Get ready for more sequels and franchises from Disney. CEO Bob Iger said on the company’s Wednesday earnings call that its stable of studios will be leaning more into familiar faces in theaters in the coming years. “I’d say we’re leaning a little bit more into sequels and franchises,” Iger told analysts. “I think given the environment and given what it takes to get people out of their homes to see a film … leaning on franchises that are familiar is actually a smart thing.” Iger also noted that Disney would be walking back the strategy it had taken when it launched Disney+ to produce a wave of streaming titles for the service. Marvel Studios in particular leaned heavily into this strategy, releasing the popular “WandaVision” in early 2021 before releasing several more titles like “Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” “Hawkeye,” “Moon Knight” and “She-Hulk” to diminishing returns. “In our zeal to greatly increase volume partially tied to this wanting to chase more global subs for our streaming platform, some of our studios lost a little focus. So the first step that we’ve taken is that we’ve reduced volume, we reduced output, particularly in Marvel,” Iger said. Iger’s promise to make less overall, but more of the titles audiences loved most, is reflected in Disney’s new slate additions… (Article then goes on about new animated Disney/Pixar movies)
WandaVision, Loki, What If? and Moon Knight were excellent. She-Hulk was weird, but captured the spirit of the comics. The worst part was the uncanny valley CGI, but even that was only a few scenes. Hawkeye was fun but surprisingly forgettable for a show that brought back Kingpin, and Echo was a good followup. Werewolf By Night and the GotG Christmas Special were fantastic little additions.
Ms. Marvel was surprisingly heartfelt. It seemed like they wanted a tween show, but tried to make it fit in the larger world. It was not perfect, and I haven’t seen The Marvels yet to know how Kamala did on the big screen, but I’m optimistic.
Falcon and the Winter Soldier stumbled. Anthony Mackie can’t carry a show when the writing is bad. But Bucky, Zemo, and Okoye were fun to watch. Hopefully the next Captain America movie has excellent writers, and we can defend the film from racists who are going to trash it regardless.
Secret Wars was a hot mess. Sam Jackson as Nick Fury is always compelling, and it introduced some interesting ideas. But again, the writing left so many loose ends and half-concepts that the ending felt like scraping a plate of spaghetti into the garbage. Olivia Coleman will be a fun addition to the MCU, and I hope she shows up in Thunderbolts.
On balance, the shows were a net positive to the MCU. The trouble was the crowded release schedule. If “lost a little focus” is code for “bad writing,” then I agree with Feige.
The real problem with Phases 4 and 5, though, was that you could never watch the shows and movies in release order on Disney Plus. Since Black Widow, there has not been a time when you could stream the last movie before the next one left theaters. That’s three years of content without any opportunity to get current. If you didn’t go see, let’s say, Eternals in theaters, you don’t know if there will be spoilers in No Way Home, which tied directly to Multiverse of Madness, and you don’t know if there will be spoilers in Love and Thunder, which means you probably skipped Wakanda Forever, Quantumania, GotG 3, and you’re now waiting for the Marvels to stream so you can go enjoy Deadpool in the theaters. That’s seven movie tickets you didn’t buy because you skipping one movie three years ago. Eight if you skipped Shang-Chi (but I didn’t).
The reason I bring that up is that, one of the main draws to watch everything is that it all ties together. There are references and spoilers and easter eggs in each show and movie. If you’re putting off watching the movies, you’re also going to put off watching the shows. The more time between the release date and you watching, the lower the enthusiasm everyone feels.
The twisted part is, having gotten mostly caught up, I see now why they didn’t realize or care that they were doing this. The tie-ins weren’t that strong. Strange was in Spiderman, but the events don’t matter that much. Love and Thunder starts with the Guardians, but there’s not much crossover there, either. Quantumania and Loki barely relate to each other despite sharing the same (now fired) primary antagonist that was going to tie the whole phase together. Wanda from WandaVision is barely recognizable in Multiverse of Madness, despite her entire motivation being established in the show. Eternals had a Celestial pop out of the earth and it was never mentioned again.
So while I was waiting to stream things in order to avoid missing anything, Marvel was sending the message that you don’t have to watch everything. You can skip things that don’t interest you, which I suppose is a good thing for most people. Because then they released a firehose of content with varying levels of quality.
I was doing it wrong, and I should have just gone to see the movies I wanted to see and watched the shows I wanted to watch.
My hope is that Deadpool 3 is a refresh of everything. Break the fourth wall, acknowledge everything is fucked, promise everything will change, and start spending effort to ensure the movies and shows are high quality. Good writing smooths over a lot of cracks.
If reducing the output helps them do that, then that’s great.
A lot of people shit on she Hulk, but as a fan of the street level comics, she Hulk, Howard the duck, squirrel girl, etc. The she Hulk show was actually super accurate to the tone and silliness of the comics. I just wish we had seen her being neighbors with Howard.
Howard in the MCU is hanging out in Knowhere, and showed up in What If…? on Xandar.
I would love a Squirrel Girl series, but I think it will work better animated.
I think the people who shit on She Hulk were hoping for a Hulk show. The entire ending was wild, but I think a lot of the viewers who were hoping for a showdown with Abomination felt personally attacked by the moral lesson. The percentage of reviews that used the term “woke” roughly tracks with the percentage of people who support conservative politicians.
They’ve been leaning into sequels since the early 00s. Remember all the “direct to video” sequeuls? Probably not because they were just that good.
People bitch at Disney for leaning into sequels, but when they finally put out original movies, people don’t watch them and shit on them, so why wouldn’t they just lean into sequels.
Soon there will be one movie, and everything released will just be an extrapolation, sequel, reboot, ret-con, and/or continuation of that one movie.
