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The Marvel Cinematic Universe (hereby abbreviated as MCU) garnered a fair share of criticism in the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame and even beforehand. As there are plenty of points in this regard, ranging from the tonal whiplash of Thor: Love and Thunder to inconsistent writing between films, it can be a little overwhelming to parse through all of them.
Given that the MCU has lasted for well over a decade, that's more than enough time to dissect a few of the legitimate problems with it and how they should've been addressed. While not a post-mortem, this should provide some context for the more legitimate complaints that the cinematic universe seems to be garnering, especially of late.
Disclaimer: As this involves a decade's worth of Marvel content, spoiler warnings are ahead for the various films and TV shows. Any and all opinions expressed here are solely of the author's.
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10 of the MCU's biggest problems examined, along with some potential fixes
1) Half the Avengers being ignored
When most fans picture the MCU, they usually think of Iron Man, Captain America, or Thor. The fact that these three practically dominated phases 1 and 2 didn't help matters. The Hulk only had one film in Phase 1 and was deemed a lost cause after that, Black Panther didn't premiere until Phase 3 alongside Captain Marvel, and Black Widow's film didn't release until Phase 4.
This problem gets more egregious during Avengers Endgame, where only Captain America and Iron Man get big character development. Widow's character arc is mostly implied and not written well, Hawkeye's was only salvaged thanks to his tie-in show, and Thor was largely reduced to a joke, as was the case with Ant-Man.
An easy fix would've been giving Hulk another movie between Age of Ultron and Thor: Ragnarok, putting Black Widow's movie between Infinity War and Endgame, and giving Hawkeye his own film. Captain Marvel's film, while good in its own way, felt more like an introductory film late in the game and should've premiered earlier.
2) Tom Holland's Spider-Man attached to Iron Man
Any comic fan will tell you that Spider-Man and Iron Man have a good working relationship, up until Civil War and other stories that have Spidey thrown out of Avenger's Tower or had them at odds. While the movie version of Civil War introduced Tom Holland's version of Spider-Man well, one chief critique was that Spider-Man felt hollow in Homecoming and Far From Home.
To clarify: Spider-Man is a hero in his own right, with his own rogues gallery and middle-class upbringing. Yet both Mysterio and Vulture in the MCU have grievances with Iron Man and as a result, it feels like Spider-Man is just Iron Man's successor instead of being his own person. A way to fix this would've been to have the villains not have grievances with Iron Man at all, and future Spider-Man films should focus on his own adventures and rogues gallery.
It must be noted that Spider-Man: No Way Home fixed a lot of the criticisms people had with Tom Holland's version of Spider-Man, even if it needed the crossover of Tobey Mcquire and Andrew Garfield's versions to do so.
3) "Adaptations" in name only
The MCU has had to switch things around when adapting famous comic book stories. This normally isn't a problem, as the MCU makes it work with great acting and great presentation. An example of a story better told in the MCU than in the comics is Captain America: Civil War and the Winter Soldier storyline.
The problems started coming in with Infinity War and Endgame, but they existed since the Age of Ultron, with Ultron's motives and the changes made to Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. There are other examples like the Infinity Saga adaptations and the Secret Invasion live-action series.
For clarification, Secret Invasion was made into a sci-fi political thriller instead of a The Thing-style imposter movie, and Thanos' motives among other things were changed for Infinity War and Endgame. A comics-accurate film adaptation of certain events is possible, but ongoing rights issues would need to be untangled first.
4) Too many Bathos
Bathos refers to the storytelling trope where something serious takes a swerve into the trivial, like having a massive war scene suddenly cut away to something mundane and silly or more casual dialogue following epic and grandiose dialogue. In the MCU's case, the crowning example is Thor: Love and Thunder from Phase 4.
The aforementioned Thor film felt like everything was undercut by far too much humor, a problem most people have had with the rest of the MCU, where a serious or heartfelt moment is undercut by a joke, a lot like the Thor fat jokes in Endgame. In the case of Thor: Love and Thunder, it ruined what was otherwise a perfectly good story.
While the complaint is a valid one, it only really started getting annoying during Phase 4. If anything, the fact that films like Wakanda Forever and Guardians of the Galaxy 3 make the humor mix well with a serious tone proves that it can work. The problem isn't the humor, it's the quality of the writing around the humor.
5) Embracing spoiler culture too much
Per several exposés about how Avengers: Endgame was handled behind the scenes, a very serious discussion has taken hold recently about how spoilers are handled on the corporate level. The exposés boil down to this: the film(s) have entire scripts completely blacked out except for individual roles and lines, resulting in the actors being confused, delivering lines wrong, and not emoting well.
Spoilers are obviously things to be avoided on a person-to-person level, as they run the risk of ruining a story. This is why spoiler warnings are added in reviews or discussion articles. The problem is that Marvel has become way more intense about avoiding leaks and spoilers ever since Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania had a major script leak prior to release.
Scripts being changed to support different actors is common, likewise not telling actors certain things about their characters or the story in order to garner genuine reactions has been done in several films prior, like Ghostbusters or Star Wars. The practice of entirely blacking out scripts to avoid "spoiling" things for actors, however, needs to be dropped or the production will suffer for it.
6) Workplace abuse
During the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Marvel and the MCU have been discussed when it comes to the idea of workplace abuse. This is especially timely given that Marvel's special effects teams have all voted to unionize.
2023 is littered with reports of strikes going on in multiple areas throughout the workplace, especially in America. From actors to writers to automotive workers and prices of everything rising whilst CEOs make more money than their workers, it's prudent to talk about the abusive conditions MCU workers have been through.
From the pay being hardly anything to survive on to various special effects studios shuttering their doors post-production owing to not seeing a cent for their efforts, and exploitative work hours, the unionization efforts are considered a historic event for the industry. If Disney and Marvel had treated their workers fairly and paid them well, this potentially could've been avoided.
7) Oversaturation with diminishing returns
Oversaturating the market with multiple films, shows, and other merchandise, especially with a packed release schedule has resulted in what many have dubbed "superhero fatigue". Realistically, it's not so much superhero fatigue as Across the Spider-Verse was positively received and so was Guardians of the Galaxy 3.
The problem here is both quality and quantity - too much of the same material is being released. One could point to Phase 4's lackluster performance as the problem, but it goes a little deeper than just one span of time. Audiences still love superhero stories, The Batman proved that.
The problem is that there's so much content that the MCU was beginning to give people whiplash and hype fatigue starting around mid-Phase 3 in 2017. Essentially, there's too much for any one person to reasonably enjoy and all of it seems to also be coming out too quickly. Slowing down would help.
8) Everything feels the same
This is a complimentary point to points 3, 4, and 7. Across the Spider-Verse producers and writers Phil Lord and Chris Miller gave an interview to Rolling Stone in June 2023 on the aforementioned issue of so-called "superhero fatigue". In the interview, Miller stated:
“I don’t believe it’s super superhero fatigue, I believe it’s ‘a movie that feels like a movie I’ve seen a dozen times before’ fatigue...If you’re using the same story structure and the same style and the same tone and the same vibe as movies and shows that have come before, it doesn’t matter what genre it is. It’s going to be boring to people.”
Lord added specifically that theater audiences cannot be satiated on the multiverse stakes, Easter Eggs, and big reveals when all they care about is the relationships between characters. James Gunn made similar statements in April, about DC and Marvel heroes and why it's important to keep the characters front and center.
The essence of this complaint is simple: the characters all feel like wisecrackers, the stories themselves are over-reliant on the aforementioned multiverse shenanigans and Easter Eggs, and there's no room for characters to grow or breathe because they're too focused on telling the big picture stories. It's why Eternals was panned over Shang-Chi.
9) Too many characters, too little development
To expand on point 8, there are a lot of characters in Marvel Comics. This is expected, however, as the comics are well over 50 years old. The problem with the MCU currently is that it is trying to introduce too many characters, too quickly, and fit the big picture in whilst interrupting the story.
In other words, the problem is not having enough self-contained stories. Wakanda Forever and Guardians 3 were self-contained enough for their respective stories. Spider-Man: No Way Home was a live-action Spider-Man celebration, only for the live action Spider-Man stories. But then there are examples like the aforementioned Eternals, Secret Invasion, and others that over-rely on too many callbacks and references.
The older MCU films worked because, despite there being a connective tissue, the films told their own stories. There's too little of the newer characters for audiences to truly absorb if they show up again at all. Again, the key is to slow down and let things be self-contained before introducing the larger universe which isn't happening.
10) The Disney Plus shows are too short/mishandled
Everyone has their favorite of the MCU live-action shows, though even fans can agree on one critical problem: they're fitting the mold of shortening and streamlining TV to fit into a shorter timeframe at the expense of the story and overall productions. It's an overall problem with Hollywood, but the MCU has it in spades.
More than one of the shows on the Disney+ streaming service has been criticized for ending in an anticlimactic manner, or otherwise just not meeting the standard set by the movies. The length of the shows makes them feel like shortened movies as opposed to utilizing television's strengths to continue after their first season.
Wandavision, for example, could've had another season to develop the SWORD plotline. Loki has another season coming up, and What If...? has another season likewise. Compared to Agents of SHIELD or the Netflix series like Jessica Jones or Luke Cage, however, more episodes and time will be needed to make sure things develop properly.
As the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues onward into 2023, it was worth noting all of the mistakes past and present, and how to fix them. Though these may have been only 10 major mistakes, there are doubtless more that other fans could bring up with the same degree of legitimacy.
The point of a list like this isn't to decry the MCU, it's seen some of the better Marvel live-action adaptations since the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy of movies. A healthy dose of criticism can go a long way, as this article hopefully has proven.
