The Beacon Beat

By Adam Pick

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) dominated the movie culture of the 2010s with successful movies one after another. Sadly, for the past few years, the MCU has been seen as a dying universe. Fans complain that the quality of the new movies has gone down, and they are no longer made with the care that gave Marvel its vast fame and respect in the first place.

The recent movie “The Marvels” exemplifies this low standard, as it is Marvel’s lowest-grossing movie since “The Incredible Hulk,” released in 2008. This may be attributed to multiple factors, but one of them is certainly the SAG-AFTRA strike, which restricted actors from promoting their movies. Because the strike ended only one day before “The Marvels” global release, fans of the franchise, unfortunately, did not even know the movie was out due to the lack of advertising.

While the actor’s strike is a reasonable cause for the failure of the movie, another explanation can also be the poor quality of the movie, which led to its disaster at the box office. Marvel’s “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania,” released early this year, also flopped at the box office, although it was released before the actor strike began. We can see another example of this through Marvel’s new shows on Disney+. Many fans hate the majority of the shows, other than a few exceptions like, “Loki” or “WandaVision.”

Many comic book movie fans claim that the recent failure of the Marvel movies and shows can be attributed to what many refer to as “Superhero Fatigue,” meaning that there are too many superhero movies coming out at once. However, this simply cannot be the case either because “Across the Spider Verse” and “The Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 3,” both released this summer, were big hits at the box office despite being superhero movies. Ever Since “Avengers Endgame,” fans don’t feel the same love for the MCU as they used to because of Marvel’s lack of good content in both the movies and the shows. 

Marvel has lost its touch; it no longer delivers the wonderful moments we all are used to. Marvel has entered a stage that happens even to the best companies in which quantity replaces quality. As fans avoid the movies altogether, Marvel is looking for solutions. A recent article published by Variety stated that one of these alternatives is to bring back the original cast of The Avengers, including Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, and Chris Evans. Fans speculate how they will come back, and if so, the common belief is that they’ll be resurrected or it will have something to do with the multiverse. While some fans are happy with the idea of this new (or old) direction, yearning to see Downey Jr. in the iconic Iron Man armor again, others feel that it would ruin the MCU, and make deaths feel meaningless. As of now the return of the original Avengers is just heavily speculated, but has a high chance of being true. As a fan of the franchise, I would prefer for them to create new characters rather than just continue to use the same characters over and over again.

Due to everything going on at Marvel right now, from the SAG-aftra strike to their movie’s flopping at the box office, they had to delay many of their films, making 2024 the first year in over a decade with only one Marvel movie coming out. As a huge fan myself, I hope Marvel finds its way back to excellence very soon.