Why Does Marvel Feel Soulless?
The franchise has been criticised for feeling "bland" lately. Here's why.
Superhero films have always had their critics — people who (sometimes justifiably) called out the genre for being generic, and — well — bland. But superhero films, like any other cultural media, cannot be uniformly classed into a single box. There are superhero films that have had something to say (and I'm not talking about the embarrassing self-congratulatory spectacle that was Captain Marvel: Marvel's attempt to rebrand as "feminist"). The problem is that, lately, most superhero films don’t seem to be interested in being films. Instead, every Marvel offering these days just feels like bait — you watch it as the studio reels you in to continue forcing the franchise down your throat.
There are criticisms that say that writers who work on big superhero blockbusters are essentially squandering the imaginative potential that the genre has. Maybe some of them are, but let's be real: the problem does not lie with writers, but rather with the industry's studios. In an ideal world, we would be able to extricate culture from its modern form as a capitalist industry and judge it solely based on its artistic merits. But in a world in which culture has been industrialised and commercialised, we must instead approach criticism of it with the knowledge that it isn't only writers and artists and filmmakers who are creating the media we consume, but rather entire teams of producers, executives, investors and marketers, all of whom have a vested interest in generating profit, not in creating art. Or, in the case of politicians and the Pentagon, of producing propaganda. As director Martin Scorsese claimed in an op-ed for the New York Times, modern franchises like Marvel are “market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption.”
Maybe to some (wiser) people, superheroes have always been bland and boring. To the rest of us who looked for every Marvel release like addicts looking for another fix, it is a disappointing thing to come to terms with the fact that the magic that we saw in those films and TV shows just isn't there any more, if it ever was. I have watched every single Marvel release (even, God help me, Iron Fist), but it's been some years now since I stopped feeling happy while watching them. The plots just don't intrigue me and, in my opinion, Marvel's well-known humour has consistently fallen flat in all its recent productions. Projects that should have been thrilling culminations for deserving characters, such as Loki for Loki, or The Falcon and The Winter Soldier for Sam and Bucky, were some of my least favourite Marvel productions ever. Particularly the latter, as it wrapped itself up in the guise of wokeness and liberal leanings while simultaneously failing to truly question the far-reaching consequences of a racist and imperialist military industrial complex. What good does it really do disenfranchised communities in the US and the world over to have a black Captain America as opposed to a white one? He's still a symbol of American political and cultural imperialism — a symbol of the self-perpetuating myth of American exceptionalism that has been actively pedalled by the Pentagon for decades. In congratulating themselves over gifting the role of Captain America to a black man, Marvel has effectively whitewashed the character of its true imperialist legacy, which is an exploitation of the call for diversity.
Of course, superhero films cannot be truly expected to subvert the American military industrial complex. Or the patriarchy, or racism, or ableism, or queer-phobia, etc.. Not because the genre is inherently one-dimensional, but because the companies producing these stories are too deeply tied to military, political and corporate interests, which ultimately corrupt the true positive messages of said stories. Again, if we could somehow extricate superheroes from the interests of the companies who produce them, then perhaps we wouldn’t have only half-hearted and superficial attempts at enacting social and political progress. But in a society where culture is solely driven by profit, that is all we are likely to get.
Perhaps things felt different ten years ago because superheroes had only just become the most culturally dominant genre in the world. Critics back then did talk of the risk of franchise fatigue, but the belief that superheroes were simply too big to fail persisted. Could the disappointment in Marvel's offerings now be, in fact, franchise fatigue? Or are we as a society simply outgrowing superheroes? The latter does not seem likely, simply because there are still millions of people who still enjoy superhero films and TV shows. Martin Scorsese got into trouble on the Internet when he claimed that what’s missing from Marvel films “is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes." And is he wrong? It is highly likely that after more than a decade of being constantly bombarded by vastly similar superhero blockbusters, audiences have already internalised the formulaic tropes and tendencies of these films, leaving them ready for something new and different. Marvel, in particular, has come to feel soulless and empty as a franchise; I watched Black Widow only because I had to — because once upon a time, I watched The Avengers as a teenager and fell in love with the only badass female character I had ever been exposed to that wasn’t so badly written that she effectively alienated women. I owed it to Natasha to watch the film that we should have gotten seven years ago. But I shouldn't have felt forced to watch the damn thing.
Yet, this disappointment in superheroes goes beyond franchise fatigue. As an audience, not only have we become too familiar with Marvel's story-telling formulas, but we have also become more educated, progressive and film-literate. With each new generation, we have come to expect more and more overtly progressive messaging, and that is a demand that the Hollywood film industry, and Disney in particular, simply cannot adequately cater to, no matter how much they pretend to. This isn't even meant as a veiled criticism of the industry's inherent conservatism, but rather as a comment on how the capitalist roots of our cultural media will always ensure that progress is inhibited and slowed down as much as possible. It is simply not in studios' economic interest to have blatantly progressive heroes (which is why progressive ideologies are often relegated to the villains instead). In fact, let’s not forget that in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, the titular heroes fight against the most progressive and leftist movement ever to have been portrayed by Marvel — a movement that is simply not convincing enough in its villainy — and then not only protect the corrupt politicians but also befriend John Walker, the new Captain America, despite his obvious criminality and murderous tendencies. Such adherence to the status quo on behalf of studios like Marvel is due to the erroneous belief that any deviation from it would potentially risk a loss of revenue by alienating the white, male, heteronormative consumers; a belief that was categorically proven wrong years ago when multiple studies showed that films led by women and people of colour actually dominate the market and the box office, even for franchises that were thought to be white male territory, including Marvel, Star Wars and most action franchises.
So why do Marvel releases feel so bland these days? Because they are. They are intentionally formulated (by studios who rarely allow creative freedom to filmmakers) to be as universally appealing as possible — which means that any real substance or potentially progressive politics in the stories are either watered down or stripped away altogether in favour of maintaining the status quo. Captain America may be a black man now, but the fact remains that there is still a Captain America: a physical representation of American imperialism and American infallibility. And this stubborn compliance with the status quo is all the more noticeable the more time passes and the more audiences learn how to look for meaningful messaging in the media they consume. Maybe superhero films haven't changed and we're only just now waking up to their politically restricted nature, or maybe society has changed and the films are simply falling short of its new expectations, unable to keep up with the times. Either way, the studios producing these films are failing us as consumers and as a society. But can we really expect more than that? In a society where culture has been monetised, can we really expect a studio such as Marvel, or its parent company Disney, to prioritise progressiveness, social awareness and cultural empathy over profit? Over the status quo?
By R. Jordan Ortiz
Hope you enjoyed this piece! We’re back and planning for more critical analyses of our our favourite popular media out there. Look for us next week and don’t forget to like, subcribe and share! :)