5 Ways Disney Can Fix The MCU
With audience engagement with Marvel dwindling over the last year, here are 5 ways Disney could fix the MCU.
What is happening with Disney right now! For many years it seemed as though Disney would never be beaten, they’d reign supreme over the lands of Hollywood as the indominable studio goliath that it is. Now don’t get me wrong, Disney is still reeling in billions every year, but it seems as though somethings changed. The kinks are slowly starting to show.
Let’s cast our minds back to Aril 2019. Avengers: Endgame had just been released, a film that acted as the culmination of 21 movies and a storyline that had been ten years in the making — this was the MCU at its peak, with box office figures reflecting that claim. Four years later, engagement from audiences with Marvel content seems at an all time low. Loki season 2 has just been released to very little public discourse and ticket pre-sales for The Marvels next month are reportedly so low its being compared to this year’s The Flash — a notable box office flop. Marvel has been in a steady decline for a while now, so lets examine five potential ways the studio could get things back on track.us leo.
1) Choosing quality over quantity!
In 2022 Marvel had three theatrical releases alongside four Disney+ shows, as well as two standalone theatrical episodes — a total of nine pieces of content. Whilst die-hard MCU fans are likely to keep up with such an intense release cycle, the average viewer definitely is not. By oversaturating itself, the MCU has subsequently diluted the quality of each individual piece, losing fans in the process.
This year has seen an equal number of theatrical releases and half the number of MCU shows, so its clear Marvel intends to slow down. However only Guardians of The Galaxy: Vol.3 has proved itself as a win for the studio, with Antman: Quantumania performing both commercially and critically poorly alongside Secret Invasion being heralded as the worst MCU show to date. Is it any coincidence that the films that have performed the best in the box office have also performed the best with critics? Sure there’s something to be said about fan loyalty towards the Guardian’s franchise, but never underestimate the power of quality.
2) Fix the Kang problem.
When Marvel first introduced audiences to Thanos in 2012, it took six years of his presence being subtly weaved through a variety of post-credit scenes and mysterious name droppings before he even faced The Avengers in 2018’s Infinity War. Thanos was never overexposed yet his name was known amongst both die-hard fans and general audiences alike. Let’s take Kang on the other hand. First properly introduced in the first season of Loki, after Kevin Feige claimed the Disney+ shows were not essential viewing, we’ve seen several variants of Kang now, one of which being his defeat in Antman: Quantumania. This is confusing for several reasons. Do general audiences need to watch the shows or not? Is Kang really that big of a threat if he can be easily defeated by a B-list hero like Antman?
If Marvel wants audiences to care about Kang then he needs to be felt across all of the theatrical releases, yet many general audiences tuning in for Guardian’s 3 or Wakanda Forever wouldn’t have a clue of his existence! Where Thanos’ quest to find the Infinity stones and wipe out half of all life from the universe was simple, do we even know what Kang’s is? Marvel is currently alienating general audiences from die-hard fans by offering those who view every piece of content significantly more information than those who only tune in for just the theatrical releases. What made them successful in the past was how easy the concept was to grasp, yet now it seems even among fans as though there’s no clear narrative direction. Plus, this isn’t even considering the allegations against Jonathan Majors…
3) Commit to the Multiverse, or please just ditch it.
The multiverse offered the MCU an opportunity to break the mould of what came before. In an age where audiences are increasingly valuing more creativity from the movies they engage with, Marvel has the opportunity to take inspiration from the comics depiction of the multiverse by incorporating new visual styles like: noir, sci-fi or horror. We could’ve seen some genuine experimentation in the cinematic form and departed away from the washed out colour palette the MCU is known for. Multiverse of Madness had all the potential to trailblaze this new approach — yet what did we get? More of the same. What’s more, Marvel isn’t even willing to experiment with the endless array of parallel characters at their disposal, instead opting for what essentially adds up to meaningless celebrity cameos before being killed off. The multiverse cannot be half measured, if they aren’t bold enough to embrace it then they need to move on from it.
4) Fix the diversity and representation issues.
The subject of diversity is a hot topic through much of Hollywood right now. When representation is done poorly and writers introduce characters for whom being LGBTQ+ or BAME is the only purpose they serve, then diversity becomes nothing more than a box-ticking exercise from studios wishing to simply appeal to a wider demographic. Whilst Disney as a studio holds slightly more overall blame for this approach, signs of it can be seen trickling down into Marvel — the upcoming movie The Marvels being showing signs of this. It’s as though they’ve asked writers: ‘what contrived situation can we create to force as many of our female superheroes into the same movie to showcase our diversity?’, whilst glossing over how out of the 32 movies thus far: only 2 of them focus on a female character in the leading role, only 3 a character that’s Black, Asian or minority ethnic and not a single unapologetically LGBTQ+ character at all!
Representation, when done poorly, achieves nothing to help the minority groups it seeks to lift up. All audiences have the right to see themselves reflected in the media they watch without feeling their presence is going to cause backlash. When studios use diversity as a box ticking exercise, it provokes conservatives to review bomb and financially boycott such films — making it even more of a financial risk for studios to have representation at all. Marvel appears to know of the problem it faces, and at the very least The Marvels indicates somewhat of a step in the right direction, just one that is skimming the line between authenticity and trivial box ticking ever so closely.
5) Disney+ content needs showrunners and pilots.
Upon the creation of its Disney+ shows, Marvel Studios seemingly took an approach to the TV production process that differs from much of the industry. Usually, before a whole season of a show is greenlit for production, a pilot of that show is made and subsequently focused group. Based off this a studio will decide the viability of a project and come to a decision whether it should go into production and be announced to the media, assuming news of it hasn’t already leaked, or simply be canned. Marvel, on the other hand, has gone a different route.
Characters and shows are announced years ahead of time, before a script has been written or talent has been attached. This anticipation from fans and the risk of disappointing them by cancelling the project of a beloved character, means that where normally a studio will kill unviable projects succinctly after the pilot stage, Marvel has no choice but to blaze ahead into production. What’s more, none of the shows have any one creative visionary behind them that’s driving the project forward. No showrunners like Russel T. Davies for Doctor Who or Mike White for The White Lotus. Instead there’s just Kevin Feige, spread thin between the countless films and tv show’s he is simultaneously producing, but diluting the quality of all of them in the process. Frankly if Marvel wishes to get their Disney+ shows back on track, then they need to start adhering to the rest of the TV industry: make pilots, utilise showrunners and not agree to every spin-off show Feige conceives.
Audiences are undoubtedly feeling the symptoms of superhero fatigue, however they aren’t quite done with them yet. The success of Spider-Verse, Guardians of The Galaxy 3 and The Batman last year all reflects that people still want their heroes. But they are no longer willing to abide by the subpar level of quality that is starting to define this era of Marvel movies. Thus its clear the MCU needs to start taking more creative risks and in the process finally give audiences a reason to reengage with their content once more.
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