Variety<\/em> had a new report yesterday<\/a> about the many challenges facing the Marvel Cinematic Universe. From new Marvel villain Jonathan Majors\u2019 significant legal issues<\/a> to the overworked and recently organized VFX teams, the piece is a fascinating look at what happens when a company focuses too much on the business of making entertainment and not on the entertainment itself. It\u2019s clear the studio is losing the trust of audiences, but its latest move to regain it seems to be less about fixing the problems and more about assigning blame to others. The latest scapegoat is The Marvels<\/em>, the franchise\u2019s next big superhero movie. And that has me confused, because the majority of the big issues with The Marvels<\/em> are not, as Variety<\/em>\u2019s story implies, the fault of the filmmakers or unique to that film. They\u2019re the end state of Disney\u2019s grand Marvel design.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ostensibly, the messaging for The Marvels<\/em> should be easy, right? The Marvels<\/em> is a sequel to the 2019 blockbuster Captain Marvel<\/em>. That film broke loads of box-office records, including at one point being the 23rd highest grossing film of all time<\/em>. It stars Oscar winner Brie Larson, who is currently also enjoying success in the Apple TV romance drama Lessons in Chemistry<\/em>. She\u2019s joined by Teyonah Parris, one of the breakout stars of 2021\u2019s WandaVision,<\/em> and Iman Vellani, who anchored 2022\u2019s Ms. Marvel<\/em> with a heroic level of infectious enthusiasm. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s directed by Nia DaCosta, who grabbed everyone\u2019s attention with 2021\u2019s Candyman<\/em><\/a> (produced by Jordan Peele) and is currently shooting Hedda<\/em> with Tessa Thompson. Contrary to most films, The Marvels<\/em> is also apparently going to be a breezy 105 minutes<\/a> \u2014 just what people have been begging for! And it\u2019s going to be a comedy about three heroines coming together to form a team \u2014 which many women, myself included, have been wishing for since this whole universe kicked off 15 years ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the buzz coming out of Disney around The Marvels<\/em> is so bleak, I\u2019ve been left wondering why the company even wants to release the film because it sure doesn\u2019t seem to have much confidence in it. Some of the biggest bad buzz is around the news that DaCosta moved onto her next project, Hedda<\/em>, while The Marvels<\/em> was still in postproduction. It can be a very bad sign if a director leaves a film\u2019s production while it\u2019s still being made, but it can also be a good thing. Steven Spielberg shot Schindler\u2019s List<\/em> while Jurassic Park<\/em> was in post, and Wong Kar-wai did the same with Chungking Express<\/em> while Ashes of Time<\/em> was in post. Moreover, and I really want to stress this part, this is how movies and TV shows are made at Marvel<\/a>. Some filmmakers even refuse to work with the studio<\/a> because it holds so much creative power over the finished project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s why I was so surprised to see DaCosta get any of the blame here. Particularly when the larger problem \u2014 the one that has necessitated major reshoots<\/a> and delays for the film<\/a> \u2014 sounds like it\u2019s a scripting one. According to Variety<\/em>\u2019s reporting and previous rumors, the original script didn\u2019t account for properly introducing the film\u2019s many characters \u2014 presuming the audience already knew them from WandaVision <\/em>and Ms. Marvel<\/em>. That\u2019s led to a lot of confusion and the four weeks of reshoots. And if the filmmakers had had the time to sit with the script, the reshoots (and oddly pointed bad buzz) might not have been necessary. (It might have also saved a lot of other Marvel films and TV shows. Almost every recent series and film has had some degree of similar reshoots.<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the bad buzz isn\u2019t just coming from within the Mouse\u2019s House. It\u2019s also coming from analysts. According to Variety<\/em>\u2019s <\/em>sources, it\u2019s on track to open at $75 to $80 million. That\u2019s less than its prequel, which was one of Marvel\u2019s rare good films of the last few years. That\u2019s also less than the absolute stinker Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness<\/em>, which opened at $185 million and which I\u2019d argue was where Disney really went off the rails into making truly awful films we\u2019re expected to see because we all love a \u201cshared universe.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And that\u2019s the bigger issue here. Disney\u2019s been making garbage, which makes people less inclined to watch new stuff on the off chance it\u2019s garbage, too. Films like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania<\/em> and Thor: Love and Thunder <\/em>have occasionally cool moments in them, pasted together by increasingly shoddy CGI and far too much focus on reminding us of the bigger cinematic universe instead of giving us the well-made adventure films that were the engine of the MCU\u2019s success for a very long time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I don\u2019t want to put on rose-colored glasses and say every early Marvel film was better than what\u2019s coming out today. I sat through all of Iron Man 2<\/em> in the theaters. I remember Avengers: Age of Ultron,<\/em> too. But as the MCU has become more and more successful, it\u2019s become a victim of its own hubris. It started to imitate the comic industry that inspired it: shoddily putting together solo projects that always feed into some big crossover event and that usually require you to catch up with a bunch of other solo projects regardless of whether you want to, all while being pretty devoid of well-thought-out or consistent characterizations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The studio has also let projects balloon in budget with the understanding that it can be \u201cfixed in post.\u201d \u201cKevin\u2019s real superpower, his genius, has always been in postproduction and getting his hands on movies and making sure that they finished strongly,\u201d one source told Variety<\/em>. They were referring to Marvel superproducer Kevin Feige and blamed the fact that \u201che\u2019s spread thin\u201d for some of Marvel\u2019s decline in quality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That may be true \u2014 but that was always a terrible way to make a movie. Fixing it in post is what you do because you didn\u2019t plan things well enough \u2014 or didn\u2019t have a strong enough vision from the outset. It can save a picture, but more often than not, it\u2019s putting rouge on a pig. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n And this year, it finally seemed to break Marvel Studios. One of the reasons, according to the Variety<\/em> piece, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania<\/em>\u2019s graphics look like they came out of a \u201990s syndicated fantasy show is because the film\u2019s release date was switched with The Marvels\u2019, <\/em>and the already overworked VFX team had to push its postproduction schedule by four and a half months. If your whole philosophy is fixing it in post, then axing any of that time is going to make for a worse film a lot of us have to sit through.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n