Nothing to Marvel At- What the Future Holds for the MCU

The MCU has been at the forefront of entertainment for the past decade, but with the new shows and films being released, the franchise is losing much of the creativity and originality that drove its past projects. 

By Anya Patri

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a staple of entertainment for the past fourteen years, grossing incredibly high numbers in the box office and streaming sites. While the content itself hasn’t always been consistently good, Marvel has managed to establish an interconnected world based on the comics started in 1939 that translated immensely well onto the big screen. With iconic characters such as Iron-Man, Captain America, and Spiderman that have launched their actors and directors into superstardom, Marvel has been one of Hollywood’s biggest powerhouses in recent cinema. 

However, with the death of its most beloved franchise, The Avengers, the new era of Marvel movies has been a mixed batch. There are some unique and thrilling shows featuring diversity, something that the company has been attempting to introduce in more projects; but there have also been shows that are dull, derivative, and were almost impossible for me to sit through when I attempted to watch them. So is it possible for the “New Marvel” to fill the footsteps of the era that came before it? Or is this change a welcome respite from a franchise which has been likened to a theme park by Director Martin Scorsese? These questions have been asked and discussed by critics and fans alike. However, I believe that while Marvel’s new direction does bring something new to the table, some of the new media in the franchise feel a bit like the creators throwing half-baked concepts at the public and seeing what makes them the most money.  

A show that exemplifies the worse parts of Marvel’s new direction is She-Hulk: Attorney At Law. This show feels like corporate, “girlboss” feminism, filled with blanket statements and catchphrases about women’s empowerment while lacking any depth in their delivery. The characters are incredibly bland, and the main character, Jennifer Walters, is difficult to sympathize with, root for, or even care about. They reintroduce Bruce Banner, or the Hulk, as a mentor figure to Walters, but strip him of anything that made him an enjoyable character to watch in the process, making him a hollow shell of his predecessor. This show is boring, derivative, and an attempt at a cute, early-2000’s style slice of life comedy that falls flat the second you pay attention to it. Even the special effects are lacking with the Hulk characters, which is surprising as Marvel is known to spare no expense with production. It has none of the passion and heart that so many previous films possessed, and none of the creativity or effort that we have come to expect from Marvel. It just is a forgettable cash-grab, which is quite disappointing.

However, a show released around the same time this year as She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, that I actually enjoyed was Ms. Marvel. Following the origin story of a young Pakistani-American teen with an affinity for comics and a love of the superhero Captain Marvel, Kamala Khan becomes a superhero herself. While this show felt like a Disney Channel original show with a higher production budget, I loved the way the artwork and graffiti came to life around the characters, as well as the very cartoon way of storytelling reminiscent of Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse. The representation in this show is one of its highlights, and the main character’s struggles and sincere authenticity makes her compelling to watch. It is quite impressive how Marvel has added so much more diversity with their main characters in the past couple of years, and I hope to see more of this representation in the future. While Ms. Marvel is nowhere near my favorite Marvel show, it definitely is a fun, chill, weekend watch when you can’t stand disney channel laugh tracks but feel nostalgic for the shows themselves. 

Ultimately, Marvel’s shows have been a bit hit-or-miss, with a few good ones like Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, and WandaVision that are creative and experimental, as well as telling compelling stories. WandaVision is Marvel’s best series to date, with no competition from other shows in both ratings and viewership. It goes to show that Marvel is capable of amazing art, but when it comes to its recent series’, their release strategy feels much more like quantity over quality, with lots of mediocre television fading into the background while the good ones are few and far between. While I commend the amount of content being produced, I would rather have a smaller number of high-quality, well-made shows over a slew of boring and unoriginal series that attempt to mimic the MCUs golden age yet never coming close. Marvel can make high-quality, unique shows, they just choose not to. A solid product takes time and effort, but the studio tends to prioritize viewership and streams over quality. 

I wish the Marvel movie situation was better than the shows, but if anything, they are unfortunately much worse. While there have been a few shows that I have genuinely enjoyed, I haven’t seen a single newer movie (aside from Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) without leaving the theater underwhelmed. The Eternals had horrible pacing, a group of forgettable characters despite the star-studded cast, and mediocre special effects. Morbius was quite possibly one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life and I will never recover from watching it. Finally, Thor: Love and Thunder felt like a fever-induced dream that had me more confused at the end than when I started (I loved the screaming goats though. Those were a 10/10). Even movies that I would consider decent, like Spiderman: No Way Home and Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, were enjoyable for me for their special effects and for spiderman, childhood nostalgia. They were more like RPG video games than movies, but I did enjoy the emotional stakes that were so drastically missing from the previous films. 

The problem with the new Marvel movies is that when they are compared to previous films, they completely fall apart under the scrutiny. While the MCU has a plethora of bad movies released during the Avengers Era, I can’t see any of them coming near the sheer soullessness of the newer films. There is an immense lack of creativity and solid writing to back up character motivations. You need creativity and drive to make something good, and neither is present in the newer films. The production is mediocre and while there are some good ones, they shine in comparison to the drivel that surrounds them. It is quite disappointing that there are so many straight out bad releases and it makes me worry about the future of Marvel’s content. 

Another issue that these films face is that their only appeal is their connection to the greater MCU. Only those who are invested in the whole franchise can enjoy these movies, and they are only fun because of the easter-egg connections they have to other content- fan favorites have cameos; allusions to different events that previously occurred; running jokes or gags; etc. While those are fun, it gets a bit old when that’s the only interesting part of the movie. For example, if you look at Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, it stands alone and with the MCU because while it could be canonically accurate, it still is fun to watch even if you know nothing about Spiderman comics or movies. On the other hand, you have Spiderman: No Way Home, which is a fun movie but really only works if you have an awareness of previous Spiderman movies, villains, actors, and characters. MCU connections can be done well, but to rely on them solely is simply lazy storytelling. 

Ultimately, all art is subjective, except for Morbius which is objectively bad. Regardless of what marvel puts out, we’re still going to watch it, whether it be out of curiosity or because the franchise has been so important to us throughout the past decade. However, I personally predict that the Marvel franchise will slowly reach a Star Wars status- it will continue to add on to the universe even when it is unnecessary and no one particularly enjoys the additions. There will be a fair amount of decent shows or movies, but unless Marvel kickstarts its former creativity and gets people invested in its content outside of The Avengers, they will keep beating a dead horse without anything ever changing. But as someone who has enjoyed my fair share of Marvel films, they are amazing to see in theaters and I still have my fingers crossed that a movie will come along, prove me wrong, and change my mind. Until then, though, I’ll be taking a long break from the MCU.

_{Images credited to Disney and Disney+}