It feels like I'm late to the party. The warning signs for Phase Four were always there, but like most MCU fans I believed Kevin Feige 'got it'--that he was the protector of the brand, the lord of continuity, the guarantor of quality. This notion was undercut by WandaVision, set on fire by Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and then nuked out of existence by Loki. That may sound like hyperbole, but I don't think it is. Let's go through why I believe that.
WandaVision has deep and problematic character and story issues. We know even Marvel is aware of this after the fact because Feige arranged for a damage control article in May. This is the show that said torture was okay if you feel a little sad (among other things, although that's the biggest Bohner). I'm not going to rehash all the issues (you can peruse here and here), but the errors were not typical for the MCU--I'd argue they were unprecedented.
Then we have Falcon and the Winter Soldier, a show that is actually worse, with nonsensical character and story arcs and a baffling conclusion where the titular hero loses a debate with faceless bureaucrats (again, I won't repeat everything, but peruse here and here). There's been no damage control from Feige yet, but unlike with WandaVision, Falcon isn't directly leading into a film (Doctor Strange 2) that's coming soon.
What about Loki? How, after just one episode, was it already problematic? It eliminated free will--the TVA has us living in a deterministic universe where none of our choices matter. It also undercut the importance and power of the Infinity Stones (and, thus, the primary motivator of Phases two and three). This is Last Jedi-style subverting of expectations and it cannot go well (it already causes problems for Eternals--how can they impact the past of the MCU when the TVA dictates everything?).
In all three shows, the writing is inexcusably bad, yet Feige seems unaware of it--rewarding the first two showrunners post-launch and Waldron prior (he re-wrote Doctor Strange 2). Were it not for the brand, production value, and most performances, these shows would be considered disasters.
I'm including these charts from Google Trends just to point out the obvious: none of the three upcoming films have made inroads with the public--Shang-Chi in particular has run into a brick wall of indifference, while Black Widow missed its window (interest peaking back in December of 2019). The poor reception of Falcon is obvious. Right now Loki is riding star power to slightly more interest, but I think we'll see the same downward trend ending in regret once it's over.
I'm comparing these shows to the standard Marvel set for itself. For fans content with generic television, there's nothing to worry about, or so one would believe given the types of shows that are popular (Bridgerton comes to mind), but oddly, casuals are not flocking to the IP as expected (something made very clear when Disney+ missed its targets). As for those of us who enjoyed the MCU as something more ambitious, this has been disheartening. All the cleverness and character development laced throughout the MCU has evaporated and we're left with a husk. It's because of this that I haven't been posting for the last month.
This begs the question: how did this happen? How did we go from a brilliant film like Infinity War to what we're getting now? My theory is that this is what an unfettered Kevin Feige looks like--that he doesn't understand story or continuity. Feige, it seems, is a visual person--he knows aesthetics. Why do I say that? Because those are the things that continue qualitatively now. If that's the case, and the underclass of producers haven't changed, why was the writing better before?
For years we read about the much derided Marvel story group--how they interfered with what Feige wanted to do. This group's impact was removed (along with Ike Perlmutter) during the production of Civil War, although their impact was felt to some extent with Doctor Strange. For me, Strange is the last consistent film we received from the MCU (outside the Russo brother's films), so the impact of that change can be traced back prior to the Disney+ disasters.
If that's my assessment, what does it mean for future coverage? Much of what I've done the last few years is track scoops--who was right, who was wrong, ergo who can be trusted. I feel like that's well understood at this point, and right now I frankly don't care what's happening in any of the currently announced projects. I feel no inclination to watch every MCU IP, although I'm more likely to keep up with the films because the investment is so much smaller. I hope there's something on the slate that I'll enjoy, but there's nothing on the horizon which inspires confidence. I'm not going to stop covering the MCU completely, but I will be more periodic about it until I have a reason to re-invest.
This is a painful state for me to be in, given how much I loved Marvel comics when I was younger and how good the MCU used to be. It doesn't hurt as much as I expect the Amazon Lord of the Rings show will, because Marvel had an eleven year run of excellence that can still be enjoyed (whereas Amazon will likely crush Tolkien immediately and it will be years before someone else can fix it). It's an odd era to live in, where genre fair is constantly being made, but the writing for it is slipshod and horrible. Feige, we know, can be very good when given constraints, but at this point in his career those constraints aren't likely to return.
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
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