Those living at the height of an empire are often the ones who experience the sorrow of its fall. When one gets lost in the bliss of a rise built on foundations that will one day be gone, the epic moment of removal is followed by a fatal plummet. Bloody and broken, one tries to rise again, fueled by nostalgia for the heights. Nostos, the Greek word for “return”, coupled with algos, translated to “suffering”, makes up nostalgia, the suffering caused by the persistent longing to return. Recollections of the early 2000s and its cinematic landscape are wrapped in nostalgia. Since then, the landscape of cinema has undergone significant transformation. Movie theatres and Videoramas have been replaced by laptop screens; weekly episodes have given way to streaming binges. To sustain a franchise through these unprecedented transformations is to sustain an empire through ever-changing citizens, laws, and politics.
Few would argue with the notion that Marvel Studios experienced the height of its empire during the early 2000s, built on the foundations of beloved characters. But in recent years, it seems that Marvel’s rise has come to an end. The gravity of recent decisions appears to be pulling Marvel towards the fall. With the support of its historical foundations now removed, fans are left wavering. It seems fans are moving away from Marvel’s gravitational pull, looking back nostalgically at Iron Man, Captain America, the Avengers, and other fallen soldiers who had become the heart of Marvel.
The foundation
Whether you love it or hate it, there is no escape from the force of the Marvel name. Only 16 years ago, Marvel Studios stumbled upon barren land, a world few travellers had explored before. At the same time, Detective Comics (better known as DC Comics) got to work. With comics in one hand and a video camera in the other, Marvel Studios created its empire, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), sending Iron Man (2008) out into the world. Iron Man was the first Marvel Comics superhero to come to life. It did not take long for the cynical, sarcastic, bad-boy-turned-good who saved the world in a high-tech suit to win the hearts of millions all over the world, earning a worldwide box office gross profit of $585.8 million.
The MCU basked in the glory of its creation. Iron Man became the foundational platform for securing the empire, allowing for the empire’s quick ascent into the cinematic world. Iron Man’s days of solitude quickly came to an end. During the same year as his film debut, MCU provided him with a little green buddy who has anger issues. Three years later, this feisty duo was introduced to a god of thunder with luscious hair and a separation anxiety-filled hammer – Thor took the empire to interplanetary heights. To provide some stability to this rowdy bunch, the MCU introduced Captain America as the rational and positive influence these heroes needed. These characters, and those introduced in their respective films, became the sturdy foundation of the MCU empire, the Avengers. In just 15 years, Marvel Studios’ 32 films grossed around $29 billion, making it more profitable than any other movie franchise in history.
The riveting adventures that the Avengers took part in culminated in 22 films. The Infinity Saga was broken down into key moments that took over a decade to bring together. At the height of its empire, Marvel assembled its foundations into a two-part series. Avengers: Infinity War saw Marvel’s finest come together to save the world from the latest galactic threat. Infinity War quickly became the Marvel empire’s greatest creation. With an 8.4 IMDb rating and $2.052 billion in hand, Marvel flew this rocketship straight to the end in Avengers: Endgame.
After the success of Infinity War, it was no surprise that audiences worldwide queued to see the finale. Filled with excitement and anticipation, audiences looked on as the story unfolded. Marvel’s tales of heroes and villains were, up until that point, coated with the relief that good will always prevail. This is what audiences had come to anticipate, gathered in the cinema as they awaited Thanos’s defeat. For a whopping $2.798 billion, Marvel killed off two of its foundational characters, Iron Man and Black Widow. Left with shaky foundations, Marvel has developed various strategies to overcome the tumultuous reality over the last few years, but few have seemed to work. Iron Man foreshadowed this current downfall when he said, “Part of the journey is the end.”
The instability
Looking back after the tsunami that was Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios and fans alike came to a grave realisation. In quick succession, Marvel had lost four of its biggest stars. Endgame saw the heroic deaths of Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow as well as the retirement of Chris Evans’s Captain America. While these fictional goodbyes were still in Marvel’s hands, it was not long after that the world was forced to say goodbye to Chadwick Boseman, the star in Black Panther. Boseman, who departed the world due to cancer, was set to become Marvel’s new foundation. Slated to star in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Boseman was Marvel’s plan for the future. Before Black Panther, with a box office of $1.346 billion in 2018, and Captain Marvel, $1.128 billion in 2019, not a single non-Iron Man or non-Spider Man MCU movie earned above $900 million. In 2019, Marvel’s empire stared into the abyss of the blank page as they realised their A-Team was gone.
Along with losing Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Panther, various other beloved heroes left the empire to see the world. Zoe Saldaña, the actress who brought life to the dark and fierce Gamora, announced her retirement from Guardians of the Galaxy. Shortly afterward, Tom Holland, our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, and Chris Hemsworth, the perfectly cast Thor, announced their plans to take a break from making movies. This left Marvel’s empire unstable at a critical time.
The raids
Marvel was forced to take on the three-fold raid without the foundation upon which it was built. The first raid will go down in Marvel history as “The Plague”, as the COVID-19 pandemic infiltrated cinemas and evicted Marvel’s life source: income. While Marvel was colluding with Disney, preparing its streaming strategy to defeat Covid, the second raid, “The Sanction”, was moving in.
A year into the pandemic and seemingly bored with all this lockdown business, China finally had time to think about the things that really matter in the world. After careful consideration, it settled on Marvel movies as the most pressing issue of the time, implementing a de facto ban on releasing any Marvel movies in Chinese theatres. While Chinese regulators never officially explained why the movies were banned, many believed it had something to do with the worsening trade wars between China and the United States, as well as President Xi Jinping’s nationalist policy and pet peeves with the Statue of Liberty. Paul Dergarabedian, a Comscore senior media analyst, explained this raid best when he said, “Marvel’s post-COVID earnings may represent the most striking example of the importance of China as a key movie market for the superhero genre.”
However, it has been over two years since “The Plague” withdrew its force and a little over a year since “The Sanction” unlocked its doors. How long can an empire blame its enemies for their past actions without acknowledging its own shortcomings?
Mad at Disney+
Amid the two raids, the MCU empire signed a treaty with Disney, an empire that it believed would serve as a strong ally during such trying times. In 2021, Marvel premiered its Disney+ miniseries, which added to the storylines of the most beloved characters. This treaty started strong, with WandaVision providing Marvel with the monetary ammo it needed to see out the empire’s battles. However, as these releases drove over the speed limit and raced in one after the other, viewers began to feel bombarded with copy-paste products. In the past five years, Marvel has released up to 20 projects, with another two dozen set to hit the screen by the end of this decade. It seems the empire is favouring quantity when replacing the foundations that it tore away.
Marvel lovers have started to criticise the repetitive formula of epic battles and a flood of new characters, plot threads, and timelines. The Eternals, featuring Marvel’s latest heroic entourage, was meant to launch a whole new universe of cosmically-minded storytelling. Yet even Angelina Jolie could not solidify the concept, and the film was so underwhelming that it is unclear if one will ever see those characters in a movie again (sadly including Harry Styles’s Starfox).
These allies, puzzled by their treaty’s ever-decreasing effectiveness, cannot solely blame superhero fatigue for the decreasing interest in the MCU. Sony’s animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which became Sony’s highest-grossing animated movie and the highest-grossing animated comic book movie ever, sold more tickets in the United States than Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 internationally. As the empire continued to descend, onlookers watched as the flood came their way. People seemed to be taking a closer look at the quality of the murky water, which was the direct result of underpayed visual effects artists.
Visually affected
Visual effects (VFX) artists have been the quintessential glue that has kept the MCU empire in one piece. When the concepts and characters fell short, the beauty of the visual effects and surroundings often softened the blow and made viewers more forgiving. In this light, it seems contradictory that Marvel pays their VFX artists 20% less than other movie studios. Marvel employees have reported working up to 16-hour shifts, skipping lunches and breaks to accomplish their tasks quickly. VFX artist Dhruv Govil, who previously worked on Guardians of the Galaxy and Spider-Man: Homecoming, took on the empire through Twitter (now known as X), launching a virtual strike. Govil spoke about his experience with the empire on Twitter: “Working on Marvel shows is what pushed me to leave the VFX industry. They are a horrible client, and I have seen way too many colleagues break down due to being overworked while Marvel tightens the purse strings.”
It seems incredibly counterproductive that when trying to rebuild its foundations, an empire chooses to smite the hand that created it. In September 2023, Marvel Studios VFX artists unanimously voted to unionise in response to the Disney+ workload piled into tight deadlines. Marvel itself can no longer ignore the issues with its quality control, and the latest episode of She-Hulk even explicitly critiques the tedious, ill-rendered CGI battles that have become a staple of the Marvel recipe.
Visions of the future
It seems Marvel is learning from its miscalculated moves, as it will release only one film in 2024, Deadpool 3. Along with this, viewers will see a downturn in Disney+ television shows. Perhaps Marvel and Disney have realised that an increase in quantity decreases the value of the individual Marvel films and shows.
An empire is not built in a day. It takes years of hard work and innovation to establish itself. Similarly, an empire is not destroyed in a day – it takes dozens of misguided acts before it crumbles, leaving dust in the form of nostalgic films in its place. The mere notion of films taking place in the MCU is no longer enough. Many wonder whether audiences will care enough about another Blade film or the fourth attempt to turn the Fantastic Four into a franchise to solidify Marvel’s unstable empire. While Marvel may be undergoing a fall, it does not have to be its end. Restructuring foundations, investing time in planning and building materials, and considering the hands that lay down the bricks can go a long way. All that is left is to wait and see, to look nostalgically and optimistically on as the empire sways with the changing times.
