10 HUGE Problems Facing The Future Of The MCU
6. Audience Burnout
People will debate until they're blue in the face about whether "superhero fatigue" is a real thing, but what's less debatable is that the MCU's box office prowess has begun to wane since the start of Phase 4.
Yes, the impact of the pandemic cannot be ignored, but only one of the eight MCU movies released during the Multiverse Saga has grossed more than $1 billion globally - Spider-Man: No Way Home.
More concerningly, the recent Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania colossally under-performed, and will be lucky to get within spitting distance of $500 million, bringing it dangerously close to not turning a profit at all.
15 years into the MCU, with 31 movies behind it, it's clear that the series' mainstream popularity is declining - certainly not to disastrous levels, but audiences are becoming far more discerning and choosy about which films they leave the house to watch.
Plus, with the TV and movie branches of the MCU become ever-more intertwined, watching a movie like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - positioned as a sequel to WandaVision - ends up feeling like homework for many.
The MCU pumps out so much content these days that "keeping up" can feel like more of a job than some would like, and though Kevin Feige recently stated that the franchise is being re-evaluated to favour quality over quantity, with so many projects already on the docket it's a tough claim to believe.
Reigniting mainstream enthusiasm for the MCU will be extremely difficult, because no matter how good the upcoming Avengers films could be, a lot of people are basically over the franchise at this point.