Is the Marvel Cinematic Universe Becoming Bloated?
The great thing about having nerds for friends is the odd places conversations will take you. A little while back I got to talking with some friends about the then newly released Doctor Strange film to see if we could pin down where in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) timeline its events take place. After a thorough discussion and many hot dogs ordered to use as timeline markers one of my group offered a startling confession: He was done with Marvel. This wasn’t because of a fall off in quality in the films nor was it an issue of too many releases: three per year really isn’t that bad. His reason was that films today are too complicated. The various narratives are complex and are increasingly interwoven.
That got me thinking. As much as we’ve enjoyed the MCU, have multiple stories become overwhelming? Well, let’s look at story structures. Phase 1 saw several introduction films and was rife with origin stories with the set up for Avengers really just being in Thor and slightly in Captain America. The brilliance of this was that when Avengers began, all of our characters had already gone through the main thrust of their character arcs. We didn’t need to develop them much further since they were the fully realized versions of themselves and now we got to see them work together.
From there, began the expansion and build up into Age of Ultron. Each series continued the development of its own characters, while adding to the shared world space. Again, this is same formula as before. Characters develop in their own series and when they get to share a space again, we get to see full characters working together the next time there’s an Avengers film. But that’s where things started to come apart a bit.
The Avengers
The first Avengers film introduced us to Hawkeye. He got some development, as did Black Widow and the new Hulk. That’s fine since so much more of the cast are already fully developed. With Age of Ultron, we were suddenly introducing and providing character arcs for Ultron, the Maximoff twins and Vision. This happened while continuing to develop characters that play secondary roles like the romance between Banner and Romanov and Clint Barton’s family. Additionally, for the first time there were good reasons why it was important for you to watch previous films in order to understand major plot points, namely Captain America the Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy. The first film explained why SHIELD was no longer around but the Avengers were. Guardians of the Galaxy provides you with an explanation of what the Infinity Stones are, so there is impact when the Soul Gem is revealed.
A Maze of Narratives
Phase 3 began and now we have gotten to the point where major plot points depend on you having watched other films. The term Infinity Stone has different meaning and depends on you having watched Age of Ultron and Guardians of the Galaxy. Even more, this is critically important information with regards to Doctor Strange. Captain America Civil War required the viewing of all the Iron Man films plus the Avengers and made allusions to Thor and Hulk, which we won’t have answers for until Thor 3. Hell Black Panther and Spiderman Homecoming are the first titles in their respective series but the characters were already introduced in a Captain America film, which makes it required viewing for both of them. Yes, the universe is getting more complex and interwoven and it has gotten to the point where you cannot miss a Marvel film because you’ll be missing needed information.
Is complexity in films a bad thing?
At first glance, yes it is. By having major plot points shared between films, the MCU expects people to see films they may otherwise not be interested in. After the first Thor movie, I was basically done with his character. There are plenty of people who didn’t care for Captain America: The First Avenger, or Doctor Strange, or even the Iron Man films. With the first two phases, you could get away with choosing what to watch but that is no longer the case. Thor Ragnarok could be good but frankly I just do not care about him or even Loki anymore. But I can’t skip it because there is a chance it will be hugely important later. If you didn’t like Doctor Strange, you’ll still need to see its sequel because it will most likely be important.
This is the same problem that the comic industry has with major crossover events. That in order to know what is going on, we need to grind through what we don’t like. What’s more is the worry that it’s a cash grab. Why let people choose what they want to see, when it’s expected they watch all the films if they want to understand everything.
Confusion With Complexity
The biggest problem with this is that with complexity comes a level of confusion. Casual viewers of these films are losing the main thread that events are leading towards (Thanos) as more and more characters, places, artifacts and secondary stories are coming into play. In addition, the release schedule for films doesn’t match up with the MCU timeline. For example, Doctor Strange takes place over the course of several other Marvel films and Ragnarok runs parallel to Civil War. Will Homecoming and Black Panther also run parallel to other narratives? Does one relate to the other in some way? How will Guardians of the Galaxy 2 affect things? With more and more tangent stories happening at the same time, you may gain in character and world building but you lose out on forward timeline momentum. Furthermore, it means you need to remember ever more of the back-story in order to understand how characters relate to each other and why things occur the way they do.
The Flip Side
Added complexity is not a bad thing. First of all, with complexity comes richness. We get to explore more of the wider world and see how it functions and adapts to things like super heroes and planet ending threats. We get introduced to lore like the Infinity Stones and hints of ever-greater beings like the Celestials and the Living Tribunal. Then there is the interweaving of stories like Tony’s parents and the Winter Soldier, or the existence of Thor prompting a military build up. All of this is engaging does what Tolkien did especially well, which is give a sense of establishment and reality to an unreal world. You are less likely to question the leaps of imagination needed to have a being like Vision when you’ve already accepted the leaps it took to accept Thor and Hulk as being real. This opens the door for richer territory to astonish and astound.
Quality Above Quantity
To say the industry expects you to invest and see every movie may be accurate but so what? When all of the films have been quality movies and there is a vested interest in keeping that quality going forward, doesn’t everyone win? Yes Marvel and Disney have great box office success, but we also get to be entertained on an unimaginable scale.
It is merely a theory that all the Pixar films happen in the same universe. It is objectively true that the MCU is all tied together. What’s more, because of the dedication to making good films, you never really have to “struggle” through a movie. I mentioned earlier that I don’t care for Thor much but that doesn’t mean that I dislike the Thor films. In my view, they are a fun time with some interesting ideas and some poor points of execution. I still have fun when I watch them because there are still parts that I enjoy in them. In fact, you can even say that these films make it harder for later films to be bad. Doctor Strange was the first origin movie we had, since Ant Man and both of them, by virtue of being part of an established world, didn’t need to spend additional time acclimating viewers to a world where these sorts of things are possible. That gives over more screen time for character development and action since a fair bit of exposition is done. We’ll see how well they do the solo films for Spiderman and Black Panther since both of those characters have already been introduced. We got all of Black Panther’s origin in Civil War and Spiderman is in his suit and established. Again, more time for the other components and stories.
The Epic Scale
The biggest boon however is with regards to development. If we look at the Star Wars films the Clone War is staggeringly poorly depicted. It starts at the end of Episode 2 and is over by the end of the second act of Episode 3. We saw almost nothing of Anakin and Obi-Wan forging a strong bond together nor the sheer horror that was a galaxy spanning war in which millions upon millions died. But then we had the Clone Wars Animated series. We saw stories and adventures, horror and loss. Brothers in arms and grand betrayals. The Clone Wars are better told through the lens of a television series because there is so much to cover. You need the added time to explore these stories and themes; explore the epic scale, they are due. The story of Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet is absolutely MASSIVE. In the comics, its scale was nothing shy of universal. Everyone and everything took part in the story arc and that’s what we are building to. Something of such epic scale NEEDS a properly explorative serialized narrative. On that note we can look at the MCU less as connected movies and more as a sort of long form video series. How many amazing character moments have been able to happen because of that? How much more rewarding is the action when you’ve had so much build up?
What do you think?
Is the added complexity of the MCU providing for richer ground or is this doomed to failure? Furthermore what lessons can the DC Extended Universe learn from this and how will the Monsters Universe (beginning with The Mummy) make use of this structure?
