It’s time to kill the MCU

[admin]

The Marvel Cinematic Universe successfully adapted the superhero comic book formula to the big screen, for both good and ill.

It’s time to kill the MCU : Read more

 

[Andy Bates]

I disagree with the premise that the MCU (or anything really) should quit while they're ahead. Why is it necessary to end a story, just because you personally are ready to move on?

Endgame was a great stopping point; if you decide that you want to stop watching Marvel movies, then of course you can do what you want. Put a pin in it, call it done, and move on. And they definitely provided closure for several characters, so the MCU is already a step ahead of the comics. But if people are interested in the Marvel movies or shows, why shouldn't Marvel produce new content for them?

It's rare the a movie studio or an author or a band ends on their finest work...but you never know when that best work will come, or who will enjoy it. If Marvel had ended with the Avengers, we never would have gotten Infinity War and Endgame. If the Beatles had ended after The White Album, we never would have gotten Abbey Road.

Let people enjoy things. If they stop being popular and making money, Marvel will stop making them. But right now, it seems odd to quit while you're doing well and making things that people like.

 

[Marshall Honorof]

I disagree with the premise that the MCU (or anything really) should quit while they're ahead. Why is it necessary to end a story, just because you personally are ready to move on?

Endgame was a great stopping point; if you decide that you want to stop watching Marvel movies, then of course you can do what you want. Put a pin in it, call it done, and move on. And they definitely provided closure for several characters, so the MCU is already a step ahead of the comics. But if people are interested in the Marvel movies or shows, why shouldn't Marvel produce new content for them?

It's rare the a movie studio or an author or a band ends on their finest work...but you never know when that best work will come, or who will enjoy it. If Marvel had ended with the Avengers, we never would have gotten Infinity War and Endgame. If the Beatles had ended after The White Album, we never would have gotten Abbey Road.

Let people enjoy things. If they stop being popular and making money, Marvel will stop making them. But right now, it seems odd to quit while you're doing well and making things that people like.

So, this is a fair point, and I promise I'm not trying to take away something that people enjoy! (I don't think Disney is going to shout "stop the presses," even if someone there comes across this article.) As you said, there's the potential for better MCU stuff in the future, and we won't really know until we see it. The MCU is also essentially a license to print money at this point, so there's absolutely no business reason to stop it now.

At the same time, I do think that Avengers was the apotheosis of what the MCU set out to accomplish. "Can you make a superhero team-up movie that feels just like the comic books, right down to requiring the audience to internalize years' worth of internal mythology and crossovers?" And the answer, amazingly, was "yes." We can debate the pros and cons of Ultron, Civil War, Infinity War, Endgame, etc., but after the proof-of-concept, the follow-ups were inherently a little less impressive.

At a certain point, I think the MCU is destined to follow the comics, in that there will be too much of it for most people to consume, even if they want to. I just feel it might be wiser to end the project on a high note before it gets to that point.

 

[Bobomafo]

The MCU is not the Avengers. There has always been an appetite for Marvel heroes, the Avengers story was just the most consistently successful, and it was because they created a new formula, a formula nonetheless, but if you recall, previous attempts to button up Marvel serials were, well, the kindest word I can use is unsatisfying (cough ahem Spiderman 3, cough cough X-men 3, ahem ahem cough Dark Phoenix).
So let's not pretend that ending it will solve the problem. And until Disney can finally, legally, copyright the physical likenesses of their actors in order to make them play the same character long past their prime years or even their natural life (they can pay Peter Cushing's estate, i presume, easier than scarjo, the most bankable actress alive right now because reasons?), the movies will always have limitations that the comics don't. Their solution is to tell different stories in the same universe rather than centering the universe around a single character. This includes introducing new actors to play the same symbol rather than the same character (sam wilson the new cap, starting ant man off with Scott lang rather than hank pym, etc).
I agree that they need to be careful about becoming too expansive, after a while it may begin to feel like they are justifying their own existence. But I think that if they continue to take the long view approach with each movie in each phase, there is no reason they cannot continue to be successful for decades to come. How old is james bond again? And that was without really trying when you think about it.

 

[Vantine]

The problem with the article is that it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of superhero comics. The Avengers line up was constantly changing. It doesn't need to stop because it's inherently designed to constantly be renewed. Not unlike Doctor Who regenerating. You can continue to link peripherally to the original characters but have a new team facing new threats which is exactly what they are doing now. Which leads to the authors second misunderstanding. There's no lack of direction. The first group of movies led to the creation of the avengers and the infinity war. The new batch of movies is leading directly to the building of a new team and a confrontation with a new threat, Kang the Conqueror. I fail to see why the author is so confused about this.