It feels like ever since the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic Movie Studios have been on the decline. Marvel Studios, bought by Disney in 2008, has been a big part of superhero media for the last 20 years. Before these movies were popularized characters such as Captain America and Iron Man in the comics were not as popular as they are today. Ironman (2008) starring Robert Downey Jr was the starting point that launched Marvel into box office heaven grossing 586 million dollars.
After Ironman, Captain America, Thor, and The Hulk were introduced, the first Avengers movie was released in 2012. At this time Marvel released every movie one by one and then had a big team-up to beat the villains trying to destroy the city. However, now we have every superhero on a streaming service and some on separate movies trying to win a time-traveling multidimensional being. This type of model does not work for little kids and parents who are trying to keep up with every movie.
The whole MCU movie takes 75 hours to watch including shows it would be an additional 55 hours so that means the entire runtime for everyone to keep up is 130 hours. 130 hours is a lot with constant movies coming out every year for people with full-time jobs and a lot of other things going on. This is supported by the rotten tomatoes scores and the Disney+ streaming ratings for recent movies and shows. After Avengers Endgame (2019) which was the 2nd highest-rated Marvel movie with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 94% Disney tried to recreate a new big bad named Kang the Conqueror. Comic fans were excited because Kang was a powerful villain and a household name possibly more hyped than Thanos. Kang was introduced in Antman Quantamania (2023) and this is the worst-rated Marvel movie of all time and for good reason. They tried to release Kang through a movie and a show at the same time and as I mentioned previously it is nearly impossible to keep up with all of the shows.
Marvel has been such a big influence on Hollywood over the last 20 years and has impacted other movie studios. Marvel’s Ideology has been integrated into its competitor DC studios when they tried to create the Justice league but failed due to it trying to create a new MCU. With the popular game Fortnite Marvel has done many collaborations spanning to other universes and it has had a big toll on many franchises.
Marvel’s response going forward was to use Kang as the main villain was abandoned and replaced with the return of Robert Downey Jr as a famous villain Dr Doom.
Sources cited: https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-watch-the-marvel-movies-in-order#:~:text=If%20you%20want%20to%20watch,5.37%20days)%20to%20watch%20everything.
