‘Quantumania’ And The Incredible Shrinking MCU

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the 31st Marvel Studios feature film and the official kickoff of Phase 5 of the MCU, debuted last week to decent box office but abysmal reviews. The film is the third to feature Ant Man (Paul Rudd), an unlikely candidate to anchor a trilogy in the first place, and has left many viewers confused and exhausted by relentless special effects and too many “just wait, this will get cool in a couple more movies” plot points.

This reaction points to some danger ahead for a story architecture that so far has supported almost limitless expansion and unimpeded access to moviegoers’ wallets. Is the franchise, whose financial success since 2008 is unprecedented in Hollywood history, in danger of collapsing under the weight of its own continuity?

In a recent EW interview, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige waxed enthusiastic about Jonathan Majors’ portrayal of the villainous time lord Kang who debuted in last year’s Loki series on Disney+. “Kang is the highest-testing villain we’ve ever had in any of our friends-and-families screenings,” he said.

Behind the hype, Feige is clearly hoping Majors will help fill the charisma gap that’s bedeviled Marvel since the departure of franchise lynchpins Robert Downey, Jr. and Chris Evans, and the untimely death of Chadwick Boseman. Similar hopes rest on the shoulders of Iman Vellani, the appealing young actress at the center of 2022’s Ms. Marvel mini-series, bound for the big screen in The Marvels (due out July 28). “She essentially steals [the show],” said Feige. “It makes me excited that people will, I hope, see that movie and then revisit those shows on Disney+.”

The infusion of new faces comes at a time when characters like The Guardians of the Galaxy (slated for a return to the big screen on May 5 following an enjoyable holiday novelty special on Disney+) and Thor are looking a bit shopworn. The bigger problem is whether these talented actors will be given the space to develop into well-rounded characters that capture our affections in the ways Evans’s idealistic Captain America, Chris Hemsworth’s earnest and big-hearted Thor, and Downey’s rakish, sharp-witted Tony Stark did in the initial wave.

When the MCU was a blank slate, those characters and their foundational stories not only captured the true spirit of the beloved original characters, but also a fresh way to bring comic-based material to the screen. They balanced respect for Marvel story continuity with accessibility for the billions of people not steeped in decades of comics minutia.

Now more than thirty feature films and nearly a dozen TV series in, and with the universe overgrown with Big Story lore and details, it is nearly impossible for even Marvel’s best writers and directors to strike that balance. The arcs of discovery, redemption and coming to terms with past trauma that powered Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and Black Panther now grate like the strains of a pop song that’s gotten too much airplay. The details of backstory for Shang Chi, the (new) Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and various other heroes introduced in the past few years may be importantly different in terms of cultural representation, but they amount to just new paint on an old story formula. Meanwhile genuinely original high concept works like The Eternals and Moon Knight require audiences to embrace whole new facets of mythology that sit uneasily alongside the mountain range of McGuffins that already towers over the MCU landscape. It is no wonder they have been met with resistance.

Feige recognizes the problem of keeping things both fresh and familiar. “We don’t ever want it to seem exclusive or that you need to have done your homework before watching something,” he told EW. “Now, I’ve also realized that a lot of people like to do the homework. A lot of people find the fun in the homework and the continuity and the connectivity. But it is a balance of always trying to do both.”

Indeed. Consider that Marvel now features at least four pantheons of divine beings, several warring intergalactic alien races, dozens of planes of existence, at least two lost Earthly kingdoms, various mystical and scientific sources of supernatural power, and an alternative history of World War II, just for starters. That’s a lot. And we haven’t even started with mutants or clones yet. All this hangs in the background, with an audience trained to pay the most careful attention to clues and continuity details, and with increasingly larger bodies of knowledge necessary to even make sense of new installments.

This might not sound like a “shrinking” universe; rather the opposite. The problem is that every new addition, every new realm or universe or mythology that has to make its appearance to raise the stakes in each new installment, diminishes the grandeur of the whole. One awesome toy in a toybox appears cool and impressive. Dozens of toys is just clutter.

Marvel still has two big artillery shells in its arsenal capable of blasting through the ball of confusion that the MCU has become, thanks to Disney’s acquisition of 20^th/21^st Century Fox in 2019. The X-Men and the Fantastic Four are each poised for a long-awaited MCU debut, and each is several cuts above the back-bench characters currently being pressed into service.

It remains unclear how big an impact these can make after 20 years of franchise exhaustion, reboots and failures to launch. Hopes run especially high for the Fantastic Four, the cornerstone of Marvel Comics’ initial rise to glory in the 1960s and the launchpad for many of the company’s most brilliant stories and concepts. But this simplest of concepts – a squabbling family of adventurers balancing the four essential elements – has proven curiously resistant to satisfactory cinematic adaptation. Fans everywhere – and Disney shareholders – are hoping Feige can break the curse.

“We sort of talked about mutants and that whole aspect to the Marvel world,” said Feige. “But Fantastic Four is the foundation for everything that came after in the comics. There’s certainly been versions of it [on screen], but never inhabiting the storytelling of the MCU. And that’s something that is really exciting for us.”

Most studios would kill to have Marvel’s problem of too much franchise content, too many expectations of past greatness to live up to, and too long a streak of billion dollar box office hits to continue indefinitely. Most would also kill to have their crown jewels in the hands of Kevin Feige, who has managed to somehow make all this work far better and far longer than anyone could possibly imagine.

Feige’s boss, Bob Iger, not only has to worry about potential franchise fatigue, but also the fragile economics of the streaming and theatrical release ecosystem in general, from which not even Disney is immune. So it’s unsurprising that Feige told EW that “the pace at which we’re putting out the Disney+ shows will change,” and that a few of the Marvel projects people assumed were on the books for 2023 might not see the light of day for a little while longer.

Balance, by its nature, requires restraint, something that doesn’t always come easily to Hollywood. With Quantumania, Marvel made itself small, or at least smaller than we’re accustomed to seeing in terms of universal adulation. We’ll see if it can keep growing its story universe without getting too big for its own good.