Kevin Feige Calls Out Director, Could Bring Downfall of MCU

Kevin Feige has been the biggest name behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe for over a decade.

The Marvel Studios president has been the driving force behind the MCU since its inception with Iron Man in 2008 and brought about the rise, and inevitable fall, of superhero films. He’s created the out-of-this-world, blockbuster-hit team-ups of several Avengers movies, which essentially defined an entire generation of audiences.

However, as the studio has tried to keep up with the success of its first decade and a half, the cracks in the plot are starting to become clearer. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) kicked off Phase Five of the MCU, officially introducing Kang the Conqueror as the next Thanos-level threat to humanity. However, due to a variety of issues, including poor VFX and allegations against Jonathan Majors, who plays Kang, the movie became Marvel’s worst-performing movie.

While Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 (2023) helped the studio recover from the failure that was Ant-Man, Marvel’s streaming series have started to struggle with delays and low viewership. With the announcement earlier this year that The Marvels (2023) was being delayed from a June release to November, many started to wonder at the future of the studio and the direction it was taking.

As The Marvels faces down a November release, director Nia DaCosta recently spoke out about her time directing the upcoming sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel. The Marvels will feature a team-up including Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (played by Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau/Photon (played by Teyonah Parris), and Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel (played by Iman Vellani).

Famously, Vellani is a comic book nerd who’s had no problem addressing Feige about various choices and fan perspectives, even helping her Marvels co-stars with background information about their characters while filming. Most recently, it was announced that she would be writing an upcoming Ms. Marvel comic.

Along with Vellani, DaCosta is a fellow comic book nerd, and they were challenged by the issue of not letting that fact take over the film. According to DaCosta, Feige told her to reign in some of her choices, saying she was being “too much of a nerd,” and that she needed to find the balancing point between being a fan and being a director.

Depending on the success of The Marvels, the film could be the argument as to why more nerds should be more involved in adapting media like comic books. Especially when things like the multiverse and variants start to get involved, having people who are not only familiar with the content but who also enjoy it to the extent that Vellani and DaCosta clearly do could take superhero movies one step further.

Relying on executives and business people to create and sustain something at the level of the current MCU can only go so far with fans. Eventually it becomes clear that the source material isn’t being honored, considered, or appreciated and it leads to failures like Quantumania. It may be time to bring in more “comic book nerds” to help revitalize the superhero genre while maintaining the amount of content Marvel has planned.

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