First of all, I’m not saying it’s because of wokeness or anything like that. It’s because people got bored with their product.

The impetus to write this came from looking at the cast list of Avengers: Doomsday. It wasn’t promising.

As of this writing, there’s been 37 of these movies and I don’t know how many series about the MCU. i don’t even know which of the series are about MCU and which are just Marvel. The top year was 2021, when there was a full 4 theatrical releases in six months (because the pandemic pushed those releases back): Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals and Spider-Man: No Way Home. Of those, Black Widow didn’t do well (this was still a point in time when theater access was limited), Shang-Chi did surprisingly well for a character with little name recognition, Eternals flopped and Spider-Man was one of the biggest hits of all time. The key thing here is that their fortunes were beginning to falter but at this point they could still blame the pandemic.

Next year, same phase, brought us three movies: Dr. Strange 2, Thor 4 and Black Panther 2. More cracks. I liked Raimi’s take on Dr. Strange more than most people did, but Taika Waititi did not seem happy about having to do another Thor movie, and Black Panther had lost it’s star. The replacement felt awkward and pro-monarchy when there was a better option sitting in the sidelines (I would have seen Nakia become the Black Panther before Shuri for multiple on and off screen reasons). All in all, it was still a good year for them. All of these movies were profitable. However, budgets ballooning while interest was waning.

And 2023 was not good. Ant-Man and Wasp was not a complete disaster but it didn’t make money theatrically. Guardians of the Galaxy was a hit, but budget was much higher than the last outing while revenue declined (not much but still). Marvels was doing so bad in the box office that Disney stopped reporting early.

At this point, Marvel definitely pulled back on production. Of course, the pandemic and the strikes also affected their schedules, and there was the Jonathan Majors problem, but there was only one release in 2024 and that is barely a Marvel release: Deadpool and Wolverine, which was a huge hit.

Now, this year, they released three movies: The new Captain America, Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four, meaning B-list heroes and trying to resuscitate a franchise that had already failed twice in recent history. Although they pulled back on the budgets at this point (a sure sign of things being bad), none of these were hits. They weren’t catastrophes and probably will make Disney money in the long run, but that’s not what they need right now.

Now, Disney has made it’s money back from Marvel. They paid $4 billion for it and these have made $32 billion from box office alone (although, it should be noted that some of the early ones were produced by Marvel and distributed by Paramount before Disney bought Marvel). Add physical media, streaming and licensing, and it’s obvious that it was a deal was worth it. However, business is messed up and longevity is often not a consideration, because the people holding the stock want to see income and thus it isn’t enough that these movies are making money. They need to make more. All the time. Nevermind that with 37 movies and however many series, these are no longer must-see.

So, when this year failed, they are going to go big next year. Of course, this isn’t just a last minute thing. These things require plenty of production time and planning, so they have been working on this for a while, but they are bringing back everyone for Avengers: Doomsday. While everyone might be a bit of an exaggeration, but just look at this:

Bringing back Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans feels a bit desperate, but okay… They at least carried the franchise when it was truly big. But the X-Men from a quarter of a century ago, when some of them were already quite old? That’s not a good idea. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen are in their mid-80s. This is supposed to be your opportunity to build towards something. Instead, they are bringing back people from movies that were never huge hits and the original trilogy was 20 years ago. Sure, Wolverine worked but how much of that was because Deadpool kept bringing him up over and over again in his previous movies?

Also, who’s looking forward to Kelsey Grammer as Beast? I remember him being in the third X-Men movie, but it couldn’t have been a big role.

So, what are they doing? RDJ turned 60 this year, Chris Evans is already in his mid-40s, and both of them already made their exit from the franchise. This is not the future. This is embarrassing. I have nothing against these two as people or actors, but in order to survive, a franchise needs to evolve. Their attempts at evolving just didn’t really succeed. That shouldn’t mean going back. Sure, I am a bit intrigued about how these two are integrated back into the fold, but not really. Not enough to pay to see this movie. Of course, if Avengers: Doomsday gets good enough reviews, I’ll see it, but I’m not excited and I can’t see how anyone else could possibly be at this point.

All of this seems like they are panicking. I can’t be the only one to feel this and if others get the same feel, why would they be interested either? At this point, the only thing they’ve used in their marketing is the fact that Steve Rogers will be back. Is that really enough to get anyone interested? I think they have just completely misunderstood what made their whole thing interesting and at the same time they’ve squeezed all the life out of this whole thing.

Well, at least they are now taking their time with things. Doomsday won’t be out until next Christmas and there’s only one movie before it (the next Spider-Man) and there is no indication that these two will be linked in any way (although I doubt they will be able to resist the temptation).