Marvel Studios‘ latest entry, “Thunderbolts*,’ now officially retitled “The New Avengers,” has been mostly praised for returning the superhero film studio back to its character-driven roots as part of an attempt to scale back the high volume of productions on both the small and big screens. After there had been some questions of quality control and studio resources/personnel being stretched thin to accommodate both Disney’s theatrical slate and Disney+’s thirst for never-ending MCU content.
Disney CEO Bob Iger is now speaking up about the new film’s success (it has earned an impressive $165.5 million at the global box office, so far) with both critics and audiences, boasting about it being the “first and best example” of the studio’s new priority to make better movies under the new Marvel Studios strategy of focusing on quality over quantity. Also, highlighting in a recent investor’s call, the desire for more streaming projects from Marvel was part of the problem.
“We all know that in our zeal to flood our streaming platform with more content, that we turned to all of our creative engines, including Marvel, and had them produce a lot more,” Iger said during Wednesday’s Disney investor call (via Variety).
“We’ve also learned over time that quantity does not necessarily beget quality. And frankly, we’ve all admitted to ourselves that we lost a little focus by making too much. By consolidating a bit and having Marvel focus much more on their films, we believe that will result in better quality. I think the first and best example is ‘Thunderbolts*.’ I feel very good about that.”
The film directed by Jake Schreier does a very good job of pulling elements from movies like “The Guardians of The Galaxy,” and the first two “Captain America” sequels as way to continue the tradition of Marvel’s interest in exploring misfit characters impacted by traumas (Bob’s eternal demon manifesting as a powerful villain, The Void) alongside shadowy and backstabbing government sub-plots (sadly, mirroring the chaos of the current government) as America continues their pursit of creating super-human beings that combat future cosmic threats after the likes of Loki, Thanos, and evil Skrulls.
How the group of old and new characters from “Thunderbolts*” (“The New Avengers”) will factor into new films like “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Avengers: Secret Wars” remains to be seen, but seeing more ragtag characters being adopted into the heroic fold as a form of redemption feels a little less haphazard.
Hopefully, things like “The Fantastic Four: The First Steps,” “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” “X-Men,” and “Black Panther 3” will have similar big narrative and character swings in an attempt to do NEW things that audiences haven’t experienced, as some movies did feel like they blended together with other stories.
On the streaming side of things, we have things like “Ironheart,” “Wonder Man,” “Daredevil: Born Again” season 2, and “Vision Quest” on deck.
We’ll have to wait and see if the quality control has indeed been restored by this new strategy from Marvel/Disney or if it’s just a temporary band-aid.
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
