Are Marvel movies not good anymore?
Ever since the pandemic in 2020, there has been talk amongst Marvel fans about the lack of quality in new movies. Marvel’s latest movie, “The Marvels,” did not have good ticket sales. It made $206 million with a budget of $270 million, deeming it a box office flop. It’s as though Marvel has lost its spark. Marvel separates its movies into phases and have recently begun production on their fourth phase. Since the beginning of Marvel’s “Phase Four,” it has all been a giant pile of trash movies and series. Where the Marvel films are starting to feel more and more like a classic 3D animated kids show with all of the CGI that takes place.
Many fans have felt that Marvel movies have had a comedic tone rather than a serious one. For example, in “Thor: Love and Thunder,” the villain from the comics of “Thor” is a god killer. The way he is represented in the movie doesn’t give off the scary vibe he has in the comics. He also lacked many characteristics given to him in the comics, such as his lust for vengeance against every god in the universe and his appearance was drastically changed as well.
“Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is another example of a story being too comedic to tell a serious story. Modok, the secondary antagonist, is treated as a joke and a throwaway character throughout the whole film. They basically take this supervillain and make him the comedic relief character. It’s lazy and shows no effort in actually developing a serious storyline.
One possible reason for this lack in quality is that during the pandemic, all movies had to halt production for safety. This cost Marvel $64 million. Additionally, the actors are getting older and Marvel has probably realized that they can’t keep making them look young. After all, everyone ages and making actors look younger costs Marvel more and more money.
Additionally, for five months in 2023, the Writers Guild of America, a labor union with thousands of media writers, went on strike over a labor dispute with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, who are responsible for the industry-wide contracts on behalf of more than 350 producers. Because of this, every movie in the U.S. had to be put on pause for 148 days. This might be another cause for the downfall in the quality of Marvel movies. Because of the lack of coordinated direction that the company was already taking, the short of writers could have thrown directors for a loop.
Kyle Pecht ‘25 said, “They’ve started doing solo characters. I personally liked it with the big everyones, when they were all together. I like some movies about their own characters but lately they’ve been kind of bad.”
Ty Miller ‘24 said, “I think that ever since Disney+ came out, [Marvel] started making too many spin-offs of everything and it’s hard to keep up with the timeline. You know what I mean, it’s just gone downhill. I think that it’ll take God and a miracle for Marvel to come back from this.”
It feels like Marvel isn’t trying anymore. They have given up on fan favorite series because the new ones coincide with Disney’s censorship, which took away all R-rated movies from the Disney website, and in turn, caused a depression in the creativity in which they could create movies freely and having to focus instead on whether or not it was suitable for children. This is much different compared to Marvel’s old restrictions, before it was under the jurisdiction of Disney. This leads to soulless films that consist of corny jokes and extreme action sequences with little story being built.
