In recent years, the superhero blockbuster genre, which peaked in the last decade, has begun to stagnate — box office revenues have noticeably declined, criticism is increasing, and studios seem unsure of what to do. In today's article, we will analyze these problems using the Marvel Cinematic Universe as an example and try to answer the question — is the era of superhero films truly over?
Toxic Marvel Brand
After the release of "Avengers: Endgame" in 2019, Marvel fans around the world held their breath: what could the studio offer after such an epic? Some eagerly awaited the fourth phase, while others were skeptical, as surpassing the "Infinity Saga" would be no easy feat. And the topic of "agenda" was just beginning to gain momentum and had not yet bored the mass audience, although it did raise concerns.
But six years later, the answer is clear — they haven't come up with anything worthwhile and, even worse, they've lost not only a significant portion of their fan base but also a large share of their own potential.
Moreover, it's so bad that today the Marvel brand itself has become toxic — almost as much as Ubisoft in the gaming industry. Take this year — in 2025, three MCU films were released: "Captain America: Brave New World", "Thunderbolts*", and "Fantastic Four: First Steps". All of them turned out to be relatively good — even "Cap 4", which is easy to understand if you accept the fact that it's not about Captain America himself, but about Thaddeus Ross. Although this is debatable.
"Thunderbolts*" and "Fantastic Four" even brought something new to the MCU: the first film reflected on depression and psychology, moving away from the usual superhero brawls, and the second returned the viewer to the era of "Silver Age" comics, which can also be considered a breath of fresh air.
So, "Captain America" and "Thunderbolts*" have already failed, and "Fantastic Four" has very little chance of recouping its costs — box office revenues have dropped by almost 70% after the first week. People are simply tired of what Marvel is feeding them and don't believe in their projects even when they turn out to be good.
Origins of the Crisis
Reason One: It Got Worse
Here you have the influence of the notorious "agenda", which only grew over several years, and the problems with the visual component of projects in 2022-2023 reached their peak. This also includes the consequences of the pandemic and the scandal with Jonathan Majors, who was found guilty in the case of assaulting his ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari — and he played the role of Kang the Conqueror, who was supposed to replace Thanos as the main villain of the new saga.
All this led to a significant weakening of interest from viewers, and the studio's films lost what they were famous for before — stability.
Some, of course, made money, but they did it by some miracle — especially "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" (860 million in revenue) and "Thor: Love and Thunder" (760 million), the quality of which is highly debated among fans. Otherwise, only "Spider-Man: No Way Home" (1.95 billion), "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" (955 million), and "Deadpool & Wolverine" (1.33 billion) had large box office revenues. And all these films are characterized by an abundance of fan service. Only "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" turned out to be good in terms of both quality and box office (845 million) — but this is an exception to the rule named James Gunn, who now heads the DC universe.
Seven films completely failed during this time, some of which didn't even break even. After all, to recoup costs and make a profit, a film must earn 2-3 times its budget:
- "Black Widow" — 380 million in revenue with a 200 million budget;
- "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" — 432 million in revenue with a 200 million budget;
- "Eternals" — 402 million in revenue with a 200 million budget;
- "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" — 476 million in revenue with a 200 million budget;
- "The Marvels" — 206 million in revenue with a 374 million budget;
- "Captain America: Brave New World" — 415 million in revenue with a 180 million budget;
- "Thunderbolts*" — 382 million in revenue with a 180 million budget.
Reason Two: No Connection
If earlier each film brought something new to the overall picture of the world — characters, events, objects, and so on — now all the heroes have dispersed in different directions and started their own storylines, which, in the end, led to nothing.
Over the years, we have been given many hints about the future plot, which remained without continuation — what are the post-credit scenes in "Eternals" worth, where two storylines were teased at once: the appearance of the Black Knight, which leads viewers to the mystical side of the MCU, and Thanos's brother, which was supposed to expand the cosmic part of the universe.
Previously, viewers' interest grew because one film pulled another along, covering each other's shortcomings with common storylines — that's why even the first "Captain Marvel" grossed over a billion simply because it was released between "Infinity War" and "Endgame", and the viewer was interested: what kind of piece of history would be important for the next "Avengers"? It was roughly the same with "Star Wars", where individual parts — for example, "Episode II: Attack of the Clones" — may not be very popular among viewers, but the overall picture is interesting.
But now we have a bunch of disparate projects that don't cover each other in any way, and all their shortcomings become only more noticeable because of this.
Reason Three: Saga Without a Saga
Continuing the topic of the lack of connection between films, we come to the fact that the declared "Multiverse Saga" is simply not revealed in any way. After the completion of the third phase, exactly 30 projects were released: 14 films, 14 series, and 2 special episodes — and how many of them somehow relate to the topic of the multiverse?
Only eight projects do this directly — and even then, some of them are fan-service potboilers, and some ended up on the list simply because their events unfold in alternative universes and are not connected with the main one, at least not yet:
- films: "Spider-Man: No Way Home", "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness", "Deadpool & Wolverine", "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania", and "Fantastic Four: First Steps";
- series "Loki";
- animated series: "What If...?" and "Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man".
You can also recall "The Marvels", "Captain America 4", and "Thunderbolts" — they have post-credit scenes that are related to the multiverse, but no more. And the series "Agatha All Along", where Wiccan appeared — although this is debatable.
Reason Four: Series
Starting with the fourth phase, series began to appear in the MCU — they existed before, but then their action took place somewhere in the background, not connecting with the events of the films in any way, and at most referring to them. Now, the projects have a direct relationship with the main films, and the old series have been declared non-canon. It's especially обидно for "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." — however, given what happened in the last season, it's easy to imagine that the events of this project were another separate universe, as in "Fantastic Four".
Now, although the series have received a direct connection with the films, the latter did not need them — each film itself explains its events, without requiring much knowledge of what happened in the series: Wanda and Strange themselves will explain what was in "WandaVision", and the fact that Falcon became Captain America is so obvious after Steve gave him the shield at the end of "Endgame" — even the appearance of "U.S. Agent" is not such a big omission, because they will tell about him in a couple of words in "Thunderbolts*".
Yes, not all series are bad: "Hawkeye" and "Moon Knight" are good, "Ms. Marvel" can be watched once, and "Daredevil: Born Again" perfectly continues the project from Netflix. But everything else is either just bad, or leads to nothing, or is simply not needed. The only exception was "Loki", which single-handedly pulled the whole idea of the multiverse — literally explaining how everything works here and what is needed for.
The emphasis on series is explained by several factors. At the end of 2019, the Disney corporation launched its analogue of Netflix — the Disney+ streaming service, on which all MCU projects, both series and films, began to be released. And although the experiment with the simultaneous premiere in cinemas and on streaming failed — the COVID-19 pandemic also contributed to this — the service became a partial justification for the decline in the quality of Marvel products and not only. They say that if the film does not recoup its costs in theaters, it will make up for it on streaming, no big deal, and an abundance of series was needed to fill the service with content — no one thought about quality!
It's also because the studio decided to turn a perfectly calibrated universe into an analogue of comics, where there are a huge number of different series, most of which lead to nothing and are not connected with each other in any way. The series were also supposed to be a small extension, not obligating the viewer to anything — the so-called "tie-ins".
But it's one thing to draw a comic — it takes 5-10 people at most, or even less, and several weeks/months to create. It's quite another to shoot a film/series, which costs hundreds of millions of dollars and months/years of production. Here, even if you see that your strategy is not working, you can't just cancel everything — it takes years. And if you have to change something, then money and plot hooks simply fly down the drain — which is what happened.
Reason Five: Fatigue
We should also not forget about the banal overdose of attention for viewers and the studios themselves: people are tired of watching unnecessary projects, and the corporation's production capacity turned out to be overloaded — before, when only 2-3 films were released per year, it suited everyone. Changes after the "Infinity Saga" were needed, but Kevin Feige and the others clearly did not think through all their possible consequences — fortunately, they understood this and changed their approach.
The phases have a similar problem. Previously, each phase meant some kind of common arc:
- First — assembling the Avengers;
- Second — the consequences of the battle in New York and changes in the worldview of the characters, which in the future leads to the breakup of the team of heroes and an emphasis on the infinity stones;
- Third — conflict within the team, the final confrontation with Thanos, and the completion of the storylines of Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow.
But how do the fourth, fifth, and sixth phases differ from each other? Why are they needed after "Endgame"? The question is open.
Because of all this, we got the main irony of the cinema of the 2020s: if the previous DC cinematic universe tried to repeat the path of Marvel, but failed, then Marvel turned into DC, which had exactly the same problems, very well.
Now Disney had to radically change its plans, removing Kang and immediately delivering a double trump card in the form of Doctor Doom, whose role will be played by Robert Downey Jr. His return cost the "mouse house" a very large sum: the amounts range from 70-80 to 220 million, depending on the source. You can shoot a whole film for this money!
By the way, I have a theory why Kang was replaced by Doom — besides the fact that he is one of the most famous villains in Marvel and a chance to bring back Downey Jr. Perhaps the point is that both Kang and Doom are closely connected with the Fantastic Four, and the studio made such a swap in order not to change the final plans too much.
Stagnation of Superhero Films
After the reasons described above, the question arises: "has the superhero genre really gone out of trend?". Many believe that, yes, because films are failing more and more often. And there is some truth here, because many projects are sterile and built according to the same formula, which most people are tired of. And game adaptations are now attracting more and more attention, outlining a new trend.
Remember when Marvel was at its peak, DC films earned about as much as Marvel does today — which demonstrates people's attitude to the quality of the product. And the excellent "Superman" from James Gunn also showed, according to the director himself, good numbers at the box office — it grossed $594 million.
Next, the MCU plans the fourth "Spider-Man" and a new dilogy "Avengers": "Kang Dynasty" and "Secret Wars". "Spider-Man" will most likely pay off, since it is the most popular Marvel character in principle — although most of the profit will go to Sony, since the rights belong to them.
But everything is more complicated with the "Avengers". Even if they collect 1-1.5 billion each, which is already very difficult in the current realities, these fees are unlikely to be able to recoup the costs — the cast will be huge, and the marketing will be exorbitant.
Analysis
A significant share of the problems of superhero blockbusters in recent years is a consequence of erroneous creative decisions of studios, an emphasis on the "agenda", and an overabundance of low-quality and monotonous content, which people eventually got tired of.
All this allowed a new trend — video game adaptations — to occupy the vacated niche and push aside superhero films. But this does not mean that the genre itself has outlived its usefulness — competent studio decisions are needed. Although, it seems, it is unlikely that superhero cinema will be able to return to its previous level of popularity.
After the release of the film "Avengers: Secret Wars", the Marvel cinematic universe will undergo a large-scale reboot — many characters will be played by new actors, and the structure of the universe itself should change again. It remains to be hoped that new genres will be incorporated into the cinematic universe with these changes, and the cost of filming will be reduced to adequate values — so that the quality does not suffer, and you do not have to bite your elbows after another failure.
