Where Marvel went Wrong.

It’s 2012 in the movie theater with some of the loudest noises ever produced in film history being played, and 7 year old me is fast asleep. My mom, however, is completely engrossed watching The Avengers. So as I wake up after the final fight with the Chitari and Loki, completely missing all the cool and interesting bits, my mom is planning buying all the previous movies in the Marvel franchise to watch. It was safe to say, she and I (mostly her) were hooked.

I don’t expect this experience to happen any time soon with new Marvel fans. As the golden days of Marvel are well behind us. While many of the new movies show great promise, none have quite the same excitement as the movies made before. Most people attribute this to sloppier writing, fan-service, and poor direction, but those aren’t the main reasons why Marvel is worse now (Though they all certainly play a part); the main reason is a lack of character.

“But James,” I hear you say, “Marvel has tons of characters! I mean look at their filmography! They have Ant Man, Iron Man, Spider Man, Captain Marvel, and many more. How can you possibly say they don’t have character?” Well, dear reader, it isn’t a quantity issue, it is a quality issue. How many of these characters can you say are truly well written and flushed out in their newest movies? Spider Man certainly does, Ant Man you can make a decent argument for, Iron Man is dead, and Captain Marvel is one of the most poorly written female protagonists in recent memory. Which is disappointing, as Marvel has written good female protagonists before. Black Widow and the Scarlet Witch to name a few.

What I have noticed within the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) is that the movies and shows have slowly begun to lose focus on the characters and begin looking at the plot. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with a plot focused film, but when you have characters who have super powers and are extremely unrelatable on a surface level, and you don’t dig into what makes them human, you get DC.

The problem is that they obviously knew that at one point. If you go to the origins of Marvel with Iron Man, you don’t get a movie about a convoluted Multiverse with a villain who turned evil because of a cop-out book that makes people evil;

You got God damn Iron Man.

You watched the film and saw the transformation of a rich man named Tony Stark who knew nothing but pleasure and ecstasy, who’s ego made hot air balloons jealous, get humbled over the course of a feature film and become Iron Man. And although he was humble by the end, he still kept some of that ego he had before because he is human.

Iron Man was such a compelling character because by the end of his life, he had been through every possible tragedy the universe would allow. Iron Man at the end of his life made a decision Tony Stark from the beginning wouldn’t; the decision to sacrifice himself to save the Universe.

Marvel doesn’t write characters that well anymore because they are too busy trying to write a plot surrounding the characters. The plot of Marvel phase 1-3 can be very neatly surmised as the development and conclusion of a group of troubled people who learned to be better people through sacrifice, humility, and learning to accept their flaws. Whereas Phase 4+ cannot.

I used to love Marvel, I appreciated their films and looked up to their characters as a kid, and now I find it very hard to imagine anyone looking up to any one of the current protagonists. (With the exception of Peter Parker, they’ve done Spider Man very well.) My only hope is that in the future, Marvel will finally dig deep into these characters, and really show how these super-humans overcome their greatest flaws in the most human way.

That’s my Spiel, if you have enjoyed this piece, please consider liking to let me know you’ve enjoyed it and subscribing if you want more pieces like this randomly popping into your inbox. I have enabled paid subscriptions, so if you want to feed my coffee addiction, please consider doing that as well.