What Next For The MCU After Avengers: Endgame?
6. Keeping The Competition At Bay
The 'Marvel vs DC' debate has been done to death, and it has been definitively proven that the Warner Bros.-backed DCEU simply hasn't been able to compete at the same critical or commercial level as the Disney-owned Marvel Studios on a consistent basis.
That being said, recent developments on both sides of the divide could see things heating up over the coming years.
For the first time in a long time, the future of the MCU is in a state of flux. Some flagship characters are gone, with Avengers: Endgame acting as something of a soft reboot for the shared universe. Marvel Studios may have announced a number of release dates up to 2022, but none of these dates have officially been claimed as of yet.
As for the DC, they have been undergoing something of a creative renaissance recently. Gone is the dark and brooding Zack Snyder aesthetic, and in is a sense of self-awareness and fun that had been sorely lacking in the studio's output from Man of Steel right up to Justice League.
Aquaman was big, loud and very, very stupid, but it knew this and fully embraced it. It might not be a particularly good movie, but it is entertaining as hell. Audiences clearly agreed as it earned over $1.1bn at the box office, which is a total that only seven MCU movies have ever exceeded. Shazam! may not have hit the same financial heights ($362.7m worldwide), but it was a bona fide critical darling nonetheless.
The billion dollar success of Aquaman and the critical praise that showered Shazam! increased interest in DC movies again, and the future is looking brighter than it has for a long time. The incredible-looking Joker, the hotly-anticipated Wonder Woman 1984, writer/director James Gunn's The Suicide Squad the eventual release of The Batman could rejuvenate the studio's fortunes in a huge way, and provide the reshuffled Marvel Cinematic Universe with genuine competition for the first time ever.