By Chris Snellgrove
| Printed
There have been numerous suppose items and social media posts about what has prompted the decline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and some of the widespread complaints boils all the way down to many reveals and movies feeling like homework. Disney appears to count on followers to take in each little bit of ancillary media to easily perceive its newest releases. Most of the time, this doesn’t actually inform a whole story as a result of the most recent content material spends an excessive amount of time establishing what comes subsequent. It’s a irritating strategy to blockbuster storytelling, and we are able to blame George Lucas and his strategy to the Star Wars prequels fairly immediately for Marvel’s decline.
How Star Wars Made Homework For Followers
At this level, you’re most likely asking the plain query: how might the Star Wars prequels negatively have an effect on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, particularly when The Phantom Menace got here out nearly a decade earlier than Iron Man introduced the MCU to life? The reply begins with Darth Maul, a killer new character who, regardless of his superior design and instantaneous recognition, solely had three traces of dialogue. Audiences understandably had loads of questions on his origins and motivations and had been invariably instructed they needed to go learn varied books and comics to piece collectively what this man’s entire deal was.
For the Star Wars prequels, that grew to become a persistent drawback, one which Disney would replicate with Marvel after shopping for the franchise set in a galaxy far, far-off. You needed to learn exterior media to study essential lore about different villains like Depend Dooku and Basic Grievous, and studying books and comics was additionally the one solution to study extra about equally essential relationships such because the friendship between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker and the wedding between Padme Amidala and future Darth Vader. It was, frankly, insanely lazy storytelling constructed on the idea that ravenous followers wouldn’t thoughts the costly and time-consuming homework of additional studying.
Marvel Will get Its Personal Homework
Now, Disney has purchased Star Wars, which implies it’s owned by the identical monolithic studio that owns Marvel. Unsurprisingly, Disney has replicated the prequel drawback of assigning audiences homework, hoping that you simply’ll dig into exterior media to elucidate main plot particulars just like the rise of the First Order, Kylo Ren’s fall to the Darkish Aspect, and why the Resistance is separate from the federal government that they work to guard. What was shocking, although, is that Disney started making use of this strategy of constructing followers do homework with their different blockbuster IP.
With the launch of Disney+, the Home of Mouse adopted a Variant (so to talk) of the homework technique. As a substitute of encouraging followers to mainline books and comics to totally perceive new movies, they wished followers to look at Disney+ reveals as a substitute. Now, you need to watch WandaVision to grasp each Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Insanity and Agatha All Alongside. It’s a must to watch Loki to grasp who the Huge Dangerous of Quantumania is, simply as you need to watch Ms. Marvel to grasp who the heck this new character in The Marvels is.
The irony is that followers acted like this was an annoying new storytelling determination by Disney, however the actuality is that they merely utilized George Lucas’ annoying homework technique to Marvel. Truthfully, they’d each cause to count on this technique to work…for as irritating as these prequels had been, followers actually did flock to shops to purchase ancillary media and absolutely perceive these new movies set in a galaxy far, far-off. However that was as a result of we hadn’t had new cinematic Star Wars content material since Return of the Jedi in 1983; that technique didn’t work for Marvel as a result of Disney launched a lot so quickly, successfully creating the superhero fatigue now threatening their backside line.
There you might have it, of us: whether or not followers of both franchise need to admit it, Star Wars helped inadvertently create Marvel’s greatest drawback. And contemplating the one solution to repair it’s for Disney to focus much less on revenue and extra on telling nice tales, that drawback gained’t go away anytime quickly. Fairly quickly, the MCU as an entire could be a bit like Logan’s skeletal physique: a fairly corpse Deadpool will get to play with every time Disney wants a protected field workplace hit.
