MCU like the comics and spam every character he can think of.
For example, when Chapek asked for more content, Feige could've went with an Agents of Shield revival, or a Peggy Carter revival, or a Warriors 3 show, or even Howling Commandos. Instead he went with...Echo.
It's very obvious that prior to 2019 there was a team that was keeping Feige in check and that team had a solid grasp on business and marketability while Feige clearly does not given that his track record since Endgame is largely failure.
Then, on top of that, Feige seems to have had no control over the writers. On one side you have Blade where the writers kept trying to turn in scripts about everyone but Blade, and on the other side you have numerous shows/movies where the central themes were the writers trying to use it as a platform for their politics.
Bottom line is, Feige is the MCU's biggest problem. They need to put someone else in charge of Marvel.
What happened in 2019 is really more that he basically became spread too thin that he basically couldn't realistically oversee everything, since now he oversaw the comics, the games, the TV shows, etc. to the point that if you wanted to pitch him your ideas or get him to approve something you had to catch up to him on the hallway according to some articles. (This ties to your comment about him having no control over the writers, because he can't oversee everything they do now because he has to be multiple places now)
So whatever its Feige or someone else what they need to do is make sure one person doesn't have to oversee every single aspect of the company and have each division have their own man overseeing that, cause having one man have to oversee everything is too much (Something we are already seeing on the TV side where Brad Winderbaum is now basically the one overseeing that)
As for the TV shows, Loki is honestly the only Marvel series I can fully recommend. If you like Bucky and Sam, then *The Falcon and the Winter Soldier* is worth watching too. But shows like *Secret Invasion*? Just skip it. You’d definitely hate it, especially considering what you said about Marvel’s obsession with power creep: “The original Avengers were our heroes—tarnishing them by saying this new guy is way stronger? Fuck that.” I agree.
And *The Marvels*… yeah, that one is really bad. I genuinely can’t believe the higher-ups approved it. It’s sad that after the peak of the Infinity Saga, we’ve ended up with so much disappointment. The writing in most of the recent shows is just rough (Loki being the big exception).
I really hope they fix things, and that by next year Marvel finally gets back into form.
How exactly did that happen?
>With Riri, the writing tends to go in the opposite direction. She’s introduced as already being better than Tony at everything—smarter, morally “above” him, more capable, etc. Instead of letting her grow into the role, the story frames her as instantly superior. On top of that, she sometimes does questionable things (stealing materials, causing problems she never really pays for), but we’re expected to ignore it because she’s the “new genius.”
>What really bothers me is when the story has her belittle Tony, like saying he only built the suit because he was rich. Meanwhile Tony literally built his first armor with nothing and risked his life to do it. It feels unfair to tear down Tony’s journey just to make Riri look better.
>Riri could be a great character, but the writing is soo bad it’s doesn’t let Riri be a great character.
>Now my problem with She-Hulk is simple: the writing is awful. They keep telling me Jen is amazing without ever showing it. She never struggles, never fails, never earns anything. Every scene is just another cheap, easy win.
>There’s no setup, so the payoff falls flat. Same with her Hulk origin—she becomes She-Hulk by accident and immediately outperforms Bruce, while mocking everything he went through. It’s terrible character work.
>In the end, it feels like the writers wanted a self-insert power fantasy instead of a real hero with growth, consequences, or an actual story. Lazy writing all around
read this
Also, it's very clear that Riri is not a great person. She crosses lines as a means to an end, and the whole time, we know that she's wrong. She made a deal with the fucking devil, and they never painted her as heroic for that.
As for She-Hulk, I'm pretty sure we didn't watch the same show, she has problems, and solves them, but that's not the same as not having problems.
Also, you're using em-dashes wrong.