POP—Is the Marvel Cinematic Universe Dying?

Exploring popular culture with both feet planted on terra firma. This is your monthly POP—

Is the Marvel Cinematic Universe Dying?

by Jeff Bowles

The original Iron Man movie launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe back in 2008, and perhaps nobody was more surprised than Marvel at how gigantic a success both that film and its subsequent sequels and spinoffs would become. Not long before Iron Man landed in theaters, the president of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, along with a squad of very talented, very shrewd writers and filmmakers, began to map out and then to successfully execute something never seen before in the movie business: a complete, functional shared universe, one that maximizes profits by intermingling a whole host of extremely popular characters.

Grossing just shy of $30 billion as of the time of this writing (and yes, that’s billion with a b), the thirty-one movies and nine Disney+ television series that make up the MCU have certainly set Hollywood on fire. So far, the universe is composed of five “Phases” that have each presented unique storytelling opportunities, including larger story arcs that have taken time and more than a few entries to complete, not unlike the semi-serialized storytelling made popular by comic book publishers decades ago.

You know, comic book publishers like Marvel and DC, the latter of which has its own cinematic universe, albeit it a somewhat smaller and less profitable one. The truth is, and it’s clear few in Hollywood understood this before it smacked them in the face, Marvel Studios is a bit of a ringer when it comes to the game of entertainment profit-making. It’s accurate to say the company has many decades of experience publishing lucrative, popular, larger-than life stories with hundreds of disparate and often unaffiliated characters thrown into the mix. Marvel’s roster of colorful heroes and villains is deeper than most non-fans know. Their origin stories have origin stories. As the old man might say, they could do this all day.

Except that maybe they can’t.

You see, due to unforeseen factors here in the second decade of Marvel Studios’ victory lap of a success story, the MCU, Marvel’s parent company Disney, and the entire Hollywood system have stumbled into something pretty alarming: fewer people are paying to see their movies and shows.

Why is that? There are a number of factors, in fact. This is not a simple issue. The big causes, of course, are the growing diversity and wealth of competing entertainment options, the great stagnation of the American middle class (vs. the price-gouging tendencies theaters, streamers, and other film and television providers have developed as inflation continues to rise), an unplanned writers and actors strike, the rise of AI, adjacent culture wars aplenty, and perhaps most significantly of all, the COVID pandemic, which couldn’t have been predicted even if the Hollywood elite were in fact unanimously psychic.

And they aren’t. Here’s the proof. It does seem as though Marvel is in a bit of trouble right now, which is a phrase both ridiculous and insane to have to write (see that $30 billion figure). There is no real reason the MCU shouldn’t continue accumulating monumental accomplishments, and you know, lesser failures, which are slightly more numerous than ‘true believer’ fans want to admit.

It’s correct both diehard and casual audiences are less over-the-moon for Marvel movies than they were ten years ago. That’s simply the nature of the entertainment beast. Here today, dollar bin tomorrow. However, Marvel as a corporate storytelling entity has traditionally proved immune to this effect, due to the fact that a Marvel Comics fan is not built like other fans. These people—my people—have weathered so much unpopularity in their lives it forms part of their identities. We were born in cultural squalor, birthed into dingy little comic shops no non-nerd dared enter, raised and bred on stories with so much impact, so much color, so much action and fun the movies and shows and other forms of storytelling all the “normies” love seem just, you know, like, lame by comparison.

The truth is that when a good Marvel movie comes out—and I do mean a good one—Marvel fans almost always show up. This thing, this loyalty, it makes for what the analysts call a core audience, a big one, which is something every single producer in Hollywood would sell her/his/their left arm and a single thumb to snag. The bigger problem is quality. This is Marvel’s smorgasbord to ruin, and every observant fan knows it. Because while those afore-mentioned unforeseen factors have certainly had a major impact, Marvel itself could lose the whole thing simply by producing, well, less than stellar work.

Now, as far as comic book movie quality goes, casual audiences typically like but don’t always love Marvel. For every Avengers: Endgame or Captain America: The Winter Soldier there’s a Thor: Love and Thunder or a Secret Invasion (the most recent completed MCU series available on Disney+, but come on, if you weren’t a little disappointed by it, you were probably watching Loki instead). The first three phases of movies were average to great, but after Endgame, most fans agree, quality has been on the decline. It turns out Iron Man’s birth in 2008 may have been just as consequential as his … you know what? I won’t spoil Endgame if you haven’t seen it, but for crying out loud, it’s a four-year-old movie. Catch up already!

Overall quality has slipped for two reasons, as I see it, and in retrospect, each of those reasons is more short-sighted than the last. Although Kevin Feige and Marvel meticulously planned out the first ten years or so of their behemoth mad-science experiment, they don’t seem to have done so hot crafting a second. The two Avengers movies that end the Infinity Saga (Infinity War and Endgame) must’ve been monumental in their undertaking. It’s no wonder, is it, that those responsible felt the crunch a little too keenly to keep their eyes on the long game?

To a certain degree, and more than once, narrative threads have been buried in this latest batch of Marvel content. Concinnity and follow-through have become an issue, as plot points plumet more than drop and wayward character cameos wither on the vine. I mean, how and why is Harry Styles Thanos’ brother? How and why, Marvel?! Just be patient? We’ll find out when we find out? Oh, okay. Asking for a friend.

Something else Feige neglected, the power of corporate mergers. It’s well known that when Disney bought Marvel back in 2009, the House of Mouse was betting big and hoping it’d pay off bigger. It did, but Disney also bought a couple other major entertainment entities at that time, such as Lucasfilm, National Geographic, and 20th Century Fox.

The acquisition of Fox had big implications for Marvel. In addition to producing new Star Wars movies and an endless, I don’t know, ice flow of Titanic documentaries, Disney also arranged for the film rights reunion of Marvel with a few key characters the comic company sold off in the 1990s to bail itself out from bankruptcy. Namely, The X-Men and the Fantastic Four, but Kevin Feige himself also made a deal with Sony Pictures, the owners of Spider-Man and all his corresponding characters, to feature the highflying web-head in some key MCU films, a huge boon if there ever was one. The Spider-Man movies have been moving financial mountains for Sony since 2002. So too have the X-Men films for Fox, since 2000 in fact, and do not doubt Feige is planning a major MCU homecoming for everyone’s favorite irascible mutants. When the time is right, of course.

Unfortunately, adding more toys to the toy box has tended to slow down and even halt some parts of Marvel’s famously rocksteady product pipeline. MCU filmmakers have often been forced to readjust and change things up, sometimes right in the middle of production. That sort of thing is typically not good for the quality control process, and sometimes the end results have felt rushed. As all the gears set themselves in motion in what became the Infinity Saga, you could almost feel the momentum gathering from your theater seat. Not so with this new “Multiverse Saga”, which just hasn’t ever managed to get airborne, narratively speaking.

Ironically, the last internal hurdle Marvel has had to face is their own parent company. For all the love (and money) with which Disney has showered the little comic company that could, bare economics and the necessity and nuisance of corporate expansion have forced Disney to place some demands on Marvel that clearly have been difficult to meet. First off, Disney compelled Marvel to expand their brand from a shared movie universe to a shared movie and TV free-for-all, requiring fans to subscribe to streaming or miss out, all for the glory of Disney+, which initially seemed like a smash success, but which has been struggling of late. Disney+ isn’t a bad service as such, but their initial monthly consumer asking price was far too low to maintain for long, and their original programming has been … you know … The Book of Boba Fett and Hocus Pocus 2.

On top of that, Bob Iger, the once and future Disney CEO, has seemed eager to shake things up within his company and all its subsidiaries, once again owing to the fact that fewer people are going to theaters to see his stuff. Iger and Feige are in a tight spot, and it’d be easy to conclude Bob Iger would sell Marvel and Lucasfilm and all his company’s many acquired Fox properties if it meant saving the mouse side of the business for good. As it was in Uncle Walt’s day, Disney is in the movie and theme park business, and if business isn’t booming, neither, I suspect, will be Thor’s raging thunder. So to speak. Sorry, bad Marvel puns are too easy to hammer out. Ugh…

The funny thing is, Disney has recently added huge Marvel expansions to both its California and Florida resorts, and they plan on building a third in Hong Kong. Avengers Campus, as it’s called, features a life-size Avengers headquarters, several state-of-the-art rides, and more food, beverage, and merchandise options than you can shake Cap’s shield at. But will it be enough? Because everyone knows people are visiting theme parks less, too.

And maybe that’s the real problem. Everybody—and I do mean everybody—does seem much less enthused about spending money on this stuff than they were a decade ago. Can you blame us, Marvel? The world has become a nerve-racking place. Mass shootings, international wars, global pandemics. I’d sure love there to be an Avengers in real life, but I’m not so sure I want to waste my hard-earned cash on their every big-screen adventure. Times are getting tougher, entertainment options are expanding, and truth be told, Marvel kind of overdid it.

Between Feige and Iger, no superhero prospect need go undeveloped. If it sells, let it sell, if it doesn’t, well, we have an answer for that, too. These knuckleheads (said with all respect due) flooded the marketplace with comic-book-isms galore. Some people eat this stuff up, but many do not. What do you say to folks who prefer more grounded ‘adult’ cinema? Drama? Romance? Maybe even some decent high-brow comedy? Sorry, sir or madam and any accompanying friends and dependents, but all you can see at the movie house tonight is Marvel, Marvel, Marvel, and maybe one Batman flick. No, most people who don’t have Spider-Man’s responsibility credo tattooed on their souls won’t pay for that or celebrate it in any way. So, Marvel overdid it. So what? Isn’t that what Hollywood does? Run things into the ground until they’re unpopular, then find some other poor unsuspecting trends to acquire and exploit?

Traditionally, yes, that’s how it’s always seemed to us, watching as we’ve been from our stadium theater seating. There’s really no need to expect any less today than we expected twenty or forty or even sixty years ago. Is the MCU dying? I think it’s too soon to start the funeral march, but if Disney ever seriously considers selling Marvel—and to be clear, at present, there’s no indication this will happen anytime soon—the MCU will essentially be back to square one. New funding may mean new projects, but not if audiences have stopped going to see them.

Money talks, just as it’s always been, and moviegoers vote with their wallets. The good news is that Marvel’s history and legacy are rock solid. They really are the House of Ideas. They’ve told so many stories throughout the decades, both good and bad, it’d make Stephen King blush. Admittedly, publishing comics and producing big-budget blockbusters are two very different things, but with a bit of good luck and good public sentiment, anything and everything is sustainable. Am I right?

To be perfectly blunt, I’m not so sure Marvel can die. Like Blade, they’re the daywalker that just keeps coming. Like Pheonix, they always seem to rise from the ashes. Like Scarlett Witch, they’re absolutely crazy to make an impact. And make no mistake about it, if Marvel could die, if that were even possible, it’d be a noble, glorious death, just like… nope, still won’t spoil it for you. All I can say is this: stop seeing those Marvel movies if you want to find out just how tenuous the studio’s hold on mass-market media really is. I mean, but don’t, because I love this stuff. Sorry, I just do.

See you next month. Same POP time, same POP channel. Have a wonderful November, everyone!

Jeff Bowles is a science fiction and horror writer from the mountains of Colorado. The best of his outrageous and imaginative work can be found in Resurrection Mixtape, Love/Madness/Demon, God’s Body: Book One – The Fall, Godling and Other Paint Stories, Fear and Loathing in Las Cruces, and Brave New Multiverse. He has published work in magazines and anthologies like PodCastle, Tales from the Canyons of the Damned, the Threepenny Review, and Dark Moon Digest. Jeff earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at Western State Colorado University. He currently lives in the high-altitude Pikes Peak region, where he dreams strange dreams and spends far too much time under the stars.

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