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Being responsible for creating, curating, and constantly expanding the biggest, most popular, and highest-grossing franchise in the history of cinema is always going to lead to supreme confidence, but Marvel became a victim of its own hubris when it came to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
The superhero sandbox has been struggling on all fronts recently, with the recent drama surrounding Daredevil: Born Again encapsulating the issues to have dogged Kevin Feige’s previously-impenetrable armor ever since the Multiverse Saga began, with all of the MCU’s worst-reviewed film and television projects having emerged since Avengers: Endgame.
On the feature-length front, Quantumania is the lowest-rated movie on Rotten Tomatoes, and during a recent appearance on The Watch podcast, author Joanna Robinson – the brains behind bombshell book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios – revealed that the higher-ups genuinely thought they had a winner on their hands.
“[Marvel Studios] is aware of what’s happening to their brand. My understanding, having talked to some people, is that Quantumania really shook them, and I’m sure Secret Invasion shook them further, but Quantumania really shook them because they felt like they had something good. Because they all internally thought, ‘Everyone’s gonna love this.’ And then they put it out and people didn’t. And then they were like, ‘Oh no, our internal barometer is not attuned to what people want anymore.’ With Quantumania, they were like, ‘We put out a banger.’ And then that’s not how a lot of people felt.”
If the slide doesn’t arrest itself sooner rather than later, then audiences might well begin to turn their backs on the MCU in larger numbers than ever before, so maybe now is the time for Feige and company to consolidate, streamline, and ensure things get back on the right track before it’s too late.