This piece will talk about how or indeed if Marvel Studios can pull themselves back from the brink. As many of you will be aware Marvel is in somewhat of a bad state at the moment, yes Deadpool and Wolverine will be a success but outside of that what else will be? Will Brave New World or Thunderbolts break 1 billion it is highly, and I do mean highly, unlikely. Many people view Marvel Studios as being in a perpetual decline since Endgame with a few hits here and there, mainly Spiderman related, and undeniably that’s true.
My question here is how do we get back to the hight of Endgame, in my opinion there are 4 key steps that need to be taken in order to right the ship, some will be popular and some won’t be, but all are needed.
Firstly, Marvel needs to stop making things for niche audiences, they made a show like She-Hulk not for general nerds or fans of Marvel but to try and lure in the Fleabag crowd, with the idea that oh they can keep their male audience and then bring in a new or growing female audience at the same time. This as Sony has learnt is not possible, doing things like this lessens your inherent male nerdy viewer base, and though it may increase demographics slightly doesn’t change the fact that superhero content is mainly enjoyed by guys so should be aimed at them. You cannot force an inherently male franchise into all these different moulds to try and get in different groups who likely will just watch that one thing and tune out the rest. You can see this as well with the low numbers of things like Ms Marvel, again it was made for a specific audience and the general Marvel crowd didn’t turn up, the Marvels again it was made for a specific audience and it didn’t perform well, do I need to spell it out anymore?
Secondly, they need to wipe the slate clean and start over. Now I don’t mean a reboot what I mean is give up all this multiverse stuff that has so far left audiences cold, Kang is gone so come up with a new threat and have it be set in 616, or whatever Marvel calls their universe, and leave the multiverse for another day. As well as this you want to focus on your well established and liked characters, I am talking about your Fantastic Fours, your X-Men, hell even a Midnight Sons with Moon Knight, Blade, Dane Whitman, Werewolf by Night and Ghost Rider, not Agatha and the coven of who cares, or rip-off Iron Man, or even Wonder Man, who is coming in way too late. Here is the bit that will get some people upset, I believe that Marvel should copy WBD and scrap these projects even if they are done and ready to go for the tax write off and go okay we made a mistake with these projects on characters people don’t know or in the case of Riri people actively dislike, and just let it go down the wayside.
Thirdly, stop it with Disney +, there shouldn’t be any series coming out on Disney + every time they release something like the soap opera dross that was Echo all they are doing is diluting the brand and creating homework for people. When you just had to watch the movies to know what was going on things were far more accessible, marathoning a few movies is far more enjoyable, especially as many of them were good, then sitting down and watching hours upon hours of frankly mediocre Disney + fare so that you can understand a reference in the Marvels. The level of homework that is expected of audiences at this point is just ridiculous. If it were me I would use Disney + for two reasons, firstly to spot light and introduce new characters, White Tiger appears in the next Spiderman film give her an hour long special on Disney +, not a series. I would also use Disney + as a bridge, by that I would use hour long specials to fill in gaps in the world or between films to again set up ideas. Basically I would do 4 or maybe 5 of these type of events a year and nothing else, they would each be about an hour long and that’s it.
Oh and I’d keep the animation stuff going on Disney + as that is fairly inconsequential.
Finally, if things were getting really bad, which I have a feeling that by the end of next year they will be, I would bring back Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans and any other dead character that would get fans to care again, but I believe that this should only be done if they can’t save it any other way as it would create its own problems.
Ultimately Marvel seem hellbent on hacking themselves to death, the Silver Surfer casting news and the fact that we aren’t getting the version of the Surfer most fans would want shows that they are continuing down an identity politics, subversion sort of direction and mark my words they will pay for it, as audiences won’t come back. Perhaps the issue is Fiege himself, much like with Lucasfilm Marvel would benefit from someone new at the helm as Fiege and his masterplan seems to be a thing of the past at this point, unless the plan said to make a bunch of low quality Disney + shows and damage the brand.
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