The Four Color Media Monitor

USA Today's covered the downfall of the Marvel movie adapatations, and as you guessed, won't get into any of the more challenging observations as to why it's turned into a flop in the past few years:

Marvel has a problem.

Iron Man, Thor, even the Hulk can't fix what’s broken over at the once-infallible movie and TV studio that's largely responsible for our superhero-saturated zeitgeist. And what especially won’t fix it is a Disney+ series about those superheroes.

I've got no wish to subscribe to their channel at this point anyway, any more than I would Netflix.

So what happened to the seemingly invincible purveyor of pop-culture phenomena?

It’s the inevitable result of the Disney-owned brand’s strategy to use its A-level talent and biggest superhero names to prop up streaming service Disney+, and the general Hollywood maxim that more is better (spoiler alert: it's not). There were six Marvel projects across theatrical and streaming this year (evenly split among films and series); eight in 2022 (three films, three series and two "special presentations"); and nine in 2021 (four films and five series).

A glut of content has watered down the brand, as Iger acknowledged, but also created a barrier to entry for some movies that seemingly required knowledge of the TV shows to fully understand. That meant “WandaVision” became semi-required viewing for “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” and new Marvel stars like Hailee Steinfeld and Julia Louis-Dreyfus made their first appearances in TV shows, not films.

"I always say when the lights go down and a movie starts, it's a clean slate," Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said at a 2021 news conference for TV critics shortly after the debut of "WandaVision," the first Disney+ Marvel series. That's a noble goal, but anyone who has seen any of the 33 Marvel movies knows that prior knowledge is almost always a requirement.

The Marvel brand is no longer enough to sell any random project to viewers, and it is clear the people at the studio didn't realize this in time for "The Marvels" and other efforts. Splashing Marvel all over TV makes the theatrical films less essential. And they likely lost moviegoers. The more shows and movies Marvel debuted, the less vital each installment became. Disney+ series starring a big hero such as the new Captain America (Anthony Mackie) or Loki (Tom Hiddleston) may have brought in subscribers, but at what cost?

The lack of coherent marketing and the Hollywood strikes, which prevented stars from promoting their projects, made it even harder for casual viewers to understand the connections between the films and series this year. How could fans know that "The Marvels" had deep links to two TV series (two of its three heroes were introduced in Disney+ series) if Larson and her co-stars couldn't tell them? How are they to know that the upcoming "Echo" (streaming on Disney+ Jan. 10) is a "Hawkeye" spinoff if they didn't bother catching "Hawkeye" in the first place?

None of the above, of course, says anything about whether pandering to LGBT ideology and even whitewashing Islam in the Muslim Ms. Marvel series that was adapted to live action played a part in bringing down the quality. Moviegoers and TV watchers with common sense don't like being lectured with the kind of woke politics now a sad staple in many entertainment products. Did any of the above examples play a part? Maybe, but that would still only be the tip of the iceberg they don't want to delve into.

So where does Marvel go from here? It's hard to say. Rival DC Comics, owned by Warner Bros. Studios, doesn't seem to have much of a coherent plan, either. In the past decade it has released live action and animated series piecemeal, and it will have a Colin Farrell-starring "Penguin" series on Max in 2024. The studio is restarting its movie universe completely under the stewardship of director James Gunn (formerly a Marvel man) after this month's "Aquaman" sequel. It's certainly more chaotic and less connected than Marvel's strategy, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily better.

Well of course not. And that's because DC's films of the past decade have become just as woke as Marvel's, maybe even worse. The Black Adam movie was a particularly troubling example, and so too is Wonder Woman 1984. But even if the MSM were to address Warner Brothers' DC adaptations, they wouldn't ask even the most remote queries as to whether political correctness sabotaged their movie output for as long or even longer than it did Marvel's. No wonder I'm not sorry to see the franchises take a tumble, and there's little chance of any improvement to be seen even in the coming years.

Labels: dc comics, golden calf of LGBT, history, islam and jihad, marvel comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics