Victoria Alonso, president of Marvel physical production, post-production, visual effects and animation has been fired amidst allegations of toxic workplace behaviour and a flagging film flagship.

Marvel became an entertainment giant by thumbing their nose at the industry norm of spitting out garbage sequels to great films, and endless reboots. Beginning with Iron Man in 2008 they made a series of marvellous movies.

Disney were quick to realise the potential of the studio and acquired them in 2009 meaning that they have been a part of Marvel's success from very nearly the beginning.

At some point the wheels came off.

Some regard Eternals as the turning and also absolute low point.

Others just all of phase four as a disaster.

We've been rewatching the films recently with this question in mind and would say it was 2018's Ant-Man and The Wasp.

From that point on it gets messy and films of the same calibre as those in their early days become the exception, eg. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

We enjoyed the first Black Panther film and sequel Wakanda Forever had the same director and writers so we expected it to be another great exception.

It wasn't.

Their most recent offering Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is currently tied with Eternals on Rotten Tomatoes as the worst rated MCU film.

The Marvel movie machine is clearly broken.

But how?

Last year Marvel's Joe Quesada resigned as executive vice president and creative director.

As is the case in any resignation or firing the truth may not ever be known by those outside of the company but we read his position as being broadly across quality.

Maybe he could see this writing on the wall and whether he was responsible or not was expecting executive heads to roll in the near future.

Didn't want it to be his and stepped out of the firing line.

Defenders of the freshly fired Victoria blame Disney for expecting too much of Marvel.

Having entered the streaming provider race to compete with Netflix, Disney leaned heavily on Marvel to produce not only films at breakneck speed but also television series for Disney+.

Some also argue that even had they maintained original quality levels, Disney were still over-saturating the market with Marvel content.

Other Victoria defenders claim that a senior executive bullying staff isn't believable.

Picture us laughing.

We don't presume either way on these or other allegations in general but senior executives being bullies doesn't stretch our imagination in the slightest.

When remarking on Joe's resignation we said that we'd seen his name many flash across the screen many times over the years and recognised it.

The same is also true of Victoria's and hers is one of the few executive female names to do that on Marvel films.

Many lament that her firing removes an openly gay woman of colour from a senior role.

As it happens she's married to an Australian actress, Imelda Corcoran who has played a few minor Marvel roles in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.

Our takeaway is this - we will probably never know if Victoria deserved to be fired but we do know that the public perceive firing as "action".

Something has definitely gone wrong at Marvel and firing her sends the message that Marvel know and are trying to remedy it.

This is their way of saying, "Stick with us. We'll turn things around."

But to our eye they've got the wrong end of the production stick.

We can recall a few scenes from recent Marvel films with arguably imperfect visual effects but in impact those pale in comparison to writing and / or directing problems.

So we don't expect Victoria's firing to fix Marvel.

If things improve it would be because Marvel also make other unpublicised changes.

[ Main Image: Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania - Michelle Pfeiffer. Credit: Marvel via IMDb.com. ]

References

Chanliau, Pierre (March 21, 2023). Marvel Studios’ Toxic Workplace Accusations Arise Following Exec Shakeup. TheDirect.

Donnelly, M. & Vary, A. B. (March 22, 2023). Inside Victoria Alonso’s Shocking Exit From Marvel Studios. Variety.

Rotten Tomatoes. All Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranked by Tomatometer. (viewed March 24, 2023)

Wikipedia. Victoria Alonso. (viewed March 24, 2023)