Two years later, with four movies having been released post Endgame (including Spiderman: Far From Home), and four-plus TV shows (WandaVision, Falcon & Winter Soldier, Loki, What If?, and now Hawkeye) I find myself thinking what was once unthinkable: did Marvel outstretch itsef?
I should note, none of the properties I've seen since WandaVision effectively kicked off Phase 4 of Marvel are outright bad. At worst they are blandlessly mediocre (Falcon and Winter Soldier), but all of them just seem a bit off, and more worryingly the only ones that resonated with me featured a lot of people from the era of Marvel it will always try to escape from.
This seems most resonant having really enjoyed the first two episodes of Hawkeye, after finding myself really enjoying Loki. These people I did grow up with, I do still care about. But then again, Sang-Chi is the only movie of the new phase I've enjoyed so far, almost precisely because of how disconnected it was to the larger Multiverse pot. And in reality, I think that is where things are losing me.
Simply put, I think the Multiverse as a concept is just a bit too broad, a bit too far, a bit too mystifying to reasonably do. The band-aid was ripped with Endgame, but at least it still seemed somewhat followable (for as much as quantum-based time travel could be). But with what really started in Loki, and was leaned into fully in What If? and is almost assuredly showing its face in the next Spiderman and the next Dr. Strange movie (if not many other Marvel TV and movie properties), I think this might be too far.
The physics of a multi-verse is about as advanced as you et, and far more so tha what can be reasonably expected for any comic fan. Granted, I do understand this has some basis in the Marvel comics, but again I'm not a comic guy. I'm a movie guy, and seeing these intergalactic, multi-universal problems have taken what is already such a broad conflict board (e.g. Thanos killing trillions across billions of planets) into hyperdrive.
I realize this is very close-minded of me, and honestly maybe I'll end up loving the Multiverse as a canvas-slash-big bad. What I don't appreciate though is with the Multiverse we've seemed to lose any semblance of who is stronger than who and for what reason. In the Infinity Saga there used to be a general sense of powers and a bit of a power ranking - pun intended, in this case. Whether its Wanda in WandaVision, or the Timekeepers in Loki, or basically everyone in What If? powers seem arbitrary, endless and limitless.
I also there's a bit of overload here, with so much content being endlessly thrown at us (granted, some of this crunch is due to Covid delaying the few things that would've come out in 2020), that I do wonder if the quality control is like it used to be - or is Marvel seemingyl happy to throw out a bunch of 'B's instead of focusing on the 2-4 'A' movies it used to.
It's hard to say it;s a bad thing that Kevin Fiege and the Movie folks got more control of the TV side of things. Apart from maybe Jessica Jones, I never got into the earlier Marvel TV content. The shows are better now and it probably is a net positive that there is a connectivity to the movies, but it is asking a lot of us to wathch all that and figure out where the connections are.
Ultimately, there's enough good will here to keep me invested for a while longer, but I for usre see a world where it gets a bit too much, the storylines a bit too intricate and tightly wound (a negative, in this case), and a bit too strained for even me to keep giving it my time. I just hope we get past that Thor movie before it happens.
