Howdy, folks!
Welcome once again to the Omnium Gatherum.
Or, if you’re new here, welcome to the Omnium Gatherum.
Long story short and as a warm up for myself before diving into this column’s topic, the Omnium Gatherum is a column I write, started for and hosted by the late, great Comics Waiting Room website, where I ruminate and cogitate, often using big words, over various topics across pop culture and culture in general.
This time around the topic came to me as I was haunted by 3 am thoughts, those sorts of odd ideas that come together when one has either stayed up all night or gotten up from a deep sleep.
Starting in 2008, the Marvel Cinematic Universe as it came to be known dominated the marketplace of pop culture and the box office. The resurgence and completed redemption arc of Robert Downey, Jr., occurred during this time, largely due to his portrayal of Tony Stark, the billionaire genius playboy philanthropist, also known as Iron Man. The stardoms of Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, and Chris Pratt were also forged during the rise of Marvel Studios. The late Chadwick Boseman will forever live in the hearts of fans, especially African-American fans, for his portrayal of the Black Panther before his untimely death. A portrayal so large that his absence from the subsequent sequel to the first Black Panther film hangs around the neck of the second film like an albatross. An absence that, like the rest of the mostly narrative (and otherwise) driven shift from the core heroes of the first three Phases—including the names mentioned above—to new heroes and new concepts seems to have left Marvel Studios and its MCU seemingly dead or dying and struggling for what to do next to win back both hardcore fans and general audiences.
Not to bury the lede any further, this column will take a look at where I think the Marvel Cinematic Universe died, how, and why.
To set the table, we have to deal with a few realities.
The first reality is we are still early days of The Afterglow from When Corona-Chan Came to Town as I refer to our recent plague years. That year to two year period changed all of our lives, from our social interactions to our shopping habits to how we enjoy entertaining ourselves. The years that launched a trillion podcasts and Only Fans and YouTube channels and seemingly endless streaming options have taken their tolls on Hollywood. One quick Google search can find a variety of news stories about movie theaters ranging from old time theaters closing down to how the moviegoing experience is having to evolve to keep up with audiences that have comparable options at home to marketing campaigns designed to counter the aforementioned home theater experience, all of which demonstrates that all is not right in Hollywood.
So when one takes a look at the box office numbers of Marvel Phase 4, the next reality is one can interpret said numbers in a variety of ways. One way to look at them shows a growing disinterest from audiences of continuing franchises, as Thor: Love And Thunder, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever underperformed slightly or majorly compared to their respective predecessors. The expansion of the MCU’s television offerings started off with high hopes as WandaVision and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier made their debuts; only to be brought down to earth roughly as the seeming lackluster reception of Loki season 2 and Echo demonstrate. I’m trying to avoid mentioning things like The Fandom Menace that have arisen in the last few years on the internets but that is a symptom of the problem and a part of the first reality. The growth of podcasts and personal broadcast channels has allowed fans of all kinds to find ecosystems and echo chambers more in alignment with their values and ways of thinking. That means it’s harder to capture the same eyeballs and minds en masse the way Hollywood had ahold of generally in the years Before Corona-Chan Came to Town. Add in the more openly waged Culture Wars, where the idea of common ground is becoming more of a Friends reference than a possible philosophical goal desired by the widest possible number of peoples, and we have a fertile environment for the death of something like the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
After all, for more than a decade, the MCU was the common campfire around which much of the world gathered to experience—reimagined by Hollywood magic—the adventures of the heroes of the Marvel Universe, that creation of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita, John Buscema, Roy Thomas, and far, far too many other names to mention here. Heroes like Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Panther, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and the Hulk entered the mass consciousness by way of the films of Marvel Phases 1, 2, and 3, reaching beyond than their superhero comics beginnings to become cultural icons.
And that’s the third reality, that the heroes of the Marvel Universe and their analogs in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have become cultural icons and the modern myths to a wider world. That has implications beyond the mere box office, as we shall see. Implications that I will begin to deal with by discussing where the Marvel Cinematic Universe died, albeit it by accident rather than by design, how it died, and why.
Again, in an effort not to bury the lede in all the words I’m throwing about, here are what I think is responsible for the aforementioned death.
I blame the overuse of character arcs in modern storytelling.
And I blame mainstream audiences.
I will deal with these in order.
I’m blaming the overuse of character arcs because it is killing how people approach what are ostensibly ongoing series characters. Now I know I’m hitting the two of you folks reading this with a lot of ideas, so let me back up some.
When it comes to American film and television, there has been a long history of continuing characters that have become icons. Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp is one of the earliest examples of such a character. A character that appears in numerous shorts and features that never appears to change but goes through changes in the jazz sense of the word. The Thin Man films show us the lives of Nick and Nora Charles as they solve crimes and while the film series does show us the Charles family as it grows to add a Junior to the pet child Asta the dog the fundamental natures of Nick and Nora do not change. The first movie finds Nick boozing it up and engaging in sharp dialogue exchanges with Nora and they are still doing that by the time the sixth film rolled around.
The same with the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movie series where the setting changes from Victorian London to wartime London and the stories take on a more patriotic bent but the characters of Holmes and Watson, their banter, their camaraderie, stayed the same.
Bill Cosby, in The Cosby Show, was the same lovable father figure from the first episode to the last, despite what we have learned about the man in the years since.
Over the years however, in both British television and later American television, the idea of a proper character arc became the norm. The best example I think of is Buffy the Vampire Slayer the series with its season long arcs that built to a climax with each season finale where the characters underwent some deeper transformation in themselves that changed them. Buffy grows into her responsibilities as a slayer whether she liked it or not, even becoming a big sister when it was necessary. Side characters like Willow and Zander also underwent major changes from season to season. And part of why this new approach worked is because audiences ate it up. Modern audiences (as much as I hate to use that phrase because every audience is a modern audience relatively speaking) suddenly liked the idea of characters in a series undergoing lots of character development. Compare that to older shows like Hill Street Blues and LA Law where changes to characters happened more organically than dramatically in character arc fashion. That approval of more developed characters led to many shows focusing on complex character arcs and even allowed for properties like the Song of Fire and Ice, more popularly known as Game of Thrones, to become hits. So it’s not farfetched to imagine that such character arcs went into the planning of the soon to be born Marvel Cinematic Universe when Marvel Studios announced their initial plans for a series of movies that would introduce the heroes of the Marvel Universe to big screen.
The problem with that, though, is that in their native environment of superhero comics characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor don’t necessarily undergo character arcs, not as they were originally conceived. Oh sure, as any long time readers of Marvel Comics could tell you, Iron Man has changed armor styles, has updated with the times, has occasionally put others like James Rhodes into the armor in his place, but all of those changes have been temporary. In the end, Iron Man is Tony Stark. Once he needed the armor to keep him alive, that did change but not his wearing the armor. The same can be said of Captain America, where he has abandoned the identity, taken up others like Nomad and The Captain, lost his powers and the Super Soldier Serum in his veins, been turned into an old man and a Nazi, all to end up right back to being Steve Rogers and being the one to throw that mighty shield. The same could be said for Thor, the Hulk, Black Widow, Black Panther, and so on, and so on. Anything looking like a true character arc doesn’t often exist in superhero comics and fiction.
Because in that meta-genre known as Superhero, the Never-Ending Battle is the primary narrative structure. That means the heroes have to live to fight another day. That also means the heroes can’t change in radical ways or can’t maintain those changes for very long. Again, Steve Rogers was once known as Nomad when he lost faith in America and the American Dream. Only to resume the identity of Captain America again. Thor became unworthy to wield Mjolnir for a time before recovering control of it. Stan Lee referred to the ever-changing yet changeless nature of the characters of the Marvel Universe by the term the Illusion of Change. Johnny Storm may grown older but he’s still the junior partner of the Fantastic Four. Many attempts may be made to cure him but Ben Grimm will always be The Thing.
That kind of eternal recurrence—to borrow that term from Buddhism—is not the stock in trade for Hollywood, especially not these days. Nowadays it seems that everything is geared towards the character arc, from how a potential television series is pitched to how movies that feature continuing characters have to give them some kind of arc. Here I’m thinking of the contrast between the bulk of the James Bond movies before the arrival of Daniel Craig in the titular role and his years playing the British super spy. Although, the earlier Bond films did have an arc running through them in terms of Bond versus Spectre that took a personal turn when Bond got married and widowed by the end of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and became a revenge subplot that ended with Bond dropping Blofeld down a smoke stack at the beginning of For Your Eyes Only, even the changes in the lead actor were simply treated as something of a nonissue. The Bond of those earlier films didn’t change even as the times changed around him. Technically the Pierce Brosnan Bond is the same guy who showed up with Sean Connery’s face in Dr. No. I say this knowing there a whole subculture out there that’s chosen to interpret the changes in the lead actor as meaning that James Bond is actually an agent’s code name and not a person’s name and thus helps with the idea that James Bond can be Black or be a woman for some. Unfortunately, all one needs to do is watch the films themselves, the text as it were, and see that in the world of the films there’s only one James Bond, no matter how many faces he wore before Daniel Craig took the role.
With Craig’s turn as Bond, though, the decision was made first to take the audience back to the beginnings of Bond as a double 0 agent and then to weave his films into a much more complex continuing narrative arc. I can only speculate that part of why is because the character arc had really embedded itself into the consciousness of the producers and other creators behind the scenes. I mentioned the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies above. Across 14 films, aside from the sudden and unexplained changed from Victorian London to World War 2 era London, nothing changed about the characters of Holmes and Watson. In contrast, every film of the Craig Bond era had some sort of profound character change for Bond, up to and including his seeming death in ironically named No Time To Die. Although the credits did promise that James Bond would return. Return from what, the dead? This last film pretty much did everything it could to explicitly and implicitly conclude the Craig Bond’s arc, from introducing a possible replacement to again offering what seemed like a permanent death for this incarnation of the super spy. That sets the table for possibly seeing someone completely different as James Bond, even though that may not be what audiences want.
Because, while well executed character arcs can be satisfying to watch and probably to perform as far as the actors are concerned, that isn’t always what audiences want. For example, look at some of the fan response to Kevin Smith’s He-Man animated series. Some but not all Masters of the Universe fans were upset at seeing their hero go through the kinds of changes that are typical of a character arc when what they really wanted was something more akin to Stan Lee’s Illusion of Change or what is called the Flat Arc. In other words, just like the Filmation original series, what some but not all Masters of the Universe fans wanted was the typical plot of Skeletor has a new plan to get into Castle Greyskull or some new bad guy shows up, He-Man gets into action, maybe there’s an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire of the plot that needs saving or has a lesson to learn, He-Man and Skeletor fight and ultimately He-Man overcomes the obstacles and wins and saves the day. It’s an incredibly simple story to tell and is very often satisfying to all ages, as the continued love of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels demonstrates as another example; no one is reading those books to see Wolfe go on a diet or for Archie Goodwin the detective to quit for several books before rejoining as a darker or more peaceful person depending on his off camera adventures, they are there to read about Wolfe and Goodwin solving the crime and mystery at hand. Solving the crime, saving the day, these are typical flat arc stories or what might be called Dad stories by some of today’s critics.
But what is a flat arc? How is it different from a character arc? Here I’ll use the novelist and writing instructor K. M. Weiland’s definition from her book Creating Character Arcs,
“Next to the positive change arc, the flat character arc is the most popular storyline. Also called the ‘testing arc,’ the flat arc is about a character who does not change. He already has the Truth figured out in the beginning of the story, and he uses that Truth to help him overcome various external tests.
“The flat-arc protagonist will be confronted with tremendous opposition. He will at times be shaken. His commitment to the Truth will be tested to the breaking point—but he will never waver from it. He will experience little inner conflict and will not change significantly as a person—although he may sometimes change externally (as per Veronica Sicoe in her blog article ‘The 3 Types of Character Arc - Change, Growth and Fall’):
“‘…the protagonist changes his perspective, learns different skills, or gains a different role. The end-result is not ‘better’ or more than the starting point, just different. The protagonist has not overcome a grand inner resistance or anything, he simply gained a new set of skills or assumed a new position, maybe discovered a talent he forgot he had, or a different vocation.’”
In other words, this flat arc is the classic plot of pulp heroes like Doc Savage and The Shadow as well as the problem of the week of such classic television dramas as Dragnet, Quincy, ME, and Star Trek.
As Weiland says in her definition, the positive change arc and the corresponding negative change arc what most people think of when one says character arcs. In other words, a character when confronted by whatever else a story throws at them has to undergo some kind of internal change of attitude, emotions, etc., that completely changes who they are and how they see the world in which they live.
Now, in these last few years as I’ve spent more time editing for clients and figuring out the nature of a project I alternatively call my White Whale, inspired by the works of Steven Pressfield, and my Beauty and the Beast In The Box, after Spaulding Gray’s spoken word performance Monster In The Box, I’ve come to develop some quasi-religious ideas around the nature of story. That journey has shaped how I’ve come to look at stories and the roles they play in our lives.
Some of the obvious conclusions I’ve come to along the way is the power of the Monomyth or the Hero’s Journey as Joseph Campbell coined it to shape how all humans interact with and receive story. The same goes with the idea of archetypes, of universal human character forms—Hero, Shadow, King, and so on—and how they work with story. I’ve found the work of Caroline Myss especially powerful to study along these lines. Archetypes are particularly interesting to study as these universal forms offer storytellers chances to work with something eternal, something unchangeable, the complete opposite to the idea of all characters having some kind of arc.
The reason I bring up archetypes and their unchanging qualities is I’ve come to believe that when it comes to series characters, and by this I mean characters that were and are specifically designed to keep going through X number of stories, are metaphysically resistant to being changed. That characters like Hamlet, despite the existence of the movie comedy Hamlet 2, were not designed to keep going after their story for which they were designed has been told. This is in contrast to characters like Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe. There is only one place and time for a kingdom of Denmark to be rotten. This is in contrast to there always being a case in London or New York that needs solving and only the efforts of a Holmes and Watson or a Wolfe and Goodwin can bring justice yet again.
One can choose not to share my belief. In that case I would advise such a person to look into how much Doyle wanted to kill off Holmes and move on to something else, only to resurrect the character later, due to popular demand. And that was in the days when the penny dreadfuls and newspapers, the telegraph and radio were the main means of communication available. Holmes was not only popular at the time but he had become in short order an archetype within his genre, that of the master detective. An archetype that Nero Wolfe shares, which explains why the novels featuring the massive master detective can change the times where the stories take place yet the core cast of characters don’t change.
As I mentioned above, the heroes of the Marvel Universe were not created to go through a few character arcs and call it a day. They were designed to keep selling month in, month out. This meant that any changes wrought to the characters would find themselves reversed and retconned out of existence. Tony Stark could finally have the heart damage that wearing the Iron Man chest plate necessitated fixed and yet still be Iron Man. Steve Rogers could find the Super Soldier Serum completely removed from his blood or find that it was killing him and still he would find ways to keep fighting, to keep testing himself, and to ultimately be cured. T’Challa could be injured or removed as the head of the Panther Clan, could spend time in America as a rite of passage, and still would regain his position as the Black Panther. Any changes to these series characters is temporary. If anything such changes are actually built into the premise of superhero comics. Like Stan the Man established, the Illusion of Change is the rule, not the exception, when it comes to the heroes of the Marvel Universe.
In superhero comics, Tony Stark is Iron Man, Steve Rogers is Captain America, Thor is the Norse God of Thunder and even the identity of Donald Blake turned out to be a temporary identity for Thor Odinson. Others may have used or do use the superheroic identities but these changes do not last, no matter what some fans or editors may attempt.
As a digression while you two readers absorb this concept, this explains the magic behind meme magic phrase going around the internets, “Peter Parker is Spider-Man; Miles Morales is Miles Morales.”
How? Why?
Because, and here I know I will sound like a nut or a mix of Grant Morrison and Carl Jung, I believe that once any character gels in the consciousness of his/her/its creator and/or the audience that some kind of archetypal inertia takes hold, making it difficult to make any changes to said character that weren’t already present in the embryonic phase. Sherlock Holmes cannot have a romance of any worth, despite many wonderful stories that have played with that premise such as The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. None of those romances last, so there will be no setting up Holmes to become like Nick and Nora Charles with his lady by his side. The Fantastic Four will always be and will always center on Reed and Susan Richards, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm. Other characters like She-Hulk or the Black Panther and Storm may join the team temporarily but those founding four characters will always be together.
Just as Peter Parker was conceived to be Spider-Man from the beginning. Meanwhile Miles Morales was conceived of as an answer to the question Donald Glover put out into the universe when he mentioned in an interview that he tried to go out for the part of Peter Parker in one of the Spider-Man films, only to be told no. So Glover asked, “Why can’t someone Black play Peter Parker?” That’s a huge fundamental difference between how the characters were conceived and probably the key as to why it has been so difficult for Marvel, despite the character even being used to anchor two animated films, to get Miles Morales over with broader audiences. Miles wasn’t conceived to be Spider-Man, he was conceived to answer a question about someone Black being Spider-Man
Quite honestly, all things being equal, there is no reason why a Black man can’t play Peter Parker on screen in principle. Yet that wasn’t how the character was designed and no matter how much someone like Walter Mosley can write of how he as a Black man could identify with Spider-Man and his struggles and back story it still belongs to a skinny, nerdy White kid from Queens, orphaned and being raised by his elderly aunt and uncle, who gets bitten by a radioactive spider, as created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. ‘Nuff said.
Spider-Man and the other heroes of the Marvel Universe are series characters without a doubt. Something the long runs of the comics and many trade paperback and hardcover omnibus volumes demonstrate. However, their analogs in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, aside from keeping one element from the comics that I will discuss later, are characters who arc, within in their solo films as well as within the larger story structure of the various Phases and Sagas.
And that’s the flaw no one thinks of.
Giving the Marvel characters actual arcs is like applying programmed obsolescence to what are narrative perpetual motion machines.
Let’s compare The Avengers in the comics at the end of The Infinity Gauntlet mini-series to their counterparts in the films Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. In the comics, despite all of the storm and stress of the crossover event, despite all of the deaths and destruction, the Avengers characters who participated went back home to have new adventures in their respective titles, while Thanos ended up on a farm. That farm element was used in the movies, along with other elements but by the end of Avengers: Infinity War, many characters and half of the universe were dead, including the Vision who didn’t return in any form until the WandaVision series. Avengers: Endgame begins with a five year gap where the universe had to adjust to the losses and ends with Tony Stark dead, Steve Rogers old, and Thor fat and giving up his father’s kingdom to go find himself. Those developments are great ends to the character arcs they went through over the course of several movies. Those developments are pretty radical changes, which is exactly what one wants for a good character arc.
It’s just too radical for characters that are meant to continue the Never-Ending Battle.
Also, as much as audiences of all kinds, especially movie going ones, like new things that excite and thrill them, they also like what Lawrence Block in his book Telling Lies For Fun And Profit calls ‘the same but different’. One can look at the early history of Hollywood to see this on display. I mentioned the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes film series and The Thin Man movies. There were also long running series featuring characters like Charlie Chan, Mister Moto, The Saint, and other detective characters. In time, James Bond would join in the fun as one of cinema’s great heroes. All the way up to the present day with the recent John Wick series. People do like seeing the same characters go through their struggles to succeed or save the day, as Weiland says in her definition of a flat arc. The soon to end Mission Impossible series, produced by Tom Cruise, as well as his Top Gun: Maverick shows how popular audiences can find it enjoyable to revisit old friends at the common campfire, as much as they can find it refreshing to meet new ones.
That dichotomy is why I also blame mainstream audiences for the death of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
On the one hand, mainstream audiences have shown they will love seeing the same old characters, seeming unchanged except for any aging on the part of the actors involved or recasting caused by varying circumstances, in movie after movie. On the other hand, audiences love characters changing or having arcs that leave them transformed. Unfortunately the latter option, the offhand situation as it were, holds the key for why audiences are likely no longer showing as much interest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Because, as far as many but not all of the audience are concerned, the stories of Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Thor, the three foundational characters of the MCU, have essentially been told. Tony Stark has had his heroic death. Steve Rogers got his happy ending. Thor got whatever nonsense the fourth film gave him by the end, a testimony that sets up my next point perfectly. In two of these cases their character arcs reached pretty definitive ends. Here’s where I can cue Ferris Bueller to tell everyone the movie is over, go home.
Or, as it seems for Marvel Phases 4 and 5, stay home.
Because, as far as moviegoers are concerned, once the story is told—in this case, I mean whatever character arcs the characters go through that leave them changed in some major way (Darth Vader is redeemed, John Wick is seemingly dead)—they are ready for the next story. That doesn’t mean they are ready for the next stories to take place in the same world as the finished story did though. Now, what is likely to be the outcome if a studio tells a long and complicated series of films encompassing a handful of iconic characters, characters that aren’t designed to truly have an arc, where by the final film every sign is given (character death, drastic changes to the characters that live, expansive autograph based final credits, and so on) that their story is over?
The easy answer is not bother to show up for the next set of films that try to introduce new characters and concepts without the benefit of the more iconic characters . At least not with the same enthusiasm as carried the Marvel Studios brand through its first three Phases.
One could even see the writing on the wall with Iron Man 3. In many ways, especially tonally, the film is as much a farewell to Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark/Iron Man as it was the third cinematic adventure of the titular hero. Story choices from blowing up the mansion, to using and destroying so many Iron Man suits, to having Stark get a proper heart surgery to remove the Arc Reactor (ironic, given the name), all pointed the way towards clearing the decks for a possible replacement for RDJ, if not simply sunsetting the character. An action that ultimately took place a few films later.
Even though his comics counterpart also had surgery that repaired his heart and removed the initial impetus for the building of the original Iron Man armor, especially with its chest plate that kept Stark alive, during the 1970s, it wasn’t a change that kept Tony from being Iron Man. Just as putting Rhodey in the armor for a time didn’t stop Stark from becoming Iron Man again. Just as brining a teenage Tony Stark from the past to replace a treacherous and then dead adult version didn’t keep Stark from becoming Iron Man again.
See where I’m going here?
Such changes that change back or change in a different direction are typical of superhero comics, like the Marvel Universe. In other words, the Illusion of Change.
While the Marvel Cinematic Universe brought aspects of superhero storytelling from the comics page to the big screen, like big action set pieces, internal continuity (which I will get into a bit more below), and cosmic level sagas, it didn’t bring that Illusion of Change. Instead, Marvel Studios did what any studio would do and that it fell back on usage of character arcs as that’s what they do well nowadays. However they didn’t need to.
Why?
Because, as I’ve above, moviegoers do love continuing characters like James Bond and John Wick. Think about the continuity between all of the other James Bond films versus the Daniel Craig Bond movies. Where there was an arc of sorts there was nothing it did to prevent Bond from getting back into action with the next installment in the franchise in the early movies. In the Craig movies, the audience has essentially seen his becoming a Double Zero agent to his seeming demise. That seems like a tough corner to paint oneself into when owning and operating a character based franchise.
In the case of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, let’s add into that mix something that hadn’t been tried up until the shared universe’s beginnings. Namely that of something more akin to the kind of complex interconnected stories that the Marvel Universe had pioneered. The idea of a 20 or so film saga, told over a decade, was a grand one. It was an idea that made Marvel Studios a fortune and entertained audiences world wide. The problem is, that like Daffy Duck’s infamous Last Trick from “Show Biz Bugs”—where he blew himself up to thunderous applause—it’s an idea that may only be able to be done once.
After all, even the most casual MCU fan spent a decade watching two to three films a year that all built towards one memorable conclusion. How does Marvel Studios get that audience excited for another such saga all over again right on the heels of the first one? More importantly, why should mainstream audiences, the bulk of whoever Marvel has to attract into the theaters, care about a second such saga? Why should they care when the characters they started enjoying the Marvel Cinematic Universe featuring are dead or gone and/or simply replaced with vastly different ones?
In contrast, superhero comics readers, to borrow from Stephen King, lie cheek and jowl daily and weekly with the arcane, with the cosmic and world changing, and with the Illusion of Change. The sort of saga that Marvel Studios assembled over the course of a decade is fairly commonplace in the Marvel Universe. Anyone can sample any two year period of Chris Claremont’s X-Men, Paul Levitz’s Legion of Super-Heroes, or Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four and see stories that make what’s called The Infinity Saga look very finite indeed. The less said about any comparisons between The Infinity Saga as Marvel Studios called Phases 1-3 collectively and the trilogy of The Infinity Gauntlet, The Infinity War, and The Infinity Crusade, the better.
Mainstream audiences are more inclined to enjoy extended soap operas in their entertainments than the superhero operas, although the former may be a part of the latter. As an aside offered as a contrast, when I most recently took English classes I often found myself either reading comics or pulps as a counterbalance or inserting superhero and science fiction tropes into some of the literature I read out of boredom with the commonplace worlds that reading educator selected literature took me.
That’s because I am used to, like many other superhero comics fans, and enjoy reading about these larger than life characters whose lives can seem to be a perpetual roller coaster or like a non-kayfabe version of World Wresting Entertainment. As an example, I am looking at the Avengers The Gathering omnibus and Avengers Operation Galactic Storm Epic Collection in my office. During the roughly three year period of comics collected, the Avengers get a new member in Crystal of the Inhumans, are training a substitute Thor, get involved in a war between the Kree and Shi’ar Empires, battle the Starjammers and the X-Men, and finally face an evil parallel Earth version of one of their members, all while also dealing with a love triangle and other interpersonal dramas. Most mainstream audiences don’t necessarily like this sort of thing, as I just described. Another aside, this time from my days working in a comics shop, I would occasionally have a civilian walk in and want to know where they could get started following their favorite superhero from childhood. After getting a read on their interests and the like, I would make what were smart recommendations but the civilian, upon learning what the superheroes actually did in their comics, would leave making no purchases. That and the parents, mostly the mothers, who wanted to buy superhero comics for their kids but wanted them without any action or violence, of which there were none. Superhero fans love the action, violence, the cosmic and epic on a regular basis; the mainstream audience, not so much.
Overcoming that resistance was the beauty and miracle of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It understood that most folks would like the Marvel characters if presented well. Mainstream audiences do like continuing characters and film franchises as I’ve mentioned before. But that like is built on the same principle as the superhero comics, namely offering them unchanging characters.
Characters that change, though, characters that arc can also signal a subconscious off ramp for audiences as well through the very act of having an arc.
I mentioned Iron Man 3 as signaling a farewell of sorts to RDJ as much as to Tony Stark. Captain America: Civil War and Thor: Ragnarok take similar tacks, a kind of subtle yet not so subtle setting up to clear the decks as it were. From Cap leaving behind his shield with Stark and going on the run to Thor seeing his home of Asgard destroyed, in addition to the loss of his father and hammer, the movies of Marvel Phases 2 and 3 began setting up a big off ramp in the back of the minds of the audience, even though they didn’t know it at the time.
All of which led to the aptly titled Avengers: Endgame, which sees Tony Stark finally making the heroic sacrifice he thought he would approach another way when Steve Rogers asked him to figuratively consider it in Avengers; it sees Rogers himself use the time travel gag to cash that raincheck with the lovely Agent Carter for a happily ever after, the kind superheroes don’t normally get; and it sees Thor leaving the survivors of the fall of the kingdom of Asgard in someone else’s hands than his, finally answering the question from the first Thor movie about his readiness to be king in the negative. All of these story developments satisfying conclusions and simply conclusions to these characters’ arcs, depending on how one feels about it.
Whatever else it does, Spider-Man: No Way Home provides an accidental coda to the story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and not just to Phase 3 by resolving the stories for all three cinematic versions of Spider-Man. The audience gets to see Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man redeem himself for letting his Gwen Stacy die from falling. The simple act of Tobey Maguire entering the scene was enough of a resolution for his fans, based on all of the videos of audiences applauding loudly when he came on screen. The revelation that his Spider-Man had found a way to grow up and lead a relatively normal life is the gravy on top of the icing, to borrow from Eric Bogosian. That Tom Holland’s Spider-Man has the sad resolution to his story nonetheless still provides a jumping off point for fans, instead of keeping them on the edge of their seats for a fourth film with him. The final shots of Peter Parker in an apartment, all alone, feels like an ending, a sad ending, which in many ways fits his character.
Whether it’s Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: No Way Home, these stories tell their audiences the story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is over despite themselves. They gave people reasons to show themselves out of the party.
And it looks like in many ways that they have taken it.
The current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is no longer that of Must See Storytelling, of the common campfire stories. It is more like just another type of consumer product that audiences are expected to consume or not.
And the answer is increasingly becoming ‘not’.
So, what should Marvel Studios do, especially with them showing no signs of stopping?
Offering my two cents adjusted for inflation, I might suggest that Marvel Studios do the unthinkable and that is give the movies and TV shows a 3 to 5 year break. Give the audience a chance to miss the MCU. Then either a complete reboot of the MCU and/or a recasting of Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Thor, along with any other characters that need it. And limit the use of characters arcs in favor of more flat arc based storytelling. And possibly, in a suggestion in complete contrast to the moves that Marvel is actually making, save the big sagas for a time. Do a series of Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor films that focus on action and adventure, saving the Avengers franchise for a story that fits that set of characters. Make mainstream audiences rediscover what made these characters special. Part of what made them special was seeing them on the big screen, an achievement that can’t be repeated in terms of novelty (thank you, Daffy). But another part that made the Marvel movies special and can make them special again is simply seeing the world Stan and Jack and oh so many others made come to life. It was and is seeing that world just outside our windows as pitched by The Man alive with all of its power and glory on display and in action that fans loved. It wasn’t so much seeing Tony Stark grow as a human being that audiences found fascinating. It was seeing a man wearing red and gold high tech body armor or a former wimp turned Adonis throwing a shield or a god throwing a war hammer on the big screen saving the day that fans and audiences loved.
And that’s it.
Thanks to all two of you for hanging in this long. I’ll have to see about getting some kind of check in the mail to y’all.
In the meantime, I’ve got a life to get back to. Although, that life may have to wait. I suddenly have a desire to see Captain America: The First Avenger, Hulk, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and The Avengers. Perhaps it’s because I reminded myself of just how cool and fun those early films were. Perhaps it’s also because I’m not interested in looking at the world outside my window. It’s becoming a scary place, a place that could use some larger than life heroes.
Ultimately, wasn’t that the real message of Stan Lee and others? That what was called noblesse oblige still existed, even if it took the loss of a loved one to get one particular skinny kid to learn that lesson?
Until next time, folks!
Namaste, y’all!
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