Posted in: Marvel Studios, Movies | Tagged: avengers: doomsday

Is Avengers: Doomsday An Overreaction To Underperforming Post-Endgame?

The recent creative decisions regarding Avengers: Doomsday are playing it safe. Is this an overreaction to Marvel underperforming post-Endgame and in 2023?

It's the summer of 2019, and the first screening of Avengers: Endgame is winding up to its final moments. It looks like all hope is lost until a voice in Captain America's ear tells him, "on your left." Suddenly, portals around the battlefield begin to open, and all of the heroes that vanished in the previous movie walked through, ready to do battle. We see characters standing side by side that we never thought we'd see together, all finally united, the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe coalesced into one moment as Steve Rogers finally says the words: "Avengers, Assemble." It's a high that Marvel Studios might not ever top. This was the end of the first decade or so of Marvel's meticulous, slow-burn storytelling. Then it was time to start the slow burn again, but Disney investors don't necessarily have the patience for the concept of slow-burn storytelling coming to a close and having to be restarted.

Before the pandemic even hit, there were people saying that everyone needed to brace for the 2020 box office to be significantly smaller than 2019, but no one could have predicted COVID. The next phase of Marvel storytelling felt like it got off on the wrong foot, with films like Black Widow and Eternals not quite hitting the spot in 2021, though Shang-Chi was promising, and Spider-Man: No Way Home felt like it was trying to recreate Endgame on a smaller scale. By 2022, it seemed like things might have settled a bit, but all three films in 2022 [Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever] were messy at the end of the day. We were also eight television shows in and Marvel seemed to be struggling with consistency there. The slate for 2023 was huge, though, with three massive films and three shows, two of which were promised to be extremely important for future stories.

2023: The Year Marvel Studios Truly Stumbled For The First Time

There was this idea, back before the pandemic, that Marvel might have gotten too big to fail, and if they ever had a film where they genuinely misstepped, they could just bypass it and move on. It had worked a couple of times with mixed results. Everyone forgot about Thor: The Dark World until it ironically became extremely important in Endgame, and it's only in the upcoming fourth Captain America movie that they are addressing plot points from The Incredible Hulk. However, there is a misstep here and there, and then there's what happened in 2023. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was painfully mediocre, but the problem was that it was set up as the foundation for the Kang storyline. The Marvels had the strike going against it, but those characters are all supposed to be big players. Secret Invasion was a mess, and the fact that people needed to watch this bad show to understand what ended up being a mediocre movie was about the worst possible scenario for Marvel.

So they took a step back in 2024 and only released one movie, which was going to be a hit no matter what, and two shows, one of which was more or less ignored and the other which managed to get the audience's attention. They dropped Jonathan Majors and seemed to confirm that the Kang storyline was no more. Then, San Diego Comic-Con happened, and Marvel not only announced that they were bringing back Anthony and Joe Russo, but they were bringing back Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom in a move that could only be described as "playing it as safe as possible."

An Overreaction To Underperforming

Since then, a few more casting announcements have come and gone, with rumors reporting that Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell are returning for Avengers: Doomsday as well. In response to phases four and five being met with middling box office returns and less critical acclaim, Marvel is doing what almost everyone does when they feel threatened; they are making what they think are safe choices. However, the studio didn't get where it is today by making safe choices. Everything about phase one was about making choices that were the opposite of safe in nearly every aspect. Captain America? How will that play to an international audience? Thor? That's way too weird; how will people get on board for that? The studio that got off the ground by taking a chance on a C-list level character and an actor who was barely on his redemption tour had receded back into their shell like a scared turtle just because they aren't as big or as successful as they used to be — as if anyone could keep up that momentum forever.

There is absolutely no denying that with every returning cast member announcement of Avengers: Doomsday, the studio that took chances is getting further and further away. The reactions to Downey Jr.'s announcement were not unanimous across the board; there were plenty of people who didn't think this was the right decision, and they weren't wrong. It's safe, it's boring, and being boring is even worse than being bad. At least if you're bad, you're interesting. These decisions don't feel born out of storytelling but instead out of board rooms and executives desperate to see multiple movies a year cross the billion-dollar line at the box office.

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