The Marvels' Box Office Flop: A Shift in Studio Success and Hollywood's New Era for Workers
The Marvels' Box Office Flop: A Shift in Studio Success and Hollywood's New Era for Workers
The ability to alter anything last minute has evolved into narratives that feel uncertain.
"The Marvels" debuted this month with the lowest box office numbers among all 33 films within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While this poses a challenge for Marvel Studios, it doesn't suggest a decline in their ability to create compelling movies. Audiences are likely to return, especially for movies branded with "Avengers" or "X-Men."
This signals the conclusion of an era marked by unwavering dominance. Marvel, setting the pace for Hollywood over the past 15 years, now sheds light on Hollywood's future trajectory.
While some fans might mark Marvel's history by specific movies like the Fantastic Four or Blade series, the studio's evolution isn't defined by cosmic events or supernatural heroes but by writers' strikes.
The Writers Guild of America strikes in 2007-8 and recently this year bookend crucial phases in Marvel Studios' journey. In between, Marvel transitioned from a struggling independent studio to the Disney division behind the most lucrative movie franchise, boasting 32 films grossing $29.5 billion and counting.
Each strike forced Marvel to confront fundamental questions about crafting superhero narratives involving armored protagonists and capes.
The remedy for nearly every challenge
In 2007, the studio raced to finish "Iron Man" before the WGA halted further contributions. While the movie was nearly complete, the final battle lacked the character and wit of the rest of the film. Just before the "pencils down" order, screenwriters devised a new scene, leveraging preexisting footage and heavy CGI, emphasizing Stark's intellect to defeat his rival.
Implementing this last-minute solution established three core principles for Marvel Studios: readiness to discard long-planned ideas for better alternatives, using special effects to reflect character depth, and resorting to CGI under tight deadlines.
Yet, these principles led to overwhelming workloads for digital artists, compromising the quality of recent Marvel productions.
The drift towards vague storytelling
The freedom to alter stories resulted in narratives that felt indecisive, leaving options open for abrupt revisions, likely to set up entirely new projects due to corporate pressure.
Jac Schaeffer, head writer of "WandaVision," mentioned the ongoing uncertainty in crafting the series finale, a typical aspect of Marvel projects. However, by 2023, this narrative vagueness translated into financial setbacks. "Secret Invasion" incurred over $200 million in costs, heavily spent on reshoots and hasty CGI fixes, receiving overwhelmingly negative reactions.
This year's strikes and the conclusion of the streaming wars prompted Marvel Studios to reassess its surplus of Disney Plus shows. Studio head Kevin Feige made tough choices, scrapping the 18-episode series "Daredevil: Born Again" midway, realizing its ineffectiveness.
After years of avoiding conventional TV norms, Marvel acknowledged their value, recognizing the need for pilots and showrunners. Embracing traditional methods might refine their storytelling, aligning with the recent deal between WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. This aligns well, considering the impending Hollywood labor conflict concerning digital labor.
The recently resolved Screen Actors Guild strike highlighted actors' desire to control their digital representations, challenging the reliance on CGI patches in movie editing, impacting the working conditions of digital specialists.
In September, Marvel's in-house VFX artists unionized. If last-minute digital alterations become costlier, it could prompt the industry to adopt more structured approaches to storyline development.
Hollywood might remember 2023 not solely for Marvel Studios' box office setback but as the year studios negotiated the terms of our digital future.
