Report: Things are So Chaotic at Marvel Studios That They're Considering Bringing All the Original Avengers Back

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Just one man's opinion, but with a couple of notable exceptions, all the content the Marvel Cinematic Universe has put out since Avengers: Endgame has been garbage of varying temperatures. Those exceptions being the time they brought together three different Spider-Men for a well-executed piece of nostalgia bait. And Guardians of the Galaxy 3, which they wisely left in the hands of James Gunn to finish his trilogy before he jumped ship to try and save DC's movie division from destroying itself any worse than it has. 

It pains me to say this about the MCU. I take a back seat to no one when it came to loving what they accomplished between the Iron Man that started it all and the next 22 films. When Endgame came out, the phrase you kept hearing was that audiences had waited 11 years for it. Not me. I'd been waiting my whole life for it. Ever since I was reading Marvel Comics in the back of my mom's faux wood-paneled Country Squire wagon on the way up to my uncle's vacation house in Maine, I'd wanted to see these films. And the project on the whole was a triumphant achievement that perfectly stuck the landing. Thanks in large part to the emotional nurple of watching two of the most beloved characters sacrifice their lives to save the universe. Heroes to the end. 

But since then, it's been mostly cheap, amateurish, slapped together, lazy dreck. Often retconning the characters. And seemingly written and produced by people who were either not familiar with the source material, or hate it and the fans who care about it. 

Again, that's just me. Or so I thought. Because according to a report, the people running the show at Disney's Marvel division recognize how much damage they've done to the brand. There's a lot to unpack here, so I'll just try to hit the highlights:

Variety - This past September, a group of Marvel creatives, including studio chief Kevin Feige, assembled in Palm Springs for the studio’s annual retreat. Most years, the vibe would have been confident. …

But this occasion was angst-ridden — everyone at Marvel was reeling from a series of disappointments on-screen … The most pressing issue to be discussed at the retreat was what to do about Jonathan Majors, the actor who had been poised to carry the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe but instead is headed to a high-profile trial in New York later this month on domestic violence charges. …

Majors was already a big presence in the MCU, including as the scene-stealing antagonist in February’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” And he has been positioned as the franchise’s next big thing in this season of “Loki” — particularly in the finale, which airs on Nov. 9 and sets up Kang as the titular star of a fourth “Avengers” film in 2026. 

“Marvel is truly fucked with the whole Kang angle,” says one top dealmaker.

Making matters worse is Disney has spent a ton of money on the Captain Marvel sequel The Marvels, which is finally coming out next week after years of delays and reshoots. And by all their own estimates, it's going to do less box office than even Quanumania did, and lose them another fortune. And it didn't help that the direct of the movie wasn't around for the redo of a $250 million film she was put in charge of because she was off making some art house, vanity project film that no one will ever see instead. 

And part of the problem with the low quality of a lot of the productions can be laid at the feet of Disney CEO Bob Iger, who needed Disney+ to work in order to boost the company's plummeting stock price:

Feige isn’t the only person showing signs of strain. Marvel’s entire VFX battalion, including staffers and vendors, is struggling to keep pace with a never-ending stream of productions. This past February, when the credits rolled at the world premiere of “Quantumania,” shock rippled through the Regency Village Theatre in Westwood over some shoddy CGI. “There were at least 10 scenes where the visual effects had been added at the last minute and were out of focus,” says one veteran power broker who was there. “It was insane. I’ve never seen something like that in my entire career. Everyone was talking about it. Even the kids of executives were talking about it.” 

So this:

It got so bad that the VFX artists, who were sick of pulling 14 hour work days, walked off the job and unionized. And all this over-production was costly in other ways.

All the while, Marvel was bleeding money, with a single episode of “She-Hulk” costing some $25 million, dwarfing the budget of a final-season episode of HBO’s “Game of Thrones, ” but without a similar Zeitgeist bang. [And at the] August 2022 series premiere … the “She-Hulk” special effects were out of focus in multiple scenes.

The solution? Well, I suppose they could slow down, commit to doing higher quality work going forward, with respect for the characters and stories they're trying to tell and the loyal audience that has made Marvel one of the most recognizable brands in the world. 

Naaahhh. Instead they're talking about just doing what they did before. With the same characters played by the same actors. Even the ones we so lovingly said goodbye to in Endgame.

With Iger publicly acknowledging the downside of a Marvel TV glut that “diluted focus and attention,” the keepers of the comic book empire are considering some dramatic moves. Sources say there have been talks to bring back the original gang for an “Avengers” movie. This would include reviving Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, both of whom were killed off in “Endgame.”

It's ironic this is coming out now, the same week that South Park just went scorched earth on Disney for recycling the same crap over and over again:

To Disney's credit if they do go this route, at least they'd be publicly acknowledging what most of us figured out a few years ago. And what South Park perfectly stated. And that is that the world's biggest studio doesn't have a single person working at it with an original thought or a single cell of creativity in their brains. Seriously, the idea of dusting off Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson again sounds like a subplot t didn't make the final edit in "Panderverse." 

But this to me says it all:

As public criticism mounts, Feige is pulling the plug on scripts and projects that aren’t working. Case in point: the “Blade” reboot. With Mahershala Ali signed on for the eponymous role of a vampire, things looked promising for a 2023 release date. But the project has gone through at least five writers, two directors and one shutdown six weeks before production. One person familiar with the script permutations says the story at one point morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons. Blade was relegated to the fourth lead, a bizarre idea considering that the studio had two-time Oscar winner Ali on board.

You've got Blade, and absolutely fantastic legacy character who could use a reboot after 30 years and a really shitty third installment in which Wesley Snipes was only there for the paycheck and mailed it in. You've got one of the best actors of his generation, perfectly suited to play this badass vampire hunter. So they decided to bury him behind three females and add some life lessons. Girl Bosses killing vamps as a way to fight back against the patriarchy or whatever. It straight up sounds like Cartman's catchphrase from the episode:

At least Feige had the integrity to put the  Blade script in the shredder and start over. Without the pandering. It's just a question of whether Marvel has already done too much damage to the brand to pull out of this tailspin. For now though, it's an example of life imitating art: