Since the launch of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”.
There has been a lot of controversy about this movie and about the future development of Marvel.
Some people even said bluntly: the fourth phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has officially announced that Marvel is going downhill.
As the most successful movie universe so far, why is Marvel being questioned?
Even, there are people waiting to see Marvel’s jokes?
Purely because audiences who have experienced or seen Marvel’s glory can clearly feel that Marvel is indeed going downhill at this stage.
Marvel’s box office and word of mouth are in decline.
As a commercial film, the box office is high and low
Judging from the movie’s box office profits, Marvel’s fourth-stage movies have been released, except for “Spider-Man: No Way Home”, other projects are losing money.
In the development of MCU to this day, except for the first stage, there has been no such situation.
This is based on the movie development universe model, which can bring a certain brand effect to other movies.
Even in Phase 2, “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Ant-Man”, which had no audience base, were able to do well at the box office.
But in the fourth stage, under the blessing of having the brand effect of the previous 13 years.
The fourth phase of the MCU movie, but still failed.
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Of course, some may say that overall, the fourth phase of the MCU is still profitable.
After all, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was there at the box office and created a new sixth place in film history. Isn’t this Marvel’s glory?
It should be understood that the movie “Spider-Man: No Way Home” can be said to have achieved such results when the BUFF is full.
The emotional marketing of “three Spider-Man in the same frame”, plus the accumulation of MCU for many years, plus the popularity of the bug over the years, plus the slack off of the US epidemic.
If this box office is not high, then Marvel really is really helpless.
And in the stage when Marvel is not going downhill, except for the first stage, Marvel really has no money, and the brand has not been fighting. How can you say that the overall profitability is seen?
In the second and third stages, every movie is profitable.
Even compared to the first stage of the MCU, the fourth stage is a real hip pull.
“Iron Man” Northern America box office 319 million, global box office 585 million;
“The Incredible Hulk” Northern America box office 134 million, global box office 264 million;
“Iron Man 2” Northern America box office 312 million, global box office 624 million;
“Thor” Northern America box office 181 million, global box office 449 million;
“Captain America: The First Avenger” grossed $176 million in Northern America and $370 million worldwide.
Except for the little spider, the current fourth phase of the movie does not have any advantages.
Moreover, the films of the first stage were all films from more than ten years ago, and the audience at that time had not even formed the concept of MCU.
From this point of view, the performance of the fourth stage is also very hip.
Therefore, whether it is from the box office of a single film or the overall box office, Marvel is going downhill.
The reason why Marvel is going downhill at this stage is that some people think it is the reason for the lack of core characters.
Although in the previous three stages, Marvel was criticized for the creation of “one-size-fits-all”.
However, through this “one-size-fits-all” creative mode, Marvel has figured out a set of creative modes that can be persistent and accurate audiences who can accept this creative mode for a long time.
Marvel movies, within this framework, are constantly repeating themselves.
Under the same content of the story structure, bury the easter eggs.
Such a creative mode can feed back popularity to other characters through the bundling of easter eggs while the narrative is constantly escalating.
Then Marvel will expand these characters based on their popularity.
Deepen the creation of character design and expand the audience of the character.
For example, to create spin-off dramas for supporting roles such as Loki, Wanda, Hawkeye, Falcon, etc.
It can not only ensure that roles can be developed to a certain extent, broaden and expand IP boundaries, and increase capital income.
It can also be exchanged for the likes of more audiences.
For example, in the movies “Black Panther” and “Captain Marvel”, it’s hard not to think of who it was made for.
Even “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” chose Falcon as the protagonist, as the heir to Steve Rogers, after a certain amount of thought.
But that all changed after “Avengers: Endgame”.
As the two core characters of the MCU, they retired directly, which made the original “core” gameplay come to a dead end.
Originally in the Iron Man movie, it brought Black Widow, War Machine, Spider-Man;
In the Steve Rogers movie, bring in characters such as Black Panther, Ant-Man, Wanda, Black Widow and more.
Thanks to the years of risk of the two big brothers, the popularity of the two big brothers can drive other heroes to appear, and the audience does not feel violated.
But the situation in the fourth stage is that the core characters have not yet been established.
And Marvel still uses the old-fashioned creative method, which naturally seems a bit difficult.
In addition, with the development of the MCU, the audience who originally watched “Iron Man” is also growing, and their perception of the world is also changing.
Marvel’s old routine will naturally arouse dissatisfaction with this part of the audience.
And when the speed of the increase of new fans is not as fast as that of the old fans, the downhill feeling of Marvel will naturally become heavier and heavier.
Related Post: Rumored Marvel’s “Doctor Strange 2” Wanda will have a battle with the multiverse version of Captain Marvel?.
