Forget The X-Men And Fantastic Four - Reboot The MCU With Fewer Heroes

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The crown has well and truly slipped off Kevin Feige and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Since the publication of Variety’s expose of the troubles at Marvel - an actor accused of abuse, unfinished CGI, rewrites and reduced budgets - there’s been talk about introducing more characters, bringing back dead heroes, and giving the MCU the dreaded reboot.

But the problem clearly began when Marvel stretched itself too thin, creating superhero fatigue. After a run of extremely successful integrated movies that culminated in the thrilling Infinity Saga, Marvel and Disney went all in with its TV shows. It forced popular heroes and villains into their own stories, adding cameos, sequels, one-offs, animated shorts, eventually piling up a roster of characters on top of one another in an interlocking narrative that only made sense with a very long ball of string and a forgiving shrug.

When you have to organise all your shows and movies on your own streaming service in multiple menus - watch in release order, watch in timeline order, watch in character arcs - then you’ve created your own problem. As The Boys and Gen V showrunner Eric Kripke pointed out recently, “we try to keep the timeline super simple because all that folding-in-on-itself timeline stuff that I think other comic book universes find themselves having to do is just bewildering for me as a viewer”.

Adding more characters isn’t a problem in itself, but a lack of quality control saw the mediocre shows (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye) go up against better titles (Loki, WandaVision) and become muddled in the process. Add in attempts at different genres - the gags of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, the visual experimentation of teen drama Ms Marvel - and you have an audience overwhelmed with options, tone, consistency and choice. You can watch them all and feel swamped with good, bad, and ultimately, indifferent content. Or you can pick the ones you’re curious about knowing you might miss something relevant to a movie or show you'll maybe watch three years later.

This influx of characters came at the same time of Marvel’s obsession with incorporating shows and movies into a multiverse. Again, the concept of a multiverse can be fun and Marvel can pull it off. In Dr Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, director Sam Raimi had a ball, introducing Earth 838 versions of Reed Richards, Professor X and Black Bolt, before promptly and violently killing them off. It turns out death can be a neat ending. Who knew? Not Marvel’s execs, because the multiverse is still unravelling.

Now the multiverse has become less a story arc, and more a clumsy tool to try to wrap up loose ends, unnecessary complexities and bloat. The MCU has come up against the exact problem the Marvel comic book world has faced so many times before - too many characters, poorly handled, knotty relationships, and crossovers that break the timeline and consistency of other stories.

This character intrusion is happening right now in the MCU, with Jonathan Majors’ Kang The Conqueror as the thread through multiple movies released, releasing, and yet to come until at least 2027. Some have been decent, some forgettable. But if you go into one movie already confused about a character and come away with little conclusion, it all starts to feel disposable. I really want to see The Marvels, but have I got to watch the risible Secret Invasion to get the full story? It’s exhausting.

And yet we’re now at a point where it looks like the X-Men are going to be featured in The Marvels, before getting their own movies now that Marvel has regained the rights from 21st Century Fox. Add to that the Fantastic Four, a super family due another reboot, and it’s exasperating. Oh, and how about bringing back dead heroes like Robert Downey’s Jr’s Iron Man and Scarlet Johansson’s Black Widow? Sure, throw them in the pot and stir it up, who cares what it tastes like.

Marvel and Disney need to understand that it’s okay to strip all of this back. Stories can be told without five other major characters from other movies and shows popping up for a punch up, a cameo, a cheap gag or a blatant advert.

A Fantastic Four movie that just features the soap opera of the Richards’ family dynamic will work. The problem is that these characters come with so much baggage. If Marvel puts together a Fantastic Four movie then it has to consider the supporting characters forever associated with those heroes - Dr Doom, Silver Surfer, and Galactus, plus regular team-up buddy Spider-Man, to name a few. The success and expectation weighs down production before it has even started. But pre-MCU movie Logan proved that just a pinch of X-Men works just as well as the entire mutant roster. There's no harm in taking things lightly. Show a little restraint and care for just one character and they'll shine.

Variety’s report points to a number of problems that bothers Marvel and its execs. But fans will forgive sloppy CGI. They’re not going to cry over Blade’s budget being less than $100 million. They’ll accept a different actor playing Kang, because as Captain America star Chris Evans pointed out recently - the fans are there for the hero, not the actor. We’re not in it for a Havok and Banshee spin-off, or a Human Torch cameo in the next Spider-Man movie. It’s all about the stories. It’s all about the characters.

The start of the MCU was a big, brave, and expensive gamble that comic book and action movie fans would follow the story of just six mainline superheroes to a conclusion in the first Avengers movie. Just six! The current spaghetti of characters, heroes and villains, thrown out across sequels and teases, TV and mediocre movies, just isn’t working.

Marvel and Disney need to be brave again. To hold its nerve, and reduce its output. To make a single story with just a handful of heroes, a villainous antagonist, some real star-power, and have it feel like an actual event-movie once again.