Marvel Phase Four will kick off in the new year with The Black Widow and The Eternals, plus a whole lot of TV stuff on Disney+, meaning that this should be a time of rejoicing for any Marvel Cinematic Universe fan, which at this point in time, appears to be literally everyone, and not obsessing over what might ruin things.
Except there’s a problem brewing.
See, the entire journey over the past decade was building to Endgame, now officially the most successful film of all time. We met our heroes, we saw the Avengers form – hey, remember when there was only six of them? Ah, it was a simpler time! – and then expand and splinter and make up and finally all unite to defeat the elemental forces of time and space itself!
And now things have smashed.
We appear to have lost Iron Man (dead), Black Widow (dead), Captain America (elderly) and Hulk (Endgame-injury), while Spider-Man, the character that seemed most likely to be the new Iron Man-figure around whom the remaining heroes might congeal, has been lost to a labyrinthine legal battle over the film rights.
And while there are still some names in there – Dr Strange’s next film will be in 2021, as will Thor’s, and new films for Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther and Captain Marvel are currently pencilled in for Phase Five – a lot of the established names seem to be headed for TV rather than the big screen: Hawkeye, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Loki, even Ant-Man and the Wasp.
So a lot of the casual fan favourites are now unavailable or repurposed, but that’s not even the biggest problem.
Just have a think about the Marvel films you loved most – it was the team ups, right?
Certainly that’s what the box office receipts say. Of the highest grossing MCU films, the all-in team ups are all in the top tend: Avengers: Endgame at #1, Avengers: Infinity War #3, The Avengers at #4, Avengers: Age of Ultron #5, and Captain America: Civil War (an Avengers film in all but name) at #8.
The message in those numbers is that people want to see their heroes livin’, learnin’ and lovin’ together, but Endgame kinda did the ultimate version of that. So where is there to go from here? It feels like there’s nowhere but down, at least in the next three-to-five years.
And sure, there are plenty of reasons to think that the Fantastic Four and the X-Men are being prepped for their MCU debuts in Phase Six, as well as rumblings that Dr Doom and Galactacus will be the new big bads of the MCU. But that’s not coming until 2025 at the earliest. That’s a long time to expect casual fans to wait.
So none of this is insurmountable – after all, it took a decade-plus to build from The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man to Endgame – but are audiences going to keep caring at Endgame-levels until Wolverine and Mr Fantastic finally turn up?
So, will Phase Four be the moment when Marvel’s ambitious dreams fell into ruin? Eh, let’s see how The Eternals and Shang-Chi And The Ten Rings go and reassess.