When you think about Iron Man 1-3, Thor 1-3, Captain America 1-2, the first Ant Man, the Guardians movies, the first Black Panther-- these were not movies designed to be The Next Episode of A Larger Universe, spending a ton of time setting up other characters or future stories to be told in other franchises. They were stories designed around a clear character arc. And those character arcs made us like those characters. There was a post-credit tag, sure, or sometimes a buddy from another movie would roll through... but the movies were still mostly isolated, still driven by main characters we cared about.

Now Iron Man's gone, Captain America's gone, Black Panther's gone, James Gunn is gone so the Guardians are gone. The last Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, and Thor movies had some fun individual elements but definitely weren't movies rooted around character arcs that made us care about the characters and made us think "I NEED to see what happens next to them!" (Doctor Strange had Wanda, who people cared about, but now she's gone too.) Tom Holland says he's taking a break from acting. So, like... who do we have left that mass audiences truly *care* about?

They have a ton of characters in way too many movies and TV shows, but in their rush to glut the market with content, the storytelling and-- perhaps more importantly-- the style/visuals of these movies have really suffered. It's hard to earn trust back in a brand unless they can crank out consecutive hits in a row. And sure, the movies are still making money today, but the overall trend line is also very clearly pointing downward since Endgame. They'll have a hit in Deadpool 3, but that's also because it's playing the nostalgia card with Hugh Jackman's Wolverine-- the same card the last Spider-Man movie played. Like, eventually, you'll run out of people to bring back, lol. Captain America 4 isn't going to work-- Mackie is good but not a guy you build your cinematic universe around. Thunderbolts is a disaster waiting to happen. They need to stop dicking around with these "let's make each new movie/TV show a new episode in the universe's journey!" and focus on making good straight forward character-driven stories.

And the stuff about Blade in that article makes me worried they may just be increasingly out of touch with what the audience wants, lol. Blade isn't complicated! It's John Wick with vampires! Give Blade someone to care about, have a big vampire kill that person, have Blade murder a bunch of henchman vampires using cool anti-vampire weapons, end with the fight with the Big Bad. It's so insanely uncomplicated! Why must the suits try to complicate everything by saying "but how can we add more characters and expand the cinematic universe?" You expand the universe by making ONE good character in ONE good movie and letting the audience give a shit about them!

So I think it's honestly not hard to envision Marvel turning things around-- they need to pare down, focus on characters, make their movies into events instead of episodes, let the directors actually put a personal stamp on their movies, and give FX houses enough pay and time to make the movies not look like muddy digital shit. That's a lot of things-- kind of like re-directing a battleship, it takes time for the turn to execute-- but it wouldn't be *that* hard. The question becomes: do we think Marvel wants to do that? Or do they want to just keep announcing Big Team Up Movies and Shows to give the next quarter's stock a temporary boost? Given how many studios don't view movies as movies anymore, but as mere assets in a grander conglomerate shareholder report, it's easy to get cynical. But since I grew up on Marvel comics, I'd love for them to figure it out.