The Fall of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe: A Craft Analysis

Theo Spataro

I know all of us remember back in 2019 when Avengers: Endgame came out. It was my freshman year of high school, and it was huge, to say the least. Loads of people, including my own parents, completely uninstalled social media programs to avoid spoilers. Teachers at my school forbade us from talking about it in class. And when my friends who had gotten lucky and saw it early insisted on talking about it right next to me, I stuck my fingers in my ears and started going “la-la-la-la.” This hype is reflected in the charts, too. Avengers: Endgame has a lifetime gross of $2,799,439,100, ranking just below Avatar. But when is the last time anyone has been that excited for an MCU movie? After Avengers: Endgame, it all went downhill.

My family and I used to be huge MCU fans. We would get tickets at the Alamo Drafthouse for every new movie that came out. But with each new movie, I grew more and more disappointed. Now, as a writer, I couldn’t help but think, “Why are these failing so badly?” To me, the answer came down to a matter of craft. They had star actors hired for these movies, and believe me, it wasn’t the actors that were the problem. Each movie had an instantly obvious craft flaw that a lot of writers actually make all the time.

Let’s look at Eternals. This movie has an ensemble cast, and most of the characters get introduced right off the bat. This creates the problem of overpopulation. There are too many characters and not enough development for them. See, Marvel actually did try to fix this problem. The solution to overpopulation, a lot of the time, is to give each character something unique about them. However, this actually made the problem worse. Eternals is a

two-hour-and-thirty-six-minute movie in which they tried to have an elaborate plot while also juggling ten main characters. The space that Marvel had to work with in this movie was not nearly enough to give each character their own development. But they sure as hell tried. Then, the issue instead became that each character had a little bit of development, but no one character was fully dynamic. The audience doesn’t get to feel acquainted with the characters this way. How do you make an audience care about a movie when you don’t even care if the characters live or not?

While overpopulation is a big issue, so is the common craft flaw that I call “breaking audience expectations.” Shang-Chi, Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness, Ant-Man 3, and many other recent movies all fell victim to this problem. When you go to see a superhero movie, what are you expecting? Generally speaking, you expect to see an extraordinary person in a world that’s ours, but not quite, save the innocent civilians from danger. A large portion of the appeal is that it mirrors our reality almost exactly, aside from the actual superhero part. Movies like Shang-Chi, Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness, and Ant-Man 3 all begin somewhere in the United States. Then, suddenly, the superheroes go to some alternate dimension or a secret magical fantasy world. Audiences of any kind, whether they’re readers or viewers, need to be taught how your world works. An audience needs to dip their toes in the water before getting thrown in the deep end. When you set an audience up to believe things are going to go a certain way, much like Marvel did, then completely swerve, it leaves the audience confused and disappointed. This is “breaking audience expectations,” also known as the biggest reason MCU movies aren’t good anymore.

You might read this and go: “But Theo, there’s no way two simple craft flaws ruined something as grand as the MCU.” Except, it’s true. Even media with a budget of 236.2 million USD (like Eternals) and millions of fans can fall short simply due to craft issues in the writing. Money and grand spectacle can only distract the masses for so long. When the foundation of storytelling cracks, even the most anticipated blockbuster feels incomplete or messy. If the MCU wants its audience back, it has to look back at its roots: the writing. And if you’re a writer who’s reading this, let the MCU be your cautionary tale. A story doesn’t fail because it lacks the funding or fanbase; it fails because the craft did.