It’s funny how quickly things change. Not long ago the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Marvel Cinematic Universe was at🀅op the world following the release of Avengers: Endgame, armed with a cultural cache only few select media in history have ever been able to command. It was unparalleled, but ever since it feels like the titan has come crashing down into an embarrassing, CGI-addled mess of its own making. A laundry list of underwhelming films, needless television shows and a terrible focus on quantity over quality has diluted a once untouchable icon of the modern landscape.
As someone who checked out upon the release of Avengers: Endgame and has only tuned in for the occasional film or show, I’m unsure how the MCU can come back from its current malaise. The films we praised, such as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 or Spider-Man: No Way Home, don’t take advantage of the MCU so much as they do their own distinct ideas or nostalgia for past superhero adventures we’re ♈desperate to see return. The future isn’t too exciting, so we clamor for the past as we march happily tꦓowards the box office. But for each success are several failures, or a convolution of narrative and characters which few seem to care for. Loki aside, how many Moon Knight or Ms Marvel stans can you name?
While millions continue to be made and the MCU likely isn’t going anywhere, and will almost certainly get worse before it gets better, the mainstream interest 𒅌is no longer on a sustained level. My parents and siblings aren’t obsessively following the events and characters of each new film because there’s simply too many of them, not to mention several streaming shows which tie into the overall story but also require a more robust time investment. Tune in each week or risk falling behind, a💞nd don’t forget to pencil several dates in your calendar for every film in the fear that a random event which will come to influence the Kang Dynasty will pass us by. I just don’t care anymore, and that feels like an overriding sentiment around the world.
The superhero genre has also evolved to new and exciting places the MCU has both failed to embrace and seems overly eager to replicate. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse went and changed the landscape of anima𓃲tion and superhero films forever, proving that we can tell stories that are modern, heartfelt, authentic, but wildly different in their creative charm. When the MCU sought to do the same thing with Doctor Strange and Ant-Man, we received neutered products that had to awkwardly dance around the demands of the timeline. Never did it feel like a filmmaker was given free rein to make their mark, which is a damning thing to admit when someone as talented as Sam Raimi is involved. Sony also spewed out films like Morbius, but at least those were able to attract the attention of millions because they’d bothered to conjure up an identity, no matter how mediocre. MCU doesn’t have that today.
Cinematic universes aren’t as unique or groundbreaking as they once were. Marvel may have ushered in a new era with the release of Iron Man and the subsequent films that helped make The Avengers possible, but this once impossible experiment is now commonplace. To remain relevant in their own game, the company must be daring, try new things, or admit it needs to slow down and actually produce films and shows worth caring for. Sadly, the gravy train has no brakes, and if it wasn’t for the ongoing strikes in every union from acting to visual effects, the industry could have been pushed to the br🅘eaking point until it all fell apart of its own accord. People h𝔉ave already stopped showing up, and if you expect much more from them, that situation is only going to worsen. I’m not sure the trajectory can be changed if the die is already cast. You keep going until changing course is the only option.
Back in 2008, when it first became clear that Iron Man was building towards something more than itself, there was a clear creative intention behind it. There wasn’t an indication that this ex♋periment was going to work, but somehow Jon Favreau and Kevin Feige had cleverly convinced those above them to let them try something that could change the entertainment world forever. And it did, but that liberating paradigm shift has led to a homogenous status quo where an endless stream of superhero media is being produced for profit and nothing more. It isn’t lighting the world on fire because it has no spark, and no reason for us to be invested in characters when there’s too many of them, and it’s not leading anywhere g♈ood.
The MCU is a walking corpse of what it once was, and I don’t🧸 know what can be done to bring it back to life.
