There's a problem with Marvel

After seeing The Marvels, the latest installment of the largest and most scattered franchise in history, one probably leaves satisfied but with a curious feeling on one's person that we might call alienation. Having reached the 33rd installment of the Marvel film saga, it doesn't matter whether director Nia DaCosta did a good job, whether the film has "heart" and whether the cast has chemistry: it is hard to take a Marvel product seriously in 2023. When the film tries to be tragic and serious, one already knows that no one is going to die and that the villain has no real chance of winning; when it tries to be comic and light, it reveals an apparent lack of defined codes and consistency of tone reminiscent of Rick & Morty's absurdist pastiche but without the meta-awareness and bitter cynicism that make Rick & Morty a cult. The best parts of the film are undoubtedly the scenes of Kamala Khan with her family -that is, those involving "normal" characters that aren't not shot against a green screen. A demonstration of how Marvel films have irretrievably lost their relatability, their ability to engage with stories we can identify with, their connection to the world: it is no accident that many of the latest releases take place in space, between planets and galaxies, nor are they about authentic human dynamics of characters who, even with costumes and superpowers, remain actual human beings. Now, The Marvels, as well as the second season of Loki and the third installment of Guardians of the Galaxy, seem to be the last happy moments of an empire on the verge of collapse. As Variety illustrated in an article-highlighted this week and as recounted ad nauseam by the many anti-Marvel critics on the web, the magic seems to have run out. But why?

While some point to the reasons for Marvel's decline as a matter of cultural trend ("it's not superhero time anymore" and so on) the real reason is a simple matter of math. After building a model of success with the Infinity Saga, Marvel Studios' top brass thought to expand the story horizon from two movies a year to six annual releases, including TV series. The frequency of release of new Marvel products became frantic, the quality of the final products was the result of a completely aseptic and impersonal assembly line, the protagonists of the first three phases of the saga were replaced by characters never heard of before and whom no one had really asked for: Shang-Chi, the Eternals, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, G'Iah - after Endgame the Marvel universe stopped being familiar and was filled with strangers who claimed to be our friends More: removed is the dimension of the everyday life of human beings, the one in which Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and Bryan Singer's X-Men moved, we no longer fantasize about having this or that superpower, in what would happen if we could become superheroes in our everyday lives - which was also the original premise of all Marvel heroes. The fantasy element, which has become generic and abstract in a green screen backdrop, is no longer aspirational but is as generic as the heroes themselves: all endowed with the same superstrength, the same superlasers and the ability to fly. Overextending such an interconnected world has also created two orders of problems: those of scripts that are increasingly formulaic and repetitive, identical to each other in tone and in fact forgettable; and those of special effects that have come to dominate so much every aspect of production that the films themselves possess an almost plastic patina, a digital rendering look reminiscent of video games taking the viewer out of the film almost immediately. Wanting to produce too much has led Marvel Studios to produce worse - better would have been for the company's top management to focus on a more coherent and less scattershot but above all more inspired and mature narrative.

In their anxiety to cultivate a unified voice and aesthetic across thirty-three different films, Marvel films have become increasingly diluted and generic. It is no mystery that all Marvel films suffer heavy interference from a studio preoccupied with packaging a blockbuster product. But here's the thing: this attitude relegates MCU releases to mere "content" and "product" and does not translate into projects endowed with uniqueness and artistic autonomy. Especially since maintaining the identity of a saga requires not dispersing its narrative connotations: instead of giving us two or three iconic protagonists, Marvel Studios has inserted dozens of forgettable characters, disconnected stories, contradictory chronologies. After the great conflagration of Infinity War, it would have been good to start again from a new small core, build on a new and solid foundation, and land the Multiverse Saga (already chaotic in itself) with a more sure footing and a solid team of characters. Instead, the identities of old characters have been questioned and re-discussed, when not replaced in the case of Captain America and Iron Heart; new characters introduced have not been followed up (think Shang-Chi and the Eternals, who appeared in 2021 and then vanished into thin air); and in general the pretense of gravitas and seriousness that existed until Phase 3, that of Infinity War, has been lost in a storm of randomness that has destabilized the focus of the films: from random characters appearing in post-credit scenes, like Harry Styles and Charlize Theron; to macroscopic contradictions such as the dozens of alien races all English-speaking and identical to humans and the fact that various characters do not sweat or bleed.

Un’atmosfera benpensante di fanservice, foreshawoding e nostalgia che proietta ogni film verso un ipotetico sequel senza chiedersi se il film che il pubblico sta guardando sia di qualità. Il successo dei film di Into The Spiderverse, un capolavoro indiscusso, viene precisamente dal fatto che non hanno niente di generico e “facile”: sono prodotti artistici seri, creati nel corso di lunghi anni di lavoro e dotati di un’identità precisa. I film, ovviamente, appartengono a Sony e non ai Marvel Studios e si nota molto l’assenza di una livella aziendale che ha appiattito tutti gli elementi della trama a un omogeneizzato facilmente digeribile.

Finally, it doesn't help at all that these mediocre products have not only colonized the market by wiping out mid-budget films and poisoning the movie industry with an unhealthy obsession with franchises, sequels, and remakes; but also that they have been accompanied by a series of largely mediocre side films and TV series that have exacerbated the boredom one feels toward the comic book world and its conventions. Culturally speaking, the deluge of superhero movies is the main indication of a corporate era and culture (which does not only affect cinema) in which quality loses value over quantity, substance demotes in favor of numbers. It is no coincidence that the most impactful superhero products on pop culture since Infinity War have been The Boys and Invincible: stories that deconstruct and sometimes openly mock the genre and appear so refreshing because they tell the story of our world, touching on themes such as culture wars, the rise of fascism, obsession with social media, nepo babies, and the toxicity of celebrity culture; while Invincible tells these superheroes through their personal dramas, delving into the characters in an honest and sincere way, and thus creating a story that one follows with childlike wonder but can be taken seriously on a psychological level, tells us something about us. The era of superheroes is not over - it is simply time to call them back from space and bring them back down to earth.