It’s 1996 and I’m 17 and I was flirting with the girl who sells tickets at the movie theater. I was working concessions and hoping that I was going to be promoted someday to that sweet usher job. It’s dead as disco and so we did not have much to do but chat.
Finally, a customer stepped up to the window. He was large, wore a skull cap and I’m fairly certain I had seen him around.
“What’s this duck movie about?” he asked.
She tried to explain it but it was not easy. It’s a family film she says, and there are ducks.
Suddenly the light clicked on.
“Oh, she has to raise the ducks and then get them south?” he said.
We both nodded our heads and, knowing what he was in for, the patron happily bought a ticket for Fly Away Home.
Even though I could go see movies for free I somehow missed Fly Away Home. I’m sure it’s out there somewhere amongst the Dark Highways of cinema and the internet. And maybe you, like that movie patron from decades in my past, will be comforted in knowing exactly what kind of movie you will get if you choose to spend time with it.
I’m fairly certain that no one has ever used this analogy before but have you ever noticed that Marvel movies are like amusement park rides?
You get on the ride, it takes you for a fun, safe thrill, and then you get off. Most of them are the comfort food of cinema. I don’t know about you, but I think that is wonderful. After all, I know exactly what I want out of a certain type of cinema.
In a western, I want easy-to-define good guys shooting at despicable villains. In a rom-com, I want exactly what the name implies, romance and comedy. Those should give me a few laughs, a few tears, and usually a happy couple at the end. Horror films should scare. Pixar movies, and most Disney cartoons, begin with tragedy and then show us how to live well and find our place in the face of the heartrending change that is growing to adulthood. Gangster pictures had better deliver urban violence and a critique of capitalism.
With a Marvel movie, I know what I am going to get.
Superhero cinema usually delivers quippy action scenes, CGI spectacle, and earnest questions about what powerful people owe to their friends, their families, and the world at large.
Some of us love this stuff. Some people loudly hate it. I once knew a girl who absolutely would not watch anything with a phaser, a spaceship, or an alien in it. I think she’s missing out, but everyone can decide for themselves which entertainments they want.
Some people like Space Mountain and some people like The Hall of Presidents. I haven’t watched a reality show since the first season of Survivor but I have seen every version of Star Trek. I am happy with my life choices.
Marvel’s Phase 4 gave us a lyrical portrait of humanity in The Eternals, a lawyer comedy show in She-Hulk, a glimpse into the life of a Muslim teenager in Ms. Marvel, and an examination of fictional grief in WandaVision and real-world grief through a fictional lens in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Before we get even deeper into the weeds let’s briefly talk about what has come before and why it became the most financially successful cinema in the history of cinema.
After selling the rights to its most successful properties to others, Marvel, then an independent comic book company, decided to start its own movie studio. They began in 2008 with Iron Man, a character that had not been translated into film or television before, and leaned on producer Kevin Feige who has a deep love of the source material. The movie ended with an end-credit tease for The Avengers.
Iron Man was a hit and audiences mostly enjoyed four other Marvel films, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger.
Just as Iron Man ended with a tease for The Avengers, The Avengers ended with a first look at Thanos and a bigger story, The Infinity Saga.
This story would more or less be part of every movie going forward until the end of Phase 3 and Endgame. And while the movies did have their own adventures and concerns there was, for the most part, a tight, easy-to-follow, straight line in every film from point A to Endgame. 1
We’d never seen that before. I would add the movies were generally well-regarded. Two concerns I remember from the early days:
- People were going to have superhero fatigue. To which the answer must be, nope.
- The music in Marvel movies sucked. This was specifically about the scores themselves. But that proved to be nonsense and James Gunn showed that a superhero movie could have the same connection to the music world as a Tarantino jam.
So Phases 1-3 are mostly considered massive successes. So much so that following Endgame the expectations at every level are tremendously high.
Meanwhile, as we got to Phase 4 Marvel found itself dealing with several real-world issues that had massive impacts on its creative ambitions. First, the world shut down for the coronavirus pandemic and as everyone eventually went back to work there were strict controls over how we interacted with each other in public.
Second, Marvel was acquired by Disney and found itself with all of the benefits and problems that come with being part of a massive entertainment conglomerate.
Think of Disney as the murderous gangster Paulie in Goodfellas.
“Now the guy’s got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with the bill? He can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy, he can call Paulie. But now the guy’s gotta come up with Paulie’s money every week, no matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me.”
— Goodfellas
Hey Marvel you want to start a new storyline? Great, we will spend billions on marketing and distribution. Also, we have Disney+ now and we’re gonna need a new show, movie, or special every few months to keep subscribers happy. Covid causing problems? That’s too bad. Now, where’s Moon Knight? Not enough CGI workers in the world available to make all of this seem believable? Well, sorry about your bad luck but She-Hulk needs to release in Q4.
Disney’s other creative factions, Pixar and Star Wars, pretty much cracked under the pressure. Star Wars films are dead and were mostly rejected by their audience. Pixar is a shadow of itself.
Marvel rolls on.
Marvel’s finances remained at the top of the game in Phase 4. They, along with Batman and most small-budget horror flicks, are the only guaranteed winners at the box office. And, Disney+ is essentially the house that Marvel built. Notable exceptions: The Mandalorian, and pretty much nothing else. I love Andor too but I am not convinced that anyone, other than internet critics, actually watched it.
Critically, Phase 4 is a mixed bag.
There is no easier mark for Marvel film and television products than me. I’m a guy in my 40s who grew up reading and loving a world of comic book stories including Marvel. I still have a pull list at my local comic book store. I have never thought of a comic as an investment and have instead read every book I ever bought.
And movies are an escape for me. In my day job, I write about some of the most horrid things humanity has to offer. I don’t watch crime fiction all that often because I live with it five days a week. Instead, please give me a happy story where the heroes are likely going to be noble and then win in the end.
No one, no matter how good they are at the game, can produce this much and have a near-perfect record. We don’t talk about Michael Jordan’s losses or his time with the Washington Wizards. Tyson and Ali had bad nights before the end. It’s all in the game.
So here’s some of what I loved and some of what didn’t work for me.
This stuff was great
Spider-Man: No Way Home
This was as good as anything Marvel has ever done. And Endgame level film for 20 years of Spider-man movies that managed to give any fan exactly what they wanted and to bring a satisfying conclusion to three different Spider-men. I watched every Best Picture nominee last year. No Way Home was better than at least three of them.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: Introduced a great new section of the Marvel Universe (Ta Lo) and two new fun heroes. It’s a fun romp and it’s up there with solid movies I can watch again any time.
Ms. Marvel: Expectations can often lead to disappointments but they can also lead to great surprises. I expected Ms. Marvel would not be for me. It’s a story about a teenage girl who becomes a superhero and deals with her family and her religion. But in the hands of its creative team, it’s a wonderful glimpse at a unique culture (a culture that is seriously underrepresented in American media) a nice adventure story, a history lesson, and a chance for star Iman Vellani to wow audiences with her infectious, happy charm. Marvel TV had a bunch of winners but this was the champ.
WandaVision, Loki, and Hawkeye. These shows had wildly different goals but I think all of them succeeded. The Matt Fraction David Aja Hawkeye comic book run, on which this series is based, is maybe my absolute favorite run of comics over the past 20 years. The show didn’t quite manage to hit those heights but it was awful close.
WandaVision: eventually wore me down with one too many sitcom spoof episodes but it pulled everything together nicely in the end.
Loki: Someone get Mobius a jet ski. What are we even doing here? Also, bonus points for having the final episode just be Jonathan Majors being awesome. I know several people didn’t like it but I was all in.
Werewolf By Night: My only critique of this is that I didn’t care for the use of black and white. It seems likely that it is there to make sure a story as clearly bloody as this does not get Disney in trouble. But it’s a fun horror romp that manages to be faithful both to the Marvel comics of the 1970s and the Universal horror movies that influenced them. I thought it was really good. But I also hope that we are going to get more of this soon. I’d like a Giant Sized Man-Thing show please.
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. I thought it was near perfect.
This stuff was fine
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law; Moon Knight, What If…? and Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness.
She-Hulk could have easily made it into the great category. But yes, the CGI was not great and there were some definite clunkers among the episodes. Still, it made me laugh a lot, especially because it was designed to punch a certain group of non-fans in the face every week. That ending was spectacular and ripped from the comics. If we got nothing else than the Daredevil stuff and the Wong (and Madisynn) episodes then everything here was worth it.
Moon Knight: I told a friend who was super-hyped for Moon Knight exactly how they would use his multiple personality disorder to hide expensive action sequences when the trailers dropped.
And then, they did exactly what I suggested in the first episode. My friend grew very disappointed in the show. I thought it was good though it never quite made it to greatness. As Marvel digs deeper to find new characters to spotlight we are reaching a point where third and fourth-string characters are given a chance to make a go of it.
But there is a reason why a lot of these characters are often given limited series runs or show up in team books. They are hard to sustain. Not every character can be Batman.
Mistakes were made
Black Widow, Eternals, Thor: Love and Thunder
If this blog has a point at all it’s that I don’t want to spend a bunch of time criticizing things I didn’t care for. The internet is full of people telling you what is wrong with the things they supposedly otherwise love.
But briefly, Black Widow would have been a lot more fun if it had come out in Phase 3 before Natasha Romanoff died in Endgame. It’s hard to enjoy a superhero romp when you know it ends in a graveyard.
Eternals: It did its best to mix the Jack Kirby original vision with the Neil Gaiman reimagining. I know people who swear by it. I am not one of those people.
Thor: Love and Thunder: I laughed a bunch. But in the end, I was disappointed. They took 10 years in the comics to tell the Gorr the Godbutcher story while also telling a story about Jane Foster getting cancer and becoming Thor. This needed more time and people who were willing to treat the material as something more than a way to get from one joke to another as quickly as possible. It was the biggest creative miss of Phase 4.
Endgame
If I had to peg the honest criticism of Phase 4 its that the audience really wants another straight line to follow. They want the Infinity Stones and Thanos to be replaced by Mephisto and a multiverse of problems who can be tracked over every movie and show for the next 10 years.
Marvel may end up doing some of that as we get Kang off the ground but it seems very likely that we will not be doing the same thing, in the same way, moving forward.
Nor should they. Marvel has actually been at its most successful when it breaks the mold and allows filmmakers like James Gunn and Taiki Waititi (well once) to take the reigns.
And despite what critics might say Marvel has made some bold television and movies during Phase Four and they seemed willing to experiment even while knowing that some of those experiments might blow up in their faces.
No one else has ever gone so far before without a reset. James Bond was recast every decade or so and the franchise went in a new direction. The same with Doctor Who and Star Trek. DC defenestrates itself every few years and while I have high hopes for the new regime it will be a decade before I trust that they really will stick with a plan and keep plowing forward.
The MCU continues on. Some of you out there in cinema land take that as a threat. But there is obviously one answer.
“I Am Inevitable.”
— Thanos
Footnotes
- As long as you ignore the Marvel TV properties in Phases 1-3. Which I am.
Dark Highways 