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Have audiences just about had enough of Marvel Studios attempt at television series? The MCU's attempt at extending the Marvel brand to Disney + has been everything but successful. With the recent WGA and SAG strikes coming to a close, it seems Marvel is starting to revamp how it produces TV, but will it be enough to bring Marvel fans back into the fold? Or will the Marvel Cinematic Universe keep pushing forward with the same format?
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You killed my mother, my father
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You're slaving. You're weak. Have you noticed how all the recent Marvel TV shows
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feel like they're just bad? They all seem to be wandering and meandering slogs
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to get through, right? Well, that might be because for the last few years
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the behind the scenes of Marvel television has been nothing short of a mess
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For close to a decade, the MCU dominated the box office and the movie going public's heart
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Then things started to falter. Now we're living under what feels like a near avalanche of film and TV projects
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set inside the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Some of these stories have been great
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but the overwhelming majority of the post-in-game fare have been uneven, to say the least
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The lack of quality surrounding these projects, and specifically the MCU's TV shows
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have poured jet fuel on growing feelings of resentment and restlessness with Marvel fans
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Ah, this is a mess. None of these storylines make any sense
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So is this the end of the MCU as we know it? No, not in the slightest. In fact, Marvel Brass is very
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aware of the fact that their stranglehold on global culture is slipping, and they're making
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moves to restructure their TV production pipeline as we speak. For a little context, the Disney Plus
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era of the MCU might as well be considered Marvel TV 2.0 for all it bears in similarity to the
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original Netflix and ABC shows. Why is that? Well, because Marvel Television, a subsidiary of Marvel
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Studios, was literally created in 2010 to capitalize off of the success of the mainline MCU movies by
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ostensibly one man, Ike Perlmutter. Marvel Television is a brand new venture and something
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that I'm extremely excited about. He pushed the creation of a TV division through over the
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objections of Kevin Feige who was worried about this exact problem a watering down of the brand TV and film are two separate beasts and move at completely different paces
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Maintaining a cohesive universe of stories where there are two different rates of churn
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is an almost impossible task, which is why the Inhumans, Agent Carter
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the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as the Netflix shows like Jessica Jones, Daredevil, and The Defenders
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were kind of kept off in their own little circle. Continuity really only flowed one way
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from the movies to the shows. Never the other way around. I'm sorry, this is a mistake
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I gotta go. Hey, where? I can't be a part of this. If you ask me, you already are
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Due to the resounding success of Endgame, Feige was handed the reins to both the TV and film sides of the MCU
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This was something that initially seemed like it was for the best. We would now get fully integrated TV and film characters
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The originally announced slate of projects included both a Scarlet Witch TV show
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and a Falcon and Winter Soldier project. They also rapidly announced that the shows would take a more extended movie approach to story creation
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by building out these shows as miniseries as opposed to ongoing continuing narratives
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This seemed like a smart way to stop the scope creep that Kevin Feige was originally worried about
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and debut with a splash. Big name actors, fan favorite characters, and a production model that seemed both shrewd and sustainable
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So you're saying the universe created a sitcom starring two Avengers? It's a working theory
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However, too much of a good thing is never good. It quickly became apparent that Disney needed a constant and steady stream of MCU-branded content
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to keep their newly debuted platform relevant during the early days of the streaming wars
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This ultimately resulted in too many shows being greenlit and not enough time or energy going into making sure that these projects
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actually could stand on their own two feet. The most recent releases of the MCU mixed record of small adventures is the program Secret Invasion which received a wildly negative response and Loki Season 2 which has been more positively received And yet the same critiques that plague many MCU shows are being proffered about both of these projects
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Weird pacing, meandering story, and a general feeling that things are either rushing to a climax
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or wasting time on stuff no one cares about. But a waste of time
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In a recent article released by The Hollywood Reporter, we may have gotten a reason for those stylistic inconsistencies and almost universally consistent
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flaws. Marvel's production pipeline is drastically different from everyone else in Tinseltown
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Marvel doesn't shoot pilots, they don't write show bibles, and they don't even hire showrunners
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They basically just left the writer's room to construct the shows, almost without supervision
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in a traditional sense. Then they spent $150 million creating the shows episode by episode
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as if they were one extremely long film. How did they fix things that weren't working, you might ask
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Highly expensive rewrites and reshoots, just like you would on a film
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not like TV productions are typically handled. I don't understand what's happening
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why it's all falling apart, and why I can't fix it. This method came to the fore during the production
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of the high-profile reboot of everyone's favorite superheroic blind lawyer, Daredevil, Born Again
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As you'll remember, the writers and the actor strike started in May and July, respectively
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Due to this work stoppage, Marvel execs reviewed the footage from Born Again
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and were not pleased with what they were seeing. The proposed 18-episode series
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was intended to be the return of Charlie Cox's beloved incarnation of the Demon of Hell's Kitchen
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to a new plateau of glory. Only, according to sources in the know
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he literally didn't put on his costume until episode four. Supposedly, the first four episodes
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were playing into the exact tropes of what fans were complaining about. Where did you come up with that original idea
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Was that from every other superhero story This along with the internal discussions has caused Marvel to upend the way that they been producing TV They completely overhauling it They abandoning everything they shot of Born Again
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fired head creators Chris Ord and Matt Corman, and are releasing the directors for the rest of the season
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from their commitments. From here on out, they're going to be making Bibles
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pilots, and shooting in a more traditional TV production method. They're also going to be refocusing
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on making traditionally structured shows as opposed to miniseries-style shows. With that in mind, they brought in a new head writer and showrunner for Daredevil
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Dario Scartapane, a former journalist and former showrunner of NBC's Trauma and FX's The Bridge
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On the surface, this pivot might seem like a drastic solution to a bizarrely ethereal problem
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and yet, it's one that bodes well for the MCU. Maybe they can stop trying to reinvent the wheel and focus on making stories
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that aren't worried about filling in the gaps in between movies and instead have an actual internal narrative engine all their own
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Sometimes it's okay to destroy something. If there's a hope that you can replace that thing with something better
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What this signals over anything else is the fact that the people in charge of the MCU know they're slipping
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and they're attempting to pivot back to what could work. Audiences are tired of the high-volume output, the films all feeling cookie-cutter
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and many of the beloved and iconic characters having been retired. If Marvel were truly listening, they'd say
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we're going to shut it down for a bit post-Secret Wars and eventually come back for more when the time is right
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But that won't happen. There's just too much money on the line. Ultimately, the MCU isn't going anywhere anytime soon
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So the important aspect of the revelation that even they know the TV side hasn't been working
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is that they're committed to trying to fix things. Let's just hope that in frantically attempting to mend things
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they don't make everything worse. Like greenlighting more Moon Knight. Hi