MatPat Tries To Save The MCU…But I Have Some Notes

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a mess. Ignoring that Sony still has the Spider titles (and ruining them), Marvel Studios has seen a once beloved shared universe, a concept so popular (and taken from the comics) that other studios tried–and failed–to imitate it. DC still hopes to with the Gunniverse after the failure of the Snyderverse. There are a number of reasons why, which many commentators, including me, have gone over, chronicling the fall of a once beloved cinema brand.

Once again, MatPat is here to attempt to repair the damage, and nobody can call him part of this or that “Gate” because he isn’t all that political and just calls what he sees…with any controversy coming from different opinions rather than hatred of where he stands on this or that unrelated topic. Just as he did recently trying to save Disney as a whole as well as suggest what James Gunn can do (I’d like to tell James Gunn what he can do…) with his take on the DC Universe, his latest video from the Film Theorists focuses on what Marvel Studios should consider rather than calls to reboot the MCU or even bringing back old characters like he’s Russell T. Davies.

Since I do follow the deeper discussions and complaints from comic fans, however, there are a few thoughts I’d like to add to the conversation. I’m not a consultant like Matthew Patrick (that’s not snark; it’s actually something he’s done as a side gig to the four Theorist channels) but I have observed many of the MCU’s behind the scenes failings thanks to the people I follow and my goal of examining storytelling to become a better storyteller and promote better stories. Thus, I have some thoughts of my own.

I don’t understand all these calls for reboots lately. You done screwed up, son, but we’re not going to toss you out and have another kid replace you. I’ve seen good series have bad episodes, seasons/runs, and issues, yet come out of it and become better for it. It’s why the BBC is still trying to save Doctor Who, their biggest international success. Even if we have to ignore certain stories (nobody talks about the time Superman and Big Barda were mind controlled into shooting a porno for a reason), the series as a whole finds a way to survive when put in the hands of people who care about what they’re doing.

That’s kind of been the big problem. Apparently Ike Perlmutter had a committee that went over MCU offerings and decided if it was a proper adaptation, while Avi Arad, an admitted Marvel fan, made sure they could sell toys. That means while the movies weren’t made for kids they were at least accessible as the collector market is only a small portion of toy buyers. Kids–rather, their parents–make up the majority. Disney got rid of the committee along with Perlmutter and Arad, and now you have producers who won’t hire you if you actually follow the comics. The latest shows and movies were made by people more interested in the story they wanted to tell than adapting these characters from the comics or even continuing the existing brand.

That means you chase off the fans, one of the biggest sources of free promotion if you make a good adaptation that’s also a good story and still accessible to the general public, and thus less people are interested. Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger were all praised for their general accuracy to the source material as far as who the characters are, with changes made between formats understandable. Tony in the comics and other adaptations like Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and the Iron Man anime, ended up taking cues from Robert Downey Jr.’s performance and no fans I know complained. Then they did one worse by creating She-Hulk, whose showrunner was mad that Carol Danvers wasn’t better received and blamed it on sexism rather than bad writing, and attacked the fans of the comic through the show. Word is The Marvels was intended to draw women but more men showed up because while women like superheroes there aren’t as many as men, who did go. And still there weren’t enough ticket buyers to save the movie.

MatPat suggests having different runner of the different areas of the MCU–the street level, the cosmic level, and the magical level being his examples. The comics do this, or did, through group editors. The spider-titles have a group editor, the mutant titles have a group editor, and so on. DC also does this, but you also need the editors to work together. The group editor will protect their writer and don’t care about the writers in any other group, and they won’t work together. Writer 1 may want to have Wolverine fight Electro, to see how a guy with metal throughout his body handles a villain whose weapon is pure electricity, but the Spider-Man group editor says no because writer 2 may want to use him in the future. Rather than come up with a story that allows both writers to tell their story or even team up, writer 1 is out of luck. That’s not beneficial in the long run. With Venom (for example, because that’s part of Sony’s domain and they only agreed to allow Spider-Man in the MCU officially if they dropped as much iconography as possible–hence Michelle Jones and de-aged Aunt May) now being part street level and part cosmic given the current backstory for the symbiotes, that could be trouble in the future. Everyone needs to get along, with Feige ultimately trying to work a truce or just outright choosing a side. In short Feige should act like an editor-in-chief should if I follow MatPat’s idea.

I don’t know that too much content is a problem so much as not a clear notation to the viewers that they don’t have to watch everything. I didn’t watch any of Thor’s movies but I could follow what he was saying about the Tesseract/Cosmic Cube in Avengers. The screenwriter gave him dialog that told us all we need to. I didn’t watch Doctor Strange’s movies but I could follow what he did in the sequel Avenger movies. Granted, I know him from a few comics and appearances in other Marvel adaptations over the years. The comics do have characters crossover, but until Eventitis poisoned how Marvel tells stories that wasn’t a problem. The characters existed in their own city or their own part of New York, and had their own adventures except when events called for them to cross over outside of events like the various Secret Wars over the decades. You also had team-up titles like the various Avengers titles or The Defenders or New Warriors, and while members of those teams also had solo books, the solo books would affect what happens in the team books only as much as it needed to in order to maintain a shared universe. That or the narrator captions would say “this happened before Blahblah #whatever”. Marvel would like you to read all their books, and Marvel Studios would like you to watch all their movies and shows, but if you only had a few favorites you collected regularly and one you grabbed because that lone story looked interesting, it was still a sale.

The MCU may be putting out too many Disney+ shows and movies, killing their Agents Of SHIELD show on ABC and last I heard made it non-canon despite Agent Coulson as a main character and Nick Fury showing up as a cameo, with the actors from the movies. However, the problem is lack of quality. They’re putting out more shows and movies than they can currently handle. Technically you could make an entire TV network or studio that is just adaptations of comics (someone in the ad-sponsored livestream channels should get on that–also war movie channels because my dad would finally give streaming services more of a chance), but you need the budget and the time to make them right, which Marvel Studios hasn’t gotten. They ram the shows through while order the movies to undergo a lot of reshoots because nobody checked the scripts before THE ENTIRE MOVIE WAS ALREADY SHOT! If they can’t handle the current workload to make good stories, step back, focus on the movies, and let the shows serve as flavor for the movies. Given that the special effects department unionized because of how they were forced to work on MCU movies and shows, I’d say you do need to curb that schedule a bit.

MatPat said the very thing I’ve been saying for awhile now: if they don’t care, why should I? They don’t care about adapting the source material, don’t care to tell good stories, don’t care to stay consistent because the creators are more interested in their stories than their characters’ stories, and the studios involved don’t seem to care either. Gimmicks will not save Marvel’s movies, and a reboot would be just another gimmick, like the multiverse, or Kang (which now has to be scrapped since they don’t want to replace the actor playing him after he got in serious legal trouble–apparently Rhodey and General Ross were the only characters you’re allowed to replace). The comics have their own problems but if Marvel Studios cared more about Marvel Comics–and Marvel Comics cared more about Marvel Comics–a lot of the existing issues could be solved by following what Marvel USED to do right. Again, if you don’t care about what you’re making and the legacy you’re ruining, why should I care about what you’re doing now?