Marvel mania is over: How the comic book super-franchise started to unravel in 2023

Marvel has a problem.

Iron Man, Thor, even the Hulk can't fix what’s broken over at the once-infallible movie and TV studio that's largely responsible for our superhero-saturated zeitgeist. And what especially won’t fix it is a Disney+ series about those superheroes.

For much of 2023, the comic-book adaptation machine has struggled to deliver hits both critically and commercially, at the box office and on the small screen:

• “The Marvels,” the follow-up to 2019’s “Captain Marvel” starring Brie Larson, had the franchise’s worst-ever opening weekend box office, with $47 million domestically.

• Episodes of 2022 series “She-Hulk” reportedly cost more to make than an installment in the final season of “Game of Thrones.”

• Rotten Tomatoes scores have cratered for new movies and series, after years of highly positive reviews.

• Fans have pointed out shoddy special effects in this year’s “Ant-Man: Quantumania" and other Marvel features and series.

• And then there's Jonathan Majors, the villain in the “Loki” series and “Quantumania,” who is meant to be a huge part of future films but is on trial on charges of domestic violence.

Even Disney CEO Bob Iger recently acknowledged that Marvel has "diluted" its brand (without admitting that it was mostly his strategy that got the company here).

So what happened to the seemingly invincible purveyor of pop-culture phenomena?

It’s the inevitable result of the Disney-owned brand’s strategy to use its A-level talent and biggest superhero names to prop up streaming service Disney+, and the general Hollywood maxim that more is better (spoiler alert: it's not). There were six Marvel projects across theatrical and streaming this year (evenly split among films and series); eight in 2022 (three films, three series and two "special presentations"); and nine in 2021 (four films and five series).

A glut of content has watered down the brand, as Iger acknowledged, but also created a barrier to entry for some movies that seemingly required knowledge of the TV shows to fully understand. That meant “WandaVision” became semi-required viewing for “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” and new Marvel stars like Hailee Steinfeld and Julia Louis-Dreyfus made their first appearances in TV shows, not films.

"I always say when the lights go down and a movie starts, it's a clean slate," Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said at a 2021 news conference for TV critics shortly after the debut of "WandaVision," the first Disney+ Marvel series. That's a noble goal, but anyone who has seen any of the 33 Marvel movies knows that prior knowledge is almost always a requirement.

The Marvel brand is no longer enough to sell any random project to viewers, and it is clear the people at the studio didn't realize this in time for "The Marvels" and other efforts. Splashing Marvel all over TV makes the theatrical films less essential. And they likely lost moviegoers. The more shows and movies Marvel debuted, the less vital each installment became. Disney+ series starring a big hero such as the new Captain America (Anthony Mackie) or Loki (Tom Hiddleston) may have brought in subscribers, but at what cost?

The lack of coherent marketing and the Hollywood strikes, which prevented stars from promoting their projects, made it even harder for casual viewers to understand the connections between the films and series this year. How could fans know that "The Marvels" had deep links to two TV series (two of its three heroes were introduced in Disney+ series) if Larson and her co-stars couldn't tell them? How are they to know that the upcoming "Echo" (streaming on Disney+ Jan. 10) is a "Hawkeye" spinoff if they didn't bother catching "Hawkeye" in the first place?

It's a whole lot of Marvel to digest; the studio prioritized quantity without much quality. Marvel created an assembly line that shoots out middling, predictable and (literally and figuratively) out-of-focus narratives at an almost alarming rate. Particularly in the TV series, storytelling is sloppy and often unfinished. When Majors’ Kang the Conqueror first appeared in "Loki" in 2021, his character didn't so much as solve the mystery of the TV series' first season as serve as a promotional vehicle for future Marvel films. It was a great show up until that moment.

This year's Samuel L. Jackson vehicle "Secret Invasion" didn't make sense even if you had seen the movies that created its backstory, and it was dreadfully dull. Even the good series suffer from the forced interconnectedness that feeds the Marvel machine. Iman Vellani made a brilliant debut as Ms. Marvel in her own self-titled series in 2022, but the show was so much better when it stayed down on Earth in teen hero Khamala Khan's high school community rather than jumping into the Marvel Cinematic Universe fray.

"I don't want to apologize for making sequels," Iger said in his recent comments. "Some of them have done extraordinarily well and they've been good films, too. I think you know there has to be a reason to make them; you have to have a good story. And often the story ... is not as strong as the original story. That can be a problem."

The stories aren't holding up, sequel or no. Watching a Marvel TV show or movie these days is like wandering around in the dark. Perhaps you'll trip over good plots, good characters or fun fight scenes, but there's no guarantee. What you are likely to find is confusion, frustration and that you'll lose interest quickly.

There was a better way. Before Disney+ joined the streaming wars, Marvel's TV shows were spread out on different networks and streamers and were mostly self-contained, and largely unconnected to the movies. So if you never caught "Cloak and Dagger" on Freeform, it didn't matter when you bought a ticket to "Avengers: Endgame." Many of those shows were excellent (although some were terrible), and you only had to watch several dozen two-hour movies to catch the next Marvel flick, not several dozen six-hour TV shows, too. And those TV shows were better because they were focused on their own stories, not some grand "Phase IV" strategy.

So where does Marvel go from here? It's hard to say. Rival DC Comics, owned by Warner Bros. Studios, doesn't seem to have much of a coherent plan, either. In the past decade it has released live action and animated series piecemeal, and it will have a Colin Farrell-starring "Penguin" series on Max in 2024. The studio is restarting its movie universe completely under the stewardship of director James Gunn (formerly a Marvel man) after this month's "Aquaman" sequel. It's certainly more chaotic and less connected than Marvel's strategy, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily better.

More Marvel movies and shows are in the works, because Hollywood works on a long-lead timeline.

• There are three Disney+ series − "Echo," "WandaVision" spinoff "Agatha: Darkhold Diaries" and the "X-Men: The Animated Series" revival "X-Men '97" − planned for 2024, but only "Deadpool 3" in theaters. (Spider-Man-related films "Madame Web," "Kraven the Hunter" and "Venom 3" are also due in 2024, but are owned and will be released by Sony Pictures.)

• The strikes caused Marvel to delay "Captain America: Brave New World" until February 2025, "Thunderbolts" to July 2025 and a "Blade" remake to November of that year.

• Majors' legal troubles put the fate of the still-scheduled "Avengers: The Kang Dynasty" (May 1, 2026) and "Avengers: Secret Wars" (May 7, 2027) in limbo.

But I doubt they'll learn from their mistakes. After all, superheroes aren't known for being humble or taking criticism.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Marvel fatigue: The comic book super franchise started to fail in 2023