After the release of Thor: Love and Thunder, I postulated that I would be stepping away from the Marvel’s MCU. I also said that after Avengers: Endgame, because what else was going to be as epic as the Infinity Saga? Well, with Phase 4, they’re now leaning heavily into the Multiverse. So much so, that they’ve labeled next couple of phases as the Multiverse Saga. I’m going to be honest: When I first saw Love and Thunder, I enjoyed it to a certain extent, and my review reflects that, but after a couple of months thinking about it, the worse the movie gets. It’s not the only movie during Phase 4 that I’ve had a problem with. The phase started with a poorly timed release of Black Widow which really didn’t need to happen, especially since we know what happened to Natasha Romonoff in Endgame. Eternals I liked, but it was very long. Shang-Chi was the Marvel equivalent of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and it was awesome. Spider-Man: No Way Home was also great. While I really enjoyed Multiverse of Madness, the latest Doctor Strange movie didn’t really blow my socks off. As far as the shows go on Disney Plus, I haven’t been interested in any of them. I tried watching them, but they weren’t working for me. This has been one of the major problems with Phase 4: The quality of projects during this phase has been all over the place. Not only that, there’s been a lot of stuff coming out that really don’t feel connected to one another. What made the Infinity Saga work was the level of focus for those movies. As soon as the first Avengers film hit the screen, the audience and comic book fans knew exactly where these movies were leading us: To Infinity War. Honestly, the MCU has been one of the most ambitious undertakings in movie history. Nothing like it has ever happened before.
But with Phase 4, that focus seems to have been lost. Kevin Feige had come out and said that by the end of Phase 4, we would know where this was all heading. Maybe we’ll find that out with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. I don’t know. Marvel’s facing some serious issues right now. It was recently reported by Hollywood Reporter that the upcoming movie Blade just lost it’s director, Bassam Tariq. Changing of directors happens more often than you would think, whether it’s due to “creative differences” or “scheduling conflicts.” It happens a lot. But for a movie like Blade to lose its director mere weeks before filming is supposed to begin is really bad news. There’s a reason why there was no announcement for Blade at Disney’s D23 event. This was why. What does this mean for the movie? It means the movie’s going to be delayed. You can’t just bring in a new director to pick up the reins and move forward with it. The new director needs time to get everything in order and in place for filming to begin. They have to get familiar with the script and everything that’s been put into place. You can’t do that in just 2 months when the movie was slated to start shooting. That brings us to another problem: It’s also been reported by multiple sources including CBR that there are serious problems with the script. If the reports are accurate, it sounds like the script is incredibly weak with lackluster action sequences. Enough so that Mahershala Ali is reportedly getting incredibly frustrated. Mr. Ali is supposed to be playing the film’s titular character. If this is true, that means the script will have to undergo some serious changes to bring it up to where it needs to be. That means the film will no longer make it’s 2023 release date. Since this movie will most likely be delayed, it’s reasonable to assume that a number of upcoming movies will also be delayed, with the exception of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever as that movie’s already in the can. This is an incredibly bad look for Marvel.
A lot of people were worrying about Marvel trying to do too much at once, and it looks like that’s what’s happening. The cracks are beginning to form. I saw this coming a mile away with Love and Thunder. That movie was so bad that I refuse to buy the Blu-Ray, making it the first MCU movie that I don’t want in my collection. Again, not everything in Phase 4 is awful. There’s some really good stuff in here, but the way Marvel’s been ramping up projects has got Kevin Feige being stretched to the absolute limit. My respect for Mr. Feige is unending, but he IS only human. There’s only so much that he can do. All this is part of the reason why I’ve tried to step away from the MCU. I’m looking forward to Black Panther 2, as it looks really good, and I can’t wait to see how they address Chadwick Boseman’s passing as King T’Challa. The other Marvel project that I’m really looking forward to seeing is Deadpool 3. Earlier this week, Ryan Reynolds announced the release date of the film as well as the inclusion of one Hugh Jackman as the legendary Wolverine for one more adventure. But those two movies are really all that I want to see from Marvel right now. Marvel’s been making the mistakes that Warner Bros. and DC have been making with their Snyderverse. Right now, a lot of this seems to be coming from Disney CEO Bob Chapek’s lack of ability and understanding of what makes movies work. He’s taken control away from the creatives and handed it over to corporate moneymen. We are now seeing the results, which I don’t think are good. Honestly, I would not be surprised if we found out that either Blade gets canceled or that they end up finding somebody else to play the character, because Ali might not stick around. He’s contractually obligated to, but he’s been passing up projects left and right waiting for Blade to start filming. There is some serious mismanagement going on at Marvel and it needs to get sorted out, pronto.