Is the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a rut?
From a box office standpoint, the answer is very clearly no, with some caveats.
Last year’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which Disney (DIS) produced in collaboration with Sony (SNE), was a monster hit, generating a jaw-dropping $1.6 billion in revenue, and 2021’a “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” earned a not too shabby $432 million.
Similarly, Marvel’s recent "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" is one of the biggest hits of the year, having already pulled in $953 million, which is amazing and all, but still short of the more than a billion dollars earned by “Top Gun: Maverick.”
With the exception of 2020 (which we can all agree was a bit of an off year) Disney has had the year’s highest grossing film since 2016, according to Box Office Mojo, and with the additionally exception of 2015’s “Jurassic World,” it’s more or less held down that spot every year since the 2012 release of “The Avengers,” thanks to combination of Marvel, Star Wars and established Disney properties like the “Finding Nemo” spin-off “Finding Dory.”
Now, maybe “Top Gun: Maverick” was just a special case, pulling in audiences thanks to a combination of Tom Cruise’s old-school movie star gravitas, cultural nostalgia and the sort of real world, practical special effects that are increasingly rare in the CGI age.
Or maybe, as Lewis Glazebrook at Screenrant theorized, audiences are beginning to feel the long-rumored superhero fatigue, and are a bit burned out on films that require viewers to have deep knowledge of an entire interconnected cinematic universe to enjoy. (In order to fully understand "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” at minimum someone would have needed to see at least four different Marvel films and the Disney+ series “WandaVision.”)
Then again, maybe the problem isn’t with audience burnout. Maybe the problem is with the films themselves?
Is The Marvel Cinematic Universe In A Rut?
While “Dr Strange etc.” got mostly positive reviews from critics and audiences, many felt that it was strained and just too hard to follow, even if you’d been doing your Marvel homework, and some critics (no spoilers here) felt that it relied to hard on fan-service cameos and required characters to act out of character for the plot to work.
Marvel has shrugged off middling to bad reviews before, even for the lesser entrees that didn’t live up the franchise’s generally high quality control standards. (We’re looking at you: “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”) But looking over the reviews for Marvel’s latest effort “Thor: Love and Thunder,” several critics, such as The Ringer’s Miles Surrey, have asked if the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole is looking lost and directionless. This comes on the heels of an uninspiring “The Eternals” and the too-little, too-late “Black Widow,” a showcase for a character that arguably should have been given their own film years ago.
Perhaps the problem is that Marvel spent a decade building up towards the events of “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame,” and now seemingly doesn’t know where to go next, as Surrey notes that “Phase 4 has yet to cohere around a unifying force such as Thanos and the Infinity Stones.”
But then again, it’s arguable that it’s not really the job of “Thor: Love and Thunder” director Taika Waititi to set a compelling direction for the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. All fans really want is for him to capture the irreverent humor and eye-popping visuals he brought to 2017’s “Thor: Ragnarok.” But it would seem that critics are divided as to whether he was able to recapture the magic this time around.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
What Do Critics Think Of ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’?
“Thor: Ragnarok” caught everyone by surprise. By that point the character of Thor, a god from Asgard who comes to love and protect the people of earth, had seemed played out. The 2013 film “Thor: The Dark World” is considered by fans to be one of the most forgettable films in the MCU, and the character was largely sidelined in the generally disliked “Age of Ultron.” And as star Chris Hemsworth started appearing in comedies such as the “Ghostbusters” reboot and dramas like “Blackhat,” there was speculation that maybe he was growing past the role.
But then Marvel took the rather unexpected move of hiring Waititi to take the helm for the third Thor film. By 2017, the New Zealand-based director was largely unknown to mainstream audiences, though he had earned rave reviews for the indie film “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” and the vampire mockumentary “What We Do in the Shadows,” which would later be adapted into one of the funniest shows on television.
Realizing that the character of Thor is inherently silly and over-the-top, Waititi had fun with the film, allowing Hemsworth to tap into his inner goofball and giving him permission to laugh at his himbo image, while also nailing the emotional beats and giving the whole thing an awesome, dude ‘80s film grandeur. Hemsworth was notably reinvigorated in “Ragnarok”, and he ended up becoming the only Marvel actor to sign up for a fourth solo film.
For this go-around, Waitii had promised that Tessa Thompson’s queer superhero Valkyrie would “find her Queen.” He also brought Natalie Portman back to the Thor franchise after she skipped the third one and spent the second one mostly being rescued. This time around Portman has bulked up and assumed the mantle of Thor. Also, Christian Bale is back in the superhero world, going from Batman to the villainous character Gorr the God Butcher.
So that’s a lot of plot points to juggle, while still bringing the Marvel-sized thrills and allowing Hemsworth to do his charming thing. Did Waititi pull it off this time?
Depends on who you ask, it seems.
The Hollywood Reporter doesn't think it's as funny as the last film, finding it all a bit "juvenile."
As noted above, The Ringer thinks the film is aimless, and symptomatic of a MCU with no clear direction.
Rolling Stone thinks it's a bit of an ambitious mess.
Entertainment Weekly liked the film for the most part, and enjoyed all the Guns N' Roses needle drops, even as critic wonder if critic Leah Greenblatt wonders if"this cinematic universe feels simultaneously too big to fail and too wide to support the weight of its own endless machinations."
Vulture is starting to worry about Marvel as a whole.
It's not all bad, though. Variety thinks it's fun and proves that the magic of Waititi and Hemsworth.
Consequence says that as long as you lower your expectations, it's fun summer film.
