Everyone loves a good formula. The good guy is relatable and quirky; the villain is mean. When things get too serious, there’s the comedic relief one-liner right on time. Just when you think all is lost, it’s saved! And just when you think people aren’t going to drag themselves to the theater to watch the latest world-changing mind-blowing epic MCU masterpiece, they will.
The MCU’s CGI has hit a wall, and it’s not really getting better. Their ability to raise the stakes gets more insane with every movie, to the point that you wonder how people can keep up with the plot anymore. There’s action, drama, surface-level representation, and a tangled web of plot that very few can continue to keep up with.
Every year it seems like the industry finds an aimless and lifeless way to reanimate the superhero movie’s corpse, allowing the MCU to finally achieve the unwanted: a film universe just as convoluted and impossible to understand as the comics they’re based on.
The entire appeal rests on movies that came out decades ago at this point- are you going to get the reference? Can you predict the next epic crossover? Did you catch that cameo?
The project was ambitious, and has had an undeniably powerful impact on the film industry in both good and bad ways. They brought beloved characters to life with talented actors and impressive CGI, and then used that to eliminate special effects in modern cinema.
They did the profitable thing, and took advantage of an industry with no unions and jumped on the opportunity to outsource work to minimum wage animators overseas. And, they’ve revolutionized overt capitalizing off of government support.
Blatant military propaganda aside, the MCU has also been known to subtly change scripts for the approval of the US military. We don’t need to get into the prolonged Air Force advertisement that was Captain Marvel, but we could bring up an endless series of questions. Why is the token Good White Man in Black Panther a CIA agent (an organisation historically known for meddling with African self-governance)?
Why was the villain of the Falcon and Winter Soldier show’s iconic look also the logo of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s movement? We could go on and on about the many controversial and often unaddressed moves in the MCU, but that would take forever.
Marvel has perfected the art of spoon-feeding the same story, building a borderline-incomprehensible maze of plot and crafting a universe that at this point is basically impossible to penetrate if you haven’t been following each of their “phases” since the start.
They know that people love the quirky one-liner hero and the inspiring superhero narrative. Even when people are getting tired of it, they’ll still go to the theatre to not miss out on the latest cultural movement, or to support their favourite character, or witness the newest epic #representation matters moment. And unfortunately, Marvel knows that people will pay to see their movies as long as they can keep putting them out.