The Marvel cinematic universe, or MCU for short, was created by Stan Lee and is arguably one of the most successful franchises to exist in modern day. While I’m under the impression that nothing is going to top the success of Harry Potter for a long time, the MCU is incredibly well known in its own right. Fans were drawn in to the overarching story telling, action packed fights scenes, and witty commentary between the characters on screen. Starting with Phase 1 back in 2008, the MCU currently has 30 movies and several tv shows in current Phase 4 with more already in different stages of development.
Unlike the past Marvel phases which had been met with large success and high praise, Phase 4 seems to be lacking in comparison. And it is not due to lack of content. Phase 4 boasts an impressive 7 movies, 9 tv shows with one season each, and two special presentations in 2 years. Marvel has been pushing out content to keep viewers on the edge of their seats as they slowly unveil the newest challenge the characters face: the multiverse. So, why is phase 4 doing so poorly among viewers compared to before - what's going wrong?
Well that's just it, Marvel has put out a ton of content in the past three years. I am not a die hard fan of the MCU, but I do eventually get around to watching movies when they come out in theaters. The issue I’ve faced with Phase 4 is that it seems like movies came out non-stop. With four coming out in 2021 and three in 2022, it becomes hard to process what has happened when. Movies like Black Widow (2021) and Shang-Chi (2021) feel like they came out a long time ago rather than just last year. So much content has left me, and other viewers, overwhelmed and unable to really enjoy everything being shown at us. Another part of the failing of this phase is due to Marvel shifting, in my opinion, to a quantity over quality marketing strategy.
Phase 4's main issues steam from this fact. Other issues include the decrease in production quality resulting from things like CGI and green scenes, putting too many fight scenes and attempts at witty-one liners in each movie, and a lack of a real overarching storyline to connect the films. Sure, you can argue that the main purpose of Phase 4 is to introduce and further develop the idea of the multiverse, which they did somewhat, but the idea only really appears in a few movies and tv shows leaving a lot of the movies to feel out of place. Phase 4 also introduces a lot of new characters for fans to digest after the original cast has filtered out. All these new characters lack a large fan base resulting in fans not being as excited to see movies about them. The reason these movies do so well is because Marvel relies on brand excitement - people love the MCU and will go watch any movie that the company puts out. I believe that these movies do so well not because they are incredibly high quality or have interesting storylines, but because they can’t fail. Marvel has over a decade worth of content that fans obsess over backing. Any media they put out will do well simply because it exists inside the MCU.
Now, I have not been able to watch every piece of content that came out in Phase 4, let alone the entirety of the MCU, but I do know that comparing it to the other phases, Phase 4 stands out due to its large quantity of content in a short amount of time. Take Phase one, it consisted of six movies over the course of four years, resulting in the first Avengers movie. While some argue that these movies are not great, they all had a purpose leading up to the Avengers movies, one of the most influential movies in the MCU. Phase 4 lacks a large ‘it’ movie unlike the other phases. Phase 2 had Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) while Phase 3 had both Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019). As the amount of movies and the time between when they are released has changed over the years, Marvel has started to over saturate the field with their own media, leaving fans disappointed with lackluster results.
With Marvel's plans of having up to seven or more phases in the coming years, I hope that they see the issues that Phase 4 has presented and make some changes. Marvel releasing a smaller amount of high quality, well thought out content would be much more successful than over saturating the market.
Comments