To say that a bit of news about the Marvel Cinematic Universe came out of this weekend's San Diego Comic-Con would be so far beyond an understatement that it would be in another universe.

Starting with that. MCU phase four has been drastically shortened and phases four to six are now officially designated The Multiverse Saga.

Funnily enough we watched freshly arrived on Binge Spider-Man: No Way Home last week and it was probably as good as the previous two Spider-Man films.

But it didn't satisfy.

Unable to identify anything objectively wrong or lacking we realised that we're just that over the multiverse.

We remarked on the dangers of overdoing the multiverse when this movie hit cinemas last year.

A big part of the appeal of the MCU and their films is that it's one ongoing fictional world.

The multiverse / alternate realities or dimensions can be employed to good effect to show a "what if" some event had unfolded differently and look at how known characters become different people etc.

But it's a storytelling device typically employed sparingly in science fiction properties in part because it takes a certain amount of effort to care about any fictional world.

Once you start exploding that world out into including alternates, that property both becomes more high maintenance and also potentially less impactful.

Does it matter what the outcome is of any given movie is, if you know that in alternate dimensions, it worked out a hundred different ways?

Marvel clearly aren't finished with or side-lining it.

Oh well.

Previously phase four had been scheduled as 2021-2023 and included five more films and several new series.

Now it will end with the next Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Just recently we were commenting on how disappointing this phase had been.

Disney might have decided to draw a line under and put it behind them.

Possibly a sensible move but only if they're confident that what is now phase five content will be better.

Which will begin with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in early 2023.

What Tanked Phase Four?

In light of the recent revelation that Warner Bros. appear to have been driven aground in part by social media fakery, we wonder if Marvel may have also veered off course based on following poor directions.

Here's how we think this may have rolled out.

The recent Star Wars trilogy and Star Trek series were dishonestly praised by critics.

Probably because they have improved diversity.

Improved diversity is great but bad entertainment is bad entertainment.

Trust in critics took a big hit so they couldn't afford to repeat that lie.

When Eternals came along and was definitely below Marvel's high standards, critics didn't try to misrepresent it as great.

They praised Chloe Zhao and blamed things like "the Marvel formula".

We saw it. The directing is unquestionably not poor but definitely sub-par for the MCU.

Eternals being only her fourth film, she did well, but her lack of experience directing actors during filming made her a poor choice.

There's also Thor: Ragnarok which managed to reinvigorate one of the weaker arms of the franchise.

Earlier Thor films hadn't been poor but his was one of the least relatable characters in the MCU.

Ragnarok both flipped that on its head and was also comedically brilliant.

In phase four it looked like Marvel tried to both depart from "the Marvel formula" and inject more comedy.

To ill effect.

There's also the scale factor.

Marvel Studios had a fairly solid history of pumping out several very good to excellent films every year but when the Disney+ streaming service launched in 2019 and Disney looked to Marvel to provide much more content, they were forced to massively scale up their output.

Maintaining quality under those conditions and also a pandemic may simply have been impossible.

Here's hoping we have a healthier phase five.

As we said at the beginning of this blog, Marvel had a lot to show at the San Diego Comic-Con and to give it all of it the attention it deserves, we'll take a few days to work our way through it.

[ Main Image: Marvel Phase Five. Credit: IGN via Twitter. ]

References

IGN [@IGN] (July 24, 2022). The MCU's Phase 5 lineup and everything else Marvel revealed at Comic-Con. Twitter.

Wikipedia. Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Five. (viewed July 25, 2022)

Wikipedia. Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Four. (viewed July 25, 2022)