How To Build A Better Shared Marvel Cinematic Universe

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a mess. We already know that, but it seems Marvel Studios is still struggling to find out why. Of course the Hollywood system keeps insisting it’s “superhero fatigue”, the idea that people are just tired of superheroes. That’s a nice, easy answer…but it’s wrong. You could take all the superhero content that has ever been made, form a 24/7 live stream channel with it, and there’s be a number of people watching it. Some would pick and choose their favorite heroes, keep track of when their show/movie was on, and if they have DVR as an option, record it to watch later. Or just have it on in the background. That would be nice for comic stores to stream. DC tried something like that with DC Universe but it failed because there weren’t enough people to pay for it. Make it free and ad-supported and it might have done better.

That’s not to say that quantity hasn’t been an issue. It takes time to make live-action superhero stories that require superpowers or high-tech gadgets. Even animation takes a while, so since animation is technically required to make a hero fly believably these days trying to also match the lighting of the scene is going to be a time-consuming challenge, and Disney throughout their acquired sub-studios have not been given the necessary time and resources to keep shoving out stuff for Disney+ and putting out a movie every few months. It may not be fatigue as they see it but the creators are certainly ready to take a break even when they care about what they’re doing…which they’ve done less and less and that’s what’s really chasing fans off.

Kevin Feige has apparently bought into the “superhero fatigue” argument, cutting down Marvel Studios output since Disney+ has a enough of a backlog of live-action superheroes (heaven forbid DISNEY do more than lip service when it comes to animation, giving us mediocrity there as well) that he feels he can scale down the content. Bleeding Fool is reporting his schedule is down to three movies and might cut down on the live-action shows as well. However, what does he say is the real problem?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that head of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, believes that the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has become too overwhelming for audiences. All of the interconnected movies and TV shows have made it difficult for casual viewers to keep up.

He reportedly told colleagues that watching all the new content was starting to feel more like “homework” than entertainment. Part of this is from a previous push for more content to boost streaming subscriptions back when Bob Chapek was in charge of Disney. Feige is now leading an overhaul to simplify the MCU, focusing on fewer TV shows and more stand-alone stories that don’t require extensive knowledge of past films.

The Journal‘s story is behind a paywall, so I’m going with their reporting on the story. So here’s where I disagree with Feige, not that the “homework” hasn’t been too much, but that the mistake wasn’t the quantity of stories but not understanding how the shared universe worked in the comics. Is he accidentally getting it? The part about “stand-alone stories that don’t require extensive knowledge of past films” isn’t a quote from the WSJ interview but the unnamed Bleeding Fool reporter. How far he goes with that will show ups if he understands or not.

Disney of course wants you to watch every movie and show because that’s how they make money, but it didn’t feel like a requirement before they took over. When Ike Perlmutter and Avi Arad started Marvel Studios, they wanted more control over how characters and histories were depicted. They realized that some translation has to be made (Iron Man takes its share of liberties and story combining) but the essence of those events and characters need to remain intact to draw in the comic fans, the people who buy the merchandise and push the movie by word of mouth. The traditional “end credits” scene wasn’t created by Marvel Studios but they certainly popularized it in recent years and other wanna-be franchises have pulled the same trick.

On the other hand I was never that interested in Thor in the comics, so I never saw any of the Thor movies and don’t plan to. I do know of his story through cartoons and appearances in other comics, but that’s it. Thor only has his own cartoon as part of The Marvel Super Heroes and I’ve only seen a few of those. I know him more from Avengers stories in comic and cartoon form as well as other guest appearances and crossovers. Crossovers are the only time I’ve ever bought a Thor comic. And yet when he, Loki, and the “tesseract” both showed up in the first Avengers movie I knew everything I needed to because the movie got me up to speed on the important part only. The only thing missing was some caption box telling me to check out the Thor movie if I wanted to know more beyond what the movie needed me to know to follow along.

Critiques I’ve heard of more recent Marvel movies is that you need to see the Disney+ shows in order to know who some of these characters are. The comics are no help as they ignore the comics on purpose in favor of their “superior” stories, as Echo demonstrates, or out of outright hatred of fans and the source material, as She-Hulk: Attorney At Law does with its stories. Had no interest in The Falcon & The Winter Soldier? Good luck knowing who the Flag Smashers or John Walker are when you watch any appearance of the title characters anywhere else, like Thunderbolts*. Deadpool & Wolverine was completely based on knowledge of the Fox versions of Marvel characters now that Disney owns the former 20th Century Fox.  That’s not how it started.

With the comics and early movie, the characters had their own adventures, but if a previous story elsewhere affected what would be happening in the current one, that was acknowledged and moved past. As a hypothetical, say a story has the Lincoln Memorial destroyed after Loki brought it to life and Thor had to fight a big stone Abe Lincoln. In the next Falcon movie they might have to acknowledge that, but it would be with Abe gone, somebody mentioning “some so-called ‘god’ brought it to live to attack people–welcome to our new reality”, and that being it. By now it’s established that all these superpowered and magical beings showing up have altered the world and we’re use to pre-existing superhero universes having weird things like that. Boom, done, move on. We told you what happened. If you want to see it, you’re welcome to but it won’t impact this story unless a fight takes place there or some villain wants to use the big chair for his big backside. I don’t need to see it to know it happened and how it led to what happens in this tale.

For example, remember the flood in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? I live in Connecticut, pretty far from Louisiana. I saw people donating food to send down there because I worked in a grocery store. One of my co-workers I don’t wish to associate with anymore went to Mardi Gras once. This is literally my only connection to New Orleans. Had I worked as an auto mechanic or something I wouldn’t even have those connections. I also wouldn’t want to be the poor sucker driving a car I worked on, but if they made a movie or series about my life story it would probably not have anything related to New Orleans to it and be boring as heck (no connection), which would not change what happened in New Orleans or that this other person I used to know had been there. I wouldn’t have met her (a better world for us both) and might have seen a donation box when I went shopping for groceries. At best the box would be something in the background, acknowledging things were going on elsewhere in existence. That’s how a shared universe works because we LIVE in a shared universe.

By putting out too much content too fast the quality suffered since they didn’t have time to do everything right, but forcing people to watch everything rather than update them in the work they’re watching, having to reshoot above the average movie while ignoring the source material on purpose, and telling the fans they’re the scum of the universe for not kissing their royal rears or voted for the “wrong” person are also a problem. I bet they won’t work on those issues.