The MCU: Where Does It Go From Here?

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (or MCU, for short), which used to primarily consist of motion pictures, but now includes television shows (most of them on the Disney+ streaming platform), has announced that it is pushing back the release dates for several of its upcoming projects. Rescheduling for a film or TV show isn't anything new in the entertainment world. Marvel has done it before. But this recent move seems to stem from the decision to put their Blade reboot on hold. They announced the project (starring two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali) years ago and, by all reports, the script still isn't good enough, and the director has left the project.

These bumps in the road for Marvel are becoming more common, and are perhaps a sign of the studio trying to do too much, too quickly. For example: Phase 1 of the MCU lasted four years(!), and consisted of six films. Now we're nearing the end of Phase 4, which will close out with the release next month of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Including that, Phase 4 will have consisted of eleven projects (movies and TV shows) in just a year and four months. It's obvious that Marvel's quantity has dramatically increased, but what about its quality?

The recent shake-up of release dates has prompted me to write about something that's been on my mind lately, which is the increasing discontent that a number of fans seem to be feeling about the direction (or lack thereof) of the MCU since Avengers: Endgame in 2019. People have argued that Phase 4 (which officially began in July 2021 with the Black Widow movie) has felt disjointed, or lacking direction. Some have even gone as far to say that, with Phase 1, 'we knew where it was going,' and that it was obvious that it was all building up to the threat of Thanos being the big, bad, overarching villain of the MCU.

There are a couple of things going on here, and they are very different beasts, so I want to address them individually.

First, I think one thing we're suffering from is a term I'll coin (at least, I don't think it exists, though maybe it does) The Hindsight Effect. My question is: was it clear in Phase 1 that Thanos was going to be the big bad of the MCU? Sure, Loki was acting as an evil emissary for Thanos when he led an attack on New York City in 2012's The Avengers. But, did we really have a clear idea of what lay ahead of us for the next seven years, as the Infinity Saga plotline played out? I doubt it. Heck, I knew of Thanos from my days reading comic books, and yet his (very) brief appearances in a smattering of MCU movies across several years didn't really click with me as this is the big plot that will blow up in the last two Avengers movies!

We're looking at the MCU now, and ahead, with the hindsight of eleven years of story (from Iron Man in 2008, through to Endgame in 2019). When the MCU started fourteen year ago, it was fresh and new. As each movie was released, we were introduced to more characters, stories and a sort of very light, interweaving plotline. It was a fun journey, and we were along for the ride. Things really ramped-up with Phase 3 and, well, most folks know how it all concluded in 2019 (with Spider-Man: Far From Home technically being the last entry in that phase). The MCU kind of reset after that. Some stuff is familiar (Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Thor), but a lot isn't. Thing is, now that we've seen the entirety of a storyline that took over a decade to unfold, we're impatient to know how the new storyline expands. And that's a bit unfair to the storytellers.

The second issue facing Marvel fans -- and this one is more tricky -- is that, as we've already talked about, the MCU kind of told a complete story by the time Endgame finished (with Far From Home being sort of an awkward epilogue). We are predisposed (or conditioned) to look for satisfactory conclusions to our plots, whether they be fictional ones, or even the stories of our lives. We like knowing - or expecting - that there's a beginning, middle and an end. When we experience a bang-up ending, as we did with the last Avengers movie, then our minds and hearts are thrown for a bit of a loop when the corporation (whose underlying purpose is to make money) in charge of telling these stories comes back and says, 'But wait -- there's more!'

I think this is why long-running franchises often stumble, and it's where the MCU is finding itself in trouble now. Not only is it stretching itself thin with a whole lot of content, across different platforms, but it's also struggling to continue on after, for a large segment of the population, its story has been told. Are there a ton more Marvel heroes and villains out there? Of course. Are people's appetites big enough to warrant producing films and TV shows about all of them, and at an increasingly breakneck pace? That remains to be seen, though I think we're already getting a taste of the answer.