Up next in 10
The MCU didn’t collapse overnight. It started with one small decision...opening Phase 4 with a Black Widow prequel. Black Widow wasn’t just a late solo movie, it was a signal that Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios didn’t have a clear plan for what came next. After the massive success of Avengers: Endgame, Marvel had a chance to reset, introduce new heroes, and define a bold new future. Instead, they looked backward. And that decision set the entirety of Phase 4 off on the wrong foot.
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
Avengers! Assemble
0:02
This is the finale of Avengers Endgame, arguably the best ending to the best superhero franchise of all time
0:09
The fact that the Russo brothers and Marvel landed this feat is nothing short of a miracle
0:14
And then the opening salvo of phase four is this. When you're fighting with the arm and the hair and you do like a fighting pose
0:23
it's a fighting pose. You're a total poser. I'm not a poser
0:27
Black Widow is a movie that's a decade late. Simply put, one of Marvel's many mistakes post-Endgame
0:33
was opening phase four with a prequel. It feels like a decade ago at this point
0:38
despite only being five short years, but after the finale of Endgame
0:42
Marvel had a crucial decision to make. Where should they go? What path forward should they take
0:47
Well, what they should have done is pumped the brakes. They should have stopped production
0:51
on all of TV shows and movies and just let the fallout of one of the most successful
0:55
and remarkable accomplishments in the history of film, just be. But Marvel is owned by Disney
1:02
so obviously that's not happening. Instead of giving things a five-year breathing window
1:06
before coming back and resetting the table with X-Men, they chose to release a slate of rushed TV shows
1:12
underbaked movies, and failed attempts at cementing a new generation of heroes
1:16
To lead this off, they offered up a prequel featuring Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow
1:20
who, spoiler alert, died in the movie prior. Let me go. No
1:27
Now, for context, this type of maneuver is pretty common on the comic book publishing side of things
1:32
Endgame and Infinity War were the equivalent of publishing a massive crossover book like Civil War, Secret Wars, or Fear Itself
1:39
And what happens when those books wrap up? The line continues publishing, but they reset to smaller books and smaller stories
1:45
Sometimes their respective publishers will institute an overarching story that all the books will fall under
1:51
These aren't necessarily a crossover, but a publishing imprint that allows the reader
1:56
to know that the events we just lived through have had a direct impact on the publishing
2:00
line. Post the Green Lantern centric mega crossover Blackest Night, DC had Brightest
2:04
Day which saw multiple characters being reintroduced repositioned or older characters given clean jumping on points for new readers to invest in Similarly Marvel had Dark Reign During the fallout of Secret Invasion
2:17
a Skrull-themed crossover, Dark Reign showcased a world where the bad guys won
2:21
and Norman Osborn was now the leader of S.H.I.E.L.D. This allowed fun spins on existing characters to
2:26
be birthed, like Frank Castle being killed and then cut into a million little pieces by Wolverine's
2:31
son, Daken, and then being stitched back together by the Legion of Monsters for a new title called
2:36
Frankencastle, among many others. So if post-end-game Marvel had opened up to an era subtitle
2:42
maybe that could have been one way to signal that things weren't going to be business as usual
2:47
Or Marvel could have only focused on new characters, or they could have done literally
2:51
anything to engage with fans on this topic. Instead, they just tried to continue without
2:56
coming down on either side of the fence. Is phase four a cold reset, or is phase four the beginning
3:02
of the next chapter in the MCU. Make up your mind, guys. Sometimes patience is the key to victory
3:07
Sometimes it leads to very little, and it seems like it's not worth it. One of the key aspects of running a fictional universe
3:14
like the long-running Marvel and DC publishing lines, is that you need to be aware of where your readers are at
3:19
and how you can both give them what they want and make them uncomfortable at the same time
3:24
It's a delicate thing to balance. Sometimes you need to take a big swing. Sometimes you need to give them some space
3:30
and just enjoy the proverbial meat and potato stories. Most reader bases can only handle one crossover a year
3:36
both from a hype perspective and a literal monetary one. Crossovers require a lot of extra spending
3:42
to buy all the tie-ins. And yet, sometimes these publishing companies are insistent that there's two
3:48
or sometimes even three a year. That's how you know when you're in trouble. If there's an Avengers crossover, X-Men crossover
3:54
and a general Marvel crossover happening in one year, that means sales are down
3:58
and the Marvel front office is panicking. And that math, it's not as complicated
4:02
when you're dealing with multimillion dollar movies. Because even though they're insisting
4:07
they're not just replicating the mistakes that the publishing side had made repeatedly
4:11
Marvel and DC absolutely have stumbled into recreating the most avoidable blunders
4:16
that their comic imprints have done consistently And Black Widow is a perfect example People have been calling for a solo Natasha movie for a good five years before Endgame We wanted to see what the Budapest story was Just like Budapest all over again You and I remember Budapest very differently But by the
4:33
time Marvel got around to giving her her own solo outing, she was, like we said earlier, dead. So
4:39
they had no choice but to make it a prequel, a flashback story, a story which gave the loner
4:44
brooding spy, a loving family? That just feels so misguided and not in service of her character
4:50
It's only in service of giving the MCU a safe way to introduce a new Black Widow
4:55
not create a loving send-off to one of the best characters in the MCU. And to add insult to injury, the movie itself is a hollow, plain, blank slate of a story
5:05
What really happens in this movie? What development does Natasha get that comes
5:09
even close to some of the revelations from the various Avengers movies? Nothing
5:13
It's a nothing story that was released at the worst possible time, when everyone was hoping for more Endgame
5:19
I am inevitable. Is that a fair desire to put on this Black Widow movie
5:25
Of course not. It's never going to be that, but Marvel also set it up to fail
5:30
This set the entirety of Phase 4 off on the wrong foot. Instead of starting over with a new central character of the universe
5:37
or establishing a new team of heroes, or even various characters to see if one of them clicked with audiences
5:42
It was just a series of small stories that felt like prequels and in-betweenquels
5:47
All of the Falcon and Winter Soldier show could have been handled in a prologue of the new Captain America movie
5:52
WandaVision and Loki season one each had some cool moments, but what if Hawkeye and Eternals all failed to meet their potential at the end of the day
6:00
Shang-Chi was a fun movie, but then they never followed up on his character. Marvel didn't message that they were in a rebuilding era well enough
6:07
and because of that, they never really got their footing underneath them. and it shows to this day
6:12
Even when it came time to introduce Kang, they didn't have a clear, concise story
6:17
that they were building with him. They could have easily been doing the time runs out storyline
6:20
throughout the background of the films and TV shows, but they were worried about going back
6:25
to the Avengers well too soon. And because of that, they screwed themselves
6:29
They didn have enough plot infrastructure set up when it came time to pivot away from Kang And instead they now trying to do a massive crossover with Secret Wars and Doomsday but they didn have the build and narrative framework with the previously established Avengers appearances I mean
6:44
they literally don't even have an established new Avengers team. And no, the Thunderbolts
6:48
bait and switch doesn't count. Now, is this literally the fault of Black Widow? No
6:59
Of course not. That movie is a totally fine middle-of-the-road entry. If that had come out during phase two
7:05
it probably would have made close to $700 million, but it didn't. In fact, it was released during the peak of the pandemic
7:11
and had an almost non-existent theatrical run and was offered to Disney Plus at the same time
7:16
which caused Scarlett Johansson to sue Disney, but that's a story for another time
7:20
You can't spend multiple years building and building and building narrative pressure
7:24
and then once you get to the climax and you've paid everything off, Expect people not to be clamoring for more
7:30
You've now trained your movie-going audience to only really be looking for cameos, crossovers
7:35
and the next piece of the puzzle to be slotted into place. On your left
7:42
And when there isn't that, people get dissatisfied. That's why they needed to let things breathe
7:48
If they had to tell stories about Marvel characters to satisfy shareholders, they at least should have led with the Eternals
7:54
Shang-Chi and a few other characters that didn't have any pre-existing connection to the universe
7:59
Have them be continuity-free and maybe give them a Dark Reign, Age of Heroes, or Brightest Day style sub-banner
8:05
To tell people, okay, we're in the lab now, we're tinkering, and whoever ends up being the most popular out of this era is going to be our new Tony, Cap, or Thor
8:14
The new trinity to build around. But as you're aware, they didn't do that, and they're paying the price for it now
8:19
We're in the run-up to Doomsday and Secret Wars. a duology that has so much pressure around them that there's almost no way for them to succeed
8:28
Will the movies come out? Yes. Will they make gobs of money? You bet. But the likelihood that
8:33
they'll be creatively successful or that they'll come close to even rivaling the perfection of
8:38
Endgame's finale? No way. You know what is certain though? They're not going to be opening
8:42
phase six with the prequel. They've absolutely learned that lesson, right