Credit: Chris Pizello/Invision/AP/ShutterstockSince Spider-Man: No Way Home, Marvel has been more-or-less hit-and-miss with the latest entries in the MCU. While series like She-Hulk: Attorney at Law certainly have a lot of good things at play, the disaster that was Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania didn’t exactly live up to fans’ expectations. However, one Marvel mainstay might have figured out why.
James Gunn is certainly a virtuoso of the superhero movie medium. Known for his incredible Guardians of the Galaxy series, Gunn has recently offered up his take on Marvel’s recent decline. The prolific director stated that the problem with Marvel isn’t box office numbers but one of the biggest events in the MCU’s history.
A Massive Misstep for the MCU
In a recent interview, Gunn told Rolling Stone,
“I really want Marvel to keep making good movies. I think it’s really hard in the wake of the Blip. There’s this worldwide, universe-wide event that happened. And in truth, everybody would be stark raving mad at this point. So it’s hard to write stories in the wake of that.”
For those unfamiliar with the term, the “blip” is the period of time between Thanos’ Snap and the Avengers’ victory undoing its effects. Gunn later goes on to say that the reason the Guardians of the Galaxy have been so much easier and well-recieved is because they exist outside of that event’s aftermath. That’s also why movies like Quantumania have been met with “superhero fatigue.”
The Big Blip Blunder
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions , and the phrase “too big to fail” is quite the double-edged sword for the multiversal realm of the MCU. The events seen during Marvel’s Infinity Saga are undoubtedly some of the most impressive and unforgettable moments in the entirety of the superhero genre, but that was the problem. How do you compete with that?
The Thanos Snap, the Blip, and all the events associated with it were such world-shaking, universe-defining, rule-shattering events that it’s honestly hard to compete with that. Not only that, but the aftermath of these events creates what some are calling a “continuity nightmare,” where post-cataclysmic events don’t seem to play by the same rules. Perhaps Thor had the right idea when he departed earth with the Guardians on other adventures.
Small Scale Drama
Many Marvel fans, this writer included, share the consensus that Marvel needs to get back to basics and step away from the Ultron-level threats. The reason behind Spider-Man: No Way Home’s massive acclaim and success was it’s good guys versus bad guy’s appraoch. As the film reunited Spidey with his classic villains, so did it revisit the traditional superhero formula.
James Gunn is doing the same thing with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the team has left their multiverse-shifting adventure behind and moved onto the next chapter. While the battle against the High Evolutionary certainly fits that classic formula, the stakes are more personal, making for arguably better drama than a universe-wide war.
Are we really suffering from superhero fatigue, or is James Gunn right? Tell Inside the Magic what you think in the comments below!