The Future of One of the Largest Franchises of All Time
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is one of the largest movie franchises to ever exist. But since the finale of the Avengers story line, ending with the massive success of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, the franchise has has been increasingly less well received.
What is in the future for this media giant, and what is the path for recovery?
The MCU’s most recent cinematic release, The Marvels, has been a box office disaster, so far pulling in around $76 million in the domestic box office, and near $187 million world wide. It currently sits as the lowest box office of any MCU movie ever.
While $187 million sounds like a lot of money, it pales in comparison to $2.7 billion of Avengers: Endgame.
While this stands out as Marvel’s least successful movie, it’s not the only one facing challenges recently, both at the box office and in terms of fan reception. Let’s delve into the two primary issues plaguing Marvel’s latest releases.
The Path to Recovery
The Avengers movies had very well liked characters. Getting to know them, usually through their own film, then putting them together and showing their interactions was very engaging. We knew of these characters formative experiences and driving motivations and we could see these interact and clash with the other characters.
Unfortunately, many of these early characters are no longer in the movies, and their replacements have in general have not been as well received.
Devoid of this, the only thing that could bring success back to the MCU would be movies that are good enough to stand on their own. While Spider-Man: No Way Home certainly managed that, not many of the others have.
The Big Question
To fix all these problems, do we need to reboot the whole franchise? Is starting over from scratch the best way to revitalize the story and bring back the characters we know? Taking the characters we have grown to love and showing us new and different stories that we have never seen from them? I am not sure, but I would love to see what you all think.
p.s. If we do a full reboot, my vote is for Alan Ritchson to play Captain America.