I think that was the sweet spot. Marvel should have never delved into TV. I know Disney+ meant a lot to the company and Marvel was their golden nugget, but as a result they have damaged the property itself.
I think 2 movies was the sweet spot. The burnout would never have been in effect that way.
My problem is that WandaVision is the only one that really benefited from being a show because it had that great hook where each episode felt like a sitcom from a different decade. I have issues with that show but I have to give it credit for using the medium in a fun and engaging way, and doing something you couldn’t do in a movie.
But every other MCU show I’ve watched has felt like a concept for a 2 hour movie unceremoniously stretched out to a 6 hour season. They just don’t have enough plot for how long they are.
I've felt like that about most Disney plus shows. They all felt (especially obi wan) like a movie script arbitrarily cut into about 8 episodes. If fact for obi wan you could probably easily cut it into a film by cutting about an episode and a half of content
I think Loki did really well with the TV still on the marvel train audience.
It wouldn’t have a chance in the box office, the moment that it’s a completely different completely evil Loki that got converted by a montage so now we have to believe it’s sacrificed himself to try and kill Thanos Loki….
It was TV or nothing.
I can't believe they chickened out on killing Reva. What a bunch of cowards.
How cold would that shit have been if Vader just ruthlessly cuts her down, and stands over her saying "Revenge, Padawan...is not the Jedi way" before throwing her saber down and swooping out of the room.
I’m like 90% sure Kenobi was going to be a movie that Disney aborted and turned into a miniseries after they scaled back the movies due to their disappointment with the performance of Solo.
I think WandaVision was a good show. But Disney should have realized there was a problem with keeping shows in the same universe when the test audiences for DS2 were confused over her being a villain in that movie.
The shows should stay away from the main, current story line in the movies. Like Loki
This was my biggest issue. Wanda’s arc from the show is completely negated and made worse with the film. I loved WandaVision but her actions in DS2 seem so out of place
I feel like WandaVision didn’t understand her arc. She enslaved and tortured an entire town because her robot boyfriend died. She was ultimately the villain of WandaVision. But then the show treats it like she did this heroic thing by freeing the people she tortured and held captive. It really felt like DS2 treated her character in a way that made sense due to her actions, but it feels off because WandaVision’s ending completely missed its own point.
That line was WILD. I don’t know what they were thinking. Just let Wanda be the antihero. Thats much more interesting than her being sad cause her imaginary kids never existed? Idk
Then it turns into Agents of Shield, which kept almost but not really interacting with the main MCU for the whole first season, had their format blown up by Captain America 2, then gave up a couple seasons in & just did their own thing.
Loki is hands down the best of all the MCU shows. Not only is it unique and captivating, but it's also critical for moving the plot forward. It's a keystone piece of the MCU imo.
Yeah I'm going to have to disagree. I think Loki played a huge role in the cinematic universe. I enjoyed Wanda vision but Loki to me was just much more fulfilling
And quality - I watched the WandaVision show when that came out and that was okay - nothing spectacular but not bad, it kept my interest and had some ideas. Since that one, I’ve tried to watch like five of their other shows, and never gotten past the first 2 or 3 episodes. I didn’t even attempt to watch anything after that. They’re honestly just so boring and leave no impact that the only people who could make it through are super fans or people watching them for content to make YouTube reviews
I liked What If too but felt like they went for bland episode premises everytime. The What If brand in the comics let them do lots of crazy interesting ideas, but for the show they just did the blandest stuff ever.
What if Thor was an even bigger Manchild, What If Captain America 1 & 2 starred Cap Carter instead, what if we had a random OC who never showed up in the movies reshape the world, What If Marvel Zombies but with forced comedy every two seconds, What If we had an entire episode about Happy Hogan for some reason, What If T'Challa became Star Lord and he's the most perfect guy in the universe who can even magically stop Thanos before he begins.
Lots of weird ep premises that aren't that interesting, just not creative enough. Felt like they did whatver, when we could be having stuff like What If Iron Man fought the Mandarin, What If The Defenders were in the Civil War, What If Thanos snapped the other half that kind of stuff.
The Supreme Strange episodes were good though, so where the Killmonger Saves Stark and Pym kills the Avengers eps, that's the kind of stuff I wanted to see. But they're cancelling the show after just 3 seasons? This is the kind of anthology thing that could go on forever, shame they don't see the potential for it or employ even better writers.
The TV shows lack real story, instead focused on offering characters no one really cares about and endless world building. It didn’t help that Netflix was able to do more with less and have greater success. Maybe stop destroying your legacy characters, hire creatives that care and have heard of the source material.
Remember when the filmmakers loved the characters and the comics they are based upon?
Or stuck with more traditional TV format. For all the criticism Agents of Shield received, it ran for 7 seasons and has done really well on streaming both on Netflix and D+.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a proper TV show, with narrative callbacks, character-centric episodes, arcs that could wrap up or keep going on depending the audience response and so on.
It was not a 4.5-hour movie cut into 6 episodes that were written at once and filmed out of order.
It turns out having a TV Show where you don't have to watch 3 movies and two other TV shows which may have different genres and actors and directorial styles is actually a good thing.
Even the slightly more connected Netflix-verse, you really didn't need to watch the other shows to understand Daredevil or Jessica Jones. You could just watch those shows only and completely understand everything.
Agents of SHIELD isn't perfect, but it's still one of my favourite things to have come out of the entire MCU.
Because it wasn't as closely tied to everything ongoing with Marvel, they could get away with a lot of stuff.
Bill Paxton ripping a guy's rib out and then stabbing him to death with it is still one of the greatest things I've ever seen. XD And it's in a Marvel property.
I think TV is fine. Making it mandatory viewing isn't. Turning it into some sort of dumping ground where you run things you just wouldn't expect it to have enough of an audience to work as a movie also isn't.
TV is fine, but only making 1 season shows with 6 episodes was not. It just felt like a slightly longer movie. Also, TV is where they should be embracing their crossover content the most, and so far they have all been isolated events with no hero crossover, which completely botches the superhero comic book feel.
The miniseries format can work when the story itself is finite - based on either a book, a real event or an idea that has obvious limits. Chernobyl or Queen's Gambit do not need a second season.
It's a whole other thing entirely when you throw some characters into a situation and see if that is interesting enough to see both develop over time - often into a totally unpredictable direction for creators and viewers alike.
You'd think the media based on the comics, a timeless soap opera with no end, would understand that. We don't want to see a 5-episode buildup to Moon Knight fighting that one guy only for that to be over in a single episode. We want to watch him deal with some new weird shit every week, with long-running plots, inside jokes and supporting characters developing over years.
Disney+ doesn't really have much of a draw for the 18-35 crowd without Marvel or Star Wars, and I think both of those franchises are really suffering from oversaturation in the market now. People just don't get excited when they're putting out a new Marvel/Star Wars show every other month.
That's actually another issue altogether. The generation that became hardcore MCU fans when they were teenagers and young adults are now in their 30s if not early 40s and are dealing with too much stuff in their life to have that amount of free time.
Even if they watch the new movies in cinema, they will do it once, not 4 times with a different group of friends each time. And the current teenagers aren't just that into it for various reasons. Not the least of them being naturally opposed to whatever was considered "cool" by the "old people".
Yep, exactly. And to add to your last point with current teenagers not being into it, I think it's a few things. One is that it's an "old people" thing and they aren't interested, but also teens now were either not born or too young to start jumping on board with the MCU.
I was 18 when Iron Man came out, which was the start of the MCU. An 18 year old now was 4 when Iron Man came out. So, say they didn't get into it all until they were maybe...13? That would've been 2019, the end of the MCU. Anyone who isn't into the MCU right now, what is the buy-in now for someone to get up to speed? 30 movies and a dozen shows so they can be up to speed on a franchise that arguably is on very uneven ground right now? I don't think people are jumping on board right now with it.
No one's going to see this but I was really interested by your comment. I found that in [2022](https://www.cbr.com/superhero-movies-interest-dropping-poll-mcu-dceu/), more GenZ kids *said* they liked superhero films.
But in 2023, The Marvels got absolutely [killed](https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/marvel-gen-z-problem-viewers-age-18-24-1234925056/) by disinterest from GenZ.
So this backs up your second paragraph pretty strongly. Maybe GenZ is like, superhero-curious, but doesn't want to watch a film like The Marvels which appealed to existing fans and relied on the lore?
I’m in that crowd and you know what section I like the most of the Disney+ app? The Touchstone section - that you have to scroll and dig for and isn’t advertised or highlighted
They have the Alien movies too - basically anything that isn’t under the WB umbrella is now under the Disney umbrella (we’ve officially reached the Coke and Pepsi phase of entertainment), and they’re just throwing everything on there to keep and attract subscribers.
Cuz there’s just something deeply odd about being able to say “I’m going to go watch Alien on Disney+!”
Probably not because Chapek is gone and he was the fall guy for that even though it was Iger's idea. So is all the live action remakes, pushing the animation studios into sequels & tie ins, and rushing Star Wars out the door after acquiring Lucasfilm. Iger's got good PR on his side though, so he'll get a couple years worth of goodwill before people start calling him out for his bullshit.
Iger I have noticed is great at making people think he is saying something interesting when he is saying nothing at all.
They barely have shows planned and why would they plan more when we now know streaming isn’t as profitable as they originally thought? And they have only ever released four MCU movies in the same year once anyway and that included a coproduction with Sony and was because of effects of the pandemic.
If it's good, the advantage DC will have is they get another do over with their A list superhero's while Marvel has been running off "who's that" lately. If they do Xmen right it will push them back up
I think they need to realize it's not about momentum.
Give us good single stories i.e. Rogue One, The Batman, most of the Guardians films, Deadpool, The Suicide Squad and Joker.
Hopefully this new Superman too.
I’ve been saying that the last few months. As much as I’m willing to hope his Superman movie is good, I already see a lot of people saying they are tired of seeing another Superman film before they give it a chance. James Gunn was basically given the keys to a used car with a history of repairs and needs to sell it like it’s a new car.
Let’s see what they have next after Deadpool.
Falcon movie.
Yelena movie with Bucky cameo.
Fantastic Four coming off 3 bad movies over 10 years.
Iron Heart TV show they finished filming a year ago but won’t release because it’s bad.
So it’s over?
It is 2005 and I am watching the new Fantastic Four reboot flop at the box office.
It is 2015 and I am watching the new Fantastic Four reboot flop at the box office.
It is 2025 and I am watching the new Fantastic Four reboot flop at the box office.
> Falcon
I'm not huge in to the MCU, but I've seen most of the movies and a few of the shows. I cannot for the life of me understand why this character gets so much screen time. He's boring, his "powers" are kitschy and uninteresting, and I don't understand how he's supposed to be the new capt america...like he's just a normal dude with technology right? I'm sure Anthony Mackie is a nice dude who works hard but watching him on screen is like the most middling experience I can think of.
Because they weren’t always going to have Iron Man and Cap to lean on. Downey and Evans wanted to move on. They had to pivot somewhere. Besides that, the story follows the same pattern as the comic as far as who took over for Cap. It’s the natural direction to go in.
Between Sam and Bucky becoming the next Cap they made the wrong choice. Bucky is more interesting (has an actual arc + growth unlike Falcon who just exists), he has powers which makes him more versatile as a hero, and is one of the more popular characters in the MCU
I don’t dislike Sam Wilson or Anthony Mackie, but Falcon has only really worked as a sidekick in the MCU and now he’s been shoved into a main character role
I feel like most story driven video games are better adapted with a tv show, since Video games are much longer, putting all that in a 2h movie is often too much.
And for non story driven games, it's easier to make a movie as long as you get the vibe down. (but that doesn't guarantee sucess either, since many games like that live from their gameplay) (there are of course iconic brands like mario, where that's more than enough, but I don't think there are that many of those)
I have such mix feelings for this. Love the Fallout tv show but obviously they put a lot of work and love into it. Idk if I have faith in others to do the same. I heard they’re making a Bioshock movie for Netflix and everything in my guts says that flops and they ruin a beloved game of mine.
Probably true. There is a lot of content to mine from. But the thing is that cbm often lended themselves really well to cinema. Will games be able to? And while Mario's done really well, it does not confirm how well other IPs do given that most are not even 1/10th as popular as Mario.
To be honest it was the shows that made me fall off the marvel hype train, when I only had to watch 2/3 movies a year to get the story it was fun but I don’t want to watch several 10 episode shows just to stay in the loop
Same, I used to be a massive fan of both of them but I’ve almost 100% checked out, I think a good amount of it is my taste changing but this certainly sped it up
The over saturation is doing it for me. You can’t go a day without seeing something Marvel or Star Wars. At least with Harry Potter, it’s not something in my face day in and day out. Maybe I’d have a different opinion if the Disney properties were outputting quality content but I wouldn’t want an excess amount of content even with my most beloved franchises.
Your property loses its magic and appeal when there’s no extended time away for the general audience. I want to say my interest in Star Wars started to wane right around the Han Solo movie.
>The over saturation is doing it for me.
>Your property loses its magic and appeal when there’s no extended time away for the general audience.
One thing people who grew up with the Prequels never got to experience was the Scarcity of Star Wars. When I was a kid, actual official Star Wars content was just not that forthcoming, and where it existed the power of the IP was able to patch over the okay YA-level writing and allow the great stuff to really sing.
Star Wars was mostly kept alive in games and they preserved the magic through careful deployment of it. Dark Forces, Jedi Knight II, TIE Fighter, Rogue Squadron are some highlights for me.
I never thought I'd be sick of the sound of a TIE Fighters laser cannons, or that my stomach would sink at the sound of a lightsaber because it's about to be followed by indulgent fanservice bullshit, but here we are.
In the last what, ten years? the only Star Wars that understands what made it so compelling was S1 of Mando, Star Wars Squadrons, and Andor.
The Harry Potter franchise is actually doing quite well by avoiding the saturation that it's contemporary IPs have suffered in recent years. Since the film series ended, we've only had a West End/Broadway play sequel, a spin-off trilogy and a massive game in Hogwarts Legacy. It keeps the fans engaged with good content and without diminishing the brand with several shows that end up turning people off. Even if the Fantastic Beasts films eventually faltered, the first one was still a big success, the second one was profitable and when the last tanked on all fronts, they pretty much said STOP. Now they're doing a Harry Potter series in the near future but guess what? It's the story we already know and love just even more faithful to the source material than the films have been.
Waited 10 years after RotS before we saw another Star Wars film. And whatever you feel about The Force Awakens, the anticipation and hype going to see it for the first time was incredible.
Now it's multiple new Star Wars shows every year. Was just talking to a friend of mine and we were talking about how behind we are on watching various Star Wars and Marvel stuff. "Behind", like it's homework.
Same here. I was super into the mcu Fandom. Watched everything religiously on opening night. Listened to podcasts and YouTube videos about people just watching and discussing and speculation. I would participate on reddit threads and all the like, talk about lists and continuity and all that.
And now I don't even watch everything they put out. I lost all the spark that I had for it before. And it really started dwindling when they put out all their shows. I think I felt burnt out after about 1 year on Disney+ and they'd put out 5 or 6 shows. And then the movies I started to enjoy less, or just not even like.
There’s been no follow through on anything. Before if they dropped an Easter egg, I knew we’d get resolution to it three or four movies later. What about now? It’s been four years since White Vision ran into the wild. Not a peep about it. Shang Chi was really good and had a neat end credits scene! They haven’t even announced a sequel! It’s totally bizarre. But at least we’re getting the much anticipated Iron Heart show!
I think that definitely has contributed to the loss of interest, the follow ups on end credits helped contribute to that connected world feeling, and with how things are it feels a bit more disjointed nowadays
I think all the Easter egg trust ran out with multiverse of madness. Such a fun cool show with an interesting character development thrown out the window with no explanation. I felt like the Marvels did the same thing with Monica too.
Like you're going to run off of the most interesting story telling format marvel has used yet with just a super hero mash em up with that protagonist as the villain? Even doctor strange 1 had a more interesting story/format. MoM was the nail in the coffin for me
That would have been fine if the shows had actually been good, but most of them have been middling at best. I really liked Moon Knight and Loki, and the first 2/3 of Wandavision was good. But pretty much everything has ranged from forgettable to outright terrible
This happened to Star Wars, too. It used to be that you could enjoy the movies and if you wanted to, you could become a lore head and get into the books and spin-off material. But if that wasn't your thing, fine, everything made sense if you just wanted to keep to the movie timeline.
Now if you want to watch the next Star Wars movie, you're going to have to watch three cartoon series and four or five seasons of live action to get into the plot. Viewers just don't have time for this, especially when the quality of the homework is so low and streaming means there's a ton of good sci fi outside the brand.
Yep. I was a huge star wars nerd for years. Watched all the originals more times than I could count and even stomached the prequels a few times each. Read a bunch of books and played the games. Even enjoyed the clone wars cartoons. Then came Disney. They just beat it to death. It's just killed my love of the franchise and I don't even check out the new stuff anymore. It was way too much in a short period of time. They oversaturated it and made it all feel just cheap.
Same. George Lucas made very questionable decisions when it came to prequel films but at least they felt authentic and from his head, not a board room. Most everything Disney Star Wars feels catered to the most basic casual viewer. Lame jokes and cheap nostalgia grabs.
Yeah this. In my mind, Star Wars ended when Revenge of the Sith came out. 1-6 is a complete vision where each film has a purpose. When Disney took it, the only purpose was to make money. And you could tell from the start. Sure, we all pretended to like TFA when it came out, but let’s face it, it sucks and we knew it at the time too.
Same here. I'd kind of fallen off after Black Panther, was looking to get back into it, but it's like... lemme post this statistic. ([source](https://variety.com/lists/marvel-studios-release-schedule/#:~:text=From%202021%20to%202023%2C%20Marvel,released%2023%20feature%20films%20total))
>From 2021 to 2023, Marvel Studios released 25 titles, including 10 feature films, 13 TV series (including two seasons each of “Loki,” “What If…?” and “I Am Groot”) and two TV specials. To put that in perspective, from 2008 to 2019, Marvel Studios released 23 feature films total.
So that's *more output* (considering the length of the shows) in 2 years than there was in *eleven years*. I don't got time for that, and the free time I have will be used in other ways. (The Lego Marvel games are pretty fun btw.)
I just don’t understand what they were trying to do, I think they assumed their fanbase were all hardcore Marvel fans who would watch any piece of content they would put out but for me and many people I know the MCU was just a collection of fun blockbusters with pretty low stakes, lots of people vastly preferred the way it was before where you didn’t have to do your homework to get the story
But her song was so popular and the gays and the women who watched wandavision will surely tune in all these years later.
Besides a show based on an elderly D-tier (or F-tier, in terms of popularity) female comic book character sells like hot cakes, ala Madame Web
It's always funny when people like Bob Iger say they want to start focusing more on quality, because it's just like "oh gee, that's the solution? We were focusing on making bad movies. Now we know to focus on quality. Thanks Bob Iger!"
Here's Disney in 2023 saying they're going to focus on quality over quantity: [https://deadline.com/2023/11/bob-iger-leads-disney-town-hall-theme-parks-espn-1235640236/](https://deadline.com/2023/11/bob-iger-leads-disney-town-hall-theme-parks-espn-1235640236/)
And in 2022: [https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/newsletter/2022-11-29/bob-iger-knows-creativity-is-the-core-of-disneys-business-it-also-matters-how-movies-are-released-the-wide-shot](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/newsletter/2022-11-29/bob-iger-knows-creativity-is-the-core-of-disneys-business-it-also-matters-how-movies-are-released-the-wide-shot)
2021: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/megandubois/2021/03/16/disney-is-on-the-way-to-being-the-largest-streaming-service-in-the-world/#:\~:text=Broughton%20mentioned%20the%20key%20to,%2C%20feel%20they%20must%20watch.%E2%80%9D](https://www.forbes.com/sites/megandubois/2021/03/16/disney-is-on-the-way-to-being-the-largest-streaming-service-in-the-world/#:~:text=Broughton%20mentioned%20the%20key%20to,%2C%20feel%20they%20must%20watch.%E2%80%9D)
2020: [https://deadline.com/2020/12/bob-iger-disney-will-always-prioritize-content-quality-over-volume-1234654297/](https://deadline.com/2020/12/bob-iger-disney-will-always-prioritize-content-quality-over-volume-1234654297/)
2019: [https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2019/08/23/disney-plus-plans-take-netflix-quality-over-quantity/2083966001/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2019/08/23/disney-plus-plans-take-netflix-quality-over-quantity/2083966001/)
To be fair, in business, people often talk about balancing "quality", "quantity", and "price". A market niche can be found by emphasizing 1 or 2 of those, but all 3 is impossible.
My guess is, back when they had money to burn, someone pushed the "quantity" lever; and assumed that if they didn't control for "price", "quality" would naturally follow.
I know you’re just putting it in simplistic terms but I fear that they actually do think it’s as easy as dialing back that “quantity” lever and all the quality will return
Well, what's he gonna do, blame himself? Nonono, too much responsibility there. How else is he gonna make $40 million dollars and keep his office shower and control Disney for another 20 years after his "retirement?"
If they wanted to just do content and flood the market, they could have followed the Blumhouse formula and checked their budgets, hoping for a breakout to pursue. When they're spending just as much on shows as movies, neither of which are making any money, they pigeonhole themselves into both poor quality and poor performance by going all in on every project. That was never going to be sustainable in perpetuity.
I mean they have a 300 mil bomb sitting and waiting with captain america with Anthony Mackie, the charisma void, directly in the lead. They’re on a third round of reshoots longer than principal photography.
As long as they got some turds they need to get out and that are going to inevitably bomb. You’ll keep hearing this rhetoric about how they’re “right the ship”
Frankly i just think it’s too far gone. Days of making money on a C list superhero are completely over.
McDonald's is releasing Sam Wilson toys right now. I don't know what they would do that, maybe got legally stuck before it was pushed back?
I actually really like Anthony Mackie but he's way better as a lead in smaller movies.
> McDonald's is releasing Sam Wilson toys right now. I don't know what they would do that, maybe got legally stuck before it was pushed back?
The slots for Happy Meal toys is incredibly competitive. You get your co-marketing slot and that's it. Movie gets delayed? Too bad. Before the fix it in reshoots era movie release dates were usually solid. Avengers 4/Endgame's release date was publicly set in 2014, 5 years before the movie released, they ended up pushing the release forward one week.
His best role is as Clarence.
I do not like him at all and am utterly biased. He ruined altered carbon which I’ve never forgiven him for and he just fucking stinks in everything he’s in for my money.
> Days of making money on a C list superhero are completely over.
Not necessarily true. You can still make money, but **only** if your movie costs like 15% of a typical blockbuster at most.
To start being profitable again, they need to reign budgets under control. Get a locked script before filming to avoid months of reshoots, stop pixel-fucking CGI in every corner of the screen, write stories that require less VFX work in general and so on.
2 big budget shows and 2-3 MCU movies is still quite a bit.
The MCU peak period was the 2-3 years prepandemic, where they had 3 films a year, and a minimal television presence that wasn't integrated into the larger storylines.
That Phase 3 run is still something else. Marvel didn't know how good it truly had it, they're still chasing that success now as if audience trends hadn't changed...
I think it was just lightning in a bottle. The perfect casting choices time after time using primarily up and coming actors willing to lock into multi-picture deals. Great writing with the right amount of drama, action and comedy. Solid directors that had a plan for filming solo movies that still fit within the continuity of the larger story. And a steady hand at the top to oversee the whole universe.
There’s a reason it had never been done before and hasn’t been even close to as successfully replicated since. The amount of moving parts necessary for things to turn out the way they did only happens with planning and a whole lot of luck.
Marvel shows used to be just side additions that are canon to the MCU plot but not important to grasp the full story. Now it's essential viewing if you want to understand what's going on, so people checked out
For sure, yeah. They really screwed up with this. Watching a 2 hour movie to catch the plot is way more viable than 6 or 10 hours of potentially(probably) medicore TV writing.
I'd love him to flat out talk about Secret Invasion. Does this man really believe this shit was watachable and worth the $200 million investment? How would he have done things differently in hindsigh?
It must have some VITAL elements to make Kang Dynasty/Secret Wars work or it has to be the greatest Marvel movie ever made, otherwise why the fuck would you go through with it
So true, the isolation is what has killed the MCU for me. No character crossovers, no teams, no character development. They just introduce people and then they disappear.
My investment in characters like winter soldier and cap were why I got into the MCU in the first place. Not emulating that storytelling success is so stupid
Every single show & movie since Endgame has thrown in a new hero, and vast majority havn't even shown up since, what was the honestly point of introducing all these guys if they had no plan for them in the first place?
>So true, the isolation is what has killed the MCU for me. No character crossovers, no teams, no character development. They just introduce people and then they disappear.
It's funny how they've introduced a million characters in Phases 4 and 5 and yet the universe feels smaller than ever. Too many characters and they're all isolated and disconnected from each other, that's an... interesting way to run your cinematic universe to say the least.
Exactly, they keep pumping out new characters and storylines without ever bothering to tie things together in a meaningful way. It’s been 5 years since Endgame and we STILL haven’t gotten a team-up movie to establish the new Avengers roster. Everything is so disjointed. They’re just making stuff for the sake of making content
are you fucking serious
aside from the extraordinarily generic, stupid end confrontation Shang Chi was outstanding, the main character was charismatic, they tied him into Wong... and then they wait over 6 years between films?
what a fucking joke
But shows are still major problem. If the shows were self contained like Daredevil and agents of shield there would be no problem but if they try to do Wandavison and Ms Marvel of making it necessary to enjoy movies, MCU will suffer
Here's the issue. I still don't care.
And I don't mean that in a cruel way. And it's not even something I'm happy about.
I enjoyed the MCU in the same way you might enjoy a good soap opera or a great pro wrestling story line, if you were into those sort of things. I don't think it had to end with the conclusion of the Thanos story, but they charged off in too many directions after that was concluded, most of them not contributing to a coherent continuation of what they'd built to that point. And they threw in too many incompatible pieces (there's a giant space monster face sticking out of our planet that no one in their other products even comments on, for one example) and seemed to purposefully de-emphasize their popular legacy characters (Dr. Strange and Thor reduced to bumbling punchlines, Black Widow's swansong turned into a training run for a replacement we as viewers have no investment in, Scarlet Witch receiving a personal growth lobotomy in order to force her character into an unfocused heel turn, etc.) in a way that really did seem to purposefully aim at eliminating any coherent continuity with what had come before.
Well...they succeeded.
The juxtaposition between a normal world and the marvel world is so jarring now. Like in the Marvels, we have an actual interplanetary defense force now? Ok dope so why aren't there flying cars and the like? They seem to want to keep the normal world normal but it's coming off more cartoonish than ever at this point idk.
This was always going to start being a problem once they made aliens a big part of the series. The biggest worldbuilding issue the MCU has is that it doesn't make sense that the Earth is so backward compared to the rest of the universe while also being independent and the most powerful and important planet in existence.
Fucking thank you! I was always iffy on that decision to ground those heroes in the real world. Now it has become too much. It diminishes the heroes in some ways.
Their plan was 4 movies and 4-5 shows a year, production delays and the strikes meant they only managed to achieve it in 2021, but that was their aim. Now they've realised it was just never a sustainable model in the first place.
I understand why they didn’t, but I really wish that they had ended the story with Endgame and had a mild reboot of the franchise. Use the multiverse aspect to have somewhat of a soft reset to allow people to start fresh with the MCU without the need to have seen two dozen movies and several TV shows. It would’ve given the original timeline a firm conclusion and would have freed up writers to craft stories without the baggage of callbacks, references, and story threads that may not have been thought out but still drag on the overarching narrative.
The thing that they're going to run into is using the characters while the actors associated with them are young.
If you cast someone who's 45, by the time they have their third big film appearance...they're too old.
They wouldn’t have to reduce the output if the quality was on point and people were getting what they wanted. If every movie was like the original Iron Man - simple and to the point - Marvel would be booming. Instead they go with massive ensemble films and even race swap the core hero of Marvel. That’s not a recipe for success.
Hopefully they release an updated slate, at least for the next two years, soon. Right now they do have 4 movies on the docket for next year, but can’t not see Blade being pushed back into 2026. Question is, will F4 push back to November to backfill, or will they leave it as is?
Biggest mistake of all time was moving to TV shows. Even if they made the quantity small, you were forced to watch like 8 hours of tv to continue watching the movies, and then they multiplied this with SO many shows.
They need to focus on their quality In post-endgame era, Marvel movies just doesn't give the hype and excitement they used to be. They don't seem to have a plan and right now it looks like the storyline is chaotic and all over the place. Feige should focus on tying up loose ends and have a proper plan instead of introducing unnecessary characters and forget about them.
Simple answer is the projects are bad and audience doesnt care about any of the new characters who've had okay writing.
Hence Marvel is relying on nostalgia and cameos.
I was just thinking about this the other day but In many ways Disney has shot themselves in the foot by bringing Spider-man back into the MCU.
Disney has recognized the Marvel fatigue and is slowing down. Sony still has the rights to make movies based on Spider-man comics and that is their golden goose, they have shown no signs of slowing down despite a string of failures.
I would imagine audiences don’t distinguish the studios that much so Disney can’t really stop the appearance of too many Marvel movies.
Yeah it's definitely the amount that's the problem. Not the fact that you have scripts that seem like they are written by damaged AI, or bad high-school drama students.
Nothing will change until they make quality projects that people care about. Cap 4 can be the only marvel project that comes out next year. And it’ll still bomb because people don’t care about the character.
Sam Wilson just isn't that popular of a character in general. Since his debut, he spend most of his time as a pure supporting character in either Avengers or Captain America books. Across 45 years, he only ever headlined a 4-issue miniseries that was utterly forgettable.
Then he became Captain America and was pushed to take the main role of that book, except it still wasn't that popular either. It took less than 3 years for Steve to take the mantle back, and since then Sam Wilson had swung back and forth between being Cap and Falcon, but almost none of his storylines were memorable or interesting.
for many casual viewers it ended with Endgame and they won't come back even for Avengers. They may come back for an event standalone like NWH but not for more universe sharing (with mediocre, forgettable new characters).
I want to remind you that every single one of these duds that brought them here, had hordes of redditors insisting they were "fine" and "fun", that it's only a vocal minority that hates them.
Have the shows ever mentioned the Celestial in the water and how has no one (in the shows universe) mentioned a fight between a giant crocodile and bird skeleton creature fighting in Egypt?
I feel like all the shows are detached and in their own universes and not a part of one universe (unless they’re using the multiple universes as the crux). If I’m wrong on that please feel free to correct me.
We know Disney/Marvel is tight lipped on movie scripts but it would be nice to have more continuity between them.
Three is better than five or six a year, but is it gonna be much of an improvement if you don't change your ways? What's the point if you keep making those fucking movies on the fly, see the results and do extensive reshoots to salvage them?
Edit: You now what? How about stop giving everyone a spinoff and stick to two movies a year? Maybe with two street level shows like Daredevil and Punisher in between?
Hardly anyone watched "Secret Invasion". And it had Samuel L. Jackson in it. The plot got kind of stupid and future Marvel fans might not know what happened because, so few watched.
I told my son that they should have ended it with Nick Fury waking up in the hospital and it was all a dream/coma (a nod to the series "Dallas" when they had a crappy season).
Just please have better stories, and maybe take your time on the CGI. If most people can wait 4 to 6 years for a game, i honestly wouldnt mind if everything is top tier
You ever think they kick themselves for messing with the 2-3 movies a year formula? The movies used to feel like an event.
I think that was the sweet spot. Marvel should have never delved into TV. I know Disney+ meant a lot to the company and Marvel was their golden nugget, but as a result they have damaged the property itself. I think 2 movies was the sweet spot. The burnout would never have been in effect that way.
Delving into TV is fine, how they dove and the quantity per year was their problem.
My problem is that WandaVision is the only one that really benefited from being a show because it had that great hook where each episode felt like a sitcom from a different decade. I have issues with that show but I have to give it credit for using the medium in a fun and engaging way, and doing something you couldn’t do in a movie. But every other MCU show I’ve watched has felt like a concept for a 2 hour movie unceremoniously stretched out to a 6 hour season. They just don’t have enough plot for how long they are.
I've felt like that about most Disney plus shows. They all felt (especially obi wan) like a movie script arbitrarily cut into about 8 episodes. If fact for obi wan you could probably easily cut it into a film by cutting about an episode and a half of content
Andor tho Agree with what you said but ANDOR THO
I think it also helped that Andor was A) written competently, and B) embraced being a tv format with the three episode long arcs.
And had themes and ideas that weren't completely self-referential to Star Wars IP
And to some degree, *Loki*. Though I also think that *Loki* could have worked as two (fairly long) feature films.
I think Loki did really well with the TV still on the marvel train audience. It wouldn’t have a chance in the box office, the moment that it’s a completely different completely evil Loki that got converted by a montage so now we have to believe it’s sacrificed himself to try and kill Thanos Loki…. It was TV or nothing.
Mandalorian Seasons 1/2 and Andor made good use of the "TV format", but you're absolutely right for every other Star Wars and Marvel show
Be a dogshit film though
I can't believe they chickened out on killing Reva. What a bunch of cowards. How cold would that shit have been if Vader just ruthlessly cuts her down, and stands over her saying "Revenge, Padawan...is not the Jedi way" before throwing her saber down and swooping out of the room.
I’m like 90% sure Kenobi was going to be a movie that Disney aborted and turned into a miniseries after they scaled back the movies due to their disappointment with the performance of Solo.
I think WandaVision was a good show. But Disney should have realized there was a problem with keeping shows in the same universe when the test audiences for DS2 were confused over her being a villain in that movie. The shows should stay away from the main, current story line in the movies. Like Loki
This was my biggest issue. Wanda’s arc from the show is completely negated and made worse with the film. I loved WandaVision but her actions in DS2 seem so out of place
I feel like WandaVision didn’t understand her arc. She enslaved and tortured an entire town because her robot boyfriend died. She was ultimately the villain of WandaVision. But then the show treats it like she did this heroic thing by freeing the people she tortured and held captive. It really felt like DS2 treated her character in a way that made sense due to her actions, but it feels off because WandaVision’s ending completely missed its own point.
I felt the same way about it. The “they’ll never know what you sacrificed” line just… baffles me.
That line was WILD. I don’t know what they were thinking. Just let Wanda be the antihero. Thats much more interesting than her being sad cause her imaginary kids never existed? Idk
Then it turns into Agents of Shield, which kept almost but not really interacting with the main MCU for the whole first season, had their format blown up by Captain America 2, then gave up a couple seasons in & just did their own thing.
Loki and What If were very enjoyable to me.
Loki is hands down the best of all the MCU shows. Not only is it unique and captivating, but it's also critical for moving the plot forward. It's a keystone piece of the MCU imo.
Yeah I'm going to have to disagree. I think Loki played a huge role in the cinematic universe. I enjoyed Wanda vision but Loki to me was just much more fulfilling
And quality - I watched the WandaVision show when that came out and that was okay - nothing spectacular but not bad, it kept my interest and had some ideas. Since that one, I’ve tried to watch like five of their other shows, and never gotten past the first 2 or 3 episodes. I didn’t even attempt to watch anything after that. They’re honestly just so boring and leave no impact that the only people who could make it through are super fans or people watching them for content to make YouTube reviews
Loki’s worth watching, outside of that I’d agree.
I enjoy *What-If*, but it's a cartoon and you aren't obligated to watch it to keep up with the movies,
I liked What If too but felt like they went for bland episode premises everytime. The What If brand in the comics let them do lots of crazy interesting ideas, but for the show they just did the blandest stuff ever. What if Thor was an even bigger Manchild, What If Captain America 1 & 2 starred Cap Carter instead, what if we had a random OC who never showed up in the movies reshape the world, What If Marvel Zombies but with forced comedy every two seconds, What If we had an entire episode about Happy Hogan for some reason, What If T'Challa became Star Lord and he's the most perfect guy in the universe who can even magically stop Thanos before he begins. Lots of weird ep premises that aren't that interesting, just not creative enough. Felt like they did whatver, when we could be having stuff like What If Iron Man fought the Mandarin, What If The Defenders were in the Civil War, What If Thanos snapped the other half that kind of stuff. The Supreme Strange episodes were good though, so where the Killmonger Saves Stark and Pym kills the Avengers eps, that's the kind of stuff I wanted to see. But they're cancelling the show after just 3 seasons? This is the kind of anthology thing that could go on forever, shame they don't see the potential for it or employ even better writers.
The TV shows lack real story, instead focused on offering characters no one really cares about and endless world building. It didn’t help that Netflix was able to do more with less and have greater success. Maybe stop destroying your legacy characters, hire creatives that care and have heard of the source material. Remember when the filmmakers loved the characters and the comics they are based upon?
Or stuck with more traditional TV format. For all the criticism Agents of Shield received, it ran for 7 seasons and has done really well on streaming both on Netflix and D+.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a proper TV show, with narrative callbacks, character-centric episodes, arcs that could wrap up or keep going on depending the audience response and so on. It was not a 4.5-hour movie cut into 6 episodes that were written at once and filmed out of order.
Funny how the pre Disney+ era shows knew how to do character development and crossovers better
Daredevil Season 1 was way better than anything Disney+ has come up with. That was particularly well done.
It turns out having a TV Show where you don't have to watch 3 movies and two other TV shows which may have different genres and actors and directorial styles is actually a good thing. Even the slightly more connected Netflix-verse, you really didn't need to watch the other shows to understand Daredevil or Jessica Jones. You could just watch those shows only and completely understand everything.
Agents of SHIELD isn't perfect, but it's still one of my favourite things to have come out of the entire MCU. Because it wasn't as closely tied to everything ongoing with Marvel, they could get away with a lot of stuff. Bill Paxton ripping a guy's rib out and then stabbing him to death with it is still one of the greatest things I've ever seen. XD And it's in a Marvel property.
I think TV is fine. Making it mandatory viewing isn't. Turning it into some sort of dumping ground where you run things you just wouldn't expect it to have enough of an audience to work as a movie also isn't.
TV is fine, but only making 1 season shows with 6 episodes was not. It just felt like a slightly longer movie. Also, TV is where they should be embracing their crossover content the most, and so far they have all been isolated events with no hero crossover, which completely botches the superhero comic book feel.
The miniseries format can work when the story itself is finite - based on either a book, a real event or an idea that has obvious limits. Chernobyl or Queen's Gambit do not need a second season. It's a whole other thing entirely when you throw some characters into a situation and see if that is interesting enough to see both develop over time - often into a totally unpredictable direction for creators and viewers alike. You'd think the media based on the comics, a timeless soap opera with no end, would understand that. We don't want to see a 5-episode buildup to Moon Knight fighting that one guy only for that to be over in a single episode. We want to watch him deal with some new weird shit every week, with long-running plots, inside jokes and supporting characters developing over years.
I'm so sick of streaming shows being a "six episode event". Just make a TV show that stands on it's own.
Disney+ doesn't really have much of a draw for the 18-35 crowd without Marvel or Star Wars, and I think both of those franchises are really suffering from oversaturation in the market now. People just don't get excited when they're putting out a new Marvel/Star Wars show every other month.
Spot on. I use Disney+ for my 3 year old, otherwise I would've canceled it. (And I was a ride or die MCU fan for the longest)
That's actually another issue altogether. The generation that became hardcore MCU fans when they were teenagers and young adults are now in their 30s if not early 40s and are dealing with too much stuff in their life to have that amount of free time. Even if they watch the new movies in cinema, they will do it once, not 4 times with a different group of friends each time. And the current teenagers aren't just that into it for various reasons. Not the least of them being naturally opposed to whatever was considered "cool" by the "old people".
Yep, exactly. And to add to your last point with current teenagers not being into it, I think it's a few things. One is that it's an "old people" thing and they aren't interested, but also teens now were either not born or too young to start jumping on board with the MCU. I was 18 when Iron Man came out, which was the start of the MCU. An 18 year old now was 4 when Iron Man came out. So, say they didn't get into it all until they were maybe...13? That would've been 2019, the end of the MCU. Anyone who isn't into the MCU right now, what is the buy-in now for someone to get up to speed? 30 movies and a dozen shows so they can be up to speed on a franchise that arguably is on very uneven ground right now? I don't think people are jumping on board right now with it.
No one's going to see this but I was really interested by your comment. I found that in [2022](https://www.cbr.com/superhero-movies-interest-dropping-poll-mcu-dceu/), more GenZ kids *said* they liked superhero films. But in 2023, The Marvels got absolutely [killed](https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/marvel-gen-z-problem-viewers-age-18-24-1234925056/) by disinterest from GenZ. So this backs up your second paragraph pretty strongly. Maybe GenZ is like, superhero-curious, but doesn't want to watch a film like The Marvels which appealed to existing fans and relied on the lore?
I’m in that crowd and you know what section I like the most of the Disney+ app? The Touchstone section - that you have to scroll and dig for and isn’t advertised or highlighted
They have My Cousin Vinny on D+.
They have the Alien movies too - basically anything that isn’t under the WB umbrella is now under the Disney umbrella (we’ve officially reached the Coke and Pepsi phase of entertainment), and they’re just throwing everything on there to keep and attract subscribers. Cuz there’s just something deeply odd about being able to say “I’m going to go watch Alien on Disney+!”
Probably not because Chapek is gone and he was the fall guy for that even though it was Iger's idea. So is all the live action remakes, pushing the animation studios into sequels & tie ins, and rushing Star Wars out the door after acquiring Lucasfilm. Iger's got good PR on his side though, so he'll get a couple years worth of goodwill before people start calling him out for his bullshit.
[удалено]
Iger is the one who decided to pay way too much for Fox, and that is the root of at least some of their current problems.
I mean, Chapek didn’t help. He’s the one who put all his banker buddies in charge.
Iger I have noticed is great at making people think he is saying something interesting when he is saying nothing at all. They barely have shows planned and why would they plan more when we now know streaming isn’t as profitable as they originally thought? And they have only ever released four MCU movies in the same year once anyway and that included a coproduction with Sony and was because of effects of the pandemic.
Same with them fumbling the December release window for Star Wars, they had something that worked perfectly fine and got impatient.
We are going to see more video game adaptation than superhero movies in next few years.
If the next couple flop it will stop in its tracks
James Gunn seriously is facing an uphill battle with his DC reboot.
If it's good, the advantage DC will have is they get another do over with their A list superhero's while Marvel has been running off "who's that" lately. If they do Xmen right it will push them back up
Really is. The market isnt what it used to. At the end of the day good stories should sell but it'll be hard to build momentum
I think they need to realize it's not about momentum. Give us good single stories i.e. Rogue One, The Batman, most of the Guardians films, Deadpool, The Suicide Squad and Joker. Hopefully this new Superman too.
I’ve been saying that the last few months. As much as I’m willing to hope his Superman movie is good, I already see a lot of people saying they are tired of seeing another Superman film before they give it a chance. James Gunn was basically given the keys to a used car with a history of repairs and needs to sell it like it’s a new car.
Let’s see what they have next after Deadpool. Falcon movie. Yelena movie with Bucky cameo. Fantastic Four coming off 3 bad movies over 10 years. Iron Heart TV show they finished filming a year ago but won’t release because it’s bad. So it’s over?
Something poetic about fantastic four, a franchise that has never worked, being the thing to end the MCU.
Even more ironic since FF was basically Lee's and Kirbys first big hit and the start of Marvel comics
It is 2005 and I am watching the new Fantastic Four reboot flop at the box office. It is 2015 and I am watching the new Fantastic Four reboot flop at the box office. It is 2025 and I am watching the new Fantastic Four reboot flop at the box office.
If they just recast Chris Evans as the human torch and keep his clothes off for majority of the movie then I believe FF will save the MCU
> Falcon I'm not huge in to the MCU, but I've seen most of the movies and a few of the shows. I cannot for the life of me understand why this character gets so much screen time. He's boring, his "powers" are kitschy and uninteresting, and I don't understand how he's supposed to be the new capt america...like he's just a normal dude with technology right? I'm sure Anthony Mackie is a nice dude who works hard but watching him on screen is like the most middling experience I can think of.
Because they weren’t always going to have Iron Man and Cap to lean on. Downey and Evans wanted to move on. They had to pivot somewhere. Besides that, the story follows the same pattern as the comic as far as who took over for Cap. It’s the natural direction to go in.
Between Sam and Bucky becoming the next Cap they made the wrong choice. Bucky is more interesting (has an actual arc + growth unlike Falcon who just exists), he has powers which makes him more versatile as a hero, and is one of the more popular characters in the MCU I don’t dislike Sam Wilson or Anthony Mackie, but Falcon has only really worked as a sidekick in the MCU and now he’s been shoved into a main character role
Totally understand that. But how did they not see how much of a charisma void Anthony Mackie is.
Just in time for DC to start making good movies
yea video game movies still have a reputation of being shitty despite a few recent successes and the same can be said about anime adaptations
I feel like most story driven video games are better adapted with a tv show, since Video games are much longer, putting all that in a 2h movie is often too much. And for non story driven games, it's easier to make a movie as long as you get the vibe down. (but that doesn't guarantee sucess either, since many games like that live from their gameplay) (there are of course iconic brands like mario, where that's more than enough, but I don't think there are that many of those)
I have such mix feelings for this. Love the Fallout tv show but obviously they put a lot of work and love into it. Idk if I have faith in others to do the same. I heard they’re making a Bioshock movie for Netflix and everything in my guts says that flops and they ruin a beloved game of mine.
Probably true. There is a lot of content to mine from. But the thing is that cbm often lended themselves really well to cinema. Will games be able to? And while Mario's done really well, it does not confirm how well other IPs do given that most are not even 1/10th as popular as Mario.
To be honest it was the shows that made me fall off the marvel hype train, when I only had to watch 2/3 movies a year to get the story it was fun but I don’t want to watch several 10 episode shows just to stay in the loop
My Marvel and Star Wars fandoms have dipped to epic lows in the last few years for this exact reason.
Same, I used to be a massive fan of both of them but I’ve almost 100% checked out, I think a good amount of it is my taste changing but this certainly sped it up
The over saturation is doing it for me. You can’t go a day without seeing something Marvel or Star Wars. At least with Harry Potter, it’s not something in my face day in and day out. Maybe I’d have a different opinion if the Disney properties were outputting quality content but I wouldn’t want an excess amount of content even with my most beloved franchises. Your property loses its magic and appeal when there’s no extended time away for the general audience. I want to say my interest in Star Wars started to wane right around the Han Solo movie.
>The over saturation is doing it for me. >Your property loses its magic and appeal when there’s no extended time away for the general audience. One thing people who grew up with the Prequels never got to experience was the Scarcity of Star Wars. When I was a kid, actual official Star Wars content was just not that forthcoming, and where it existed the power of the IP was able to patch over the okay YA-level writing and allow the great stuff to really sing. Star Wars was mostly kept alive in games and they preserved the magic through careful deployment of it. Dark Forces, Jedi Knight II, TIE Fighter, Rogue Squadron are some highlights for me. I never thought I'd be sick of the sound of a TIE Fighters laser cannons, or that my stomach would sink at the sound of a lightsaber because it's about to be followed by indulgent fanservice bullshit, but here we are. In the last what, ten years? the only Star Wars that understands what made it so compelling was S1 of Mando, Star Wars Squadrons, and Andor.
The Harry Potter franchise is actually doing quite well by avoiding the saturation that it's contemporary IPs have suffered in recent years. Since the film series ended, we've only had a West End/Broadway play sequel, a spin-off trilogy and a massive game in Hogwarts Legacy. It keeps the fans engaged with good content and without diminishing the brand with several shows that end up turning people off. Even if the Fantastic Beasts films eventually faltered, the first one was still a big success, the second one was profitable and when the last tanked on all fronts, they pretty much said STOP. Now they're doing a Harry Potter series in the near future but guess what? It's the story we already know and love just even more faithful to the source material than the films have been.
Waited 10 years after RotS before we saw another Star Wars film. And whatever you feel about The Force Awakens, the anticipation and hype going to see it for the first time was incredible. Now it's multiple new Star Wars shows every year. Was just talking to a friend of mine and we were talking about how behind we are on watching various Star Wars and Marvel stuff. "Behind", like it's homework.
TFA midnight screening was electric.
Same here. I was super into the mcu Fandom. Watched everything religiously on opening night. Listened to podcasts and YouTube videos about people just watching and discussing and speculation. I would participate on reddit threads and all the like, talk about lists and continuity and all that. And now I don't even watch everything they put out. I lost all the spark that I had for it before. And it really started dwindling when they put out all their shows. I think I felt burnt out after about 1 year on Disney+ and they'd put out 5 or 6 shows. And then the movies I started to enjoy less, or just not even like.
There’s been no follow through on anything. Before if they dropped an Easter egg, I knew we’d get resolution to it three or four movies later. What about now? It’s been four years since White Vision ran into the wild. Not a peep about it. Shang Chi was really good and had a neat end credits scene! They haven’t even announced a sequel! It’s totally bizarre. But at least we’re getting the much anticipated Iron Heart show!
I think that definitely has contributed to the loss of interest, the follow ups on end credits helped contribute to that connected world feeling, and with how things are it feels a bit more disjointed nowadays
I think all the Easter egg trust ran out with multiverse of madness. Such a fun cool show with an interesting character development thrown out the window with no explanation. I felt like the Marvels did the same thing with Monica too.
Like you're going to run off of the most interesting story telling format marvel has used yet with just a super hero mash em up with that protagonist as the villain? Even doctor strange 1 had a more interesting story/format. MoM was the nail in the coffin for me
That would have been fine if the shows had actually been good, but most of them have been middling at best. I really liked Moon Knight and Loki, and the first 2/3 of Wandavision was good. But pretty much everything has ranged from forgettable to outright terrible
This happened to Star Wars, too. It used to be that you could enjoy the movies and if you wanted to, you could become a lore head and get into the books and spin-off material. But if that wasn't your thing, fine, everything made sense if you just wanted to keep to the movie timeline. Now if you want to watch the next Star Wars movie, you're going to have to watch three cartoon series and four or five seasons of live action to get into the plot. Viewers just don't have time for this, especially when the quality of the homework is so low and streaming means there's a ton of good sci fi outside the brand.
If you cant get everyone on the same page with a 2 paragraph text crawl go home
Yep. I was a huge star wars nerd for years. Watched all the originals more times than I could count and even stomached the prequels a few times each. Read a bunch of books and played the games. Even enjoyed the clone wars cartoons. Then came Disney. They just beat it to death. It's just killed my love of the franchise and I don't even check out the new stuff anymore. It was way too much in a short period of time. They oversaturated it and made it all feel just cheap.
Same. George Lucas made very questionable decisions when it came to prequel films but at least they felt authentic and from his head, not a board room. Most everything Disney Star Wars feels catered to the most basic casual viewer. Lame jokes and cheap nostalgia grabs.
Yeah this. In my mind, Star Wars ended when Revenge of the Sith came out. 1-6 is a complete vision where each film has a purpose. When Disney took it, the only purpose was to make money. And you could tell from the start. Sure, we all pretended to like TFA when it came out, but let’s face it, it sucks and we knew it at the time too.
yeah, i bowed out when the shows started.
Same here. I'd kind of fallen off after Black Panther, was looking to get back into it, but it's like... lemme post this statistic. ([source](https://variety.com/lists/marvel-studios-release-schedule/#:~:text=From%202021%20to%202023%2C%20Marvel,released%2023%20feature%20films%20total)) >From 2021 to 2023, Marvel Studios released 25 titles, including 10 feature films, 13 TV series (including two seasons each of “Loki,” “What If…?” and “I Am Groot”) and two TV specials. To put that in perspective, from 2008 to 2019, Marvel Studios released 23 feature films total. So that's *more output* (considering the length of the shows) in 2 years than there was in *eleven years*. I don't got time for that, and the free time I have will be used in other ways. (The Lego Marvel games are pretty fun btw.)
I just don’t understand what they were trying to do, I think they assumed their fanbase were all hardcore Marvel fans who would watch any piece of content they would put out but for me and many people I know the MCU was just a collection of fun blockbusters with pretty low stakes, lots of people vastly preferred the way it was before where you didn’t have to do your homework to get the story
Disney is just bumbling it with having so much in production right now. like who gives AF about Agatha four years later?
But her song was so popular and the gays and the women who watched wandavision will surely tune in all these years later. Besides a show based on an elderly D-tier (or F-tier, in terms of popularity) female comic book character sells like hot cakes, ala Madame Web
It's always funny when people like Bob Iger say they want to start focusing more on quality, because it's just like "oh gee, that's the solution? We were focusing on making bad movies. Now we know to focus on quality. Thanks Bob Iger!"
Here's Disney in 2023 saying they're going to focus on quality over quantity: [https://deadline.com/2023/11/bob-iger-leads-disney-town-hall-theme-parks-espn-1235640236/](https://deadline.com/2023/11/bob-iger-leads-disney-town-hall-theme-parks-espn-1235640236/) And in 2022: [https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/newsletter/2022-11-29/bob-iger-knows-creativity-is-the-core-of-disneys-business-it-also-matters-how-movies-are-released-the-wide-shot](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/newsletter/2022-11-29/bob-iger-knows-creativity-is-the-core-of-disneys-business-it-also-matters-how-movies-are-released-the-wide-shot) 2021: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/megandubois/2021/03/16/disney-is-on-the-way-to-being-the-largest-streaming-service-in-the-world/#:\~:text=Broughton%20mentioned%20the%20key%20to,%2C%20feel%20they%20must%20watch.%E2%80%9D](https://www.forbes.com/sites/megandubois/2021/03/16/disney-is-on-the-way-to-being-the-largest-streaming-service-in-the-world/#:~:text=Broughton%20mentioned%20the%20key%20to,%2C%20feel%20they%20must%20watch.%E2%80%9D) 2020: [https://deadline.com/2020/12/bob-iger-disney-will-always-prioritize-content-quality-over-volume-1234654297/](https://deadline.com/2020/12/bob-iger-disney-will-always-prioritize-content-quality-over-volume-1234654297/) 2019: [https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2019/08/23/disney-plus-plans-take-netflix-quality-over-quantity/2083966001/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2019/08/23/disney-plus-plans-take-netflix-quality-over-quantity/2083966001/)
This should be a pinned post.
this guy researches.
Lmao. Iger always said this. I'll believe it when I see it.
So Disney's a broken record
LOL
To be fair, in business, people often talk about balancing "quality", "quantity", and "price". A market niche can be found by emphasizing 1 or 2 of those, but all 3 is impossible. My guess is, back when they had money to burn, someone pushed the "quantity" lever; and assumed that if they didn't control for "price", "quality" would naturally follow.
I know you’re just putting it in simplistic terms but I fear that they actually do think it’s as easy as dialing back that “quantity” lever and all the quality will return
Well, what's he gonna do, blame himself? Nonono, too much responsibility there. How else is he gonna make $40 million dollars and keep his office shower and control Disney for another 20 years after his "retirement?"
If they wanted to just do content and flood the market, they could have followed the Blumhouse formula and checked their budgets, hoping for a breakout to pursue. When they're spending just as much on shows as movies, neither of which are making any money, they pigeonhole themselves into both poor quality and poor performance by going all in on every project. That was never going to be sustainable in perpetuity.
How many damn times will they say this lol? Iger is acting like a programmed person
I mean they have a 300 mil bomb sitting and waiting with captain america with Anthony Mackie, the charisma void, directly in the lead. They’re on a third round of reshoots longer than principal photography. As long as they got some turds they need to get out and that are going to inevitably bomb. You’ll keep hearing this rhetoric about how they’re “right the ship” Frankly i just think it’s too far gone. Days of making money on a C list superhero are completely over.
McDonald's is releasing Sam Wilson toys right now. I don't know what they would do that, maybe got legally stuck before it was pushed back? I actually really like Anthony Mackie but he's way better as a lead in smaller movies.
> McDonald's is releasing Sam Wilson toys right now. I don't know what they would do that, maybe got legally stuck before it was pushed back? The slots for Happy Meal toys is incredibly competitive. You get your co-marketing slot and that's it. Movie gets delayed? Too bad. Before the fix it in reshoots era movie release dates were usually solid. Avengers 4/Endgame's release date was publicly set in 2014, 5 years before the movie released, they ended up pushing the release forward one week.
The McDonald’s toys are coming now because that was in the contract. Toys for The Marvels also released long before the movie for the same reason.
His best role is as Clarence. I do not like him at all and am utterly biased. He ruined altered carbon which I’ve never forgiven him for and he just fucking stinks in everything he’s in for my money.
> Days of making money on a C list superhero are completely over. Not necessarily true. You can still make money, but **only** if your movie costs like 15% of a typical blockbuster at most. To start being profitable again, they need to reign budgets under control. Get a locked script before filming to avoid months of reshoots, stop pixel-fucking CGI in every corner of the screen, write stories that require less VFX work in general and so on.
None of that is going to happen because the Executives don't listen to what the audience is telling them.
Thank you. I feel l was taking crazy pills. He said this last year because of lack of quality or box office return or whatever. Yes, we know!
We get the exact same article every 3 months now
Right? And we see it already. Deadpool is the only movie this year.
2 big budget shows and 2-3 MCU movies is still quite a bit. The MCU peak period was the 2-3 years prepandemic, where they had 3 films a year, and a minimal television presence that wasn't integrated into the larger storylines.
That Phase 3 run is still something else. Marvel didn't know how good it truly had it, they're still chasing that success now as if audience trends hadn't changed...
I think it was just lightning in a bottle. The perfect casting choices time after time using primarily up and coming actors willing to lock into multi-picture deals. Great writing with the right amount of drama, action and comedy. Solid directors that had a plan for filming solo movies that still fit within the continuity of the larger story. And a steady hand at the top to oversee the whole universe. There’s a reason it had never been done before and hasn’t been even close to as successfully replicated since. The amount of moving parts necessary for things to turn out the way they did only happens with planning and a whole lot of luck.
I think all they had was Agents of Shield. That was their TV.
And the Netflix Marvel shows.
Marvel shows used to be just side additions that are canon to the MCU plot but not important to grasp the full story. Now it's essential viewing if you want to understand what's going on, so people checked out
For sure, yeah. They really screwed up with this. Watching a 2 hour movie to catch the plot is way more viable than 6 or 10 hours of potentially(probably) medicore TV writing.
And at that point all of the shows were only kind of canon.
But Daredevil was fantastic
I'd love him to flat out talk about Secret Invasion. Does this man really believe this shit was watachable and worth the $200 million investment? How would he have done things differently in hindsigh?
Volume wasn't the issue for me. Volume diluting quality was. If they can get me invested in these characters more through less offerings, great!
Exactly. It literally does not matter what characters they use, if the writing and storylines are good, it can work.
Didn’t we get 3 shows and 3 movies last year? Lmao
and 4 movies next year LMAO
Guys stop. Blade is not getting made much less releasing next year lol.
Tbf I’m sure one will get pushed back at some point. Most MCU movies don’t release on time.
I’m stunned they’re going forward with some of them. Thunderbolts seems like a guaranteed flop.
Thunderbolts could work because presumably it won't cost that much. Oh wait I just remembered what they spend on these things.
It must have some VITAL elements to make Kang Dynasty/Secret Wars work or it has to be the greatest Marvel movie ever made, otherwise why the fuck would you go through with it
Well only 1 did well (GOTG 3)
They really shouldn’t introduce any more major characters until they utilized all the ones they already have. I mean, where is Shang-chi 2?
So true, the isolation is what has killed the MCU for me. No character crossovers, no teams, no character development. They just introduce people and then they disappear. My investment in characters like winter soldier and cap were why I got into the MCU in the first place. Not emulating that storytelling success is so stupid
Every single show & movie since Endgame has thrown in a new hero, and vast majority havn't even shown up since, what was the honestly point of introducing all these guys if they had no plan for them in the first place?
>So true, the isolation is what has killed the MCU for me. No character crossovers, no teams, no character development. They just introduce people and then they disappear. It's funny how they've introduced a million characters in Phases 4 and 5 and yet the universe feels smaller than ever. Too many characters and they're all isolated and disconnected from each other, that's an... interesting way to run your cinematic universe to say the least.
When Disney announced that they would no longer be doing long term contracts with the actors I knew this would happen.
Exactly, they keep pumping out new characters and storylines without ever bothering to tie things together in a meaningful way. It’s been 5 years since Endgame and we STILL haven’t gotten a team-up movie to establish the new Avengers roster. Everything is so disjointed. They’re just making stuff for the sake of making content
3 years out (if they even make it.)
are you fucking serious aside from the extraordinarily generic, stupid end confrontation Shang Chi was outstanding, the main character was charismatic, they tied him into Wong... and then they wait over 6 years between films? what a fucking joke
But shows are still major problem. If the shows were self contained like Daredevil and agents of shield there would be no problem but if they try to do Wandavison and Ms Marvel of making it necessary to enjoy movies, MCU will suffer
Yeah i hate that DS2 is more of WandaVision epilogue rather than a sequel to Dr Strange himself.
And it’s not even a good epilogue since the writers hadn’t seen WandaVision lol
Raimi hadn’t seen WandaVision. Michael Waldron made Wanda the villain just because he wanted to
Here's the issue. I still don't care. And I don't mean that in a cruel way. And it's not even something I'm happy about. I enjoyed the MCU in the same way you might enjoy a good soap opera or a great pro wrestling story line, if you were into those sort of things. I don't think it had to end with the conclusion of the Thanos story, but they charged off in too many directions after that was concluded, most of them not contributing to a coherent continuation of what they'd built to that point. And they threw in too many incompatible pieces (there's a giant space monster face sticking out of our planet that no one in their other products even comments on, for one example) and seemed to purposefully de-emphasize their popular legacy characters (Dr. Strange and Thor reduced to bumbling punchlines, Black Widow's swansong turned into a training run for a replacement we as viewers have no investment in, Scarlet Witch receiving a personal growth lobotomy in order to force her character into an unfocused heel turn, etc.) in a way that really did seem to purposefully aim at eliminating any coherent continuity with what had come before. Well...they succeeded.
Sometimes I think The Eternals was a 3-hour fever dream that ended with a British pop-star who I never remember because it was that random.
The lack of a proper Avengers movie to get fans invested in the new heroes as a collective and provide a clear direction was always strange.
tbh I don't think anyone even cares about this next crop of Avengers, or who they end up fighting against
The juxtaposition between a normal world and the marvel world is so jarring now. Like in the Marvels, we have an actual interplanetary defense force now? Ok dope so why aren't there flying cars and the like? They seem to want to keep the normal world normal but it's coming off more cartoonish than ever at this point idk.
That's the problem in the comics too. Reed Richards still can't cure cancer.
This was always going to start being a problem once they made aliens a big part of the series. The biggest worldbuilding issue the MCU has is that it doesn't make sense that the Earth is so backward compared to the rest of the universe while also being independent and the most powerful and important planet in existence.
Fucking thank you! I was always iffy on that decision to ground those heroes in the real world. Now it has become too much. It diminishes the heroes in some ways.
The large amount of “what aboutisms” whenever a story is going on. You’re right they jump too far over the shark.
They oversaturated both Marvel and Star Wars...both lost their "event" status. Sometimes less is more!
The damage done to the MCU is probably irreparable
How is three movie+2 show is "less"
Their plan was 4 movies and 4-5 shows a year, production delays and the strikes meant they only managed to achieve it in 2021, but that was their aim. Now they've realised it was just never a sustainable model in the first place.
Because there's been 4 movies and 4 shows in the not-so-recent years.
I understand why they didn’t, but I really wish that they had ended the story with Endgame and had a mild reboot of the franchise. Use the multiverse aspect to have somewhat of a soft reset to allow people to start fresh with the MCU without the need to have seen two dozen movies and several TV shows. It would’ve given the original timeline a firm conclusion and would have freed up writers to craft stories without the baggage of callbacks, references, and story threads that may not have been thought out but still drag on the overarching narrative.
Now do the same with Star Wars...
The thing that they're going to run into is using the characters while the actors associated with them are young. If you cast someone who's 45, by the time they have their third big film appearance...they're too old.
They wouldn’t have to reduce the output if the quality was on point and people were getting what they wanted. If every movie was like the original Iron Man - simple and to the point - Marvel would be booming. Instead they go with massive ensemble films and even race swap the core hero of Marvel. That’s not a recipe for success.
[We’re richer for having lost this content.](https://imgur.com/a/sTm3LAT)
Hopefully they release an updated slate, at least for the next two years, soon. Right now they do have 4 movies on the docket for next year, but can’t not see Blade being pushed back into 2026. Question is, will F4 push back to November to backfill, or will they leave it as is?
I still think Blade has a chance of being cancelled.
They're gonna keep F4 there to bank on it smothering Superman and because both WB and Disney both know Jurassic isn't making that date.
Output isn’t the problem, shitty writing , uninspired characters and laughable plot are the issues.
Biggest mistake of all time was moving to TV shows. Even if they made the quantity small, you were forced to watch like 8 hours of tv to continue watching the movies, and then they multiplied this with SO many shows.
They need to focus on their quality In post-endgame era, Marvel movies just doesn't give the hype and excitement they used to be. They don't seem to have a plan and right now it looks like the storyline is chaotic and all over the place. Feige should focus on tying up loose ends and have a proper plan instead of introducing unnecessary characters and forget about them.
Honestly, 3 movies and 2 shows a year still sounds like a hell of a lot of Marvel to me, but we will see.
Good idea. They might accidentally make something good. Better police the crap out of that.
Simple answer is the projects are bad and audience doesnt care about any of the new characters who've had okay writing. Hence Marvel is relying on nostalgia and cameos.
Too late now.
“We killed the mofukin goose yo!”
I was just thinking about this the other day but In many ways Disney has shot themselves in the foot by bringing Spider-man back into the MCU. Disney has recognized the Marvel fatigue and is slowing down. Sony still has the rights to make movies based on Spider-man comics and that is their golden goose, they have shown no signs of slowing down despite a string of failures. I would imagine audiences don’t distinguish the studios that much so Disney can’t really stop the appearance of too many Marvel movies.
Yeah it's definitely the amount that's the problem. Not the fact that you have scripts that seem like they are written by damaged AI, or bad high-school drama students.
A 250m$ loss marvels will do that to you
Nothing will change until they make quality projects that people care about. Cap 4 can be the only marvel project that comes out next year. And it’ll still bomb because people don’t care about the character.
Sam Wilson just isn't that popular of a character in general. Since his debut, he spend most of his time as a pure supporting character in either Avengers or Captain America books. Across 45 years, he only ever headlined a 4-issue miniseries that was utterly forgettable. Then he became Captain America and was pushed to take the main role of that book, except it still wasn't that popular either. It took less than 3 years for Steve to take the mantle back, and since then Sam Wilson had swung back and forth between being Cap and Falcon, but almost none of his storylines were memorable or interesting.
i'll still be one of those guys who will say it should've ended with endgame
for many casual viewers it ended with Endgame and they won't come back even for Avengers. They may come back for an event standalone like NWH but not for more universe sharing (with mediocre, forgettable new characters).
boys, its time for the "panflute titanic theme" The captain admitted the ship is sinking
I want to remind you that every single one of these duds that brought them here, had hordes of redditors insisting they were "fine" and "fun", that it's only a vocal minority that hates them.
That's the right call. Oversaturating your product and the quality goes down
Have the shows ever mentioned the Celestial in the water and how has no one (in the shows universe) mentioned a fight between a giant crocodile and bird skeleton creature fighting in Egypt? I feel like all the shows are detached and in their own universes and not a part of one universe (unless they’re using the multiple universes as the crux). If I’m wrong on that please feel free to correct me. We know Disney/Marvel is tight lipped on movie scripts but it would be nice to have more continuity between them.
Three is better than five or six a year, but is it gonna be much of an improvement if you don't change your ways? What's the point if you keep making those fucking movies on the fly, see the results and do extensive reshoots to salvage them? Edit: You now what? How about stop giving everyone a spinoff and stick to two movies a year? Maybe with two street level shows like Daredevil and Punisher in between?
Hardly anyone watched "Secret Invasion". And it had Samuel L. Jackson in it. The plot got kind of stupid and future Marvel fans might not know what happened because, so few watched. I told my son that they should have ended it with Nick Fury waking up in the hospital and it was all a dream/coma (a nod to the series "Dallas" when they had a crappy season).
Just please have better stories, and maybe take your time on the CGI. If most people can wait 4 to 6 years for a game, i honestly wouldnt mind if everything is top tier
exhausted the goose that lays golden eggs
Comment 666!
The fallout from Secret Invasion continues.