In the early 2000s, the superhero movie genre was looked upon with disdain, as many box office flops like “Catwoman”, “Ghost Rider” and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” tainted and oversaturated the market. Later on, however, the first of many great Marvel Movies was released. In 2008, theaters across the world were blessed with one of the greatest of all time: “Iron Man”. The release marked a turning point for superhero movies, and it showed in the box office numbers. Iron Man earned $585.5 million worldwide, which, compared to the earlier flops, was astoundingly successful. This new era’s heroes and villains could be grounded in reality, and even with a few creative liberties, meaning that not everything was fully 100% realistic, but it still looked and felt like it could be real.
Just like in the early 2000s, superhero movies are flooding the market, and consumers are tired of seeing the same characters on screen that they’ve seen tens of times over with the same eccentric and excessive CGI. All companies need to take a break and slow their productions down to commit more to a new story that no one has seen before, with characters that not many yet know. Disney has many series that have only run for a single season, with some really interesting characters that deserve more screen time and development. Disney’s “Moon Knight” was left on a cliffhanger at the end of the series, which left it in a perfect place to make a season 2. “Hawkeye” also got the same treatment, with a great series that had a lot of potential but got cut short. On the other hand, Disney’s “Daredevil” revival is already planned to have 2 more seasons released within the next three years, even though the previous Daredevil series also ran for 3 seasons, making 6 seasons of Daredevil.
Marvel’s newer movies seem to have lost their spark and the magic of the screen has simply faded and is no longer there. The newest Marvel movie, “Fantastic 4: First Steps,” has further cemented this point. Though I enjoyed the new introduction to Fantastic 4, however, the rest of the story was pretty predictable, and most of the hype surrounding the movie came from the end credits scene, which gave the world its first look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) “Doctor Doom”, but even that was disappointing since Robert Downey Jr. wasn’t even playing his role as Doom in the scene as it was announced prior.
When Marvel movies came out in times past, watchers would be enthralled with the movie’s individual story and the overarching plot of the movies in the series, but ever since “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame,” no movie has been able to stack up to the storytelling, character development, and overall impact of the Infinity Saga. Marvel and Disney dug themselves into a hole where the only way to make a lasting impact in today’s market is to either make larger and larger movies with countless CGI effects and A-list actors, or to bring back older characters from previous series that were previously non canon or forgotten. Disney has tried both ways, like with the recently released “Daredevil: Born Again” Series on Disney+, which made his series return since appearing in the She-Hulk series. And the most recent movie in the Captain America franchise, “Captain America: Brave New World,” brings back General Ross. Marvel’s iron grip on the movie industry means that no matter what they put into a movie, it’ll generally do well, and the officials at Marvel know this, which means they’ve put less and less effort into new story lines and keep referring back to the stuff they know will make money.
Previous movies in the MCU had so much character and creativity put into them, like the whole plot of Captain America: Civil War was so much more interesting with its political dissonance story line about the Sokovia Accords and in-depth character development that started to fracture the Avengers team, and compared to now, the newer movies with the same multiverse plot lines over and over. It doesn’t matter how many celebrities you funnel into a movie; without intriguing characters, cool villains, and an interesting story, there’s no point. But this isn’t an issue with Marvel itself; every superhero movie producer has been slacking, and it shows in the box office performances. Sony’s “Madame Web” grossed approximately 91 million dollars with a budget of 80 million. Madame Web in the source material is one of the most interesting and neat characters in the entire Spider-Man mythos, but this movie ruined any semblance of that original character. And before James Gunn took over the current run of the Detective Comics Universe (DCU), the recent DC movies were bad too. The flash movie was objectively bad and ran on mostly nostalgia, bringing back Michael Keaton’s Batman was just to bring in revenue.
The biggest problem with today’s market is that no company is willing to take risks; they fall back on old ways that work for the investors, but just end up being repetitive to consumers. The reason that superhero movies became as big as they are today is because Marvel took a risk with Iron Man: they took a risk casting Robert Downey Jr., and told an incredible story, but all that risk has been taken out of modern-day Hollywood.
